be
free to bring them back to the West; to land them at Odessa or to push
them up the Danube, without weakening the Allied grip on the waterway
linking the Mediterranean with the Black Sea.

This was the essence of our talk: as it lasted about an hour and a half,
I can only have put down about one tenth of it.

At odd times I have been recipient of K.'s reveries but always,
_always_, he has rejected with a sort of horror the idea of being War
Minister or Commander-in-Chief. Now by an extreme exercise of its ironic
spirit, Providence has made him both.

In pre-war days, when we met in Egypt and at Malta, K. made no bones
about what he wanted. He wanted to be Viceroy of India or Ambasssador at
Constantinople.

I remember very well one conversation we had when I asked him why he
wanted to hang on to great place, and whether he had not done enough
already. He said he could not bear to see India being mismanaged by
nincompoops or our influence in Turkey being chucked out of the window
with both hands: I answered him, I remember, by saying there were only
two things worth doing as Viceroy and they would not take very long. One
was to put a huge import duty on aniline dyes and so bring back the
lovely vegetable dyes of old India, the saffrons, indigoes, madders,
etc.; the other was to build a black marble Taj at Agra opposite the
white and join the two by a silver bridge. I expected to get a rise, but
actually he took the ideas quite seriously and I am sure made a mental
note of them. Anyway, as Viceroy, K. would have flung the whole vast
weight of India into the scale of this war; he would have poured Army
after Army from East to West. Under K. India could have beaten Turkey
single-handed; aye, and with one arm tied behind her back. With K. as
Ambassador at Constantinople he would have prevented Turkey coming into
the war. There is no doubt of it. Neither Enver Pasha nor Talaat would
have dared to enrage K., and as for the idea of their deporting him, it
is grotesque. They might have shot him in the back; they could never
have faced him with a war declaration in their hands. As an impresser
of Orientals he is a nonesuch. So we put him into the War Office in the
ways of which he is something of an amateur, with a big prestige and a
big power of drive. Yes, we remove the best experts from the War Office
and pop in K. like a powerful engine from which we have removed all
controls, regulators and safety valves. Yet see what w