ed that it was not altogether applicable, that the enemy seemed
to have come to a standstill, not because he could get no farther but
because he did not want to go farther, meaning to divert force in some
new direction, and that the words somehow represented our principal
foe as in worse case than was correct. Lord K. seemed disappointed. He
said that he would consider the matter, and he made a note on his
draft. But he stuck to his guns as it turned out; he used the phrase
in the Upper House a day or two later, and it was somewhat criticised
in the newspapers at the time. He was, I believe, so much captivated
by his little figure of speech that he simply could not bear to part
with it.

He was a regular salamander. The heat of his room, owing to the huge
fire that he always maintained if it was in the least cold outside and
to the double windows designed to keep out the noise of Whitehall, was
at times almost unbearable. One's head would be in a buzz after being
in it for some time. His long sojourn in southern lands no doubt
rendered him very susceptible to low temperatures. On one occasion,
when General Joffre had sent over a couple of superior staff officers
to discuss some questions with him, the four of us sat at his table
for an hour and a half, and the two visitors and I were almost [p.79] in a
state of collapse at the end. "Mais la chaleur! Pouf! C'etait
assommant!" I heard one say to the other as they left the room, not
noticing that I was immediately behind.

Lord Kitchener's judgement in respect to general military policy in
the Near East and the Levant, during the time that he was War Minister
was, I think, to some small extent warped at times by excessive
preoccupation with regard to Egypt and the Sudan. His hesitation to
concur in the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula until he had
convinced himself of the urgent necessity of the step by personal
observation, was, I am sure, prompted by his fears as to the evil
moral effect which such a confession of failure would exert in the
Nile Delta, and up the valley of the great river. Soon after Sir
Archie Murray had become C.I.G.S., and when the War Council had taken
to asking for the considered views of the General Staff upon problems
of the kind, a paper had to be prepared on the subject of how best to
secure Egypt. This document I drafted in the rough in the first
instance. Sir Archie and we Directors of the General Staff then went
carefully through it an