unition,
especially Mark VII rifle ammunition, should instantly be despatched
here _via_ Marseilles.

"Battle in progress. Advance being held up by stubborn opposition."

Within a few hours K.'s reply came in; he says:--

"It is difficult for me to judge the situation unless you can send me
your expenditure of ammunition for which we have repeatedly asked. The
question is not affected by the other considerations you mention." If
space and time have no bearing on strategy and tactics, then K. is
right. If ships sail over the sea as fast as railways run across the
land; if Helles is nearer Woolwich than Calais; then he is right. I use
the capital K. here impersonally, for I am sure the great man did not
indite the message himself even though it may be headed from him to me.

Late that night came another cable from the Master General of the
Ordnance saying he was sending out "in the next relief ship 10,000
rounds of 18 pr. shrapnel, and 1,000 rounds of 4.5 inch high explosive."

But why the next relief ship? It won't get here for another three weeks
and by that time we should be, by all the laws of nature and of war, in
Davy Jones's locker. True, we don't mean to be, whatever the Ordnance
may do or leave undone but, so far as I can see, that won't be their
fault. Neither I nor my Staff can make head or tail of these cables.
They seem so unlike K.; so unlike all the people. Here we are:--The
Turks in front of us--too close: the deep sea behind us--too close. We
beg them "instantly" to send us 4.5 inch and other ammunition;
"instantly, _via_ Marseilles":--they tell us in reply that they will
send 1,000 rounds of the vital stuff, the 4.5 high explosive, "_in the
next relief ship_"!

Why, even in the South African War, before the siege of Ladysmith, one
battery would fire five hundred rounds in a day. And this 1,000 rounds
in the next relief ship (_via_ Alexandria) will take three weeks to get
to us whereas stress was laid by me upon the Marseilles route.

Now, to-day, (the 9th), I have at last been able to send the Ordnance a
statement (made under extreme difficulty) of our ammunition expenditure;
up to the 5th May; i.e., before the three days' battle began. We were
then nine million small arm still to the good having spent eleven
million. We had shot away 23,000 shrapnel, 18 pr., and had 48,000 in
hand. We had fired off 5,000 of that (most vital) 4.5 howitzer and had
1,800 remaining. A.P.S. has been added saying the a