with cultivated and good women,
but the beautiful creature whom he loved hungrily and doggedly, and to
whom he proposed several times, could never bring herself to marry him.
I think there was no holy of holies in his character, no sanctuaries for
the finer intimacies of human life. As Sainte-Beuve said of Rousseau,
"he has at times a little goitre in his voice." One sees the fulness of
his limitations by comparing him with such great figures of Indian
history as the Lawrences and Nicholson: in that comparison he shrinks
at once to the dimensions of a colour-sergeant.

But in attempting to study a man of this nature, for our own learning,
we should rather observe how notable a victory he achieved in making so
much of so little than vociferate that he was not this thing or that.

He began life with no gifts from the gods; it was not in his horoscope
to be either a saint or a hero; no one was less likely to create
enthusiasm or to become a legend; and yet by resolutely following the
road of duty, by earnestly and stubbornly striving to serve his
country's interests, and by never for one moment considering in that
service the safety of his own life or the making of his own fortune,
this rough and ordinary man bred in himself a greatness which, magnified
by the legend itself created, helped his country in one of the darkest
hours, perhaps the very darkest, of its long history.

One could wish that behind this formidable greatness of personality
there had been greatness of mind, greatness of character, greatness of
heart, so that he might have been capable of directing the whole war and
holding the politicians in leash to the conclusion of a righteous peace.
But these things he lacked, and the end was what it was.

"Character," says Epicharmus, "is destiny to man." Lord Kitchener, let
us assert, was faithful to his destiny. And he was something more than
faithful, for he sanctified this loyalty to his own character by a
devotion to his country which was pure and incorruptible. Certainly he
can never be styled "the son of Cronos and Double-dealing."

LORD ROBERT CECIL

LORD ROBERT CECIL

(EDGAR ALGERNON CECIL)

Born, 1864. Educ.: at Eton and Oxford. Private Secretary to his
father, the late Marquis of Salisbury, 1886-88; called to the Bar,
1887; M.P. for East Marylebone, 1906-10; for Hitchin Division of
Herts, 1912; Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1915-16;
Assistant Secretary