France." I have thanked him. Not a word from
France since we fired the _feu de joie_.

K. believes in the East and sends shell to the West. The reason is that
K.'s _beliefs_ are only intuitions; he believes in the same sort of way
that Elijah knew certain things.

The principle underlying the world war seems to me this:--that wherever
the new system of trenches, dug-outs, barbed wire, can reach its fullest
development, _there_ we should prefer the defensive. Wherever this new
system cannot be fully developed, there the old ideas hold good and
there are the theatres for the offensive. In France and Flanders where
both sides are within a few hours' run, on good railways, from their own
chief arsenals and depots the new system attains prodigious power. In
the Turkish Empire almost all the conditions; railways, material,
factories, etc., are favourable to the old and unfavourable to the new
conditions.

To me these views appear as clear as crystal and as unanswerable as
Euclid. The tenacity of the new system of defence; the pressure of
France; the apathy of a starved military opinion; the fact that all our
most powerful soldiers are up to their necks in the West, combine to
keep us ramming our heads against the big pile of barbed wire instead of
getting through by the gate called strait.

Next Braithwaite with the following electrical bombshell:--

* * * * *

"By Bailloud's report I see that he considers that the French line can
be held by one division. If, on reconsideration, you agree with this
view can you spare the LIIIrd Division?"

K. has pounced like a hawk on Bailloud's statement (which I cabled to
him yesterday) that he is taking steps for Brulard to hold the French
section with one division.

Have answered:--

* * * * *

"(No. M.F. 703). From General Sir Ian Hamilton to Earl Kitchener. Your
No. 8409, cipher. Not one word of my No. M.F. 693 can I take back. The
situation at Cape Helles cannot be fully realized. May I remind you that
when on 20th August I moved the XXIXth Division to Suvla, I left at Cape
Helles only the minimum garrison compatible with safety. Since that date
the total British troops there have decreased in strength from 15,300 to
13,300 rifles, and now I am losing a French composite division which is
made up of the only troops of the Corps Expeditionnaire on whom I can
rely, as well as 44 guns. It is my considered opinion th