against the guerrillas. This was a slow and wearisome business. Again and again the elusive Boers avoided the mounted columns and broke through the barriers; but gradually, and after many failures, the resistance of the Boers was worn down. One feature in this scheme of subjugation provoked much criticism. The Boers were without any organized systems of supply, and every farm was for them a depot. Flocks and herds were therefore removed, grain was carted away or destroyed, and farms were gutted. This made it necessary to provide for the Boer women and children, who were assembled in concentration camps where sickness soon became prevalent and the rate of mortality was for a time very high. This sickness could not, in fact, be ascribed to any neglect on the part of the British authorities, but the result was that sympathisers with the Boers were provided with apparent grounds for agitation. Moreover, the plan almost certainly had the adverse effect of prolonging the enemy's resistance by relieving the Boers in the field of the responsibility of caring for their dependents. In June 1901 there appeared to be some prospect that the Free State and Transvaal would surrender, but the waverers were rallied by an appeal from Kruger to hold out, and by a series of risings in the Cape Colony, ably led by General Johannes Smuts. But, as in Egypt, Kitchener, having formed his plan, adhered to it, and continued to multiply lines of block-houses, and to organize drives. The end did not come till 31 May 1902, and was then reached largely because of Kitchener's moderating influence upon the terms which Lord Milner, the high commissioner, desired to impose. On his return to England in July Kitchener received a viscounty, with special remainder, and became one of the original members of the order of merit.
After a few months' rest Kitchener left England in October to take up the post of commander-in-chief in India, breaking his voyage in order to go to Khartoum and open the Gordon Memorial College. The distribution of troops in India had not been varied materially since the reorganization which followed the Mutiny, and the system of military administration was in many ways too much centralized. Kitchener had little difficulty in gaining official acceptance of his plans for removing many of the details of army administration from headquarters to the commands, and for arranging a grouping of the garrisons more in accordance with the existing problems of the defence of India, and better calculated to promote the health and efficiency of the troops. But in his attempts to improve the higher administration of the army in India he encountered serious obstacles. He found in Lord Curzon a masterful viceroy convinced of the necessity of making the civil power predominant, and suspicious of any measures that had the appearance of increasing the authority of the soldier. The existing system provided for a military member of the viceroy's council, independent of the commander-in-chief. He had what amounted to the power of vetoing any proposal of the commander-in-chief which involved expenditure. Kitchener, while recognizing the importance of maintaining the supreme authority of the viceroy, urged the abolition of the system of dual control in a long controversy, in which his arguments prevailed with Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Morley, then secretary-of-state for India. As commander-in-chief he initiated more reforms than any of his predecessors, not excepting even Lord Roberts, who had the advantage of a lifelong knowledge of the Indian army. Kitchener not only succeeded in improving the central administration and the machinery for mobilization, but he also modernized the system of training, and gave a great stimulus to military education by establishing a Staff College in India. It is certain that without the reforms which he instituted India could not have given the Empire the assistance which she furnished during the European War.
On leaving India in September 1909, Kitchener was promoted field-marshal, and after a visit to the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War, went to Australia and New Zealand to advise the dominion governments as to their organization for defence. He reached England in 1910 in order to receive the field-marshal's baton from the hands of King Edward VII. He then enjoyed some fifteen months of comparative leisure, broken only by his duties as a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence; and he profited by this to visit Turkey and the Sudan and to make a tour through British East Africa. In September 1911 he was appointed British agent and consul-general in Egypt. The prestige of that position had not unnaturally fallen somewhat with the departure of Lord Cromer, but Kitchener almost immediately succeeded in restoring it to its former height. The best tribute to his administration is that, during a
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