Life of Lord Kitchener
by Sir . New York: The Macmillan Company. 1920. Three vols., 8vo, pp. xxv+330; x+346; x+ 419 pp. $12.50.
WHILE Gladstone was still alive,Lord Rosebery once remarked that it would require a syndicate to write his biography when the time arrived. The Great Commoner was in the habit of riding so many horses abreast that it eventually took three ponderous volumes to tell the story of his life. Lord Kitchener’s era of public activity was not so long, nor did his interest extend to so many different things; but his forty years of service brought him dose to great happenings, and it is not surprising that a biography running beyond a thousand pages should be required to set it all down.
There were four outstanding epochs in Kitchener’s career. The first, extending from his appointment as intelligence officer with the illstarred Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884 to his reconquest of the Soudan in 1889, connected his name forever with the regions of the Nile. Then came the Boer War, and the rude awakening which England presently received at Magersfonteinand Colenso. The Cabinet hurried Lord Roberts to redeem the situation, but Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister, insisted that Kitchener should also go as Chief of Staff. So he went, and became a harbinger of conquest at the other end of the Dark Continent. This task performed, Kitchener in 1902 obtained an opportunity which had long been the desire of his heart — the chief command in India. There, for eight years, he devoted his intense energies to the work of reorganizing and improving the defensive strength of the Empire in the East, although seriously handicapped at times by a lack of interest on the part of the Ministry at home.
Finally, his last anil greatest efforts were put forth during the dark days of 1914-1916, when the fate of Europe hung upon the speed with which Kitchener’s army could be organized and sent across the Channel. Egypt, South Africa, India, and eventually Great Britain herself, successively turned to him during twenty years as the man who could best mobilize the forces of victory.
In the career of a great soldier, such as Kitchener undoubtedly was, it is important to mark the qualities which made for success. He was well-trained in military technique during his earlier years, although, curiously enough, like Wolseley and Roberts, he never passed through the British Staff College. He was endowed with a mind that was accurately precise; in all his organizing work the exactitude of the engineer was apparent. Nothing seemed to small for his attention and nothing too distant. He neither neglected the things of the morrow nor failed to finish the work of the day. Professional zeal and notions of discipline which were cloistral in their rigor led him to tone lip with remarkable rapidity every organization that came under his hand. He was exacting with his subordinates, but he applied to them no standards which he hesitated to make his own. Inevitably he gathered able men around him, for men could not work with him unless they conformed measurably to his high ideals of service. He thus became the incarnation of engineering efficiency applied to the whole field of military science.
The world visualized Kitchener as a man of frigid demeanor, who kept his thoughts to himself and shrank from the intimacies of companionship. True enough, a crowd was always distasteful to him; but he disliked solitude even more. The spirit of self-reliance shone brightly through all his great undertakings; but in the small affairs of daily life he was almost childlike in his dependence upon others. His work absorbed him always and bereft him of all thought or inclination for anything else. It has been well said of him that ‘in life he knew no rest and in death he found no grave.’
Take it for all in all, Kitchener was fortunate in his career, and he is fortunate also in his biographer. Sir George Arthur has done full justice to a man who placed the whole British Empire under profound obligations, but there is no Boswellian adulation in his pages and no harping upon the brazen glories of war. The narrative is well-proportioned, and although it is difficult to write the story of a dozen campaigns without encountering the temptation to be prolix in details, the chapters of this biography are clear and interesting throughout.
W. B. M.