THE ORGANISER OF VICTORY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13847, 28 August 1919, Page 2

THE ORGANISER OF VICTORY.

A contributor to a Home paper, oil the signing of peace, paid the following tribute to the memory of the late ]jo rd K i teh ene- r : "What king, going to make, war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000 V . But the British Government when it declared war had not taken into any serious account the cost —or, rather, had counted that, with a perj'eetlv equipued and highly efficientexpeditionary force of 10,000 men we could give our Allies all the help .required, or all they could expect, to meet and master the great military power of the world. When Marshal Foeh was in England for the manoeuvres of 1912 the stereotvped question was put to him by a verv tactful staff officer: "If France goes to war with Germany, how many men would 3-011 expect us to send youf' The answer was prescient and pregnant: "Send one man. I will ' take care that he shall be killed, and I will then have the English nation in arm's." When Lord Kitchener took over the seals at the War Office he found politicians, financiers and strategists in cheerful agreement that the war could not last more than six months. Modern ■ weapons, economic- conditions, and international ei-edit would combine to forbid anything like really protracted hostilities between the Central and the Entente Powers. Nor was the multiplication of theatres of war on the tapis at all. One man aloue held a diametrically opposite opinion. It is on record that I Kitchener said—and said very plainly : "The war will last at least- three years. The cost w ill be enormous. The stake'at issue is the freedom of humanity : the world will be ' convulsed : several. thrones will be vacant, and the Germans will be beaten by virtue .01 the last million, men put in the field against them." The Expeditionary Force was exquisitely 'modelled, faultlessly equipped, and composed of the flower of England's manhood. But by no stretch of imagination could it be considered an army, and for a three years' war an army is the prime necessity.

So while everyone else was thinking of the reinforcements for Sir John French's two superb corps and of expanding the Territorial framework, Kitchener boldly determined—though he did not at once declare his determination—that the British Empire could, and should, make a contribution of seventy divisions to the great cause.

"Your King and country need you" was the first proclamation put out.

says he must have 100,000 men at once 1 ' was the more populai-. version of it, and in one day 35,000 men crowded to the colors. The growth of the Kitchener armies was prodigious. ■ "How strong you will be next year" was the remark made to him in the early autumn of 19H. "Yes, but that does not matter quite so much," was the reply. "When I have to be really strong is at the beglnnin" of the third year of the war." Sleeping or working—and for the first vear he slept but very little—there was never absent from him -the matter of raising, training, and arming the hosts which should presently take the field. He was, of course, beset with tempting proposals to raise and send corps d'elite at individual expense. No offer of kindly help was turned down, but .one condition was inflexibly imposed—-that no unit, whatever its origin or character, must enjor any advantage or privilege over another.

His orders for arms, ammunition, iind equipment were of a piece with his hu-ire ideas as to man-power. Contracts were made of which three years was by no means the term, factories were built, labor, female as well, its male, unrently invoked. One rule amain was laid down ; that no barp;aiii wis to be struck with contractors or controllers unless they could -give jrenuine evidence that it could be carried out. The only mistakes made, or alleged to have been made, in the upbrin-nns- of the great armies, were the mistakes of the man -who trips over an obstacle at his feet because iie is looking ahead to the end of the road. The mistake which all others made was in not looking to the end of the road at all. The burden of the war lay heavily on Kitchener, but- he always felt that, the issue was sure. ' : ln time, though perhaps uot in my time," he would say. Twenty-two months of ceaseless effort in England, France, Flanders, and the Near East, and then the mission, which was to steady and- reestablish and strengthen a faltering j ally—a mission, the accomplishment of" which might have changed the whole face of the war, and would surely have set an earlier term to it.

Full of hope and confidence he went out on his last journey. He .was .betrayed into the hands of the Hun—into swift agony, into a horrible yetglorious death ; the only field-marshal in history, the only Minister of the Crown, to die at the hands of the enemy. God rest him well, for indeed he was'a wise and faithful servant.