The army
improved in efficiency, and the constant warfare began to produce,
even among the fellahin infantry, experienced soldiers.
The officers,
sweltering at weary Wady Halfa and Suakin, looked at the gathering
resources of Egypt and out into the deserts of the declining Dervish
Empire and knew that some day their turn would come. The sword of
re-conquest which Evelyn Wood had forged, and Grenfell had tested,
was gradually sharpened; and when the process was almost complete,
the man who was to wield it presented himself.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the eldest son of a lieutenant-colonel,
was born in 1850, and, after being privately educated, entered in 1869
the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich as a cadet of the Royal Engineers.
In the spring of 1871 he obtained his commission, and for the first ten
years of his military service remained an obscure officer, performing
his duties with regularity, but giving no promise of the talents and
character which he was afterwards to display. One powerful weapon, however,
he acquired in this time of waiting. In 1874 accident or instinct led him
to seek employment in the surveys that were being made of Cyprus and
Palestine, and in the latter country he learned Arabic. For six years the
advantage of knowing a language with which few British officers were
familiar brought him no profit. For procuring military preferment Arabic
was in 1874 as valueless as Patagonian. All this was swiftly changed by
the unexpected course of events.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 128 of 476
Words from 33840 to 34093
of 127807
