"
Prophetic words for Kitchener of Khartoum.
Who was this strong, stern, silent soldier whose career linked up past
wars with the great World War of our own day?
Like Wellington and Roberts, Kitchener came of Irish stock. He was
born near Listowel, June 24, 1850, his father, Colonel Henry Kitchener,
having bought a considerable estate in the counties of Kerry and
Limerick.
Colonel Kitchener had seen a good deal of active service himself, and
still more of garrison life. He determined to retire, and after buying
some 2,000 acres of land in Ireland, at a bankrupt sale, he built a
hunting lodge, called Gunsborough House. This was Herbert Horatio
Kitchener's birthplace. Whether the name of the house had anything to
do with his warlike career, history does not state. But certain it is,
that he was a born soldier--a man of iron almost from his boyhood.
"Yes," said his old nurse, in talking about him only a few years ago,
"I know that he is a great man; and they tell me that he has no heart,
and that everybody is afraid of him; but they are wrong. He is really
one of the most tender-hearted men in the world; and whenever he comes
to see me, he is 'my boy' just as he was in the old days in Ireland,
when he used to run to me in all his troubles, and fling his arms
around me and hug me.
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