to humanity and to the Allies of a man of Kitchener's
stature. America, still neutral and still critical, had
never been neutral or critical as to this man. There
was in him a quality that deeply impressed the
imagination of a virile people, at once strongly
practical and highly sentimental. They believed in
him as a master of organisation, an apostle of their
own revered gospel of efficiency; but they also
admired him because he looked the part, and still
more because he acted it only in dumb show. The
reticence and mystery of the man, his stoicism and
self-dependence, coupled with his "thoroughly modern
gift" of getting things done, made his personality for
Transatlantic observers one "around which a legend
twines like ivy round an oak." ¹ They had always
expressed faith in him alive; they now spoke of
him dead with an appreciation always reverent in
essence, if sometimes characteristically picturesque
in expression.

In France, where 1870 was no more forgotten
than 1914, this "brave and prolific organiser" was
"mourned as if he had been a son of the Republic." ²
"The Field-Marshal with eyes of steel," wrote one,
"disappears like the figure in a legend.""The fogs
of the North," according to another, "threw over his
death a cloud of apotheosis."

In Russia there were many parties, but only one
sentiment; Kitchener was trusted by all beyond any
Russian soldier, and beyond all statesmen of any
nationality. In the general sorrow might be detected
a sadness prophetic and almost selfish; the failure of
the great Englishman to reach his destination might

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