Like all else in Britain--men, measures and institutions--the arbitrament of time will be required to pass final judgment on Kitchener’s part in the war. In the principal field he was called upon to plow--the raising of a huge army from out of the earth--he accomplished marvels. No nation within fourteen months evolved from practically nothing an organization of, roundly, three million soldiers. It is not enough, for the actual requirements of the war call insistently for more and more, yet "K.’s" recruiting achievement stands forth without parallel in military history. It is certainly without precedent of even approximate magnitude in the annals of a non-conscript democracy. Lord Kitchener’s accomplishments in other directions have notoriously not kept pace with his successes as a recruiting-sergeant. The shells affair can hardly fail to dim his reputation. The deficiencies of the voluntary system can not be called a failure directly chargeable to him, in that it has not brought forward men in quantity commensurate with the developed necessities of the campaign. Kitchener has hinted, but only that, that he is prepared to resort to Conscription the moment he is convinced that Voluntaryism has collapsed. But it does not seem unlikely that history may condemn him for clinging to the voluntary principle too long and hesitating to make Englishmen do their duty, instead of relying endlessly on their casual inclination to perform it. Kitchener has ruled the British War Office practically as an autocrat. He brooked no interference, even from the Cabinet. Viewed from that standpoint, "K." can hardly be absolved from cardinal responsibility for British military failures. Before the end of 1915 General Sir Ian Hamilton had disappeared from Gallipoli, Sir John French returned from France, General Townshend retreated from Baghdad, and the Allied "Relief" Expedition to Serbia had retired to Salonica, whence it had set out less than ten weeks previous. CHAPTER XVI THE GENERAL, THE ADMIRAL AND THE KING