world that Lord Kitchener's judgement in connection with this
particular phase of the war had been somewhat at fault.

When asking me to take the matter up, the Army Council had probably
overlooked my civilian status or forgotten what a strong position this
placed me in. An ex-soldier does not often get an opportunity of
enjoying an official heart-to-heart talk, on paper, with the
powers-that-be in the War Office. My report was to the effect that it
was undesirable to produce any papers at all during the war, but that,
as some had to be produced, they ought to be cut down to a minimum,
that everybody official concerned in the business at home would be
more or less shown up, that this was particularly unfortunate just at
this time in view of Lord Kitchener's lamented death, that the papers
must be limited to those bearing upon the period antecedent to the
actual landing of the army in the Gallipoli Peninsula, that if this
last proviso was accepted I would go fully into the question and
report in detail, and that if the proviso was not accepted I declined
to act and they might all go to the--well, one did not quite put it in
those words, but they would take it that way. The result was not quite
what one had either expected or desired. The production-of-papers
project was dropped, and the Dardanelles Commission was appointed
instead.

Mr. Lloyd George had become Secretary of State for War by this time.
He was full of zeal and of original ideas, nor had he any intention
of being merely a "passenger." He had, after the manner of new War
Ministers, introduced a fresh personal entourage into the place, and a
momentary panic, caused by the news that telephonic communications
into and out of the place were passing in an unknown guttural language
not wholly unlike German, was only allayed on its being ascertained
that certain of his hangers-on conversed over the wires in Welsh.
Besides being full of original ideas, the new Secretary of State was
in a somewhat restless mood. He took so keen an interest in some
wonderful scheme in connection with Russian railways (about which I
was freely consulted) that he evidently was hankering after going on a
mission to that part of the world himself. He no doubt believed that a
visit from him would be an equivalent for the visit by Lord Kitchener
which had been interrupted so tragically. To anybody who had recently
been to Russia, such an idea was preposterous. Few who counted in the
Tsar's