emark,
"Where Murray has seven names I have a hundred and sixteen." Most men,
in speaking or writing of such a thing, would certainly have said "a
hundred." It is characteristic of his type that he did not even think
in round numbers. But there was in him, parallel to this almost
arithmetical passion, another quality which is, in a double sense, the
secret of his life. For it was the cause of at least half his success;
and yet he very successfully concealed it--especially from his
admirers.

The paradox of all this part of his life lies in this--that, destined
as he was to be the greatest enemy of Mahomedanism, he was quite
exceptionally a friend of Mahomedans. He had been first received in
that land, so to speak, with a blow on the head with a club; he was
destined to break the sword of the last Arab conqueror, to wreck his
holy city and treat all the religious traditions of it with a
deliberate desecration which has often been held oppressive and was
undoubtedly ruthless. Yet with the individual Moslem he had a sort of
natural brotherhood which has never been explained. Had it been shown
by a soldier of the Crusades, it would have been called witchcraft. In
this, as in many other cases, the advance of a larger enlightenment
prevents us from calling it anything. There was mixed with it, no
doubt, the deep Moslem admiration for mere masculinity, which has
probably by its exaggeration permitted the Moslem subordination of
women. But Kitchener (who was himself accused, rightly or wrongly, of
a disdain for women) must have himself contributed some other element
to the strangest of international sympathies. Whatever it was, it must
be constantly kept in mind as running parallel to his scientific
industry and particularity; for it was these two powers, used
systematically for many years before the event, that prepared the
ground for the overthrow of that wild papacy and wandering empire
which so long hung in the desert, like a mirage to mislead and to
destroy.

Kitchener was called away in 1878 to similar surveying duties in
Cyprus, and afterwards in Anatolia, where the same faculty obtained
him a _firman_, making him safe in all the Holy Cities of Islam. He
also dealt much with the Turkish fugitives fleeing from the Russian
guns to Erzerum--whither, so long after, the guns were to follow. But
it is with his later summons to Egypt that we feel he has returned to
the theatre of the great things of his life. It is not neces