The Savannah morning news., 1902-06-22

tering piston rod OF a man tnlS-QrlV-
ing along in absolute consonance with
the throbbing of the vast machine OF
fate. What is there in engineering
that produces so many fighting men?
We have had them here and England
is full of them there.
Certainly there was little in Kitch-
ener's early surroundings to provoke
fighting blood. AS a Royal Engineer,
he was trotted around to various On
endingly peaceable lands to view them
through the blass in his theodolite and
measure them with a steel tape and
otherwise disport himself So we see
him doing in the four years from 1574
to 1878. 1t is hard to conceive now
that much of the typographical knowl-
edge of the Holy Land that is pos
sessed by the world to-day is owing to
the work of the man who since then
has been depicted in European prints
as a hanger of men, a slayer of baoes,
and a scourger of women.
In Cyprus.
In 1878 England, in the methodical
movement of her red tape machine,
sent him to Cyprus, where he did
something or another about
the organization of the land courts.
England had only just then
acquired Cyprus, and there was
lots of dull deadly, monot-
onouS work to do. He remained there,
off and on, until 1882.
Imagine the man who was to be My
Lord Khartoum, sitting in his hot Of
flee in that year, listening to the drone
of a sleepy complainant and a still
more sleepy defendant, both quarreling
about matter concerning which truth
lay at the bottom of a we'll far too
deep for human sounding-and not
three hundred miles away British guns
roaring and British shells laundering
at Alexandria and young Condor
Beresford lying under fire and having
the time of his life" and big history
making all around!
Now it is almost an established fact
that one Kitchener did witness the
bombardment of Alexandria. 1t is a
completely established fact that there
| is no official record giving amy Kitch-
/ ener leave to go away from Cyprus.
But Cyprus did not suffer, nor did the
| bombardment.
Then things began to happen fast and
furious in Egypt And then did a GER
! tain brick red, bony and almost I'M
pleasantly silent youth rage in high
quarters against law courts and civil
organization and Office work in, Cyprus.
where a man had to wear. a dress suit
! at dinner every night and do other
things equally futile.
Dress suits thereupon became things
of the past with Kitchener. After Tel
el-Kebir saw the breaking of Arabs
mad might, England had to take in
hand the reorganization of the Egyp-
ton army, SO called by courtesy. Sir
Evelyn Wood was appointed Sirdar
| (commander) He demanded twenty
| five British officers for the work. Being
! about as hopeless and unpleasant. and
Improbable and unpromising a job as
| ever faced white men, there was a rush
/ of young Britons. Kitchener was
among them. He became an officer in
the glorious army of the Khedive-one
| of that curious corps who worked 10y
| ally for the little brown ruler and were
ready at any moment to knock his head
off if they or dear old England didn't
like anything that he did
A Hopeless Army.
The Egyptian army was a band of
underpaid, underfed. undertreated and
undermined fellaheen. 1t was an army
without stomach, without heart and
without backbone. 1t went forth to
war only with a view to retreating at
the earliest possible moment. II SLOUGH
ed and loafed and did not wash. II
could not shoot. And Kitchener worked
over those helpless reeds of broken ma
tiyes and gripped them and squeezed
them. and. being a man himself. found
the man in the weakened levies be-
fore him.
He made such men out OF them that
IN 1887 they made him commander IN
Suakin. and there are remnants u
desert hordes yet who remember GER
tain ensuing lean years. They remem-
br yet how the gaunt man steppe 4
calmly into their camp one night. un-
armed and alone, and cherfuily hicked
their sacred chief into the face with "a
riding whip In the midst Of his spear
bearers and gun carriers. because that
sacred chief wac just preparing 20 eK-
ecute d British soldier who had been
caught that afternoon.
osman DiRns's men who siili SIRE
alive remember him. Tor be took hIs
Egyptian ieYies into HANDFUL one dsy