Three weeks later, less a day, I met by appointment Lord Kitchener and spent forty minutes, or thereabouts, in his company at the War Office in London.  In the midst of the interview, as I sat facing Kitchener I began wondering, in the back part of my head, who it was Lord Kitchener reminded me of.  Suddenly the answer came to me, and it jolted me.  The answer was Von Heeringen.

Physically the two men—­Kitchener of Khartoum and Von Heeringen, the Gray Ghost of Metz—­had nothing in common; mentally I conceived them to be unlike.  Except that both of them held the rank of field marshal, I could put my finger on no point of similarity, either in personality or in record, which these men shared between them.  It is true they both served in the war of 1870-71; but at the outset this parallel fell flat, too, because one had been a junior officer on the German side and the other a volunteer on the French side.  One was a Prussian in every outward aspect; the other was as British as it is possible for a Briton to be.  One had been at the head of the general staff of his country, and was now in the field in active service with a sword at his side.  The other, having served his country in the field for many years, now sat intrenched behind a roll-top desk, directing the machinery of the War Office, with a pencil for a baton.  Kitchener was in his robust sixties, with a breast like a barrel; Von Heeringen was in his shrinking, drying-up seventies, and his broad shoulders had already begun to fold in on his ribs and his big black eyes to retreat deeper into his skull.  One was beaky-nosed, hatchet-headed, bearded; the other was broad-faced and shaggily mustached.  One had been famed for his accessibility; the other for his inaccessibility.

So, because of these acutely dissimilar things, I marveled to myself that day in London why, when I looked at Kitchener, I should think of Von Heeringen.  In another minute, though, I knew why:  Both men radiated the same quality of masterfulness; both of them physically typified competency; both of them looked on the world with the eyes of men who are born to have power and to hold dominion over lesser men.  Put either of these two in the rags of a beggar or the motley of a Pantaloon, and at a glance you would know him for a leader.  Considering that we were supposed to be at the front on this evening at Laon, the food was good, there being a soup, and the invariable veal on which a German buttresses the solid foundations of his dinner, a salad and fruit, red wine and white wine and brandy.  Also, there were flies amounting in numbers to a great multitude.  The talk, like the flies, went to and fro about the table; and always it was worth hearing, since it dealt largely with first-hand experiences in the very heart of the fighting.