The record-union., 1898-11-12
LORD KITCHENER.
PEN PICTURE OF THE VICTORI-
GUS ENGLISH COMMANDER.
Relentless Vigor With Which He
Pursued His Campaign
in Egypt.

Major General Sir Horatio Herbert
Kitchener. whose peerage is officially
announced in to-day's paper, is 4S years
old by the book, but that is irrelevant.
He stands several inches over six feet,
straight as a lance, and looks out i'm
periously above most mems heads; his
motions are deliberate and strong; F.;
slender, but firmly knit, he seems bullt
for tireaess, steel wire endurance, rather
than for power or agility; that also is
Irrelevant.
Steady, passionless eyes shaded py
decisive brows, brick-red, rather luli
cheeks, long mustache, beneath which
you divine an immovable mouth ms
face is harsh, and neither Appeals IoI
affection nor stirs dislike. All TINS Is
irrelevant, too; neither age, nor hgure'
nor face, nor any accident of person mas
any bearing on the essential S1rdar.
You can imagine the character just
the same is If all the externals were
different He has no age but the prime
of life no body but one to carry ms
mind, no face but one to keep his praln
behind The brain and the Will are the
essence and the whole Of the mana
brain perfect and a will so perfect In
their workings that, in the face Of ex-
tremest difficulty they never seem to
know what struggle is. You cannot
imagine the Sirdar otherwise than as
seeing the right thing to do and doing
it.
His precision is so inhumanly uner-
ring, he is more like a machine than a
man You feel that he ought to be pat
.ented and shown with pride at the
Paris International Exposition. Brit
ish Empire: Exhibit No. 1, hors con-
cours, the Soudan Machine. -
1t was aptly said of him by one who
had closely watched him in his office,
and in the field and at mess, that he is
the sort of teller that ought to be
made manager of the army and navy
stores. The aphorist's tastes lay per-
haps chiefly in the direction Of those
more general virtues which the Sirdar
does not possess, yet it summed him
up perfectly. He would be a splendid
manager of the army and navy stores.
There are some who nurse a desperate
hope that he may some day be appoint
ed to sweep out the War Office. He
would be a splendid manager of the
War Office. He would be a splendid
manager of anything.
But it so happens that he has turned
himself to the management of war in
the Soudan, and he is the complete and
the only master of that art. Beginning
life in the Royal Engineers-a soil re-
puted more favorable to machinery
than to human nature-he early turned
to the study of the Levant He was
one Of Beaconsfield's military vice con-
EllIG, in a Ci9 Minor. ho
ly director of the Palestine Exploration
fund After that he surveyed Cyprus,
whence he escaped-some whisper with
out leave-to see the bombardment Of
Alexandria,
MASTERING THE SOUDAN PROB
LEM
At the beginning of the Soudan trou-
bles he appeared. He was one of the
original twenty-five officers who set
20 work on the new Egyptian army
And in Egypt and the Soudan he has
been ever simeon the staff generally,
fighting often, living with natives
sometimes, mastering the problem of
the Soudan always. The ripe harvest
of fifteen years is that he knows
everything that is to be learned of his
subject. He has seen and profted by
lne errors OF otnerS as by their sue
cesses. He has inherited the wisdom
and the achievements of his predeces-
sors. He came at the right hour, and
he was the right man.
In the Egyptian army, a Captain of
Royal Engineers, he began as second
in-command of a regiment of cavalry.
In Wolseley's campaign he was intelli-
gence officer. During the summer of
1887 he was at Korosko. negotiating
with the Ababdeh sheiks in view of an
advance across the desert to. Abu
Hamed, and note how Enthusiastically
he has now himself bettered the then
abandoned project, by going that way
to Berber and Khartoum himself-only
with a railway
The idea Of the advance across the