about the mound that, (only to
save the tea cups), we retired with dignified slowness into our dugouts.
Whilst sitting in these funk-holes, as we used to call them at
Ladysmith, General Gouraud ran the gauntlet and made also a slow and
dignified entry. He was coming back with me to Imbros. As it was getting
late we hardened our hearts to walk across the open country between
Headquarters and the beach, where every twenty seconds or so a big
fellow was raising Cain. Fortune favouring we both reached the sea with
our heads upon our shoulders.

An answer is in to our plea for a Western scale of ammunition, guns and
howitzers. They cable sympathetically but say simply they can't. Soft
answers, etc., but it would be well if they could make up their minds
whether they wish to score the next trick in the East or in the West. If
they can't do that they will be doubly done.

A purely passive defence is not possible for us; it implies losing
ground by degrees--and we have not a yard to lose. If we are to remain
we must keep on attacking here and there to maintain ourselves! But; to
expect us to attack without giving us our fair share--on Western
standards--of high explosive and howitzers shows lack of military
imagination. A man's a man for a' that whether at Helles or Ypres. Let
me bring my lads face to face with Turks in the open field, we _must_
beat them every time because British volunteer soldiers are superior
individuals to Anatolians, Syrians or Arabs and are animated with a
superior ideal and an equal joy in battle. Wire and machine guns prevent
this hand to hand, or rifle to rifle, style of contest. Well, then the
decent thing to do is to give us shells enough to clear a fair field.
To attempt to solve the problem by letting a single dirty Turk at the
Maxim kill ten--twenty--fifty--of our fellows on the barbed
wire,--ten--twenty--fifty--_each of whom is worth several dozen Turks_,
is a sin of the Holy Ghost category unless it can be justified by dire
necessity. But there is no necessity. The supreme command has only to
decide categorically that the Allies stand on the defensive on the West
for a few weeks and then Von Donop can find us enough to bring us
through. Joffre and French, as a matter of fact, would hardly feel the
difference. If the supreme command can't do that; and can't even send us
trench mortars as substitutes, let them harden their hearts and wind up
this great enterprise for which they simply haven't g