Although the General did not call himself, having other more pressing matters to attend to, we found that a junior German officer had visited us five times in the course of the evening. But he never got further than the doorstep, nor any information beyond a bland "Not at home." I tried to picture the scene. "What would you have done if he had insisted on coming in and taking the car?" I asked M'Tavish. "I should have called the police, sir," he said, stiffening at the mere idea of such an intrusion. . reticence! Sir Robert Paul was more than my accomplice: he was the prime mover in this story, whose telling has fallen to me) was in Constantinople in December of last year, and saw our prize several times carrying a party of high British officials to their duties. On one occasion, seeing her outside the British Embassy, he spoke to the Greek chauffeur, whom he knew of old. "Ça 'gaze' toujours?" he asked. "Gaze" is French flying corps slang for "marche." "Mais mieux que jamais!" was the reply. "Il n'y a que le Rolls Royce du Haut Commissionaire qui marche comme My accomplice (but hang elle." LORD KITCHENER.1 SIR GEORGE ARTHUR'S 'Life of Lord Kitchener' is, as all lives should be, the work of a partisan. He has set his old chief in the favourable light in which he saw him, and it is vastly to Lord Kitchener's which stood him in good stead all his life. There he began his mastery of the East, its men, its customs, and its languages. Henceforth the East was something more to him than a vocation; it was a island near Assuan and cultivated it. It was in the desert that he thought most easily and clearly, and had he survived the war, he would certainly have returned to the country where he had won his first victories, and which was more closely intimate to his understanding than the land of his fathers. honour that his biographer home. The ties which bound has nowhere found it necessary him to Egypt were never to attenuate the truth or to snapped. Wherever he was, obscure the facts. Throughout it was to Cairo that his eyes his career Lord Kitchener were turned. He bought an lived (so to say) on parade. What he did was always in the public eye; what he said was always in the public ear. He had nothing to conceal, and very little to defend. His life was all of one piece-devoted to the service of his country. His character, also, was of a piece-simple, instinctive, unconscious. And Sir George Arthur, in recording the deeds and the words of his hero, has painted a skilful and sympathetic portrait, at full length, of a gallant soldier and a wise statesman, to whom the Empire owes more than to any other of his time and gener ation. Like many another great man, Kitchener gave at the outset few proofs of genius. At Woolwich he gained but little glory, and an appointment on the Palestine Survey does not seem a good approach to the War Office. Nevertheless it was in Palestine that he first learned the lessons As he loved the East and knew it, so he did not long lack the appreciation of others who knew and loved it. "Whoever comes up here," wrote Gordon as early as 1884, "had better appoint Major Kitchener Governor-General," and it was fitting that the early years which Kitchener spent in Egypt were years of apprenticeship for the task which he presently achieved, of avenging Gordon's death and of pacifying the Soudan. In 1892 he was appointed by Lord Cromer to be Sirdar, and he began slowly and laboriously to prepare for the campaign 1 Life of Lord Kitchener. By Sir George Arthur. London: Macmillan & Co. 3 volumes. which ended in the battle of Omdurman. From the very first he proved that he was much else besides a soldier. He possessed many qualities which were less showy than useful. He had a natural sense of finance. The late Lord Salisbury said that he was the only soldier in his experience who understood and practised economy. "He did not think that extravagance was the necessary handmaid of efficiency," wrote Lord Cromer, who had a perfect trust in his wisdom and ability. "On the contrary, he was a rigid economist." And it was his rigid economy which made the march to Omdurman possible, despite the scruples of a sometimes parsimonious and embarrassed Government. Hand in hand with his rigid economy there went a talent of organisation which provided for all the risks and chances of a campaign. Kitchener thought always ahead. He was not one who trusted to fortune, or who believed that accident might atone for the faults of imprudence. "Oh, for a little luck! but I never get any," he wrote years afterwards from South Africa. He was backed by something better than luck-a clear knowledge of the end he wanted to reach, and of the best road by which he might approach that end. When in 1896 the Omdurman campaign was begun, Kitchener knew that he might depend upon the loyal support of the British Agent who was his chief. Cromer himself, in supporting Kitchener, was con vineed that little else was required of him than sympathy and approval. "I abstained," said he, "from mischievous activity, and I acted as a check upon the interference of others." Seldom has a happier combination been found of soldier and civil governor. "Elasticity," writes Sir George Arthur, "was of the essence of the scheme, and Cromer willingly allowed Kitchener, when necessary, to communieate directly with agents in England, with the War Office, and even with the Admiralty, -reserving to himself the final word for every transaction and every important move. He left to the Commander in the field the same free hand which he himself obtained from the Cabinet. Complete accord between two strong men-backed as they were at home by a strong Prime Minister-was the underlying success in operations which lasted for over two years, and had their full meed of difficulties, doubts, and disappointments." Nor was Lord Kitchener slow to acknowledge the "oneness of purpose and cheerful determination" which Lord Cromer's loyalty made possible. "For a great enterprise, a master-mind is necessary," said he, at the Guildhall on November 4, 1898. "Lord Cromer was our master, and it was due to his able direction that the reconquest of the Sudan was accomplished." The practical difficulties which Kitchener had to overcome were neither few nor slight. Railways had to be constructed, since transport and supply were the first and last necessities of the campaign, and the stuff of which railways are made was generally lacking. "It may not be known," wrote an officer on Kitchener's staff, "that K. ran the Dongola expedition on the old railway material abandoned after the Wolseley expedition of 1884. His early R.E. training stood him in good stead, and no one else could have made such use of the extraordinary material lying about. Rails were dragged out of mud-huts, where they had for many years done duty as rafters, railway-fastenings used as kitchen grates were collected, and everything of the least use was hunted out and worked in." These difficulties were great enough, and they were not alone. The elements fought with a kind of savagery against the Sirdar's advance. The north wind, which in the living memory of man had never failed to blow at this season, and upon which Kitchener relied to bring up his supply-boats from Halfa, was suddenly replaced by scorching dust-laden blasts from the south. Whirlwinds of sand and violent tempests of rain completed the havoc begun by the south wind, Then the low-pressure cylinder of the Zafir, designed to take part in the attack upon Dongola, burst beyond repair. But no disaster could check the Sirdar's steady advance, and by September 22 Dongola was in our hands. Thus was reached the first stage in the recovery of the Soudan, and there for a year the campaign halted. Meanwhile Kitchener's purpose to advance as far as Omdurman was strengthened by the rumour that a French expedition, led by Colonel Marchand, was on its way to Fashoda, and the Government at home cordially approved his design. The work of preparation went steadily on. Railroads were made, stores colleeted, soldiers trained, and at last the victory of Omdurman laid open the road to Khartoum. Thus was the Soudan reconquered-thus was Gordon's murder avenged. "Ouf! it is all over," wrote Kitchener to a friend, "and I feel like a rag-but very very thankful there was no hitch." A peerage was the just reward of the Sirdar's triumph, and congratulations came to him from statesmen and soldiers, from French and English alike. But, as Sir George Arthur says, he took greater pleasure in Grenfell's simple despatch than in any other compliment that was paid him. "Arrangements for the transport of the forces to the vicinity of the battlefield," wrote Grenfell, "were made by the Sirdar and his Staff with consummate ability. All diffioulties were foreseen and provided for, and from the start of the campaign till its close at Omdurman operations have been conducted with a precision and completeness which have been beyond all praise, while the skill shown in the advance was equalled by the ability with which the Army was .. commanded in the field. Never were greater results supreme command, with Kitchener as his Chief of Staff, achieved at such a trifling all the world remembers. The cost." Thus ended in victory, complete and incontestable, Kitchener's first great achievement, and the firmness and tact wherewith he treated Colonel Marchand, when he met him at Fashoda, showed that he possessed the qualities of a diplomatist as well as those of a general. A year after Omdurman Great Britain was at war with the South African republics, and the second act in the drama of Kitchener's life began. It was not his to enjoy leisure or to rest long from his labours. Lightly as Great Britain entered upon the struggle, Kitchener was not deceived by any false hopes. He did not harbour the comfortable faith that the campaign would be "short, sharp, and decisive." He never was of those who think what they like to think. Moreover, his intuition of what the future held in store revealed him again and again a prophet of the truth. When an eager soldier told him that he feared he would reach South Africa too late to see any fighting, Kitchener warned him that the war would be "long and laborious, and fraught with more grief than glory." He was presently to discover for himself the illomened 80curacy of his forecast.. How Great Britain was aroused from its state of apathetic contentment by the events of the Black Week, how Lord Roberts was given the two great soldiers landed at the Cape in January 1900, and set themselves at once to solve the difficulty of fighting a mobile enemy in a vast country, which he knew as he knew his pooket. To Kitchener was assigned the duty of pursuing Cronje and of overtaking his laager. The first attack upon Paardeberg Drift did not meet with the success which Kitchener had hoped, and Roberts determined, in his anxiety to avoid further casualties, not upon a further attack, but upon an investment. That Kitchener made mistakes in his assault may be admitted. It is certain, on the other hand, that his general plan of the battle was correct. The investment, in truth, did not result in the saving of many lives. The troops were compelled to drink the water of the Modder, fouled by the carcasses of Cronje's slaughtered horses and cattle, and the result was an outbreak of enterio, which caused many more casualties than did the assault upon Paardeberg Drift. Moreover, as Kitchener foresaw, writes Sir George Arthur, "the investment of Cronje, protracted over several days, gave the burghers of the Free State just the breathing time that they required, and they were able with revived courage to muster anew their forces - now strengthened by the late besiegers of Ladysmith - for opposing Roberts's march to |