WHY LORD KITCHENER ISN'T LIKED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 79, 23 September 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY LORD KITCHENER ISN'T LIKED.

UK HAS MADE POWERFUL ENEMIES IN HIGH CIRCLES BY HIS IRON RULE.

Lord Kitchener's appointment as the King's representative in Egypt (says Pearson's Weekly) means that there are a number of very angry people in various parts of the British Empire. For months they have been fighting a terrible silent battle against him. They have labored hard to ba,r his way to any post of power and honor—and he has beaten them.

It would be foolish to pretend that Lord Kitchener has no enemies. He has, and tliey are powerful enemies, too. But he has made them by refusing to budge an inch from what he regards as the line of his duty, and also, what has made him far more unpopular in certain quarters, he has refused to let other people shirk what he regards as their dutv.

"Your reasons for not doing what you were told are the best I ever heard," he once told an officer after listening to a series of plausible excuses for neglected duty. "Now go and do it." That sort of remark to a "slacker" doesn't make him feel at all friendly towards you.

It was during his Soudan campaign that Lord Kitchener seriously began the process of making enemies by standing no nonsense from anybody. TO DROP THE LADIES IN THE NILE. Some ladies wanted to go to tiie front, and they arranged with an influential personage at the. War Office that they should be sent out as nurses. Lord Kitchener received a telegram telling him to expect them. He replied immediately that he did not desire the presence of women with the army. Again came a message from the War Office saying that the ladies were coming out. The exact words of Lord Kitchener's reply are unknown, but it was to the effect that if the ladies came they would be sent back, and if they came again he would drop them into the Nile. After that threat no more was heard of the proposal, but both the high personage and the ladies took a violent dislike to the Commander-in-Chief.

Before the advance on Khartoum Lord Kitchener required a new type of gun, and sent Home for it. The War Office, after its amiable custom, replied by offering to send out another kind of gun, more or less obsolete. Lord Kitchener tartly replied that he could throw stones himself, he wanted a gun to shoot with. More trouble! HIS HURRIED VISIT TO CAPETOWN. During the last Boer war Lord Kitchener, though' busy at the front, paid a hurried'visit to Capetown. Here he found a number of officers having a great time. His visit was quite unexpected, of course, and they had no time to scurry back to their regiments. When they suddenly came face to face with their Commander-in-Chief in the ball of a big hotel they nearly fainted. "What arc you doing in Capetown?" Lord Kitchener demanded. "I—we're on leave, sir," was the trembling 'answer. "Oh, indeed! On leave, are you?" "Yes. There's—there's not very much —fighting—on—-just now," another of the officers ventured to remark. "Really!" Lord Kitchener retorted. "You surprise me. Well, you will either go straight back to the' front—all of you—or you will take, the next boat back to England. You understand?" They understood very well, indeed, and the whole lot caught the next train to the north,

One of the things that exasperates him is wlien he gives a plain order and is asked to explain or to repeat, it. During the South African war he sent for an aide-de-camp and gave him one or two verbal orders to take to some officers in the neighborhood. The aide-de-camp failed to grasp the orders properly, and three times lie asked Lord Kitchener to repeat them. At the third request the General lost all patience. He wheeled round to the table and wrote a few hurried words on a sheet of paper. "Here, Captain Blank," he said, handing the paper to the aide-de-camp, "take this note, It is to the Principal Medical Officer asking him to examine your ears. There is evidently something wrong with them. And as you go out please send someone else to me." THE HORNETS' NEST IN INDIA. But, it was when he went to India that Lord Kitchener stirred up his biggest hornets' nest. So big, indeed, was the nest and so angry were the hornets (hat every effort was made to prevent him from being sent back to India recently as Viceroy. The Indian Army had drifted into a very "slack" state when Lord Kitchener arrived on the scene. The climate, of course, is rather against hard work in India, and as a general rule nobody does more work than they can help. Lord Kitchener changed all that. "How many men do you want for the manoeuvres?" asked a certain General, who had about 20.000 troops under his command. "I think T can spare 5000." Quick as a flash came Lord Kitchener's reply: "f want cverv man who is not sick or otherwise incapacitated for duty!" And lie saw to it that he got them, too. If Lord Kitchener had been content to make himself amiable, at Simla tea-parties and had not worried people to do (.lie work they had been sent out to India to do, he would almost certainly have been Viceroy of India today. Egypt, however, is a good second, and perhaps India may yet come to him.