LORD KITCHENER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7951, 29 January 1906, Page 7

LORD KITCHENER.

Mr Arnold White contributes an interesting article on Lord Kitchener to Oassell's Magazine. Of hia act in desecrating the tomb of the Mahdi end throwing bis ashes into the Nile, which created so much searching of heart in England, the author writes: How Kitohener got to Omdurman in due time need not oe related here; bat his act in desecrating the tomb of the Mahdi and throwing his ashes into the Nile, wbiob created much searching of heart in England, Reserves comment. Nobody can suppose, however hostile to militarism, tnat Kitohener could re•ceive any personal enjoyment from an act so barbarous, so certain to be resented not' only by Christians, but by agnostics and, free thinkers throughout Europe and America. If, therefore, Kitchener derived no personal advantage, what were the p üb'lio reasons for this extraordinary act? Kitohener understood the Moslem mind more thoroughly than any of hifc oritics. All war is barbarism. Kitchener was the man iwho for nearly a score of years had lived -hardly and forsworn pleasure to recover Egypt from the night of barbarism to the light of day, and he was the man wbopin the heyday of triumph asked the English public to reward him by opening a college at Khartoum for the sons of sheiks that they might learn the secrets of English progreas and enlightenment. This was the man who threw the Mabdi's head into the Nile. Why did he do it? It was done in the. interests of the peaoe of Egypt and the world. It was done to prevent the fermentation of disorder that would cluster round the nucleus of a shrine; it was done to evaporate the exhalations of a fanatic poison that would linger, as long as the Mabdi's body remained to Islam. Kitchener may have been mistaken. The persent , writer la not competent to express an oniaion, but of the essential nobility of the act enough has not been made. The man in high place who for a sense of duty will dare not only the critioism but the angry disgust of millions of his fellow countrymen is a moral hero—a rarer product of human nature than a man of physical courage, of intellectual acuteness, or of charm and distinction of manner. '