34 2 Kitchener Sent to South Africa ]"i899 



thought old Roberts, who is popular with our rank-and-file, will be able 

 to restore confidence. But he is too old for serious work, and they 

 have shoved Kitchener forward to the real command. I don't believe 

 either of them is a bit better than our beaten Generals. I had long 

 talks with Roberts in India years ago, and he gave me a poor notion 

 of his intelligence, good old fellow as he is. As for Kitchener, he 

 knows nothing of European war, and his Soudanese experience will 

 serve him little. He has the curse on him of the Mahdi's head, and 

 deserves to fail. There is a paragraph in the papers this week giving 

 an account of the Khalifa's end, and how courageously he met it. This 

 man has been uniformly represented as a contemptible coward. Yet 

 he met death as nobly as any of Plutarch's heroes. 



" 2$th Dec— Christmas Day. Kitchener has left Egypt. Though 

 he sailed from Alexandria he had not the grace to go to Montaza, where 

 the Khedive was, to bid him good-bye. Yet he has been drawing 

 £6,000 a year latterly from the Egyptian Treasury, and high pay for 

 the last fifteen years. A bearer of the white man's burden at £6,000 a 

 year ! 



" 29th Dec. — I have received a nice letter from old Herbert Spencer 

 about the attacks made on my poem by the critics, and saying he thinks 

 I was probably right when I told him I thought it would need a for- 

 eign army landed on our shores to bring us quite to our sober senses. 

 There is at present a lull in the South African fighting, the Boers wait- 

 ing to be attacked again and the English not having got their second 

 wind. 



" Margaret Talbot came to-day and spent the afternoon. Her hus- 

 band is in command here of the English garrison, and is, of course, 

 much grieved at the way the Boer War is going. He would like to be 

 there, but at the same time would dread the responsibility of failure 

 where so many others have failed. She described Kitchener's de- 

 parture. He was only half an hour at Cairo — the time between one 

 train and another, and said hardly a word to anyone. No one here 

 regrets him, for he has made no friends. 



" 3Lrf Dec. — The last year of the 1800's ends disastrously for Eng- 

 land, or rather for the British Empire. For England can only gain by 

 the break-up of that imposture. I think now there really is some chance 

 of such a consummation, for we are sending the whole of our armed 

 force into South Africa, where it is likely to become engulfed, and we 

 have got the whole sentiment of the world, civilized and uncivilized, 

 against us. 



Thou hast deserved men's hatred — they shall hate thee ; 

 Thou hast deserved men's fear — their fear shall kill; 

 Thou hast thy foot upon the weak, the weakest 

 With his armed head shall bite thee on the heel. 



