stay until his last
interview just before he started on his return journey. K.'s manner
then, he said, had changed--so much so as to give him an impression that
the great man was turning, or was being turned, against all of us out
here. K.'s conduct at the first meetings is in full harmony with his
message sent to Braithwaite for me by Fitz about a fortnight ago, saying
I possessed his fullest confidence. The change of manner was marked and
Dawnay is sure he made no mistake about it. But nothing has happened
since the date of Dawnay's arrival and departure save a very well
engineered withdrawal of the 10th and the French Divisions for which, in
point of fact, we have all been rather expecting congratulations. Dawnay
thinks some queer things are happening. He could--or would--say nothing
more.

_12th October, 1915. Imbros._ Early in the morning got off my answer to
K.'s evacuation cable. The elements, the enemy and ourselves are the
three factors of the problem. Were I to measure my problem by the night
flitting of the Irish and French Divisions (who lost neither man nor
beast in the process), I could guarantee that we would shoot the moon
with the balance of the force smoothly, swiftly and silently. That is to
say, supposing the Turks and the weather remain constant. But these are
two most inconstant things: no one can tell how a Turk will behave under
any given conditions; the Turks themselves do not know how they will
behave: the weather now is written down by the meteorologists for sudden
changes; for storms. Unsettled weather is due and ought to be reckoned
upon. Imagine a blow coming up from the South when the evacuation is
half way through. That does not seem to be, and is not, any great
stretch of imagination. Well then, having so imagined, we get a disaster
only equalled in history by that of the Athenians at Syracuse: a
disaster from which the British Empire could hardly hope to recover.

Twice backwards and forwards to the General Staff Marquee with the draft
of my guesses, my first being that we would probably lose 35 to 45 per
cent. But the General Staff have also been consulting their oracle and
were clear for 50 per cent. Months of the most anxious calculations will
not get a white man one whit forrarder in seeing into the brains of an
Asiatic Army or in forecasting Mediterranean weather. Safest to assume
that both brains and weather will behave as the German General Staff
would wish them to behave rather