LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
LORD KITCHENER'S VISIT TO SIR JOHN FRENCH.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sui,—In your issue of the 14th inst. you give importance to a letter from (the then) Sir John French to Mr. Winston Churchill which occurs in The World Crisis, and which runs : " I can't understand what brought Kitchener to Paris. . . . He took me away from the front to visit him," &c. The reason which brought Lord Kitchener to France was that the distressed and distracted Commander-in-Chief had determined to retire altogether from the line by no less than an eight days' march—an independent retreat which would involve a negation of the policy of the British Govern- ment—not to say a betrayal of the Allied Cause. The imme- diate result of Lord Kitchener's mission was that the British Army bore their glorious part in the Battle of the Marne.
Moreover, the War Secretary was careful to ask Sir John when he would like the interview to take place : thus the statement that the latter was taken away from the Head- quarters was to suppress what is true and to suggest what is untrue. Sir John himself selected the British Embassy in Paris as the meeting-place.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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