in
England and issued to them within 24 hours. Here it would be a question
of almost as many days, and, if it were to turn out that we have a long
and severe struggle, with no reserves nearer us than Woolwich--well--it
would not be pleasant! Moreover the number of howitzers, guns and rifles
in France is so enormous that it is morally impossible they should all
be hotly engaged at the same time. Thus they automatically form their
own reserves. In other words, a force possessing only ten howitzers
ought to have at least twice the reserves of a force possessing a
hundred howitzers. So at least it seems to me."

In the same letter I tell him about "Birdwood's crowd" and of their
splendid physique; their growing sense of discipline, their exceeding
great keenness, and wind up by saying that, given a fair chance, they
will, for certain, "render a very good account of themselves."

Confabs with d'Amade and Hunter-Weston. Hunter-Weston's "appreciation"
of the situation at the Dardanelles is to be treated as an _ad interim_
paper; he wrote it, he says now, without the fuller knowledge he is
daily acquiring--knowledge which is tending to make him more sanguine.
His stay at Malta and his talks with Officers there had greatly
impressed him with the hardness of the nut we have to try and crack; so
much so that his paper suggests an indefinite putting off of the attempt
to throw open the Straits. I asked him if he had laid his view before K.
in London and he said, No; that he had not then come to it and that he
had not definitely come to it now.

D'Amade's own inclinations would have led him to Asia. When he left
France he did not know he was to be under me and he had made up his mind
to land at Adramiti. But now he waives all preconceived ideas and is
keen to throw himself heart and soul into Lord K.'s ideas and mine. He
would rather I did not even refer to his former views as he sees they
are expressly barred by the tenor of my instructions. The French are
working to time in getting ship-shape. The 29th Division are arriving up
to date and about one-third of them have landed. We are fixing up our
gear for floating and other piers and are trying to improvise ways and
means of coping with the water problem--this ugly nightmare of a water
problem. The question of the carriage and storage of water for thousands
of men and horses over a roadless, mainly waterless track of country
should have been tackled before we left England.

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