New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-06-07

The name is that by which he has been
is, and will be best known. There were
other achievements in his career emitting
him to fame. They will not be forgotten,
nor regarded with ingratitude, so long as
the British Empire endures. But in the
River War his genius reached full flower
In it every element of his greatness was
efficiently and triumphantly revealed. From
Oman in 1871 to the Orkney waters in 1916
there was nothing which was not either a
preparation for or consequence Of the
Khartoum campaign.
The student of historical condolences and
of paradoxes might dwell with interest upon
his relationship to the English and French
nations, beginning in remote ancestry and
ending only with his death; a relationship
of blood and of service; at times friendly,
and at one time, at least, potentially hostile.
He belonged by birth to both, and he served
both with the best that was in his life. His
paterna ancestry was English-East Anglican
since Stuart times. His maternal forbears,
the Chevallers, were French Huguenots, i'm
ported to Suffolk more than two centuries
ago by the way of Jersey. Much of his boy
hood was spent in quaint old Oman, the
birthplace of Du Guesclin, whose heart is
still enshrined beneath the altar of the
Church of st. Sauveur.
1t was from Oman that he first went to
war II was in the Terrible Year" Sedan
had befallen, and the war-born Republic was
desperately striving to supply the organiza-
ton of which the pinchbeck Empire had
boosted but which it so lamentably lacked
when it insouciantly rushed into the trap
which Bismarck, Moltke and Room had set
for it, The lesson in the need of prepared
ness which was then impressed upon the
lads mind was never forgotten by him, but
dominated all his after life. He had just
been gazetted a sub-lieutenant of engineers
in the British army, and the War Office might
be displeased if he fought for France. But
these things could not restrain him. He en-
listed in the ranks, and fought at the front
until double pneumonia invalded him 20 the
end of the war. He thus had his baptism
of fire, and learned the supreme lesson OF
military preparedness.
As one OF Beaconsfeld's military vice
consuls in the Levant, as a surveyor for the
Palestine Exploration Fund, and as the mill
tary surveyor of Cyprus, he learned another
great lesson; that of getting in touch with
the natives of strange lands. Kipling might
we'll have taken him as the model or proto-
type of his immortal Strickland Sahib. Nor
was it mere physical adaptability in speech
and visage. This man who has always been
considered cold, mechanical, arbitrary, showed
fexibility of temperament and of sym
pathies nothing short of marvellous. He was
one of every people among whom he lived
and worked So il came to pass that whom
the bombardment of Alexandria made him
take quick leave of Cyprus and hasten to
the scene OF strife, ne was singularly well
endowed to enter into the intimate life OF
the Land of the Pharaohs Twenty-Five others
young English officers were appointed along
with him, to undertake the reorganization o.
the Egyptian army. Probably most il not
all OF the others did excellent work; but IL
is his work that shines out supremely n
modern Egyptian history.
The Fellah was at that time scarcely
man. He was not a man at all from the
military point of view. He was a chatte,
thing; shrinking and spirtless beneath the
swshng of the koorbash. II was Kitchener's
task to make him not only a man but a
first class fighting man." who was ultimately
70 meet, TO vanquish. TO annihilate, the war
rior Arab tribesmen whose life for centuries
had been victorious war and who had known
no master since the Hegira. II was on the
face Of it impossible; but genius is the art