The highest of all Lord Kitchener's merits is, that being suddenly pitchforked into office by an emergency, he nevertheless grasped at once the two or three main features of the situation, and turned the whole force of his character to dealing with them, letting the smaller matters meanwhile fall into line as best they might. He grasped the dominating factor--that it was essential to subordinate every military and political consideration to supporting France, whose fight for her own existence was equally a fight for the existence of the British Empire. He grasped the urgent need for the enrolment of many hundreds of thousands of men fit for making into soldiers, if we were to win this fight and not lose it. He grasped the need for turning these recruits into soldiers at a pace which hardly a single military expert believed to be possible. He may, or may {356} not, have fully grasped at the beginning, the difficulties--mainly owing to dearth of officers--with which he was faced: but when he did grasp them, by some means or another, he succeeded in overcoming them. It is dangerous to speak of current events in confident superlatives; but one is tempted to do so with regard to the training of the New Army. Even the most friendly among expert critics believed that what Lord Kitchener had undertaken was a thing quite impossible to do in the prescribed time. Yet he has done it. And not only the friendly, but also the severest critics, have admitted that the New Army is already fit to face any continental army, and that, moreover, to all appearance, it is one of the finest armies in history. The sternest proof is yet to come; but it is clear that something not far short of a miracle has been accomplished. If we search for an explanation of the miracle, we find it quite as much in Lord Kitchener's character as in his methods. Fortunately what was so painfully lacking in the political sphere was present in the military--Leadership. [Sidenote: HIS DISADVANTAGES] Despite the support which Lord Kitchener derived from the public confidence he laboured under several very serious disadvantages. A man cannot spend almost the whole of his working life out of England, and then return to it at the age of sixty-four, understanding all the conditions as clearly as if he had never left it. Lord Kitchener was ignorant not only of English political conditions, but also of English industrial conditions, which in a struggle like the present are certainly quite as important as the other. He may well have consoled himself, however, with the reflection that, although he himself was {357} lacking in knowledge, his colleagues were experts in both of these spheres. It was inevitable that Lord Kitchener must submit to the guidance of Ministers in the political sphere, providing they agreed with his main objects--the unflinching support of France, and the creation of the New Army.