that convulsion
of March 1917 in the territories of our great eastern Ally might never
have occurred, or it might at least have been deferred until after the
war had been brought to a happy termination. Apart from this, Lord
Kitchener's work was almost done. Thanks to him, the United Kingdom
had, alike in respect to men and to material, been transformed into a
great military Power, and yet further developments had been assured.
The employing of the instrument which he had created could be left to
other hands.

Many appreciations of him appeared at the time of his lamented
passing, and have appeared since. His character and his qualifications
as man of action and elaborator had not always been appraised quite
correctly during his lifetime, and they are a subject of differences
of opinion still. Often was he spoken of as a great organizer and
administrator. But his claim to possess such qualifications rested
rather upon the results that he obtained than upon the methods by
which he obtained them. Of detail he possessed no special mastery, and
yet he would concern himself with questions of detail which might well
have been left to subordinates to deal with. He won the confidence of
those under him not so much through trusting them in the sense of
leaving them responsibility, as through compelling them to trust him
by the force of his personality and by the wide compass of his outlook
upon the numberless questions that were ever at issue. He had been
described as harsh, taciturn, and unbending. He was on the contrary a
delightful chief to serve once one understood his ways, although he
would stand no nonsense and, like most people, was occasionally out of
humour and exacting.

A more cunning hand than mine is needed to depict adequately the great
soldier-statesman. But this I would say. There has been much foolish
talk as to this individual and to that having won the war. That any
one person could have won the war is on the face of it an absurdity.
The greatest factor in achieving the result was the British Navy; but
who would claim that any one of the chieftains in our fleets or
pulling the naval strings ashore decided the issue of the struggle?
Next, however, to what our sailors achieved afloat, the most important
influence in giving victory to the side of the Entente was the
development, to an extent previously undreamt of, of the British
fighting resources ashore. That was primarily the handiwork of Lord
Kitchener.