ks that we were incurring of running out of vital
commodities altogether unless disposal of these was kept under rigid
control. They always fell in readily with our requirements,
inconvenient as some of these may have proved. Still, all our friends
were alike in one respect--they were all of them intent upon getting
their full money's worth. As a pillar of literary culture in khaki,
indeed, remarked to me in this connection; "They must, like Fagin in
the 'Merchant of Venice,' have their pound of flesh." Such
difficulties as arose could generally be smoothed over by personal
intercourse, and the head of the Commission Internationale de
Ravitaillement could charm the most unruly member of his flock to eat
out of his hand by dint of tact and kindness.

It was just at the time when I was acting as D.C.I.G.S. in the summer
of 1917 that the French suddenly wired over to the War Office to
request us to send representatives to Paris to discuss with them what
we were prepared to let Greece have, now that the Hellenes had come
down off the fence and were going to afford active assistance to the
Allies in the Balkans, but stood in need of equipment and of supplies
of all kinds. Had I been free at the time, I should have proposed to
go even though our new friends wanted clothing, personal equipment,
transport, animals and food--goods with which my branch had nothing to
do--rather than munitions. As it was, a couple of senior officers went
over who had no proper authority to act, and who hardly knew the
ropes. The Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement was forgotten
altogether, and as for the poor dear old Treasury, not only was that
Department of State treated with scorn, but the Lords Commissioners
were not even informed, when our delegates were retrieved from the Gay
City, that a casual sort of agreement, which _inter alia_ involved
appreciable financial obligations, had been entered into with our
friends on the other side of the Channel. No determinate Convention
of any kind or sort was drawn up or signed, what had been
provisionally promised remained for a long time in a condition of
ambiguity, and the transaction as a whole cannot be claimed as one of
the cardinal achievements of the War Office during the course of the
four years' conflict.

The French undertook to find almost all the requisite armament; that
we did not mean to find any was about the only point that was clearly
laid down during the Paris negotiations, a