Earl Kitchener and the great war

Front matter

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Introduction

THE DEFENSE of Home and Country has always called forth the noblest instincts in man. Patriotism is a magnet that draws men to planes of heroic endeavor, of consummate devotion to principle, where the sacrifice of physical comfort is nothing, and the giving up of life itself a trifle.

The moments of supreme courage, effort, and achievement in the life of man have been when he has shouldered arms and faced the invader and persecutor.

War is a horrible and hateful thing; at best it is a terrible, lamentable necessity. But it does not make cowards of brave and honest men; it does frequently inspire the timid and hesitating with the fire of valor and resolution to a degree undreamed of.

So it is that in war we find stories of intrepidity, and deeds palpitating with heroism, such as only the crises of supreme danger and necessity could inspire; and we treasure these stories as part of the priceless heritage of humanity, that children and grandchildren may remember the valor of their sires; we tell and retell them, we preserve them in the volumes of the historian, on the canvas of the artist, we chisel them in stone, that men may remember the price paid for liberty and virtue.

Contents

CHAPTKR PAOa

Introduction 5

I. Earl Kitchener Dies a Hero's Death 11

CHAPTER I EARL KITCHENER DIES A HERO'S DEATH Britain's greatest shock — admiral jellicoe's

REPORT ON mission AT RUSSIA's REQUEST

SPIES BLAMED FOR CALAMITY NEWS RECEIVED

AMID INTENSE EXCITEMENT ARMY ORDERED INTO

MOURNING HOW LORD KITCHENER DIED

SUNK BY A MINE LOSS OF THE HAMPSHIRE

kitchener's PLACE IN BRITAIN'S HISTORY.

THE NEWS received by the world on June 6, 1916, that Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, and his staff were lost off the Orkney Islands the previous night, was the most stunning blow delivered to Great Britain since the beginning of the war.

It was the second great shock which the country had sustained within a week. The first was the announcement of the naval battle in the North Sea in the form of a list of the ships lost, with virtually no way of ascertaining the enemy losses. The bulletin telling of the intimation that there was any compensation in the death of Kitchener gave the country even a greater shock.

Lord Kitchener was the one outstanding personality whom the people talked of and believed in as a great man, nothwithstanding the newspaper attacks, which, at a former period of the war, threatened to undermine his popularity and the public confidence in him.

ADMIRAL JELLICOE S REPORT ON THE DISASTER

A telegram from Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander of the fleet, giving the bare facts, was received at the Admiralty on the morning following the disaster. The first official announcement was issued at about

A

Where Britain Lost Her Great Soldier and War Minister

At the time of his death Lord Kitchener was en route to Russia, intending to sail around the northern coast of Russia and land at Archangel, as indicated by the dotted line. The star shows where his ship was sunk.

1.30 in the afternoon. Such news, however, cannot be kept entirely secret even for an hour. Before noon rumors were spreading, and the telephones in the newspaper offices were busy with inquirers anxious to know whether this — one of the many reports circulating in those days of tension — had any foundation. 12

Admiral Jellicoe's report to the Admiralty was as follows :

I have to report with deep regret that His Majesty's ship Hampshire, Captain Herbert J. Savill, R. N., with Lord Kitchener and his staff on board, was sunk last night at about 8 p. m., to the west of the Orkneys, either by a mine or a torpedo.

Four boats were seen by observers on shore to leave the ship. The wind was north-northwest and heavy seas were running. Patrol vessels and destroyers at once proceeded to the spot and a party was sent along the coast to search, but only some bodies and a capsized boat have been found up to the present. As the whole shore has been searched from the seaward, I greatly fear that there is little hope of there being any survivors.

No report has yet been received from the search party on shore.

H. M. S. Hampshire was on her way to Russia.

ON MISSION AT RUSSIA'S REQUEST

Earl Kitchener was on his way to Russia, at the request of the Russian Government, to discuss important military and financial questions with Emperor Nicholas, including chiefly the supply of munitions for Russia. He intended to land at Archangel, visit Petrograd, and probably go to the Russian front.

Accompanying Earl Kitchener as his staff were Sir Frederick Donaldson, superintendent of the Royal Ordnance Factories at Woolwich and technical adviser to David Lloyd-George, Minister of Munitions; Hugh

James O'Beirne, former councilor of the British Embassy at Petrograd and former Minister at Sofia; O. A. Fitzgerald, Earl Kitchener's private military secretary, and Brigadier-General Ellershaw. On board the Hampshire with the British War Secretary were also a number of minor officers.

SPIES BLAMED FOR CALAMITY

In connection with suggestion that information of Earl Kitchener's movements may have been conveyed to the Germans by spies, it is interesting to note that the Official Gazette, on the same night on which Lord Kitchener lost his life, contained an order placing new restrictions on passengers landing at ports in the Orkney Islands, and providing that thereafter no person might land at such ports without specific permission of the military authorities at Kirkwall.

The Daily Mail gave prominence to the following statement :

''Earl Kitchener's intention to go to Russia was known to a great many persons in London on Thursday. It ought not to have been so known. The news of it may have reached the enemy. The public mind has been quick to associate his death with the work of spies. We have every sympathy with the demand which comes to us from many parts of the country that all alien enemies who are still at large, especially those in high places be interned at once."

The Morning Post, discussing the sinking of the Ham^pshire, said:

''Circumstances point at espionage or treachery, and the country will suspect this the more owing to the 14 singular freedom still allowed to enemy subjects in Great Britain."

Naval officers expressed the opinion that the cruiser Hampshire must have struck a mine, as it would have to be an exceedingly lucky shot for a torpedo to get a ship with her speed and under the condition of the sea which was very rough. The Hampshire was an old boat and not fit for fleet action, but Vv^as fast enough for patrol and blockade work.

When Admiral Jellicoe's report finally was issued the fact spread about London some time before the newspapers could get into the streets. There was a crowd about the Stock Exchange which required police reserves to deal with.

NEWS RECEIVED AMID INTENSE EXCITEMENT

At the same time another mass of people was assembling about the Government offices in Whitehall. All the windows of the War Office had the curtains lowered. That confirmed the rumor beyond doubt.

Other crowds gathered around the newspaper offices; when the boys came out with an armful of extras the people fell on them and fought for the papers. In the course of the afternoon the flags on all buildings were flown at half staff.

There was an exciting scene at the close of the Stock Exchange session.

ARMY ORDERED INTO MOURNING

The King hurried from Windsor and sent for Premier Asquith when he heard the news.

By the King's command the following order was issued to the army:

The King has learned with profound regret of the disaster whereby the Secretary of State for War has lost his life while proceeding on a special mission to the Emperor of Russia.

Field Marshal Lord Kitchener gave forty-eight years of distinguished service to the State, and it is largely due to his administrative genius and unwearying energy that the country has been able to create and place in the field the armies which today are upholding the traditional glories of our empire. Lord Kitchener will be mourned by the army as a great soldier who, under conditions of unexampled difficulty, rendered supreme and devoted service both to the army and the State.

His Majesty the King commands that the officers of the army shall wear mourning with their uniforms for the period of one week. Officers are to wear crepe on the left arm of uniform and of great-coats.

HOW LORD KITCHENER DIED

Leading Seaman Rogerson, one of the survivors of the Hampshire, has furnished the following account of Lord Kitchener's last moments:

"Of those who left the ship and have survived it, I was the one who saw Lord Kitchener last," said Rogerson. ''He went down with the ship. He did not leave her. I saw Captain Savill help his boat's crew to clear away. At the same time the captain was calling to Lord Kitchener to come to the boat, but 16 owing to the noise made by the wind and sea, Kitchener could not hear him, I think. When the explosion occurred, Lord Kitchener walked calmly from the captain's cabin, went up the ladder and on to the quarter-deck.

"There I saw him walking quite collectedly and talking to two officers, all three wearing khaki. They had no overcoats on. Lord Kitchener calmly watched the preparations for abandoning the ship, which were going on in spite of the heavy sea. In a steady and orderly way the crew just went to stations, obeyed orders and did their best to get out the boats, but it was impossible.

"Owing to the rough weather no boats could be lowered. Those that were got out were smashed up at once. No boats left the ship. What people on shore thought were boats leaving were rafts. Men did get into the boats as these lay in their cradles, thinking that as the ship went under them the boats would float, but the ship sank by the head and when she went down she turned a somersault forward, carrying down with her all the boats and those in them.

"I do not think Lord Kitchener got into a boat. When I sprang to a raft he was still on the starboard side of the quarter-deck talking with officers.

"Of the civilian members of his suite I saw nothing. I got away on one of the rafts and we had a terrible five hours in water so rough that the seas beat down on us and many men were killed by buffeting. Many others died from the piercing cold. I was quite numbed and an overpowering desire to sleep came upon us. To keep this away, we thumped each other on the back, for the man who went to sleep never woke again. When men died, it was just as though they were falling asleep. One man stood upright for five hours on a raft with dead lying all around him; one man died in my arms.

"As we got near the shore the situation grew worse. The wind was blowing on-shore, the fury of the sea dashed the rafts against the rocks with tremendous force. Many were killed in this way, and one raft thrice overturned. I don't quite know how I got ashore, for all the feeling had gone out of me. We were very kindly treated by the people who picked us up. They said it was the worst storm they had had for years."

SUNK BY A MINE

An official statement of the destruction of the Hampshire contains the following account:

''The Hampshire was proceeding along the west coast of the Orkneys. A heavy gale was blowing and seas were breaking over the ship, which necessitated her being partly battened down. Between 7.30 and 7.45 p. M. the vessel struck a mine and begun at once to settle by the bows, heeling over to starboard before she finally went down about fifteen minutes later.

''Orders were given by the captain for all hands to go to their established stations for abandoning ship. Some of the hatches were opened and the ship's company went quickly to their stations. Efforts were made without success to lower some of the boats. One of them was broken in haK and its occupants were thrown into the water. 18

''Large numbers of the crew used life-saving belts and waist coats, which proved effective in keeping them afloat. Three rafts were safely launched, and, with about fifty to seventy men on each, got clear. It was daylight up to about 11. Though rafts with these large numbers of men got away, in one case out of over seventy men aboard only six survived. The survivors all report that the men gradually dropped off, even died aboard the rafts from exhaustion and exposure to cold. Some of the crew must have perished in trying to land on the rocky coast after such a long exposure. Some died after landing."

On board the Hampshire were also a number of minor army officers, and the cruiser carried a crew of between 400 and 500 men.

At the time of the attack by a German submarine on the cross-channel passenger boat Sussex, several months previous to Lord Kitchener's death, there was a report in London that the Germans sought to sink the vessel because they had heard Lord Kitchener was on board. This report never was confirmed, but survivors of that attack admitted that a ''certain high official" actually was on the Sussex. The identity of this personage was not established, but it was generally accepted that Lord Kitchener was the man.

LOSS OF THE HAMPSHIRE

The Hampshire was an armored cruiser of 10,850 tons displacement, 450 feet long, 68}^ feet beam, 25 feet draught, and an indicated horse-power of 21,508. She was launched at Elswick in 1903 and completed in 1905 at an estimated cost of $4,332,635. She was

2 19 protected amidships by 6-inch armor, over the vital parts, which thinned down to two inches in other parts. Her deck was protected by armor from J^ inch to 2 inches in thickness, and her bulkheads carried 5-inch armor. Her main batteries were protected by 5-inch armor. She carried four 7.5-inch, six 6-inch, twenty 3-pounders and two machine guns, with two torpedo tubes.

kitchener's place in Britain's history

No doubt Lord Kitchener, who was a soldier before all else, met death as he would have chosen to meet it, in the performance of his duty to his country; but the disaster to the cruiser Hampshire was no less a tragedy of compelling horror. The great commander's life is but one of many sacrificed during the war and from the human point of view it is possible to count it as no more than the rest. Yet, however impartially pallid death may knock, he finds the conspicuous victim at the towers of kings rather than at the cottages of the poor. The loss which England suffered by Lord Kitchener's taking-off cannot be measured in words. In a sense he had fulfilled his destiny. It might even be said that he had begun to outlive his reputation. Perhaps no other man could have done what he did. To him is due the greater share of the credit for organizing the largest volunteer army which the world has ever seen. England was wretchedly unprepared in a military way for the terrible conflict thrust upon her. It was a staggering burden that Lord Kitchener had to bear. Red tape at the War Office, lack of munitions and equipment, strikes 20 among laborers, raw troops ignorant of the very elements of military science, popular ignorance of or indifference to the titanic nature of the conflict — no wonder he made mistakes, no wonder he provoked criticism.

Yet the faith of his countrymen as a whole never wavered; and it was justified. Such an admission does not diminish the substantial service he rendered or detract from his genius. He was undeniably one of the first commanders of his time; and if in this war his duties had taken him to the field there is every reason to believe that he would again have revealed the qualities which first won him fame. No English general in the fighting line has yet surpassed or even equaled him. He had that efficiency which we have come to associate with German officers rather than with English. It was shown in his administrative work in India and Egypt as well as in his campaigns. Having formed his plans, he carried them through relentlessly, not to say ruthlessly. He could not excuse negligence nor forgive failure. He worked hard himself and expected every one else to do so. Duty controlled him, not sentiment. Such a man is bound to do great things.

Chapter II Earl Kitchener: The Supreme Military Organizer

NOMINATED BY ACCLAMATION FOR WAR MINISTER

RAISED AN ARMY OF FIVE MILLIONS GIVE HIM

WHAT HE WANTS THE SPLENDID BRUTE HIS

UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE HIS SINGLENESS OF

PURPOSE — TASKS FOR HERCULES HIS STUPEN- DOUS TASK THE TRUTH ABOUT GALLIPOLI PUBLIC

CONFIDENCE ADVERTISING FOR RECRUITS

kitchener's EYES.

THE INTRODUCTION of scientific method into warfare has not impaired the power of personaHty. The bigger the machine the greater must be the man to manage it. In the peaceful days of 1914 an effort was made by the government to have Earl Kitchener shelved by a sinecure. But when the storm broke he was nominated by acclamation for War Minister. He alone saw what must be done. He alone had the power to do it. Britain had at that time little appreciation of the magnitude of the task before her. People said that the war would be over by Christmas. Kitchener said it would begin in May. People said that England would have done her duty when she fulfilled her promise of 1911 to send 160,000 men to France. Kitchener said millions of men would be needed and for three years. 22

RAISED AN ARMY OF FIVE MILLIONS

And he got them. '^ Kitchener wants you" proved the most effective recruiting advertisement. Never before in the history of the world has a man raised and equipped a volunteer army of five million men. Probably no one will ever have to do it again, so both pacifists and militarists hope, though with different reasons in mind. The country called him and he called the country. Both responded nobly. What was at first sneered at as '^Kitchener's mob" soon came to be respected as '^ Kitchener's army." Troops can be extemporized. Generals have to be trained. Lord Kitchener was criticized — and justly — for failing to provide the quantity and kind of ammunition needed by modern warfare, and for neglecting to organize in the factory as well as in the field. But this came from attempting to do too much by himself, and cannot detract from his great achievements. He was later relieved of part of his multifarious duties and it was expected that the responsibility of his ofiSce would before many months have been divided or devolved upon another. But death came to him, as doubtless he would have wished to have it come, in the path of duty and in the height of his power and reputation. England suffered an irreparable loss, but Kitchener's life came to a noble and appropriate close. His grave is deeper than that any dug by man, and, like some ancient king, two hundred of his warriors are buried in his tomb. No coffin could be found for him more fitting than a British cruiser, for the enumeration of his manly qualities reads like the catalog of ships. ''Indefatigable," "Indomitable," "Inflexible," "Implacable," ^'Invincible;" these are the adjectives his biographers use in describing his character.

GIVE HIM WHAT HE WANTS !

England has always been a believer in the man idea. The Anglo-Saxons are individualists. It was the man idea that made the Empire: Drake against Spain; Clive in India; Nelson and Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars. In the great crisis of the World War the man was Kitchener. He was not appointed Secretary of State for War; he was elected by the unanimous voice of a people. The Liberal Government had to take him, whether or no. Perhaps there was a feeling in Liberal councils that the British people had set an elephant, an immense old tusker, in a Cabinet chair.

''Give him what he wants! Do as he says!" cried the British pubHc. "We will go on with business as usual. He will win."

Yet with every class of the population — ^from newsman to millionaire newspaper owner, stevedore to steamship capitalist, publican to bishop, day laborer to peer, chorus girl to duchess — for Kitchener, what strange things one heard about the man! He was vain; he was selfish; a brute: a heartless machine that ruthlessly broke anyone who got in the way of his ambitions.

THE SPLENDID BRUTE

He was the most advertised of Englishmen — without ever having played to the gallery; he had received more honors than any Englishman — without ever asking for one. If you inquired which was the bigger man, 24

Roberts or Kitchener, an Englishman would tell you what a fine, lovable old soldier Roberts was; how he expressed the national ideal of a soldier; and then he would say: Kitchener! There were countless anecdotes about Roberts; an atmosphere of characteristic sayings and incidents enveloped him; but when you tried to learn something about Kitchener you found only bare records of accomplishment. The correspondents who followed him on campaigns sounded his praises in the way of men who literally have to admire their subject.

Work, work, w^ork — that made him the man; work, work, work for forty years, all spent away from England. He never finished a job for the Empire but another was waiting for him, and always he was ready to tackle it. For the last twenty years he invariably had the biggest one going, and all his life he had never failed. His choice was always for a task of such magnitude as to make all other tasks seem insignificant. He had first-hand knowledge of every part of the Empire. Each problem was a problem that he knew.

On that day in August, 1914, when the nation called him to authority, he at least knew what England was up against. Only a few Englishmen partly recognized it — the general public not at all. For the German system had been among his studies. He understood the organized power and spirit of Germany. From the first he said that the war would be long; that it would tax all of England's strength. He must be allowed to lay his foundations with that end in view. Meanwhile, the optimistic British public hung out ''Business as Usual" signs in the shop wdndows and stuck flags on the map to show the progress of the ''Russian steam roller" toward Berlin. With that optimistic public on one side and Kitchener on the other, Asquith was in a difficult position, the people mistaking optimism for power and Kitchener being untrained in the ways of home politics.

TASKS FOR HERCULES

When he took office Kitchener found that England, by denuding her garrisons at home, could put 80,000 men on the Continent to assist France in stalling the onslaught of the German millions. As for South Africa, there was not a single regular soldier there when De Wet took the field in rebellion. The British army was an army for doing the police work of an empire. A French chief of staff once said that it had been demoralized by its successes in little wars. If the regulars were not equal to the task in any little war, then volunteers were called for.

In Germany and France, where practically every able-bodied man of all classes serves his two and three years, there is plentiful material in the ranks to fill gaps caused by death among officers. But it is difficult to make an officer out of Tommy Atkins, the British regular private. He is a private by training and nature, with occasional exceptions. And all that Kitchener had to start with in making an army of millions was this nucleus, this regular army.

HIS STUPENDOUS TASK

When he knew that he would require two millions, perhaps three, Kitchener started in with a call for a 26 hundred thousand. Then he asked for a second hundred thousand; and as soon as he was able to care for the recruits he set the mark at a milhon. Every recruit was a civilian who had to be trained and armed. Artillery, engineers, signal corps — all had to be created out of the raw. Rifle plants had to be built, officers and drill masters trained.

The South African experience had not cleared away all the cobwebs of red tape in the War Office. Nowhere do these cobwebs gather so rapidly as in a small regular army which is under sharp civilian control, always asking for audits and explanations. The forms were tho^e for that kind of army. They did not contemplate a force of millions. Kitchener had to be the architect of a new house; he had to begin with its foundations, while the house of Germany was a completed edifice.

Meanwhile, Sir John French did not want to spare any of his good officers to drill the new army. His was the pressing need of the mopient. He was hanging on tooth and nail and amazing the Germans with how he did it. His casualties among officers were appalling. New ones must be sent out to fill their places. The gaps in shattered regiments had to be filled with fresh recruits. Before rifles and guns could be furnished to the new army, the army in France must be supplied. The wastage in rifles, as in everything else, surpassed all calculations. That army in Flanders was a great mouth ever hungry for officers, men, munitions, and supplies: which had to be put on a train, then on a steamer, and again on a train, before they reached their destination.

When spring came what had Kitchener accomplished? From India he had brought the Indian troops and put these children of the sun through a winter in the trenches in a climate which alone ought to have finished them. He had garrisoned India with Territorials and brought the British Indian regulars to France. The threatened Turkish invasion of Egypt had been turned into a farce. The Persian Gulf expedition was holding its own.

But the British public, which took the Empire for granted, had its eyes focused on the Continent. With the spring it had expected a turn of the tide, and instead the Germans developed a fever of fresh attacks. In place of the British taking the offengive, the Germans surprised the British and French with clouds of asphyxiating gas and took a considerable sector of trenches.

PUBLIC CONFIDENCE

''Business as Usual" signs disappeared from the windows. England might not yet be awake, but she had one eye open wide enough to see that nothing was as usual. A wave of pessimism and restlessness was sweeping through the public mind which no censorship could reach.

In answer, all that we have tried to express of Kitchener's career flamed up out of British memory in a way which showed that the British are not too phlegmatic for a spasm of anger. You did not have to wait on the evening editions to learn how outraged public opinion was. You knew it before a single evening edition was out; you felt it in the very air. Kitchener must not go. If he needed help, then give him help. 28

ADVERTISING FOR RECRUITS

No one of the outside public can escape the results of his devotion to specialization along one hne which is fairly illustrative. The recruiting campaign was under his personal direction. Even his most violent press

One op Lokd Kitchener's Many Posters That Covered Blank Wall

Space — Public and Private — Which Had Never Been

Used for Bill-Posting Before enemies admit that he knew how to advertise. As he had to advertise for recruits, he called in the best advertising experts in London and started the greatest advertising campaign in all history.

On every blank space, on walls of public and private buildings never covered by an official notice before, around the base of the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, under the windows of exclusive clubs, at the very doors of churches, and on every taxicab, in enormous red and blue letters across London bridges, in little posters and big; in short sentences of cajolery, shaming the ''slackers," arousing racial pride; in posters of the best lithographic art picturing lonely soldiers on the firing line calling for help, and prostrate women and children under the Prussian heel — whether the eye looked to right or left, front or rear, it could not escape Kitchener's call for men for Kitchener's army. The public came to look for the new posters, and there seemed to be always room for one more. The last one was a message in facsimile as written by Kitchener calling for another hundred thousand men. Groups gathered around in the first day that it appeared on the boardings. His own handwriting! He wrote that himself. Lord Kitchener did! It was almost like getting a personal letter from him. The interest, even the awe, of these groups suggested that the name of Kitchener had become almost as much of a fetish with the English as with the Egyptian masses. Perhaps Kitchener, who has been the bugbear of so many journalists was something of a journalist himself!

kitchener's eyes

Few- worded as Kitchener seemed in his daily routine, when it pleased him he would talk at length — freely, affably, across a desk which was never littered with papers — as if he had all the time in the world to spare. Then the listener heard great plans unfolded. 30