ener saw that these were the strategic points in
the control of Upper Egypt, and in 1896 led an expedition thither.

Ever since the death of Gordon, the country had been unsettled. It
remained to Kitchener to wield the avenging sword. He laid a light
railroad southward along the Nile, and marched swiftly, taking his
supplies with him. At Omdurman he finally met the enemy and inflicted
a crushing defeat. At Khartoum, where Gordon had been slain, he set up
a stable government.

He came back to civilization a Major General in the British army, a
peer of England--and "Kitchener of Khartoum." This popular title was
speedily shortened to "K of K," and was as well known wherever English
Tommies assembled as "Bobs," the affectionate nickname of Lord Roberts.

But Kitchener never won the deep affection of the rank and file, that
Roberts inspired. He was taciturn, aloof, and a stern disciplinarian.
His name evoked fear and respect, but never love. And yet, his men
would follow him through fire and water, for they had unbounded
confidence in his ability. It was his name that was placarded through
London, when the recruiting began for the Great War--and not the King's.

"Will you serve with Kitchener?" the posters said. And they responded,
three million strong--"Kitchener's Mob," which was to become so soon a
skilled army under his guidance.

They tell of him that when he took the post of Secretary of War, on his
first visit of inspection to the office he looked around and said, "Is
there a bed here?" When answered in the negative, he gave the brief
order, "Have one brought in."

Thereafter for several weeks he literally lived in his office night and
day. He had at last found a job that measured up to his fullest
requirements for hard work, and he revelled in it. Incidentally, he
"delivered the goods"--but nobody marvelled at that; it was nothing
more than was expected of him!

Says an anonymous writer in _The Living Age_: "England never fully
understood Lord Kitchener, and perhaps he never fully understood his
countrymen. They weaved innumerable myths around this shy and solitary
man, who revealed himself to few. To them his figure loomed gigantic
and mysterious through the sandstorms of African deserts and the mists
of the Himalayas. In their hour of trial he came among them for a
space, and then vanished forever in the wild Northern seas. He was a
good man to fight for or to fight against, and he found a w