KITCHENER'S REBELLIOUS YOUNG MAN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 104, 23 April 1908, Page 4

KITCHENER'S REBELLIOUS YOUNG MAN

Sir i'ery C.irouard, High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, who has arrived home for a holiday, stales an Engli-h journal, is the most bril.niut of all Lord Kitchener's brilliant young men. -Moreover, he is the only one oi them who is said never to have been afraid of his chief. On one occasion in Egypt, the lieueral thought a railway was getting oil too slowly. "You must go quicker," said Lord Kitchener. "1 can't," replied Ciruuard. "1 am not being properly si'!'plied with materials.' "I have i» Use tor a man who says can't," returned the Ceneral, and he sent Cirouard to Cairo. Within a week he recall™ C.irouard,and admitted lie was wrong.

Sir Percy Girouaru lias since been recognised as the grealcsf railway engineer the Army has ever produced. Ho began voung, on the Ciiiunlian i'acifie railway", and at twenty-three lie was trallic "manager ul the ltoyal Arsenal at Woolwich, where Kitchener spotted him as being just the man he wanted for the construction of the Soudan railway. Girouard hud a most wonderful line across live hundred miles of desert for the advance to Khartoum, in spite of constant harowing of the enemy. It is said that whenever he and other sapper ollicers on the railway got overburdened with their ditliculties, i<ord Kitchener used to give them a day or two oil' to take part in the fighting! At any rate, lie received a D.S.O. for liis deeds'of "derring do." and was awarded a lieutenant-coloneney and the K.C.M.G. for his work at the end 01 the campaign. Since then he lias Ikjcu Commissioner of liailways in the Transvaal ami Orange Hivcr Colony, and is now. as High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, buildim; a railway to open up trade in that, at present, inaccessible country.