en the
contracting Powers. Sir Henry and I were accompanied by small staffs,
and we put up at the Ritz in the Place Vendome.

M. Millerand, who was French War Minister at the time, presided at the
Conference which assembled in the War Office, and he made an ideal
chairman--the French are always admirable at managing such functions.
The principal French military delegate was General Pelle, General
Joffre's Chief of Staff; the Russians were represented by their
Military Attache in Paris, Colonel Count Ignatieff, and the principal
Italian military delegate was a colonel (whose name I cannot recall),
a most attractive and evidently an extremely capable soldier, who
unhappily was killed within a few months when in command of a brigade
in one of the early fights near Gorizia. In so far as framing the
military convention was concerned, that part of the proceedings gave
little trouble. The Italian representatives, it is true, were anxious
that the Allies should undertake to embark upon an offensive on the
greatest possible scale practicable, simultaneously with the Italian
army crossing the frontier about the Isonzo; but General Pelle and I
could give no guarantee to that effect, the more so seeing that a
Franco-British offensive had already, as it was, been decided upon to
start in the Bethune-Vimy region within a few days and before the
Italian army would be ready. One had a pretty shrewd suspicion that
there was no opening whatever for an offensive on the Eastern Front in
view of our Russian Allies' grave munitions difficulties, although the
French seemed strangely unaware of the nakedness of the land in that
quarter; still, it was no part of the game to hint at joints in our
harness of that kind to the Italian representatives. Ignatieff, bluff
and cheery, was careful not to commit himself on the subject. The end
of it was that our military convention amounted to little more than an
agreement that we were all jolly fine fellows, accompanied by
cordial expressions of good-will and of a determination on the part of
the four contracting Powers to do their best and to stick together.
The naval side of the problem, on the other hand, was beset by
pitfalls, and that part of the business was not satisfactorily
disposed of for several days.

Even to a landsman like myself, it was apparent that the Italian
conception of war afloat in the year of grace 1915 was open to
criticism. Our new friends contemplated employing their fleet ve