The Mirrors of Downing Street / Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster

upon doing what he consider

all from Mr. Lloyd George. The politician had come to urge the appointment of de

is sectarian guns, and was so insistent, especially in respect of Presbyterians, that at last the Secretary of State for War yielded in this one case. He took up his pen rather grudgingly and

thodoxy. A little later came another political experience which afforded him real insight into t

ulness and thoroughness of this work struck him with surprise, and he inquired the name of its author. He was told that Lord

of this honest soldier. Someone about him who had enjoyed personal relations with various editors was dispatched to one of

r does; but I have received my orders and they come from so important a quarter that I dare not disob

learnt that the spirit of the public school does not ope

he was at least an honest man amongst lawyers. He was a great man; wherever he sat, to borrow a useful phrase, was the head of the table; but this greatness of his, not being the full greatness of a complete man, and

hould not have yielded at all, and yielding grudgingly where to yield without the whole heart was fatal to success: in the end he was among the drifters, "something between a hindrance a

-and-out individualist, a believer in men, a hater of all systems. As Sir Ian Hamilton has said, wherever he saw organization his first instinct was to smash it. I think his autocracy at the War Office might have been of greater service to the countr

particulars the real greatness of this once glorious and finally pat

d figure. At certain moments he had curious flashes of inspiration, but they came at long intervals and were seldom to be had in the day of drudgery, when his mind was not excited. On the whole his intelligence was of a

ess and by its power brought him to wonderful success and great ho

pects as selfish a man as ever lived, as selfish as a greedy schoolboy; nevertheless by the power of his single virtue, to which he was faithful up to his last mo

gs in the houses of the people who were entertaining him, even in the houses of his own subordinates, until the weaker or the more timorous gave him the object of his covetousness, nevertheless for the sake of his country he clung to the uncongenial chair in Whitehall, not merely working like

musing account of an interview with Lord Kitchener which illustrates the Field-Marshal's passi

scattered about the leafy gardens at Broome. Drawings were made and ap

terrible rage. In his late years, be it remembered, Lord Kitchener was not good to look upon. He a

it, but a gentleman. He blazed at him. What did he mean by sticking up those ridiculous lit

d seen his drawings and approved of them. "Yes, the drawings!-but you can't

st, wanted amorini the size of g

me, and would have liked to have carried off many of its possessions, particularly a William the Fo

ir he sits in becomes a throne," referring to the a

tness, as we apply it to a saint, a poet, or a statesman, Lord Kitchener was a second-class and even a third-class person; but so driving was his sense of duty that it carried him to the very forefront of national life, and but for the political atmosphere in which

lity, made so pitiable an end? What was lacking that this indubitable

t has time and space in which to express itself; but many virtues of intellect and character are necessar

to the legendary Kitchener, and so long as he could find men as brave as himself, but of swifter and more adaptable intelligence, to do his bidding, he succeeded: many of the public, indeed, believed in the legendary Kitchener up to the day of his tragic death-dea

ee how the lightning intellects of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill

ve phrases. Lord Kitchener, shifting on his chair, would repeat, "It's impossible." Then in question after question Mr. Churchill would ask why it was impossible. "It's impossible," Lord Kitchener would mumble at the end of these questions. Finally, when nearly everybody had attempted t

e or four friendships with cultivated and good women, but the beautiful creature whom he loved hungrily and doggedly, and to whom he proposed several times, could never bring herself to marry him. I think there was no holy of holies in his character, no sanctuaries for the finer intimacies of huma

we should rather observe how notable a victory he achieved in making

the road of duty, by earnestly and stubbornly striving to serve his country's interests, and by never for one moment considering in that service the safety of his own life or the making of his own for

f character, greatness of heart, so that he might have been capable of directing the whole war and holding the po

d he was something more than faithful, for he sanctified this loyalty to his own character by a devotion to his c

ROBER

ROBER

ALGERNO

1887; M.P. for East Marylebone, 1906-10; for Hitchin Division of Herts, 1912; Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1915-16; Assista