LORD KITCHENER’S DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19691, 19 January 1926, Page 9

LORD KITCHENER’S DEATH

A SERIOUS CHARGE. "OFFICIALLY ORDERED NEGLIGENCE.” (Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, January 17. Mr Frank Power reiterates the charge that Lord Kitchener’s death was due to officially ordered negligence. He publishes a letter attributed to Colonel Oswald Fitzgerald, who perished with Lord Kitchener, written to a friend, prior to embarking on the Hampshire, asserting that Lord Kitchener was the centre of disgraceful political intrigue, adding: "If we don’t return, foul play will probably have been the means of preventing us.”—Sydney Sun Cable. Mr Frank Power, writing in The Referee, asserted that Mr W. 0. Bridgeman (First Lord of the Admiralty) had made a futile effort to evade the charges that: — 1) More than twelve persons survived from the disaster to the armoured cruiser Hampshire, in which Lord Kitchener and his staff were travelling to Russia, and which was lost off the Orkneys on June 6, 1916; (2) that Kitchener escaped in a small boat and survived for two nighte and a day in an inaccessible part of the Orkney coast; (3) that Kitchener’s body was found elsewhere; (4) that an infernal machine exploded on board the Hampshire; (5) that the Navy was guilty of slackness in the sending of rescue parties. Mr Power declared that the Germans were aware of Lord Kitchener’s mission sufficiently in advance of his departure to lay thirty-four mines in the vicinity of the Orkneys inscribed ‘‘Gott strafe Kitchener.” Mr Bridgeman had failed to disclose that a trawler was mined and sunk in the Hampshire's path three days prior to the disaster to the cruiser. ■