d files,--none from the swarms of filthy flies. General Bailloud and
Colonel Piepape (Chief of Staff) came across with Major Bertier in a
French torpedo boat to see me. They stayed about an hour. Bailloud's
main object was to get me to put off the attack planned by General
Gouraud for to-morrow. Gouraud has worked out everything, and I greatly
hoped in the then state of the Turks the French would have done a very
good advance on our right. The arrival of these fresh Turkish Divisions
from Adrianople does make a difference. Still, I am sorry the attack is
not to come off. Girodon is a heavy loss to Bailloud. Piepape has never
been a General Staff Officer before; by training, bent of mind and
experience he is an administrator. He is very much depressed by the loss
of the 2,000 quarts of wine by the Asiatic shell. Since Gouraud and
Girodon have left them the French seem to be less confident. When
Bailloud entered our Mess he said, in the presence of four or five young
Officers, "If the Asiatic side of the Straits is not held by us within
fifteen days our whole force is _voue a la destruction_." He meant it as
a jest, but when those who prophesy destruction are _gros bonnets_; big
wigs; it needs no miracle to make them come off--I don't mean the wigs
but the prophecies. Fortunately, Bailloud soon made a cheerier class of
joke and wound up by inviting me to dine with him in an extra chic
restaurant at Constantinople.

Have told K. plainly that the employment of an ordinary executive
soldier as Boss of so gigantic a business as Mudros is suicidal--no
less. Heaven knows K. himself had his work cut out when he ran the
communications during his advance upon Khartoum. Heaven knows I myself
had a hard enough job when I became responsible for feeding our troops
at Chitral, two hundred miles into the heart of the Himalayas from the
base at Nowshera. Breaking bulk at every stage--it was heart-breaking.
First the railway, then the bullock cart, the camel, the mules--till, at
the Larram Pass we got down to the donkey. But here we have to break
bulk from big ships to small craft; to send our stuff not to one but to
several landings, to run the show with a mixed staff of Naval and
Military Officers. No, give me deserts or precipices,--anything fixed
and solid is better than this capricious, ever-changing sea. The problem
is a real puzzler, demanding experience, energy, good temper as well as
the power of entering into the point of view of