WHY KITCHENER WENT EAST.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 150, 25 February 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY KITCHENER WENT EAST.

JIEH KNOWS THE EAST BETTER THAN ANY LIVING MAN. A low days after Christmas, 1884, in the lii'it camp at Korti on tlio Nile, where the Gordon Relief Force was waiting for its final dash on Khartoum, an Aral) prisoner wag brought in. Tall and thin, hifi dress a much patched djihheh and a dirty skull cap, there was round his neck the strings oi ninety-nine heads that showed a Jovoted .follower of the Malidi.

"Another blooming spy,'' sa d one of the privates guarding him. "He'll be .shot to-morrow, I suppose.'' But he never was, for that Arab spy was Lord Kitchener, of Khartoum. Lord Kitchener knows the East as no other living man does, knows it so well that he can speak half its tongues and dialects with case, and disguise himself so effectively as to be taken for an Arab. That's why he went East. Lord Kitchener's first job was in the East, three years after he had entered tlie Royal Engineer-. He then went out to survey Western Palestine. Lord Kitchener's last position before becoming Secretary of State lor War was in the East, when he was Consul-General in Egypt.

THE MAN WHO SMASHED THE MAHDI. In between those dates, save for the three years of the Boer \\ ar. Lord Kitchener has lived in the East. I' rom Egypt to India, from Calcutta to Cairo, lii.s name is one to conjure with. He has talked trade and commerce in the crowded bazaars of Bombay and sat cross-leuged Vwth Arab merchants in the Soudan, gravely discussing Soudanese politics. It was during those years that he got the red-brick complexion which never entirely leaves a man who has spent years under the desert sun. He was learning the Eastern tongue and the Eastern character.

11l li'OG lie paid a visit tn the Mahometan Collotic at Aliuarb. and in a speech there i>a:il, " I have boon intimately associated with Mohainetans in various parti-; of the world, and 1 am rrlad to t-ay that I number tliein anions rtiv friends in K<zy])t, Soudan, lurkey. India, and elsewhere." Turkish and Arabic bespeaks like a native. The Koran, or 1 itrkish hiMe, he knows better than any Turk. 11l all the bazaar, of E.nypt and Soudan lie is spoken of as "El 1.0 rd," and lie is reLjariled by the mas-es of Ihe people a .-fa ood. Did lie not stiia-h the Mahdi. the ood or the peoples oi' the near F,a«t ? The East looks upon Lord Kitchener a, the greatest white man who has ever been anion;; tliom, greater than Chinese Cordon, and lie was a ureal man. Me is the onlv man who knows the l'.ast-..,-n mind and has the power to sway it the way he will.