Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1914-11-03
EARL KITCHENER
Remarkable Soldier Heads British
War Office.
HAS ABILITY AND GENIUS FOR WORK
Remarkable Career of the Man Who Now Looms
Up as the Supreme Commander of the Army OF
Britain in This War of Nations.

Fifty years ago in the quaint old
town of Dinan-the birthplace of Du
Guesclin. where the famous warriors
heart is still kept in the little church
of st. Sauveur-a lanky English lad
was often teased by the little French
boys who followed him with cries of
"V'la 'Engliche," 1t is the age-old
taunt that the simple fisherfolk OF
Brittany fling in the face of their
traditional enemy. Then young Kitch-
ener would turn and do battle under
the mediaval ramparts, and as MS
tormenters were many he at times
reached home with his clothes all
blood-stained and torn.
The torn clothes must have been
a drain on the family purse, for the
Kitcheners were not rich. OF pure
English stock. his father, a lieuten-
ant-colonel on half pay, had married
the daughter of an old Huguenot
family. a Miss Chevallier of Suffolk,
and they had three children, all boys.
The eldest, Horatio Herbert, born at
Ballylongford while Capt. Kitchener's
regiment was stationed in Ireland, got
what learning he could in County
Kerry. and afterwards attended a
French school at Villeneuve, and,
with the coaching his father gave
him, just managed in 1868 to pass
the entrance examination for the
royal military academy at Woolwich,
where England trains her future Of
ficers.
Fought for France in 1870.
In 1870, he was back in Dinan
waiting to learn the result of his final
exams. But those were dark days
for France. Napoleon the Little, had
surrendered at Sedan; the govern
ment of national defense had called
ChanZy from Algiers and Gambetta
had given him the command of the
army of the Loire. Young Kitchen
er was swept by the wave of war
feeling into the ranks of the French
mobiles. He had just enlisted when
his commission arrived; he was gaZ-
cited as a sub-lieutenant of the royal
engineers. Despite the protests or
his father. who feared the wrath OF
the war office. he took the field as a
private and fought in the ranks. 1t
was lucky for England that he did.
He learned there the lesson that
stood him in good stead in the Soudan
and in South Africa-that in modern
warfare valor is nothing of worth If
not backed by organization. In that
terrible winter campaign, Kitchener
saw miles of stalled freight cars load
ed with war material; soldiers freez-
ing for lack Of overcoats stored in
plenty half a mile away, but which
there was no one to issue, and starV-
ing for food that rotted because there
was no machinery for its distribu-
ton. That is why he later fought
the Dervishes with Nubian track
layers and American bridge builders
and hemmed in the Beers with block
houses and charged wire. His first
campaign ended rather ingloriously
by his catching a severe cold after
balloon ascent made when his clothes
were wet. Three months after he
started from Dinan, he was back
under his fathers roof near to death
with pleurisy.
He joined the engineers in the
spring of 1871, and began the long,
hard toll that England eXacts from
the men who serve her. For three
years he worked at Chatham and
Aldershot and then was detached TO
work in a semi-civil capacity on the
Palestine survey. For four years,
he passed up and down measuring
the land of Canaan and learning the
ways and the speech of its people.
The English are not, as a rule, pos
sesSed of the faculty of assimilation
in any marked degree: Kitchener is
an exception. In Palestine, in Cy-
prus, in Egypt he managed to adapt
himself to the ways of the natives, to
understand the secret workings of
their minds in a manner little short
of bewildering. He acquired not only
their language but their very intona-
ton. and could live among the Arabs
as safe from detection as Kim in the
crowded streets of Lahore.
Making a Mummy Fight.
England acquired Cyprus in 1878.
and Lieut. Kitchener was. placed in
charge of the exploration. From