urs very sincerely,
"(_Sd._) IAN HAMILTON."

CHAPTER XI

BOMBS AND JOURNALISTS

Our beautiful East Lancs. Division is in a very bad way. One more month
of neglect and it will be ruined: if quickly filled up with fresh drafts
it will be better than ever. Have cabled:--

"(M.F.A. 871). From General Sir Ian Hamilton to War Office. The
following is the shortage of officers and rank and file in each Brigade
of the XLIInd East Lancashire Division including the reinforcements
reported as arriving:--

125th Brigade 50 Officers, 1,852 rank and file.
126th Brigade 31 Officers, 1,714 rank and file.
127th Brigade 50 Officers, 2,297 rank and file.

"A stage of wastage has now been reached in this Division, especially in
the 127th Manchester Brigade, when filling up with drafts will make it
as good or better than ever. If, however, they have to go on fighting in
their present condition and suffer further losses, the remnants will not
offer sufficiently wide foundation for reconstituting cadres.

"Lord Kitchener might also like to know this, that a satisfactory
proportion of the officers recently sent out to fill casualties are
shaping very well indeed."

An amalgam of veterans and fresh keen recruits, cemented by a common
county feeling as well as by war tradition, makes the best fighting
formation in the world. The veterans give experience and
steadiness;--when the battle is joined the old hands feel bound to make
good their camp-fire boastings to the recruits. The recruits bring
freshness and the spirit of competition;--they are determined to show
that they are as brave as the old fighters. But, if the East Lancs. go
on dwindling, the cadre will not retain strength enough to absorb and
shape the recruits who will, we must suppose, some day be poured into
it. A perishing formation loses moral force in more rapid progression
than the mere loss of members would seem to warrant. When a battalion
which entered upon a campaign a thousand strong,--all keen and
hopeful,--gets down to five hundred, comrades begin to look round at one
another and wonder if any will be left. When it falls to three hundred,
or less, the unit, in my experience, is better drawn out of the line.
The bravest men lose heart when, on parade, they see with their own eyes
that their Company--the finest Company in the Army--has become a
platoon,--and the famous battalion a Company. A mould for shaping youn