1798 that
must once have been the booty of some Mameluke. Who would wish for more
romantic trophies?

The Turkish war added gravity to the Battalion's responsibilities in the
Sudan. The idea at the time was to treat it passively, so long as the
Turks did not molest British Moslems on pilgrimage to Mecca. The Arabs
were known to have little sympathy with the Ottoman Turk and his
pretensions to religious authority; so Jiddah was not to be starved by
non-intercourse. The Turks themselves made such a policy impossible by
their raid against the Suez Canal in February, 1915, and the inception
of the Dardanelles Expedition marked the final victory of the school of
thought which put its faith in an Eastern offensive. Some sort of
offensive, whether against Gallipoli or Alexandretta or Haifa, had
become perhaps a moral necessity.

We learnt in the Sudan how Turco-German machinations were necessitating
a more active policy towards the Porte. I acted as prosecutor at the
public trial of a Sudanese by general court martial in the court-house
of Port Sudan in the second week of December, 1914. He had risen from
sergeant's rank in a Sudanese regiment to be Captain of the Egyptian
Coastguard in 1907. Cashiered in 1912, he served Enver Pasha in Tripoli,
became an officer of Abdul Hamid's bodyguard, and afterwards a Major of
the Baghdad Gendarmerie. Long before November, 1914, he had busily
plotted for a rising in Egypt and the diffusion of German propaganda all
over the Sudan. Under Enver Pasha's personal direction he disguised
himself in a pilgrim's robe, styled himself Suleiman Effendi, and
crossed the Red Sea from Jiddah with six pilgrims. One of these was an
Howrowri Arab from Kordofan. The rest were Falatas or Takruri--_i.e._
pilgrims from British West Africa to Mecca--a class whose whole
existence is spent on pilgrimage, brightened by spells of residence and
family life at centres like Omdurman, and this man planned to pass as a
pilgrim among pilgrims. The party was asked by the sheikh of the Takurna
village, near Port Sudan, where they came from. They replied:
"Omdurman." On the 16th November he, in beggar's clothes, sought an
interview with a Bimbashi of the Egyptian Army, at Port Sudan. He told
him and his adjutant that he had come on a secret mission from Enver to
rouse the Sudan against the British and to ascertain native feeling at
Port Sudan, Khartum, Sinja, Wad Medani, Kordofan and El Obeid.

"The Porte," he said, "kno