All these years, '97 and '98, in which I had sketched out my Shakespeare book and written half a dozen new stories, I had come more and more to feel that I must do my own work and that the drudgery of journalism was interfering with the real business of my life. The public spirit of the time, too, didn't please me. It was evident to me that Chamberlain was seeking to establish British authority, or as he would have said, British supremacy, in South Africa. At length came the news that Alfred Milner was appointed by Chamberlain as Governor General, and was to be sent out to the Cape with full authority.
Ever since Harold Frederic introduced me to Alfred Milner, when we were all in the thirties, I had thought of him as the most perfect example of a modern German in mind that I had ever seen. Both in defects and in qualities, he was characteristically German and not English. For the German trusts reason and knows thoroughly what he has learned, while the best Englishman has a subconscious belief that there are instincts higher than reason, and he has never learned anything deeply enough to feel that he knows it as a master. These immature spiritual antennae are what makes the Englishman the tragic creature he often is in practical life, and the lovable person he is at his best; and their absence gives the German his supremacy in the present and forecasts perhaps his comparative failure in the future.
Now Harold Frederic was a great friend of Milner, and he had told me a good deal about him and his imperialistic views. I became a little anxious and saw Beit on the matter, but he assured me there was nothing important afoot, and at the same time he wanted to know why I had not asked him to take any shares in the Saturday Review. I told him he could take five thousand whenever he pleased; and he took five thousand and gave me his check; others took shares too, especially when a dividend of five per cent was declared on the capital. I was on easy street as regards money, but still a little doubtful of the political situation, when Harold Frederic came and said he was giving a big dinner at the Savoy Hotel to Milner on his appointment to South Africa, and asked me to speak at the dinner. I said I should be glad to.
Harold Frederic in his speech talked of Milner and himself as only a man of genius could talk. He spoke first of Milner's generous recognition of other men; how he had pressed work upon him and praised his writing enthusiastically; he gave this as a sign of kindness of heart, whereas in Milner it was merely the efficiency of the bureaucrat. Then he spoke of Milner's career.
"From the first," he said, "at Oxford, even, the English had picked Milner out for a high position. He had had a German training and had won besides all sorts of scholastic honors at Oxford. We all knew when he arrived in London and became Stead's assistant on the Pall Mall Gazette that he was sure to come to honor, and all of us are glad now to congratulate him," for he's a jolly good fellow, and so forth.
Milner said little or nothing, did not commit himself in any way, whereas I spoke with perfect frankness. I said that the Englishman who went out to South Africa with power and who brought the Boers and British to mutual trust and harmony would do great work; but such a heaven-sent diplomatist would have to show sympathy with the Boers from the very outset. The English, of course, would trust him; he should make it his first object to win the confidence of the Boers, who were naturally suspicious. The British Empire extended north of the Transvaal over the whole central plateau of Africa to Nairobi or to Khartoum, or, if you wished, to Cairo; surely from the Transvaal border to Khartoum was enough for British colonization in the next two hundred years.
"There," I went on, "was the most fruitful land in the world, and the best climate in the world; and I think a great colonizing effort should be made, for all the unemployed in Britain might be established on that magnificent plateau and thus extend and consolidate the greatest empire on earth. The first essential to success," I insisted, "was to win the Boers by treating them fairly. They were not anti-English; they were, in spite of the war of 1880 and in spite of the Jameson Raid, inclined to be pro-English; and as soon as Krueger died the English colonists in the Transvaal would be accorded full citizen rights. The Boers would do this so much the quicker if the land to the north of the Transvaal were settled up by Englishmen. Why shouldn't the next colonial Governor be the Moses of this new Exodus? On the other hand, if the new Governor quarreled with the Boers and excited that dislike which lay so near ignorance, he might have a war on his hands that would sow evil broadcast and would retard the development, not only of South Africa, but also of Great Britain."
I did my very best in this sense. A good many people applauded me, but after the dinner, when Harold Frederic and I strolled together to the Liberal Club and I congratulated him on one of the best speeches I had ever heard, he said:
"My dear Harris, I never made a good speech before in my life, and you usually talk well, but tonight I thought you were at your worst; you showed such distrust of Milner. I assure you, he's a Radical and a good fellow."
"I don't believe he's a Radical; he's a German and he'll fail ruinously in South Africa. He'll bring war. You've only to look at him; he frightens me."
Lord Desborough came to me afterwards and said that he agreed with a good many of my ideas, but he wished that I could really meet Milner because Milner was a prince of good fellows and absolutely fair-minded. Finally he invited me to lunch with him at Willis' rooms; and I lunched there a week later with Milner and Lord Desborough.
It was at this time the fashionable rendezvous for lunch in London, and I noticed that three or four people, whom I had known socially, treated me with marked coldness. I was put down as a lover of the Boers, and a good many of the governing class disliked my attitude intensely. Man after man came out and bowed to Milner and Desborough in the pleasantest way, while contenting themselves with the merest nod to me. After lunch Milner went away and Desborough remarked to me that he had never known Milner so cautious: "He didn't speak his mind or give us even an inkling of what he thought." But I still believed that it was absolutely impossible for any English governor to be mad enough to make war with the Boers. "After all," I said to Lord Desborough, "they are the real colonists in South Africa; except the gold hunters in Johannesburg and the diamond diggers in Kimberley, there are no Englishmen outside of Natal and the Cape. Will Milner go in for colonization and make for himself a deathless reputation, or will he proceed to quarrel with the Boers?" I knew at the bottom of my heart that Krueger would quarrel with any one: was indeed as combative as a bull-terrier.
Desborough could tell me nothing, except that he hoped for the best; still, he felt pretty sure that Milner would do what Chamberlain wished and always act in the best interests of England. We had to leave it at that.
In due time Milner went out to South Africa, and in my mind's eye I saw a meeting between him and President Krueger.
Milner tall, thin, with shaven, stony face, calm, direct regard and immaculate attire, the type of clean, intelligent efficiency; and Oom Paul, huddled in his armchair, looking like a sick gorilla with a fringe of thick, dirty hair under his heavy animal face, and small hot eyes glinting out under the bushy brows: the one man ignorant to the point of believing the world to be flat, the other intelligent and equipped with all the learning of the schools; and yet Krueger a great heart and great man, and Milner small and thin, proud of easily holding his emotions in leash to his reason. I dreaded the clash, for behind Milner was all the power of Britain, and yet Krueger was right: "We Boers hold South Africa; you can't get rid of us; it is foolish to bully your bedfellow."
Milner's first speech at Graaf Reinet taught me all that I wished to know about him, and more. The gist of his speech, I shall never forget, and I don't care to look out the words. "The Boers," he began, "talk about their loyalty: I see no merit in this; I should think they would be loyal; they live in perfect peace, protected by the might of England, by her armies and navies; loyalty is a cheap price to pay for such complete security." And so he went on, as if love were a thing to be bought and affection had a price. He had no conception whatever that the ordinary Boer never dreamed of any attack from the outside and would have laughed at the idea. The whole speech was a British challenge; still, at first nothing seemed to come of it, and I gradually settled down into the hope that no decisive issue would arise in my time.
I then went into one of the bad speculations of my life. I had got to know the two managers of the Savoy Hotel, Ellis and Cesari, very well indeed. They had made a success of the Savoy Hotel, and as soon as Cesari knew that I came to the French Riviera nearly every winter, he told me that he could make a marvelous success of a hotel at Monte Carlo. Next winter I came down and saw some hotels which were for sale. I didn't care for any of them, but when I spoke to the Princess of Monaco about it, she said she would be delighted to make any hotel I took a success so far as it lay in her power; and so I told Cesari that if he could find a good hotel as an investment I might take a hand in it, for I had already bought a good deal of property on the Cap d'Estel between Monte Carlo and Eze, and would be glad to develop a hotel or reserve on it.
The next winter, Cesari came out and soon told me that he had discovered a wonderful hotel. I went to Monte Carlo and saw it, didn't think much of it, but allowed myself to be persuaded. Cesari played me false, spent some thousands of pounds on the furnishings of the hotel, and some thousands of pounds more on wine, and the first season was fairly successful. Unluckily for me, about this time one of De Lara's brothers took an interest in a hotel in Monte Carlo, and Princess Alice went continually to that hotel and left me in the lurch, saying that her husband didn't wish her to come to my place. This only made me the more obstinate, and I determined to build a reserve; I got estimates for ten thousand pounds, set the men to work under Cesari's supervision, but as my bad luck would have it, the managership of a great hotel in Paris was offered to Cesari, and he left me practically without notice.
At the crucial moment I suddenly found myself called away to South Africa again. Milner was pushing matters to an extremity. I went out and saw to my horror that he had brought it almost to war. I returned to London, determined to see Chamberlain in order to try to save England from what I regarded as a catastrophe.
I wrote to Chamberlain and asked him to give me an hour of his time; and he was good enough to consent. He had altered in many ways since we parted over the policy of the Fortnightly Review. He had given up his belief in Free Trade and had come to see that a closer union of England and her colonies was only to be achieved by "Fair Trade," but as soon as I spoke of South Africa I found that he disagreed with me. The English Empire, he thought, must be founded on justice, strict justice; and Krueger and his Boers were unjust to the English settlers in Johannesburg, who had made the Transvaal the richest state in South Africa and yet were denied any rights of citizenship. I learned from him that he meant to force the Boers and Krueger to act justly. I tried to argue with him as I have argued in these pages, but nothing I could say had any effect. It all seemed sun-clear to him, whereas I knew that the use of force must lead to a South African war, which could have nothing but evil results. I did my very best; I went so far as to plead with bun that he might assure Krueger that England would guarantee the independence of the Transvaal on condition that he gave rights of citizenship to the Johannesburgers; but the more I pleaded, the more I felt that it was all in vain; Chamberlain's mind was made up. He had the best of the verbal argument, and power to boot; and Krueger would have to give in. I was perfectly certain that Krueger would never give in.
A little while later Lord Hardwicke came to me and wanted to know whether I would sell the Saturday Review. I said that I had no objection.
There were only about ten or twelve thousand shares which hadn't been taken up, besides the reserved shares-the few hundreds reserved for me. I asked him did he wish to get control in order to change the editorship, or was he willing to keep me on as editor. He said that he didn't think there was any wish to change me; so the end of it was that I sold him the ten or twelve thousand shares, which gave him, or rather Beit and Rhodes, the control of the Saturday Review.
Some months later, Hardwicke told me that "they wanted to treat me fairly, but the policy of the Review in regard to South Africa must be modified to suit Chamberlain and Rhodes; would I do it, or would I re-sign?"
"It's a perfect impasse," I said. "You have got the voting power on everything except the vote for the editor and his assistants, and that is controlled by the five hundred shares which I possess and will not part with."
A few weeks passed and he came to me and asked me if I would please put a price on those five hundred shares. I had already had thirty thousand pounds out of the Saturday Review for the five thousand I had put in it, and I had come to see that it was necessary for me to give all my time to writing. Still, I did not want to lose the Saturday, so I put the prohibitive price of ten thousand pounds on the five hundred reserved shares; to my astonishment he came to me a little later with his check for ten thousand pounds. I could do nothing but resign myself, which I did the more easily as it freed me to do my own work as a writer, and particularly the work on Shakespeare that I was anxious to complete.
I went away immediately to the South of France and began to work seriously at the "Shakespeare." It was nearly twenty years since I had discovered him in his works; in all these years I had read him again and again for various qualities to make sure that my version of him was the correct one. The work was entrancing to me, but difficult. I had continually to be on my guard not to ascribe any of my own failings to him; fortunately for me, the differences in character and development were so marked it was not impossible to picture him in almost every trait.
In this summer of '99 I got the first rough sketch of the book down on paper. In reading it through, I was delighted with the portrait, when suddenly the papers told me that Milner had met President Krueger in South Africa and had failed utterly to come to any understanding with him, and thereupon Milner had sent a telegram to Chamberlain, which filled me with fear: it was the special pleading of an advocate, an advocate, too, who cared nothing for the Boers or South African opinion. I saw at once that Milner had adopted Chamberlain's position from one end to the other.
Now for the first time I felt how wrong I had been to give up the Saturday Review; and, it began to dawn upon me, it was because Rhodes and Chamberlain were determined to push the matter to war that Beit and Hardwicke had bought control of the Saturday. Chamberlain began to send troops to South Africa, and then another voice, and a great one, made itself heard distinctly.
At this very time, the greatest living woman writer, Olive Schreiner, wrote an impassioned article (afterwards published under the title Words in Season), pleading for fair play to the Dutch and for a policy of conciliation, just as I had pleaded.
It didn't seem possible that England would attempt to use force against the Transvaal, but I was frightened as Olive Schreiner was, and month by month the fear grew. One thing was certain: Chamberlain and Milner could make war if they wished, and it grew plainer and plainer that they meant to; they pushed Krueger to concession after concession, then declared them all worthless; and in the meantime English troops kept pouring into Natal and Cape Town. The old gorilla had to fight. War! The shame and horror of it ate into my very heart.
Almost the last thing I wrote in the Saturday Review was a prediction that if the English made war in South Africa, it would last for years and cost them two hundred millions of money and would alter none of the essential conditions. In fact, it would be at best labor and lives lost, the most brainless adventure that England ever engaged in. Years afterwards some London paper reproduced this prediction of mine as extraordinarily correct, and I remember Winston Churchill asking me one day how I had come to be so right.
"I wasn't right," I replied, "the war cost England more than a thousand millions."
"What do you mean?" he asked in astonishment.
"When you speak of what it cost," I said, "you reckon up the money paid out, but you don't count the financial consequences. Consols before the war were 114; after the war they were 94 or 5: there was a loss of twenty points of some eight hundred millions of money; but if you lost one hundred and fifty millions on Consols, you lost two hundred millions on your railroads, and a proportionate sum on all the other industries. That ineffably stupid, brainless war cost over a thousand millions of English money, and nothing, less than nothing, was gamed by it. You won contempt and hatred in South Africa and gained nothing, not even fighting fame. Campbell-Bannerman was quite right in giving back their independence to the Boers: it was the only thing to do; but even that didn't atone for the atrocious bloodshed and wanton loss."
The mere attempt to coerce Krueger showed such manifest stupidity that it forced me to doubt the English race, doubt whether they had political wisdom enough to carry out a great policy and be worthy of their astounding birthright.
Instead of beginning to settle up the great plateau of Africa from the north of the Transvaal to the Zambesi, they spent a thousand millions in ruining their prestige in Africa and bringing mourning into thousands of homes for no reason. But even Olive Schreiner could not stop Chamberlain from sending British soldiers into Natal to bring pressure on Krueger, and Milner went on talking and telegraphing rabid nonsense to excite the combative English feeling; and at length came the war.
By this time I had finished the first draft of my book on Shakespeare and was back in England; before even the war was declared, I went to see Lord Wolseley, who had been a friend of mine for a great many years. It was at the end of the summer before the war was declared that I asked him in his room in the War Office whether there was going to be war. He told me it was practically decided. I said, "How terrible! What a dreadful calamity!"
He sprang up from the table. "We are making no mistake this tune," he said.
"I'll send out an army corps and bring it to a quick ending."
"You don't really think," I said, "that an army corps will be sufficient?"
"There are not more than forty or fifty thousand Boers," he said. "I reckon that forty or fifty thousand British soldiers should be enough for them, and more than enough."
"You don't know the country," I said, "nor the Boers: two army corps, four, five army corps will not be enough."
He lifted his hands in amused deprecation. "You don't know our English soldiers," he said; "at any rate, Buller is going out; he knows the Boers."
"Buller!" I cried, and as soon as possible I went away. The next day I went and called on Buller and had a talk with him. I had known him, too, for many years, and had always looked upon him as a big foolish person, only to be tolerated because of his charming wife, Lady Audrey; but in this conversation, Buller surpassed himself.
"What are your tactics?" I asked. "Where are you going to land?"
"Oh, I suppose it will be Durban," he said; "the nearest way to the Transvaal is through Natal."
"But all Cape Colony will be seething," I said, "on the other side of you. The young Boers there will be able to go up through the Free State to the aid of their cousins in the Transvaal. What is your policy?"
"There is only one policy in war," replied Buller. "Get alongside the other fellow and give him hell."
"But suppose he won't let you get alongside of him," I said.
"There if, never any difficulty," he said, "if you want to fight."
A few months later I read of a scene that came vividly before me as pictured in the London papers-Buller with an army of thirty thousand men brought to a standstill by the shooting of two or three thousand Boers hidden on the other side of a river. He sent out artillery and soon the sharp-shooting Boers had killed every one of the gunners and then sent a force across the river to take the British guns and dump them in the river; it was done without loss:
Buller with a force outnumbering the Boers ten to one beaten to a standstill by sharp-shooters who could use cover!
It was in late December or early January, after the war had begun, that Lord Desborough asked me to lunch at the Bath Club, and at the beginning of the lunch he said: "I have asked Harris to come here because he was the only person to predict that the British forces would have many defeats. When Chamberlain asked for a credit of ten millions and everyone said that the war wouldn't last three weeks, no one except Harris saw that after three months we should need a credit of a hundred millions and should feel dreadfully disappointed at the outcome." 'Twas just after Spion Kop, I remember, when Buller had tried to occupy the little mountain and a couple of thousand men he sent up were beaten by a few hundred Boers so that they had to be withdrawn the same day. The Times had just published a dispatch of Buller, in which he said that he had retreated from Spion Kop without losing a gun or an ammunition wagon. An army general at Grenfell's lunch started the talk by declaring that that was a splendid message of Buller-that he retreated from Spion Kop without losing a gun or ammunition wagon.
"Or," I added interrupting, "a moment's time."
Everyone laughed; but the general got very red. When Grenfell pressed me for my opinion, I said, "I am sorry to say that I think the English will win; the Boers have made as bad blunders as the English: they have been led away by the memory of '80–81 and by Buller's attack, and have gone to fight in Natal; they should have left only a small force on the frontier and gone down into Cape Colony to get recruits, where they could have got a hundred thousand men of their own race to help them. Because they have not done this, they will be beaten. The next English general will land in Cape Town and go up through Cape Colony, and in a month or so the whole aspect of the war will have changed.
"But nothing alters the fact that the war is the worst one that the English have ever been engaged in, except, indeed, their terrible defeat in the Argentine, which no one seems to remember. But this is even worse, for South Africa was already practically Anglicized, made English in sentiment from one end of the country to the other.
"I remember spending an evening with General Cronje, who was a typical Boer, but his daughters would talk of nothing except of the dramas on the London stage and how they longed to go for a night to Covent Garden to hear Grand Opera."
I must have spoken with intense bitterness because at the end of the lunch Lord Desborough, in saying "Good-bye" to me, said: "I am afraid, Harris, we must part; when you speak against England as you do, it is like speaking against my mother; I cannot bear it. I am sorry, but we mustn't meet again."
I realized then that I was completely out of touch with the English, and as the gloomy days went on, I came to be more and more isolated.
I don't know how to express what I felt about that inexcusable war and my detestation of the men who brought it about. I think everyone who reads what I have written about Joseph Chamberlain and Alfred Milner must admit that I have treated them more than fairly, with sympathy, indeed, and a desire, above all, to omit no good feature of character, no gift of intellect.
But they worked together to bring about the South African war, and afterwards I always said and felt that they were viler than any criminal, two of those whom Dante meant when he said they were hated of God and of His enemies.
After the war, Chamberlain invited me to dinner and I replied, regretting that I couldn't accept. He met me a day or two afterwards in the lobby of the House of Commons and came up to me, smiling.
"Your letter rather surprised me," he said. "I thought we were friends and that you would tell me when you would be free, in case you had an engagement."
I replied, "I am very sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, but I can only see you as the maker of the war in South Africa and I cannot meet you with any decent, friendly feeling. I think it a horrible thing to have done. I mustn't speak about it or I should be insulting, and I have no wish to insult you."
"I am sorry," he replied, "but I did what I regarded as my duty."
I said, "I know, but the word 'duty' is worse than prostituted," and I hurried away.
Milner, too, I saw afterwards, met in fact at a certain house, but when he spoke to me I went past him as if I hadn't seen or heard him. I was told afterwards that both Chamberlain and Milner spoke of me as a "savage without manners," but there are higher laws than those of manners.
Swinburne wrote a shameful sonnet in August, 1899, which was printed in The Times in defense of the war. He speaks of the Boers as "dogs, agape with jaws afoam," and ends with Strike, England, and strike home.
Meanwhile, Lord Roberts had taken over the commander-in-chief-ship and the whole war had altered. I did not know Roberts at all well. Years before, he had invited Sir Charles Dilke to pay him a visit on the northwest frontier of India and see what he had done with the British forces in Afghanistan.
Dilke asked me to go with him and at first I consented eagerly, but when I talked it over with Wolseley, he persuaded me that I was wrong: he told me that Roberts had nothing in him at all-was a little fighting Irishman under the thumb of his wife, Lady Roberts; he was sure I should only be losing my time. I could see no reason for Wolseley's condemnation, for I had always found him fair minded: I took his advice in this instance and told Dilke I couldn't go with him; and so I missed Roberts. Towards the end of the year 1899 a story was told me which led me to think that I would have to alter my opinion about him.
When it became plain that Buller could do nothing except make a fool of himself in South Africa, and lead his troops to defeat and disaster, the Defense Committee under Lord Hartington got together to consider matters, and for some unknown reason they all agreed that Roberts ought to be sent out; but the Secretary of State for War objected. "We passed Roberts over," he said, "who was the senior, and sent out Buller. How can we go back to Roberts now? How can one confess such a blunder?"
"Quite easily," said Lord Hartington; "tell Roberts that we made fools of ourselves and we are sorry for it and beg him to come to our help; say that England wants him."
The moment the War Secretary broached the matter to Roberts, he exclaimed, "At last, at last!"
The Secretary of War asked him what he meant. He replied, "You know they sent me out in '80, but when I got to Cape Town I found that Gladstone had just made peace after the bitter defeat of Majuba. The news sent me down to my cabin crying with rage-to make peace after such a defeat!
But when I thought it over I felt certain that if I lived long enough my time would come, so I resolved to give up drinking and smoking and live as long as I could for the chance of redeeming our name; that's why I said, 'At last.'"
"I wanted to apologize," said the Secretary, "for passing you over and sending Buller out."
"No apology needed," said Roberts, "I have my chance at last. I will do the work; you can tell them so."
One day I read in the paper that Roberts when to church on Sunday at Cape Town, and I must confess this gave me a shock, till a friend told me the story that I have just told here. At any rate, Roberts went forward through Cape Colony and through the Free State to the Transvaal and led his troops against the chief force of the Boers under General Cronje and won a complete victory-almost without loss. One word in the account made the victory clear to me: the correspondent said that Roberts, holding the Boers in front, made a flank attack.
When he returned to England a couple of years later, I got to know him, and asked him, had I been right in my thought about his tactics.
He said, "Quite right. The Boers had come from all parts of a country three times as big as England: the Boers from the north of the Transvaal couldn't possibly know anything about the Boers from the south, so when they were on the battlefield I knew that there could be no cohesion among them; and at the same time, I realized perfectly that they were far better shots than the troops of my army, so I protected my front with a cross fire of artillery while attacking their flanks, and at once saw I was justified; the Boers began to retreat; successive flank attacks broke up the whole organization, and my artillery turned the retreat into a rout."
The bringing of two or three hundred thousand English soldiers up through Cape Colony and the Free State held Cape Colony to quietude, and the brains of Lord Roberts did the rest. The defeat and retreat of Cronje was the turning point of the war.
People still talk of Kitchener as if he had been the equal of Roberts, and I have heard the victory in South Africa attributed to his generalship, so I must tell what I think of Kitchener. I had met him first when I was in Cairo fifteenodd years before. I had gone out partly to cure bronchitis and partly to get an understanding of Egypt. I met Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer, in Cairo; and he introduced me to his assistant, who was a far abler man, Gerald Portal, afterwards Sir Gerald Portal, who died all too soon for England.
Gerald Portal came and lunched and dined with me at Shepheard's Hotel, and took me to the English Club; and at the English Club one day he asked me whether I knew Kitchener; I shook my head. "The Chief," he said, "Sir Evelyn Baring, thinks a great deal of him, but I couldn't form such a high opinion about him: he was so silent."
"I remember," I said, "my father telling me that the only way for a man of no family and no wealth to get on in the English army or navy was either by servility or silence. He added that I was incapable of both. Perhaps Kitchener's trying silence!"
"I will go to Suakim," I added, "if you will give me a letter to him. I will see Kitchener and let you know what I think of him."
I had already engaged in Cairo a Levantine Jew intepreter; he spoke English nearly as well as I did, and boasted that he spoke perfect Arabic; it seemed to me he knew nearly every known tongue, for his modern Greek was better than mine, and his Italian perfect.
In due time I went to Suakim and called on Kitchener and was invited by him to dinner. There were a couple of sheiks at the table, and from time to time Kitchener spoke to them in Arabic. His French was not good, though I had understood that he had passed some years as a young man in France. This surprised me so much that I asked him whether he knew Arabic.
"I am pretty useful at it," he said.
When I got home I told my secretary what Kitchener had said. He burst out:
"I know Kitchener; I met him in Cyprus, worked for him: he knows no Arabic, not he! He knows nothing: he's a mere ignorant bluff. I tell you what to do. I'll teach you two or three Arabic proverbs; you shoot them off at dinner: the sheiks will understand, but Kitchener won't."
He insisted so vehemently and so contemptuously about Kitchener's ignorance that I resolved to put it to the test, for his manner at the dinner had not impressed me; he had gotten his reputation through silence and not through wisdom, in my opinion. So I spent an hour learning two or three Arabic sentences till my secretary told me that I pronounced them perfectly.
The next night, dining again with Kitchener, I took the opportunity and shot off the wittiest of them. The sheiks burst out laughing and answered me in Arabic, and I grinned as if I understood what was said. Kitchener turned to me and said, "You know Arabic?"
"Oh, I am not useful at it," I replied. But I noticed that after that he used no more Arabic.
I came away from Suakim with the one word for Portal which I gave him the first day at lunch. "No one," I said, "ever was so great a soldier as Kitchener looks."
Some months later I found that Portal shared my contemptuous opinion of Kitchener's ability. And the South African war only confirmed my opinion.
As soon as Roberts left South Africa, the war under Kitchener dragged on. He founded a system of blockhouses, hoping to surround the Boers. I said his blockhouses were made for blockheads and predicted that he would achieve nothing with them; and he did achieve nothing, except waste of a huge sum.
When I got to know Lord Roberts after the war and came to a high appreciation of his soldier's insight, I wanted to get his opinion of Kitchener, and he gave it to me without circumlocution.
"You know," he said, "after beating Cronje by flank attacks, I sent Kitchener after him to round the Boers up and bring them to surrender. He had seen how I conducted the fight: I didn't dream of telling him anything about it; he must have understood, I supposed. The next news I got was that he pursued Cronje and his beaten force of four or five thousand men and attacked them at Paardeberg. He attacked them in front and lost twelve hundred men in an hour and had to draw off beaten. I almost cried when I heard it. When I came up I found the Boers by the river and immediately began a cross fire of artillery. The cross fire was deadly; the Boers took shelter in the river bed and there I left them, keeping always a cross fire of artillery ready at all the points they could get out. When they attempted to come out, they were met by heavy artillery fire. Five days afterwards, they all surrendered with a loss to us of under twenty men. I don't want to say anything against Kitchener: he can't even see what is before his eyes; he can't even learn: he is a fool."
I said, "Did you tell them that at the Council of Defense?"
"No, no," said the little man laughing. "It wasn't my business to tell them. I knew that when I got Cronje's force I had broken the back of the Boers in South Africa, and even Kitchener couldn't utterly spoil the work done."
But the South African war dragged on under Kitchener till the Boers were brought to submission with a promise of three or four millions to rebuild their houses, and shortly afterwards Campbell-Bannerman was wise enough to give them their liberty again and leave them in power in the Transvaal.
Today, from one end to the other, thanks to this piece of belated wisdom, the Transvaal is as English as it was before the ineffably stupid Boer war.