A DOOR OF HISTORY

Taranaki Daily News, 11 October 1928, Page 14

A DOOR OF HISTORY

LORD CURZON IN INDIA. QUARREL WITH KITCHENER. The second volume of Lord Ronaldshay’s “Life of Lord Curzon” gives the history of the severe, strenuous, and thorny years during which Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India, says a London correspondent of an Australian paper. It was the stormiest period of an agitated career. At the outset he quarrelled with Lord Salisbury over a coaling depot in the Persian Gulf which France coveted, but which Lord Curzon denied her on the ground of prior occupation. At the time the British Government was intent upon cultivating the friendliest of relations with France, and Lord Curzon’s too emphatic insistence upon British precedence in the Gulf was distinctly embarrassing. As fqr as the general public of both countries were concerned the incident was smoothed over and forgotten; but Lord Ronaldshay shows, perhaps for the first time, that it rankled for many years afterwards, and considerably changed Salisbury’s opinion of Curzon. So acute was the estrangement at one time that Lord Curzon appealed to King Edward to intervene. In the midst of the crisis King Amanullah of Afghanistan very unwisely embarked upon what is known as the Third Afghan War, which Lord Curzon handled with conspicuous success and brought to an early close, only to be faced with the problem offered by the South African War. The final tragedy was Lord Curzon s quarrel with Lord Kitchener, and it is concerning this historical quarrel that Lord Ronaldshay's book is most enlightening. We have in it, perhaps, the most authoritative account of one side of the dispute that has been made available. This illumination, for instance comes from a private letter written by Lord Curzon soon after Kitchener went out to India to command the Army:— “Kitchener joined me two days ago. We had long, confidential, and most friendly talks, and he greatly impressed me by his honesty, directness, frank commonsense, and combination of energy with power. I feel that at last I shall have a commander-in-chief worthy of the name and position.” Thcree months later, after further experience of him, he wrote this opinion:— “Kitchener is mad keen about everything here. I never met so concentrated a man. He uses an argument. You answer him. He repeats it. You give a second reply, even more cogent than the first. He repeats it again. You demolish him. He repeats it without alteration a third time. But he is as agreeable as he is obstinate, and everyone here likes him.” When three years before Kitchener had been suggested not for the post of commander-in-chief, but for that of military member, Lord Curzon objected on the score of these very characteristics. “It was strange,” comments Lord Ronaldshay, “that it did not occur to him that in the circumstances of the case a man of Lord Kitchener’s temperament was as likely to produce unforeseen results in the one appointment as in the other?” The test came in 1905. Kitchener wanted to abolish dual control of the Army. A controversy waxed furiously between the commander-in-chief and‘the head of the Military Department. At last a decision had to be given. Lord Curzon cast his vote against Kitchener’s proposed “military autocracy.” Lord Ronaldshay opens the doors that have been shut to the outside public upon the scenes in the Cabinet when it met at No 10, Downing Street, to consider the sudden and disturbing development, and he also throws light upon the desperate measures that were adopted in an attempt to harmonise the conflicting views of the principal actors ir. the affair. It is well known that the upshot of it all was that Lord Curzon resigned, but the steps that led up to the climax have never before been pointed out so clearly as here. There were numerous other cries in India during Lord Curzon’s regime, some of them profoundly responsible for the present state of India. Lord Ronaldshay’s version of them is the best extant. This very important life of a great Viceroy and “history” of a critical period in India should have a permanent interest and value. s