“The book is good history but not light reading for hero-worshippers.”
+ Dial 69:435 O ’20 100w Lit D p86 O 9 ’20 2100w
“We have a genuine respect for the workmanship of this long-expected and interesting book, but it would be a mistake, we think, to ‘place’ it in the line of great biographies. And for a double reason. Kitchener was admittedly a two-sided man. Wanting the highest military talent, he was still the most conspicuous example since Wellington of the handy-man-soldier.... At the same time, he was capable of thinking and acting for her as a political and a moral force. But Sir George Arthur is the soldier pure and simple, and if politics talks to him at all, it speaks to him in the unsophisticated accents of the Guards’ mess. He is also an assiduous, if an extremely competent, hero-worshipper. There was no need for over-reverence about Kitchener. His character, built in the main on lines of simplicity, crossed with shrewd rather than subtle calculation, would well have borne a more detached view even of its excellencies than Sir George Arthur maintains.” H. W. M.
+ − Nation [London] 27:74 Ap 17 ’20 2400w
“The biography is presented with such vividness that the careful reader can discern the man apart from his work.”
+ Nature 105:319 My 13 ’20 1450w
“That Lord Kitchener served to the very limit of his powers is amply and nobly proved by these volumes. But they do not solve the deeper problem of the quality of his powers.” H. J. L.
+ − New Repub 25:174 Ja 5 ’21 1500w
“It is a plain, straightforward story of absorbing interest, told without hysteria, without malice, without criticism of others—differing so widely in this respect from the books of Lord French and Sir Ian Hamilton—but with sound judgment.” F. V. Greene
+ N Y Times 25:5 Je 27 ’20 2500w No Am 212:567 O ’20 1400w