"And I," he said with a bow, "am Lord Kitchener. You have arrived just in time. Another five minutes and I should have wiped out the German army."
"Oh shut up, Uncle Horace, you wouldn't," shouted one of the boys.
It was Lord Kitchener! He had shaved off his heavy moustache, and by so doing had given himself a deceptive appearance of youth, but there could be no doubt about his identity. Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the great English War Lord! In the light of after-events, how instructive was this first meeting!
"What is the game?" I asked, hiding my feelings under a smile. "England against Germany?"
"England and Scotland and Ireland and Australia and a few others. We have ransacked the nursery and raked them all in."
So even at this time England had conceived the perfidious idea of forcing her colonies to fight for her!
"And some Indian soldiers?" I asked, nodding at half-a-dozen splendid Bengal Lancers. It struck me even then as very significant; and it is now seen to be proof that for years previously England had been plotting an invasion of the Fatherland with a swarm of black mercenaries.
Lord Kitchener evidently saw what was in my mind, and immediately exerted all his well-known charm to efface the impression he had created.
"You mustn't think," he said with a smile, "that the policy of the Cabinet is in any way affected by what goes on at 'Chez Nous.' Although Sir Edward Grey and I——"
He broke off suddenly, and, in the light of what has happened since, very suspiciously.