HL Deb 20 June 1916 vol 22 cc315-22
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BUCKMASTER)

My Lords, I have received the following telegram to your Lordships' House from the President of the Greek Chamber of Deputies at Athens—

On behalf of the Greek Chamber of Deputies I have the honour to request your Lordship to express to the House of Lords their deep regret at the grievous loss of one of their most eminent members, and to assure their Lordships of the very real share which they take in the sorrow of the British nation at losing in the person of Lord Kitchener not only one of the most glorious of her sons, but also one of the greatest figures of our time, whose name will remain enshrined in the memory of the Greek people as that of a true friend of Greece.

I have also received a Resolution passed by the French Senate in these terms—

The Senate, deeply moved by the terrible loss which has fallen upon the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by the death of Lord Kitchener, salutes the memory of the organiser of the British Armies, which, united to those of their Allies, will assure in the near future the triumph of Justice; and, remembering that Lord Kitchener placed in 1870 the valour of his youth at the service of France in danger, addresses to the House of Lords the expression of its sorrowing sympathy.

There is, further, the following Message from the Council of the Empire of Russia—

The Members of the Council of Empire of the Russian Parliamentary Delegation desire to convey to the British nation their feelings of sincere and poignant grief at the terrible loss to all the Allies involved in the disaster to the "Hampshire." They are all certain that the magnificent work done by Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener, which was warmly admired and fully appreciated in Russia, will soon bear fruit in a decisive victory of the Allies over the enemy, and realise the great aim for which so many of our best men have heroically laid down their lives.

I feel sure that your Lordships would desire that I should return a suitable answer to these communications. [" Hear, hear."]

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, the messages which have just been read by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack are a suitable introduction to the few words which I desire to speak. Since we last met in this House there has happened the lamentable occurrence which deprived this country of the services of one of its foremost public men, which robbed the Army of a chief of whom it may be said that the Army as we know it to-day was his creation, and which took from this House a member who probably was more widely known and conspicuous than any other Peer on either side of this House. Your Lordships will, I am sure, think that it is fitting that such an event should not be passed by in entire silence.

In the interval ungrudging honour has been done on all sides to the illustrious dead. Lord Kitchener's services—long, various, strenuous—rendered in all parts of the world have been passed in review, and the national sorrow has found expression through countless channels. It was not only in our great cathedrals that Lord Kitchener's death was mourned. I am probably within the mark when I say, that there was not a village church in which suitable reference was not made to the calamity which the country has suffered. We can add but little here to-night. Lord Kitchener's name will live in history above all else as that of a great soldier who was able by his personal influence to convert the modest Expeditionary Army which we had maintained to provide for the contingency of operations beyond these shores into a great host, numbered not by tens or by hundreds of thousands, but by millions—the great host which is at this moment fighting the battle of liberty and good faith and upholding the honour of the Empire in a hundred battlefields all over the world. That was, indeed, a great triumph for the voluntary system, in which Lord Kitchener was a firm believer and which we know that he abandoned with reluctance only when it became clear that it would not give us all that sufficed for our national needs. The magnitude of his performance has been realised by our Allies, by our Dominions beyond the seas, and by the whole civilised world, and it is no exaggeration to say that what he did required a touch of the enchanter's wand which no one else could have wielded but Lord Kitchener himself.

In this House we think of him as one of ourselves. He was deeply convinced—he has told me so more than once—that he was no Parliamentarian, and he preferred to leave it to others to debate the affairs of the Department which he administered. But some of us have, nevertheless, upon occasion been able to observe that he could, when necessary, display a very considerable command of effective language; that in council he was well able to make his own case; and I believe that he has been known to do so, and to do so not without success, even when he was compelled to use a language which was not his own. In that connection I think we may bear in mind that one of the latest occasions on which he took part in public discussion was the occasion of that remarkable interview which took place between him and a number of members of the House of Commons—an ordeal which any one who has had to submit to it himself will say is a pretty severe ordeal for any public man. From that ordeal he emerged with admitted success. In this House his intervention was rare; and yet amongst the impressions of the House of Lords which some of us will carry away and not forget, one of the most unforgettable is probably that of Lord Kitchener's commanding figure as he stood at this Table, not ashamed to rely largely upon the copious notes which he used to bring clown with him, when he came here to make one of those businesslike statements to which your Lordships listened with rapt attention, statements of which every line and sentence were scanned anxiously and attentively out of doors.

Of the manner of his death I cannot venture to say much. It is difficult to conceive a more impressive ending to a great and noble career. Whether it was the end which he would himself have desired we cannot take upon ourselves to say. If he had been asked, or if any one of us had been asked what kind of an end we desired for his life, I suppose we should have said that we wished him to be spared to see a glorious conclusion to this great war, to be spared when the war was over to take part in the solution of the many difficult problems which will present themselves for the consideration of our statesmen, and perhaps, after that, to be given a peaceful old age, spent in that country home to which he was so devotedly attached, and the ordering of which was, I am inclined to think, almost the only distraction which he allowed himself during the most strenuous years of his life. But it was otherwise ordered. Some master of our language will one day describe appropriately the departure of the gallant Field-Marshal, amidst the gloom and fury of a northern tempest, upon the errand which was to be his last. All that we can venture to conjecture, and we do so with confidence, is that he met his end bravely when it came. Truly it was a great and dignified exit from the stage upon which he had played so prominent a part during the long years of his life. My Lords, I ask your leave to bear witness in this House to the esteem in which we held Lord Kitchener while he was living, to the regret with which we regard his untimely loss, and to the honour in which we hold his memory.

VISCOUNT FRENCH

My Lords, I desire to add my tribute to the eloquent words of the noble Marquess. As Commander-in-Chief of the Army in France my relation with the late Secretary of State for War was constant, and I am anxious to place on record that no effort was ever spared by him to supply all our demands. I knew well the difficulties which lay in his way, not only in providing the necessary men and material for the Expeditionary Force in a war which was not of our seeking, and which has increased to quite unexpected magnitude, but also in the immediate and colossal expansion which the military forces of the Empire have necessarily undergone. Lord Kitchener faced these difficulties with characteristic determination, and the evidence of the debt which the nation owes him is to be found in the magnificent Armies which are now defending our interests all over the world. It would be idle to pretend that in the past two years I have always seen eye to eye with the great Field-Marshal who has been taken from us, but such divergence of opinion as occurred in no way interfered with the national interests nor did it ever shake my confidence in Lord Kitchener's will, power, and ability to provide us with everything that we required.

Many of your Lordships, like the noble Marquess, can speak with much greater eloquence and much greater authority of Lord Kitchener as a Cabinet Minister. Personally I prefer to keep him always in my mind as the great and glorious soldier which I knew him to be. For nearly three years in the South African War I was closely associated with him and enjoyed his intimate friendship and confidence. As Commander of the Cavalry Division during the first part of that war, I shall never forget the help I derived from his invaluable counsel and support when he was Chief of the Staff to Lord Roberts, but it was after he came to assume the Chief Command and I occupied a post of considerable responsibility under him that I realised his great value as a Commander in the field and a leader of men. He inspired us all with the utmost confidence; we relied implicitly upon him to lead us to victory; we knew we were assured of his utmost help and support in trouble and difficulty, and that he would give us the fullest measure of credit in success. I am very fortunate in the possession of many of his private letters, and I could quote numerous examples of the truth of what I say.

At that time and during subsequent years I became so impressed by his great qualities, and my estimate of him was so high, that when at the outbreak of the present war I had reason to believe that I had been selected for the Chief Command in the field, I went to Lord Kitchener very early one morning and urged him to approach the Prime Minister and endeavour to arrange that he himself should take the place and that I should accompany him as his Chief of the Staff. Although at that moment he had no idea of taking over the position of Secretary of State for War, I could not prevail upon him to do this. In the last sad fortnight I have often looked back upon that, to me, memorable interview, and I wish that it might have been so. The nation has indeed suffered a grievous loss, and the finest monument they can erect to the memory of this great man is to clothe themselves in the spirit of determination and concentration of effort which characterised his long and valuable public career.

THE EARL OF DERBY

My Lords, I speak for nobody, but I trust that the well-known friendship which existed between Lord Kitchener and myself will prevent the House from thinking me impertinent if I say a few words. I am not speaking of Lord Kitchener the Field-Marshal, of Lord Kitchener the administrator. I speak only of Kitchener—" K" as we called him—of Kitchener, the best friend I ever had. I had known him for many years. Our acquaintance ripened in South Africa, and during the past few months I do not think anybody had been in closer touch with him than I was. I saw him in a light that very few people did see him in—a light which the public as a whole hardly realised existed. He was supposed to be hard, taciturn, stern by the general public. I never knew a worse estimate of a man's character than that. Lord Kitchener was shy, more shy than people imagined, and diffident always about himself.

One little incident I should like to recall. It must have been about fifteen months ago. I saw him in his room in the War Office, and he said to me, "I wish you could tell me what I am doing wrong." When I expressed my surprise he said, "I feel there is something I ought to be-doing. There is something more I ought to do for the country. I am doing all that I can, and yet I feel that I am still leaving much undone." He was a man who inspired the greatest possible affection among his friends. I hope your Lordships will excuse me if I refer to one particular friendship which stands out in Lord Kitchener's life—the friendship of Colonel FitzGerald, his Private Secretary. If ever a man gave up the whole of his life to the service of another, Colonel FitzGerald was a man who gave it up to Lord Kitchener. If we may doubt or question, as the noble Marquess has said, whether Lord Kitchener's end was what he would have himself hoped for, there is one thing that is absolutely certain, and that is that Colonel FitzGerald met the death he would have asked for, side by side with the man he had served so faithfully throughout his military career.

When I look back upon my friendship with Lord Kitchener, curiously enough the days that come back best to my memory, and always will come back best to my memory, are two days in the last week of his life. Less than a week before he died I had been dining alone with him, and after dinner he talked, not of the war, but of all those matters which interested him so much in his private life—of Broome, the place to which, as the noble Marquess said, he was so devoted; of his china; of his life after the war; and of his trip to Russia, which he was looking forward to with the keenness of a schoolboy going for a holiday. That is a talk I shall never forget. Then, three days later, came that meeting with members of the House of Commons, at which I—I think the only member of your Lordships' House—was privileged to be present. I had been present when the suggestion was made to him that he should meet the members of the House of Commons. There was no indecision whatever as to what his answer should be. The moment it was proposed he at once said that of course he, would meet them. But with that singular gift that he had, although no Parliamentarian, of often seeing what might be said in Parliament, he made it a, condition that he would not meet the members of the House of Commons until after his salary had been discussed, because, as he said, "I am not going to be told that I attempt to burke discussion." I was present at that meeting, and I will candidly confess that, although I had no doubt in my own mind as to the great value of such a meeting, I did have some doubt as to how far he, a non-Parliamentarian, would be able to deal with the questions that all of us who have been conversant with election matters know to a certain extent how to deal with. I need not have been doubtful. I might have known him better. That meeting has been kept strictly secret, and I am not going for one minute to break the veil of secrecy; but I think I can say without hesitation that when he left that room, where there had been over two hundred Members of Parliament questioning him for a considerable time, he left behind him a feeling with regard to himself amongst those Members which anybody in any position might be proud to possess.

Little did we realise then that he was really writing the last chapter of a busy life. It is almost unbelievable how complete was his good-bye to this nation. He said good-bye then to the nation through its representatives. He said good-bye to his King; the next day good-bye to his beloved Broome; and the following day to Sir John Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet; and then came the end. Let me say that there was no kind of a presentiment. I only mention this because I feel that, as in the case of his great military chief, Lord Roberts, the end was really the one that he would have wished for. Lord Roberts died after visiting his beloved Indian troops, within sound of the guns. Lord Kitchener said good-bye to the nation at a moment when he left the whole of the machinery of the great Armies that he created in running order and when it only required skilled engineers to keep going his work. It was really as if Providence in its wisdom had given him the rest which he never would have given to himself. My Lords, with the memory of a great naval battle fresh in our minds we must all realise how rich a harvest of death the sea has reaped. We in these isles from time immemorial have paid a heavy toll to the sea for our insular security; but speaking as the friend of a friend, I can say that the sea never exacted a heavier toll than when Lord Kitchener, coffined in a British man-of-war, passed to the Great Beyond.

The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Also the Certificates that no further Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bills:

And also the Certificate that no Standing Orders are applicable to the following Petition for a Bill:

Rhodes Estate.

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.