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Updated: June 27, 2025
The immensity of the task of transforming a non-military people into a great fighting force grew on one in all its humdrum and vital details as he watched the new army forming. "Are you learning to think in big numbers?" was Lord Kitchener's question to his generals. Half of the regular officers were killed or wounded. Where the leaders? Where the drillmasters for the new army?
The General's Chief of Staff added: "Lord Kitchener was right when he said the war would last three years the first year preparation, the second year defence, and the third year ... cela sera rigolo it will be huge sport." He quoted the phrase as Lord Kitchener's own.
It was during the September campaign that the "wooden guns" and "dummy rifles" appeared, which excited so much derision in the English Radical Press, whose editors little dreamed that the day was not far distant when Mr. Asquith's Government would be glad enough to borrow those same dummy rifles for training the new levies of Kitchener's Army to fight the Germans.
On April 5th Piet Potgietersrust was entered, another fifty-mile stage, and on the morning of the 8th the British vanguard rode into Pietersburg. Kitchener's judgment and Plumer's energy had met with their reward. The Boer commando had evacuated the town and no serious opposition was made to the British entry.
Although the first wave of Kitchener's new army had dashed against the German lines in France and established another tradition for British valour, the air of England became charged with an ominous feeling that something was wrong at the front. The German advance in the west had been well nigh triumphant. Reckless bravery alone could not prevail against the avalanche of Teutonic steel.
Lloyd George went from Ministry of Munitions to sit in Kitchener's seat at the War Office. Unlike the Hero of Khartoum, he had no service in the field to his credit. But he knew men and he also knew how to deploy them. The Somme blow was struck: the new War Chieftain proved his worth. In the midst of all these new exactions Lloyd George found time for other and arduous national labours.
The sandy, high-walled enclosure is the common resting-place of four successive generations of British Empire builders: first, of soldiers who fell in the Gordon Relief Expedition; secondly, of men who died while building the railway which proved the key to Lord Kitchener's success; thirdly, of soldiers who perished in the war of 1898; lastly, of civil servants who have died while administering the country since its reconquest.
Foiled in all my attempts to find a "sensible solution" to the mystery, I determined to write and ask Lizzie Maynard of Melbourne if she could throw any light upon matters, my decision in taking this step being strengthened by the curious coincidence which I had just discovered i.e. that Mr Kitchener's housekeeper had lived with the Maynards when they had had a house in Dunedin, which was later burnt down, as so often happens in the Colonies.
British reinforcements, forming part of Lord Kitchener's new army, were being transported to the front, while the far-flung lines of trenches were filled with battle-weary veterans of the winter campaign.
This satisfaction was greatly heightened by the reflection that the armed force was thoroughly loyal to the Empire and could be trusted to assist troops in the case of any attack upon the Empire begun by the other a contingency which should always be taken into account. This line of thought was certainly Lord Kitchener's.
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