lly-beef, condensed milk, dried
fruit, biscuits, cocoa, and tea, seemed to stretch for miles. One walked
down streets of bully-beef, as it were; loitered in squares bounded by
biscuit-tins; dodged up alleys flanked by tea-chests and cases of "Ideal"
milk. Through the streets and squares came an endless procession of lorries
and G.S. waggons, passing on their lawful occasions.

After all, the final word rests with the A.S.C. All your preparation, all
your study of new methods, all your concentrations of guns and men and
horses are futile--and how futile!--if the Army Service Corps says:
"Sorry, gentlemen, but we can't feed you; and if we could, there's nothing
to carry the food in." In the beginning this was especially true of Egypt;
for there was a lamentable shortage of nearly everything that goes to the
successful waging of war. It took nearly two years of patient endeavour
before an advance could really be considered, and by far the greater part
of that time was devoted to amassing supplies and organising means of
transport. It was a colossal task, the magnitude of which was never even
imagined by the people at home.

There was practically nothing in the country. We wanted sleepers, rails,
and locomotives for the railway; pipes, pumps, and other materials for the
water-supply; waggons, motor-lorries and light-cars for transport purposes;
sand-carts, cacolets, and ambulances for the R.A.M.C.; and, with the
exception of most kinds of vegetables, food.

All this had to be brought overseas.

There may not at first sight seem to be any striking connection between an
enemy submarine and the date of an offensive. When, however, that submarine
torpedoes and sinks a vessel containing two million pounds' worth of
absolutely essential material, such as locomotives or motor-lorries, the
connection becomes less, as the date of an offensive becomes more, remote.
In fact, as neither a locomotive nor a motor-lorry, nor a boat wherein to
carry them can be built in five minutes, the offensive temporarily recedes
from view, until the next boatload of material is safely landed.

Add to this the facts that a hundred and fifty miles of desert had to be
cleared of an enemy who fought with the most bitter determination all the
way, that a railway had to be constructed, and an adequate water-supply had
to be maintained over the same desert, before an offensive on a large scale
could even be dreamt about, and the connection mentioned above