"Your letter of July 11th has just come. I congratulate you with all my heart. It is simply first-class to have you a fighting officer in the fighting line, leading your men in the very work that you are particularly and peculiarly fitted to do. I was wholly unable to understand Lord Kitchener refusing you a commission. It seemed to me to be an instance of following the letter that kills instead of the spirit that gives life. The Germans have used Von Hindenburg,[80] who was away over the legal age-limit for generals; and he has been their best general. There is undoubtedly a certain type of bureaucrat who would have thought it more important to observe the rule by keeping him at home than to have secured his leadership in victory. Of course, I personally believe in universal military service, and in the most rigorous application of military law during a war. If I had control in East Africa--or in Great Britain or the United States, for that matter!--I would make every man do whatever was best for the nation, whether this meant that he was to fight or to produce ammunition or to produce coal, and I would treat the man who sought to make a profit out of the war or who went on a strike so as to avoid doing his duty in the war just as summarily as I would treat the soldier who flinched in a fight. "I am so pleased that MacMillan is with you and is doing so well with the commissariat. Give him my heartiest regards. I wish to heaven Kermit and I were with you, or at least that Kermit[81] was with you, and that I was helping in the trenches in Flanders, where I would be of more service. "I send you herewith two articles I have just written in reference to what I regard as the frightful misconduct of my own country. The trouble is that the men at the head of our Government are doing just exactly what the men at the head of your Government did up to a year and a quarter ago; and they treat the words of men like myself precisely as your men treated Lord Roberts--I do not mean to compare myself to Lord Roberts in this matter, but the attitude of the governmental authorities toward him and toward me has been the same.