Freepedia is a series of free encyclopaedias. We currently specialize in history but we intend to branch out into other areas. This section is about Horatio Kitchener.

Horatio Kitchener was born near Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland, in 1850. Educated at the Royal Military Academy he entered the Royal Engineers in 1871. Kitchener served in Palestine (1874-78), Cyprus (1878-82) and the Sudan (1883-85).

In 1898 Kitchener became a national hero when he successfully led the British Army in the fight to win back the Sudan. As a result of his victory at Omdurman he was granted the title Lord Kitchener.

In the Boer War (1899-1902) Kitchener was chief of staff to Lord Frederick Roberts and was responsible for developing strategies to deal with the Boer guerrilla campaign. His decision to destroy Boer farms and to move civilians into concentration camps resulted him being highly criticised by politicians such as David Lloyd George and Charles Trevelyan.

After the Boer War was brought to an end by the signing of the Treaty of Vereeninging, Kitchener became commander-in-chief in India (1902-09) and military governor of Egypt (1911-14).

On the outbreak of the First World War, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, appointed Kitchener as Secretary of War. Kitchener, he first member of the military to hold the post, was given the task of recruiting a large army to fight Germany. With the help of a war poster that featured Kitchener and the words: 'Join Your Country's Army', over 3,000,000 men volunteered in the first two years of the war.

Kitchener told Asquith that he expected the war to last at least three years with millions of casualties. He argued that the British Army must concentrate its efforts on the Western Front. However, after coming under considerable pressure from Winston Churchill, he First Lord of the Admiralty, he did agree to support the Gallipoli campaign in February 1915. By the time Kitchener withdrew the troops from the the area in January, 1916, Allied casualties totaled over 250,000 men.

The Gallipoli disaster damaged Kitchener's reputation as a military strategist. Kitchener also came under attack for a shortage of military supplies. Lord Kitchener offered to resign but Herbert Asquith decided to keep him as his Secretary of War.

In the spring of 1916 Asquith decided to send Kitchener to Russia in an attempt to rally the country in its fight against Germany. On 5th June 1916, Horatio Kitchener was drowned when the HMS Hampshire on which he was traveling to Russia, was struck a mine off the Orkneys.

 

Alfred Leete, London Opinion (1914)

 

Lord Kitchener: BBC

Lord Kitchener: Wikipedia

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War Propaganda Bureau

Military Commanders and the First World War

Battle of the Somme

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(1) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The British Campaigns in Europe: 1914-1918 (1928)

Kitchener grew very arrogant. He had flashes of genius but was usually stupid. He could not see any use in Munitions. He was against tanks. He was against Welsh and Irish divisions. But he was a great force in recruiting. Asquith said of him, "he is not a great man. He is a great poster."

 

(2) In his book Margin Released, J. B. Priestley described meeting Lord Kitchener in 1915.

I had a close view, finding him older and greyer than the familiar pictures of him. The image I retained was of a rather bloated purplish face and glaring but somehow jellied eyes. A year later, when we heard he had been drowned, I felt no grief, for it did not seem to me that a man had lost his life: I saw only a heavy shape, its face now an idol's going down and down into the northern sea. yet it was he - and he alone - who had raised us new soldiers out of the ground.

 

(3) Lord Northcliffe, Daily Mail (21st May, 1915)

Lord Kitchener has starved the army in France of high-explosive shells. The admitted fact is that Lord Kitchener ordered the wrong kind of shell - the same kind of shell which he used largely against the Boers in 1900. He persisted in sending shrapnel - a useless weapon in trench warfare. He was warned repeatedly that the kind of shell required was a violently explosive bomb which would dynamite its way through the German trenches and entanglements and enable our brave men to advance in safety. This kind of shell our poor soldiers have had has caused the death of thousands of them.

 

(4) Charles Repington, diary entry (9th June, 1916)

The torpedoing or mining of the Hampshire, and the drowning of nearly every one on board, including Lord Kitchener, O'Beirne, and FitzGerald, is a great tragedy. They were on their way to Russia, and were blown up off the Orkneys. The news came while many of our friends were selling at a bazaar in the Caledonian Market, and the women of the East End shed tears at the news. We hoped against hope, but no doubt now remains. A great figure gone. The services which he rendered in the early days of the war cannot be forgotten. They transcend those of all the lesser men who were his colleagues, some few of whom envied his popularity. His old manner of working alone did not consort with the needs of this huge syndicalism, modern war. The thing was too big. He made many mistakes. He was not a good Cabinet man. His methods did not suit a democracy. But there he was, towering above the others in character as in inches, by far the most popular man in the country to the end, and a firm rock which stood out amidst the raging tempest.