KITCHENERISMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3533, 22 July 1920, Page 7

KITCHENERISMS.

ANECDOTES FEOM LATEST BIOGBAPHY. (By James Douglas). ..uiuebody ought to compile an aii-tiio-ooy of Ivitclienerisuiii. There are many Kitcliouorisuis iu fcdr George Arthur's "Life of Lord .Kitchener,'' and they are all very charaeteristic. When he entered the War Office as its chief at 10 o'clock on that fateful Thursday morning in 1914, Ins first remark was: "There is .no Army." ilis private ' secretary handed him a pen with which to give the signature for the official stamp. The" pen was as vile as the pens you usually find hi post offices. ''Dear me," announced Kitchener, '"what a War Office. scrap of j Army and not a pen that will write! " j Here is a Foch story told by Sir ' George Arthur. In ILU2, when Pocii ; was asked what troops England would furnish in the event of war with Germany, he replied, "Send .me one Eng- , lishman. X will taKe care he is killed, and I shall have the British nation in ■arms." These soldiers know how to 1 sav brutal and biting things. ! "One thing is certain," said KitI chener in the autumn of 1915: "if America bears no part in the waging of war, she will be allowed no voice in the making of peace." An important : personage said to Kitchener, "Is there 1 any harm in my asking when the I Brigade is likely to go to France?" I "Oh no, there is no? the least harm ia your asking." was the courteous, if

unsatisfying answer. Kitchener's humour wii s grim and dry. When King Constantine said to Kitchener. "What am I to do when Germany threatens me, with a million men?" "Remember," retorted Kitchener, "the four miflions England will have in the field next year.'' Kitchener spoke bitterly about the politicians. "Did you remember, when they went headlong into a war like this, that they were without an army, and without any preparation to equip one?" was the cry wrung from him once when the days' work had been specially wearing. In October, 1914, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation offered a few hours' option on a million rounds of field gun ammunitin, to be delivered in twelve months. Within four hours the offer was accepted, and Mr Schwab, the master spirit of the corporation, crossed the Atlantic to see Kitchener. "Thi s war," Kitchener said to him, "is not going to be a short one, I foresee five years of it at least. I want you to p'edge that the control of the corporation will not be sold by you and your associates under five years from now." This agreement was made on the spot, and the immense capacities of the firm secured for the rest of the war. "We are out to fight the Germans —not one another," was the phrase constantly on his lips. When Mr Churchill went out of office and was cut off from sources of information, Kitchener at once ordered his motor, and in the middle of his day's work

drove fu Churchill's residence to- tel: him the last news from France and Gallipoli. After a. difference between himself and Lloyd George, Kitchener remarked, "The little Welshman is peppery, but he means to win—which is what matters."

What about the mystery of Kitchener's death?" Sir George Arthur says: "By aa unhappy error of judgment an unswept channel was chosen for the passage of the cruiser, and Kitchener- —the secret of whose journey has been destroyed—was to fall in to the machinations of England's enemies, and to die swiftly at their hands." After attending the funeral of Lord Roberts, Kitchener said to a. friend, "I Jay a solemn charge on you, if anything should happen to me in this war, take care that they do not give me a military funeral." It is interesting to learn Kitchener's views as to the treatment of Germans after the war. "Until this maimed and scarred generation has passed away," he said to 1 a friend, "no German shall be allowed anything 'like permanent residence or social status in this country." After receiving a report of some than usually diabolical outrages on wounded prisoners, he received a note from a plutocrat of enemy birth asking him to be a guest on any evening he would name, "I am too busy fighting Germans to dine with them,"

was his scornful comment. "The war will last many years," he predicted, "and ma'ny thrones will be vacant at the end of it" When be was told that A newspaper that had assailed him and had been burned on the Stock Exehnge no expression of satisfaction could be extracted from him.

The best story in the three volumes is about the Prince of Wales. "What does it matter if I am shot! I have four brothers," was the protest of the boy Prince when pleading to be allowed to accompany his regiment to France in 1914 "If I were certain you would be shot, 1 do not know if I should be right to restrain you," said Kitchener. "What I cannot allow is the chance of the enemy securing you as a prisoner!" Kitchener had no love for the War Office. "Wyndham." he wrote to u friend, "suggests my going to the War Office; I would sooner sweep a crossing." In 1901 he wrote: '.'Why should a poor fellow like me have no pleasure or no time in his life to himself?" In 1908 he wrote to Lady Salisbury from Simla: "When I have finished here I think I shall set up as a house decorator in New York." He had just finished the decoration of his drawing j room. I Altogether "K" was a very human , being. *" Who can doubt now," says Lord°Haig, "that but for this man and his work" Germany would have been victorious?" And ho adds: "The pity is that he did not live to see the victory. Perhaps it would have, come sooner if he had been with us to the' end."