la and if the New Army,
Territorials and Yeomen had been sent instead to France! Each category
would have given (let me put it mildly) double value. The heat, the
thirst, the scrub, the snipers, all so disconcerting to our fresh
contingents would have been commonplaces of frontier warfare to our
Indian troops. See what the handful with us here have achieved. Yet in
vain do I write and cable my personal entreaties to Beauchamp Duff, the
all-powerful Commander-in-Chief in India, and a very old friend, for two
hundred Sikhs: first he offers me a couple of hundred Brahmins wherewith
to fill the ranks of the famous 14th Sikhs and then, when I hesitate
before a proposal which appears monstrous, withdraws even that offer.
Again, I beg for 200 recruits for the 14th, saying I will train them
myself; I am refused--very politely and at great length--refused,
because it would be "politically inexpedient" to send them. In vain do
we try to get our own two battalions through the Egyptian morass; they
are going to stick and do sentry go over nothing. Why; were there any
real trouble in Egypt I could land a whole Division there within four
and a half days!

As for the New Army and Territorials, gradually entered with their
veteran comrades in the trenches of France and Flanders, they too would
have had more familiar surroundings and fairer play--as everyone here
now recognizes, too late!

The crystals of history take shape while we fight. As in a glass darkly
the outlines begin to appear to anyone who has a moment wherein to peer
beyond the end of the war. Everything has gone by the contrary. Our
people have done as well as their neighbours, and better, with their
imaginations, whether in diplomacy, strategy or tactics. Where the
Gibbon or Plutarch who survives the War Office Censor is going to damn
their reputations into heaps is over their failure in business
commonsense. Under their noses, parts of their system, were two great
live organisms; the Indian Army and the Territorial Force. From the
moment the mobilization flag was dropped it was up to them to work tooth
and nail to treble or quadruple these sound, vigorous existing entities.
What have they done? After a year of war, the Indian Army and the
Territorial Army are staggering on their last legs instead of being the
best part of our forces. Compare the East Lanes Division, who had the
good fortune to escape from War Office clutches by getting right out to
Egypt at the outbre