THE FIELD MARSHAL.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12722, 18 February 1910, Page 4

THE FIELD MARSHAL.

A PEN PICTURE. .. An Australian paper publishes tlie following sketch of Field-Marshal Lord- Kitchener : — . "K" is what: -they call him in the service. Just "K,". plain "K." Nothing else. Everybody knows what it means. Go to Egypt and talk of "K." .Speak of "K" in India,- in Gibraltar, in Malta, at Aider shot. Say it to anyone who was out' in Af-rica. Wherever you mention "K"

every soldier man who hears it will. •at once prick up His ear's and become all attention, l'hey all know who iie 'if,. Ihey all know what he has cioue and what he can do. They have ail felt the toucli of his iron hand in some way of other, for the stern clench Ot it has gripped the service throughout, atfected it throughout. The train of' M X," the influence of • l Jv," is through it and over it. Field-Marshal Viscount Horatio Herbert Kitchener, of ' Khartoum, is his lull and complete title, but in the service they would never demean him by applying such a label to him. To tiiom he is "K," and "K" stands for something far more than the more man. It nieans a system, a nio- ! thod, n phase of Empire, the art of war!

Kitchener has risen rapidly. He is •sti years of age now, and ho is the foremost soldier of the British Empire. He has forced his way up by sheer brain power. That is the secret of the man, the clue to his whole character. He is pure, unalloyed brain, unhampered by any other feeling of vice or virtue. .Everything about him, his comfort, his method of living, Jus appearance, are aJI subordinated by that matchless brain ; all work to help it and increase its power. Nobody loves him. In Africa ineu went out of their way to pass wear tord, lßjobert|s in orckjr that they might salute him. They loved him. The whole Empire loves him. With Kitchener it was different. Tney said: "There's 'X,'" and stepped out of the way to avoid meeting him. They respect him. The whole Empire respects him, is grateful to him, and uses him, but love him— never. On tli© othor liandy he is not hated. Kitchener has broken many a man.- Some he has worked to death. Some he has tossed aside as not worth using. Some he has ground to powder. None hate him. He is not human enough to hate. All recognise that it is not the man Kitchener , who does these things. There is no man'Kitcl'.ener. There is just a brain, and that is why he is called '^K." If typifies that brain, superb, magnificent— the finest brain in the- British Army. Those who go under, those whom ho crushes, admit its infallibility. They admit that they had to go under, they had to be crushed. They may complain but they do not. hate him. "K" is too much like Fate. What has to be has to be, and what "K' J says has to be, for "K" is always right. So he lias gone through the Empire imposing restrictions, making loafers work, and workers work harder, and leaving behind him always that same strange passionless respect which is not love, not admiration, not hate, but merely unquestioning acquiescence. • !• There is nothing of the social lion about Kitchener. He has no social qualities. He is not even a pleasant man. He is a soldier with au ambition and amission, and he has la I jio time and no thought to spare beyond them. Long ago in Egypt he laid it down that an officer should not marry. It detracted from his usefulness; To Kitchener the sole use of a man was to get work out of himHe is a good -man-master just as he is a good horse-master. He feeds his men, sleeps his men, rests his men jusb as much as is necessary to enable them to work at their top for the longest possible time. He has.no sympathies,. no favourites. He chooses his assistants with the greatest care. They must be men of tremendous brain power, of splendid training, tight-lipped silent men who think ham and do not talk. They have to be as much like himself as possible. He has surrounded himself with such men — all of them unmarried, all of them with only one single interest — that of doing the job which 'he sets thorn. In this lies no small part of his success in his ability to choose the right men and infect them with his own singleness of purpose But even those who serve him most faithfully have no affection for him. He has friends, probably, but they arc very few. It is said of him that he has not neglected to gain favour with those in authority, so as to help Torward his career ; but at least this has to bo remembered, too, that ho has never been granted anything that ho did not almost at once justify by brilliant success. When all is said there remains this— that he is "K," the greatest brain, the greatest force, the most remarkable man in tlie British Empire to-day. There are other men of similar qualities ; but they are found among the pitiless industrial conquerors, those multi-millionaires of America, who have devoted themselves to the acquisition of wealth and the power that springs from it, just as "K" has devoted himself to the acquisition of fame and tho power that springs from military supremacy. He belongs to the same class. Tho difference is that he has chosen a different field of endeavour.