Portal:British Army/Selected biography/9
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, ADC, PC (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was an Irish-born British Field Marshal, diplomat and statesman popularly referred to as Lord Kitchener.
At the outset of World War I, the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, quickly had Lord Kitchener appointed Secretary of State for War; Asquith had been filling the job himself as a stopgap following the resignation of Colonel Seeley over the Curragh Mutiny earlier in 1914, and Kitchener was by chance briefly in Britain on leave when war was declared. Against cabinet opinion, Kitchener correctly predicted a long war that would last at least three years, require huge new armies to defeat Germany, and suffer huge casualties before the end would come. Smelling blood in the wind, Kitchener stated that the conflict would plumb the depths of manpower "to the last million."
A massive recruitment campaign began, which soon featured a distinctive poster of himself, taken from a magazine front cover. It may have encouraged large numbers of volunteers and has proven to be one of the most enduring images of the war, having been copied and parodied many times since.
