nspiration, but they came at long intervals and were seldom to be had
in the day of drudgery, when his mind was not excited. On the whole his
intelligence was of a dull order, plodding heavily through experience,
mapping the surface of life rather than penetrating any of its
mysteries, making slowly quite sure of one or two things rather than
grasping the whole problem at a stroke.

But there was one movement in his character which developed greatness
and by its power brought him to wonderful success and great honour;
this was a deep, an unquestioning, a religious sense of duty.

He started life with a stubborn ambition. As he went along he felt the
lightness of duty, and married his ambition to this Spartan virtue. He
remained in most respects as selfish a man as ever lived, as selfish as
a greedy schoolboy; nevertheless by the power of his single virtue, to
which he was faithful up to his last moments on this earth, he was able
to sacrifice his absorbing self-interest to the national welfare even in
a political atmosphere which sickened him at every turn.

You may see what I mean by considering that while he longed for nothing
so much in later life as the possession of Broome Park, and that while
his selfishness stopped hardly at anything to enrich that house with
pictures, china, and furniture, and that while he would shamelessly hint
for things in the houses of the people who were entertaining him, even
in the houses of his own subordinates, until the weaker or the more
timorous gave him the object of his covetousness, nevertheless for the
sake of his country he clung to the uncongenial chair in Whitehall, not
merely working like a cart-horse for what he considered to be his
nation's good, but suffering without public complaint of any kind, and
scarcely a private grumble, all the numerous humiliations that came his
way either from his own colleagues in the Cabinet or from a powerful
section of the newspapers outside.

I remember hearing from the late Mr. John Bonner, a most admirable
artist in many fields, an amusing account of an interview with Lord
Kitchener which illustrates the Field-Marshal's passion for his Kentish
home, and also sheds a telling light on the aesthetic side of his
character.

Mr. Bonner had been recommended to Lord Kitchener, who wanted amorini
scattered about the leafy gardens at Broome. Drawings were made and
approved: a few months afterwards the amorini were set up in the
gardens.

So