5.000.000 Men

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5.000.000 Men (Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1916)

5.000.000 Men is a booklet published by Raphael Tuck & Sons in 1916, including an appreciation wrtitten by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The booklet is a tribute to Lord Kitchener (1850-1916), British Secretary of State for War, who died on 5 June 1916 while aboard the HMS Hampshire struck a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat U-75 (commanded by Curt Beitzen) and sank west of the Orkney Islands.

It includes :

  • an appreciation by Conan Doyle.
  • a facsimile of a letter written by Lord Kitchener on 16 may 1915.
  • a tribute to Lord Kitchener by George Arthur.

It was published solely for the benefit of the Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund and the British Red Cross Fund. Note that Conan Doyle was a director of Raphael Tuck publishing company.



Appreciation (by Arthur Conan Doyle)

KITCHENER

He was in a very special sense a king-man, one who was born to fashion and control the great affairs of mankind. He has left his mark deep upon four continents, upon Africa, North and South, upon Asia, upon Australasia, and finally upon Europe. Even in his younger days there was something in the majesty of his appearance and in the proud aloofness of his character which compelled respect and even a certain awe from those who approached him. He passed from labour to labour like the hero of old. Death can have had no bitterness for him, as he knew that his supreme work had been done and that he had forged a weapon in the new British military power, which would restore the threatened liberties of Europe. When such a life was ended by such a death, and he passed out in the wind and the storm amid the desolate waters of the Orkneys, he left behind him the memory of something vast and elemental, coming suddenly and going strangely, a mighty spirit leaving great traces of its earthly passage.

Arthur Conan Doyle.


5.000.000 Men