onal attitude.

"How is it then that our letters from home are filled with lamentations
and that, having just gained a proportionately very large accretion of
territory, we see headlines in the papers such as 'The Gallipoli
standstill,' whereas it does not seem to occur to anyone to speak about
'The French standstill'?

"Well, I will tell you. The system upon which the Press Bureau
approaches the eagerly attentive ear of the British Public is the
reason.

"Why I begged the War Office to change the method by which I sent copies
of my Proemial cables to Maxwell was that I found he (animated, of
course, by the best intentions) was improving the successes and
minimising the failures. The finishing touch was given when, one day, he
inserted the phrase 'The enemy is demoralized and has to submit by day
and by night to our taking his trenches.' Obviously, even the most
stupid fellaheen after reading such a sentence must, in the course of
time, begin to ask himself how, if trenches are being easily taken by
day and by night, we still remain on the wrong side of Achi Baba!

"Turning now to the Press Bureau and our landing, there was nothing in
that landing, as I have just said, which need have caused sorrow to a
soul in the British Isles excepting, of course, the deplorable heavy
casualties which are inseparable now from making any attack. But, on the
23rd of August a correspondent cables to an American paper a sensational
story of a decisive victory, which the Press Bureau must have known to
be a tissue of lies. Had the lies taken the shape of disasters to the
British there would not, from the point of view of us soldiers, have
been the smallest objection to publishing them. Suppose Mr. X, for
instance, had said that the landing did not succeed, and had been driven
off with immense slaughter? Apart from the fact that such a cable would
have made many poor women in England unhappy for a few hours, the
fabrication would have done us positive good: when the truth was known
the relief would have been enormous, we would have gained handsome
recognition of what had actually been done, and German inspired lies
would have been discounted in future.

"But there is no _moral_ in the world that can stand against a carefully
engineered disappointment. When you know perfectly well that the spirits
of the people are bound to be dashed down to the depths within a few
days, it is unsound statesmanship surely so to engineer the Press that