streets of
Constantinople, not as conquerors, but as prisoners, within a week from
the date of our making the attempt. All the same, despite this bragging,
the Turks realise that if we were to get the Fleet through the Narrows;
or, if it were to force its own way through whilst we absorb the
attention of their mobile guns, the game would be up. So they are
straining every nerve to be ready for anything. The moral of all these
rather contradictory remarks is just what I have said time and again
since South Africa. The fact that war has become a highly scientific
business should not blind us to the other fact that its roots still draw
their nutriment from primitive feelings and methods; the feelings and
methods of boy scouts and Red Indians. It is a huge handicap to us here
that our great men keep all their tricks for their political friends and
have none to spare for their natural enemies. There has been very little
attempt to disguise our aims in England, and Maxwell and McMahon in
Egypt have allowed their Press to report every arrival of French and
British troops, and to announce openly that we are about to attack at
Gallipoli. I have protested and reported the matter to K. but nothing in
the strategic sphere can be done now although, in the tactical sphere,
we have several deceptions ready for them.

Colonel Napier, Military Attache at Sofia, and Braithwaite came in after
these pseudo-secrets had been discussed and joined in the conversation.
I doubt whether either Fitzmaurice or Napier have solid information as
to what is in front of us, and their yarns about Balkan politics are
neither here nor there. John Bull is quite out of his depth in the
defiles of the Balkans. With just so much pull over the bulk of my
compatriots as has been given me by my having spent a little time with
their Armies, I may say that the Balkan nations loathe and mistrust one
another to so great a degree that it is sheer waste of time to think of
roping them all in on our side, as Fitzmaurice and Napier seem to
propose. We may get Greece to join us, and Russia may get Roumania to
join her--_if we win here_--but then we make an enemy of Bulgaria, and
_vice versa_. If they will unearth my 1909 report at the War Office they
will see that, at that time, one Bulgarian Battalion of Infantry was
worth two Battalions of Roumanian Infantry--which may be a help to them
in making their choice. The Balkan problem is so intricate that it must
be simply ha