THE GREAT KITCHENER.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1922, Page 11

THE GREAT KITCHENER.

MR. ASQUITH DEFENDS KITCHENER.

How the Whole Course of History Might Have Been Changed. London. Jan, 6. The Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith, in the January number of Pearson’s Magazine, continues and concludes his vindication of Lord Kitchener from the aspersions cast on the Field-Marshal by Lord Esher in the latter’s book, The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener. A striking sentence is that in which Mr. Asquith states how the whole course of history might have been changed if only Kitchener had arrived in Russia instead of being drowned on the way. HIS LAST JOURNEY. Immediately before Lord Kitchener left for Russia he addressed a meet411g of m embers of Parliament and achieved a great personal triumph. On the evening of the same day he called to bid Mr. Asquith good-bye. “He was in the highest spirits, and described with gusto and humor some of his hecklers at the House. He left the room gay, alert, elastic, sanguine; the strangest contrast that can be conceived to the bewildered, buffeted, desiccated, senile figure of Lord Esher’s imaginings.”

The invitation from the Tsar to go to Ruasia to examine on the spot the whole situation there was received in May, 19Bd. Mr. Asquith writes: “There was no man, whether statesman or soldier, whose name was clothed with the same amplitude of authority and prestige in Russian eyes. It was, moreover, one of those moments lyhieh do not recur in war; and x though it is useless to speculate on unrealised possibilities, I have always been, and still am, of opinion that if Kitchener had arrived at Petrograd in the early days of June, and been able, then and there, to set about the discharge of his mission, the whole course of history might have been changed.” A SLEEPLESS NIGHT. The double evacuation of the Anzac Peninsula, carried out “by Lord Kitchener’s advice, against all his prepossessions, after a personal inspection of the local conditions,” furnished the only occasion on which “there was any sign tliat his nerve had even for a moment given way,” writes Mr. Asquith. The two men were considering the evacuation. “He told me that ha had hardly slept the night before, as he imagined he saw boatload after loatload of our gallant soldiers sunk on their way to the shipe by the fire of the Turks. This was re-

markable as he never countenanced the pessimistic forecasts put forward by high authorities both military and civilian of the enormous losses which evacuation must necessarily entail.” WITHOUT VANITY.

The author remarks that “Kitchener was entirely without the drawback of jersonal vanity or self-consciousness, le did not pose for posterity; he never laid himself out either for contempor-

ary or post-humous applause.” A little lacking in “the corrective sense of humor,” he did not mind being rallied about his o-wn foibles. A diligent and assiduous collector of objects of art, a story is told to illustrate the legend that Lord Kitchener was always seeking to enrich and adorn his Kentish home. Mr. Asquith accompanied him to Ypres in the summer of 1915. They were in the Grand Place in front of the ruin of the Cloth Hall, and Kitchener was looking ‘with an expert’s gaze” on the fine arcades of statues still intact. A young Staff officer whispered to Mr. Asquith: “These statues have been bombarded for a hundred days, but they have never been in such danger as they are at this moment.” “Do you mean,” asked the Premier, “that we may some day hope to see one or more of them at Broome Park?” The youth nodded and disappeared; and when, on the way back, Mr. Asquith repeated the conversation, Lord Kitchener was “genuinely and immensely amused.” HIS RELIGION. “Lord Esher, in one of hia lamentable lapses from, good taste,” writes Mr. Asquith, ‘has allowed himself to speculate on religion’; and the article goes on:

“Of his religion,” he says, “if he had one, nothing was known, although his biographer, who was his friend, has claimed a place for him on the side of the angels (sic), but others, who knew him well, have said that his innermost thoughts were as free as Huxley’s” (whatever that may mean). All that can fittingly be said, on this score, of Kitchener is that he seems to have taken as his watchword throughout life Milton’s line: ‘As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.” Mr. Asquith states that at the beginning of 191<J (six months before Kitchener left on the fatal voyage to Russia) he asked Lord Kitchener to give him, for himself alone, a forecast of the future of the war. On .January 4 they talked the matter over, and Mr. Asquith jotted down on paper the War Secretary’s views. The document (of which a facsimile is given in the magazine) reads thus: “We must begin our French push not later than April. “While it goes April and May, the Russians will hold the Germans on the East. “June.—When we are making way Russians will begin their great offensive. “August.—Germans will ask our peace terms, which they will reject as impossible. “September-October.—Germans pushed in on both sides. “November.—Peace on our terms. H.H.A.” Mr. Asquith remarks that, like every forecast of every expert—except Lord Kitchener’s own prediction that the war might last over three years—this one was falsified by the event. Yet in the circumstances it showed remarkable military prescience.