Kitchener, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Earl, 1850-1916
enemies of the Soudan, and to announce that in the heart of Europe, in
learned academies and ordered government offices, there had appeared a
lunacy so cruel and unclean that the maddest dervish dead in the
desert had a right to disdain it where he lay.
Kitchener, like other Englishmen of his type, made his name outside
England and even outside Europe. But it was in England, and after his
return to England, that he did what will perhaps make his name most
permanent in history. That return to England was indeed as symbolic as
his last and tragic journey to Russia. Both will stand as symbols of
the deepest things which are moving mankind in the Great War. In truth
the whole of that great European movement which we call the cause of
the Allies is in itself a homeward journey. It is a return to native
and historic ideals, after an exile in the howling wilderness of the
political pessimism and cynicism of Prussia. After his great
adventures in Africa and Asia, the Englishman has re-discovered
Europe; and in the very act of discovering Europe, the Englishman has
at last discovered England. The revelation of the forces still really
to be found in England itself, when all is said that can possibly or
plausibly be said against English commercialism and selfishness, was
the last work of Lord Kitchener. He was the embodiment of an enormous
experience which has passed through Imperialism and reached
patriotism. He had been the supreme figure of that strange and
sprawling England which lies beyond England; which carries the habits
of English clubs and hotels into the solitudes of the Nile or up the
passes of the Himalayas, and is infinitely ignorant of things
infinitely nearer home. For this type of Englishman Cairo was nearer
than Calais. Yet the typical figure which we associated with such
places as Cairo was destined before he died to open again the ancient
gate of Calais and lead in a new and noble fashion the return of
England to Europe. The great change for which his countrymen will
probably remember him longest was what we should call in England the
revolution of the New Armies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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