s in India and Egypt will possibly
never be known, so rigorous were the operations of the censorship set
up by the British War Office. One thing is certain, however: in both
countries political conditions were serious before the war and they
could not, by any stretch of optimism, be conceived as improving with
the coming of a great struggle aimed at the only remaining independent
Mohammedan power.

For many months previous to August, 1914, the Indian office in London
had been apprehensive of rebellion in India. In Egypt the circumstance
that at the beginning of the war the British authorities announced
that they would make no use of the native Egyptian army speaks for
itself. It was believed in Constantinople and in Berlin that both
Egypt and India were ripe for a terrible revolt against the rule of
the British Raj: the uprisings of millions of fanatical natives that
would forever sweep British control from these two key places to the
trade of the world and would institute a Turkish suzerainty, backed
and controlled by Berlin. This was thought all the more likely as
thousands of the British regular troops had been withdrawn from India
and Egypt for service in France, being replaced by raw levies from
England and the Colonies.

These, then, were the major considerations that prompted the early
offensive against Egypt. It was based upon sound political and
military strategy. Just how near it came to complete success, just how
much additional worry and effort it added to the burden of Great
Britain and France, only a complete revelation of the progress of
events in all fields will tell.

In the attack upon the canal the Turks operated primarily from their
base at Damascus. As preparations progressed the troops that were to
take part in the actual advance were concentrated between Jerusalem
and Akabah. Under command of Djemel Pasha, Turkish Minister of Marine,
there were gathered some 50,000 troops consisting mostly of first line
troops of the best quality, reenforced by about 10,000 more or less
irregular Arab Bedouins.

During November and early December, 1914, the force was moved forward
by slow and methodical stages, until by December 15 it was awaiting
orders to advance, encamped on the confines of the great desert that
separated it from its objective.

Here it is well that the reader should have a good idea of the
difficulties of the task the Turkish higher command had imposed upon
Djemel Pasha and his troops.