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It is time to take that subject in hand; for Lord Kitchener's notion that we are going to settle down to years of war as we did a century ago is soldierly, but not sensible.
A sudden light burned in Lord Kitchener's strange eyes, and he added earnestly: "There is something more than that. In 1914 Germany was wonderfully prepared in material things, but her greatest advantage over all other nations, except Japan, lay in her dogged devotion to her own ideals. She may have been wrong, as we think, but she believed in herself.
She knitted conspicuously, as a protest against bandage practice; giving to her soft and gentle action an air of energy inimical to her three unmarried daughters. And not even Louie had the heart to tell her that all her knitting had to be unravelled overnight, to save the wool. "A set of silly women, getting in Kitchener's way, and wasting khaki!"
He writhed and reared the horse, and practically the horse found the prisoner for us. But the operations achieved one result, which must have lifted a load of anxiety from Lord Kitchener's mind. Three fifteen-pounders, two pom-poms, and a large amount of ammunition were taken.
There were, of course, certain exceptions such, for instance, as when a lad came of a fighting family, with father, uncles, and brothers all in the Army. As for the gentleman ranker, he was always a scapegrace. Lord Kitchener's Hundred Thousand would probably be drawn from a different class, for they were being directly asked to defend their country.
I had seen Kitchener's first hundred thousand at work on Salisbury Plain under old, retired drillmasters who, however eager, were hazy about modern tactics. The men under them had the spirit which will endure the drudgery of training. With time they must learn to be soldiers. More raw material, month after month, went into the hopper.
There were 46,000 horses, 40,000 camels, 15,000 mules, and 3500 donkeys on Army work east of the Canal, and not a man or beast went short of rations. We used to think Kitchener's advance on Khartoum the perfection of military organisation. Beside the Palestine expedition that Soudan campaign fades into insignificance.
"Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind" were Lord Kitchener's words to the Army, and these qualities no less than valor will always be linked with Tommy Atkins' name in the memories of the French and Belgian people. They will never forget the happy spick-and-span soldiers who sang as they stepped ashore from the troopships at Boulogne and Havre, eager to reach the fighting line.
Colonel Kitchener's military conduct was praised, but his policy was prevented. The Governor could scarcely be expected to carry out a policy so much at variance with his views and inclinations, and in the summer of 1888 he was transferred to a purely military appointment and became Adjutant-General of the Egyptian army.
It seemed to me that there must be an evil influence hanging about those clothes of his; and I was still thinking this when Major Vandyke, Father, Diana, and Kitty and I were bunched together, a rather silent party, in Di's big, roomy town car, spinning from Park Lane to the Russian Embassy with Kitchener's "night lights" fanning long white arms across the sky of unnaturally darkened London.
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