“Lord Kitchener’s personal qualities and position played at this time a very great part in the decision of events. His prestige and authority were immense. He was the sole mouthpiece of War Office opinion in the War Council. Every one had the greatest admiration for his character, and every one felt fortified, amid the terrible and incalculable events of the opening months of the war, by his commanding presence. When he gave a decision, it was invariably accepted as final. He was never, to my belief, overruled by the War Council or the Cabinet in any military matter, great or small. No single unit was ever sent or withheld contrary, not merely to his agreement, but to his advice. Scarcely any one ever ventured to argue with him in Council. Respect for the man, sympathy for him in his immense labours, confidence in his professional judgment, and the belief that he had plans deeper and wider than any we could see, silenced misgivings and disputes, whether in the Council or at the War Office. All-powerful, imperturbable, reserved, he dominated absolutely our counsels at this time.”[11] These sentences accurately express the ideal of Lord Kitchener as conceived by the public mind. His large but still active frame, his striking appearance, and his reputation for powerful reserve, in themselves inspired confidence. His patient and ultimately successful services in Egypt, the Soudan, South Africa, and India were famed throughout the country, which discovered in him the very embodiment of the silent strength and tenacity, piously believed to distinguish the British nature. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Mr. Asquith as Prime Minister had taken the charge of the War Office upon himself, owing to Presbyterian Ulster’s threat of civil war, and the possibility of mutiny among the British garrison in Ireland, if commanded to proceed against that rather self-righteous population. When war with Germany was declared, it so happened that Lord Kitchener was in England, on the point of returning to Egypt, and Mr. Asquith handed over to him his own office as Secretary for War. The Cabinet, and especially Lord Haldane (then Lord Chancellor, but Minister of War from 1905 to 1912), the most able of army organisers, urged him to this step. But he needed no persuasion. He never thought of any other successor as possible. As he has said himself: “Lord Kitchener’s appointment was received with universal acclamation, so much so indeed that it was represented as having been forced upon a reluctant Cabinet by the overwhelming pressure of an intelligent and prescient Press.”[12]