hen, as well as more dignified, to let the Dardanelles
R.I.P.? The public will not be starved. A Dardanelles library exists---
nothing less--from which three luminous works by Masefield, Nevinson and
Callwell stand out; works each written by a man who had the right to
write; each as distinct from its fellow as one primary colour from
another, each essentially true. On the top of these comes the Report of
the Dardanelles Commission and the Life of Lord Kitchener, where his
side of the story is so admirably set forth by his intimate friend, Sir
George Arthur. The tale has been told and retold. Every morsel of the
wreckage of our Armada seems to have been brought to the surface. There
are fifty reasons against publishing, reasons which I know by heart. On
the other side there are only three things to be said:--

(1) Though the bodies recovered from the tragedy have been stripped and
laid out in the Morgue, no hand has yet dared remove the masks from
their faces.

(2) I cannot destroy this diary. Before his death Cranmer thrust his own
hand into the flames: "his heart was found entire amidst the ashes."

(3) I will not leave my diary to be flung at posterity from behind the
cover of my coffin. In case anyone wishes to challenge anything I have
said, I must be above ground to give him satisfaction.

Therefore, I will publish and at once.

A man has only one life on earth. The rest is silence. Whether God will
approve of my actions at a moment when the destinies of hundreds of
millions of human beings hung upon them, God alone knows. But before I
go I want to have the verdict of my comrades of all ranks at the
Dardanelles, and until they know the truth, as it appeared to me at the
time, how can they give that verdict?
IAN HAMILTON.

LULLENDEN FARM,
DORMANSLAND.
_April_ 25, 1920.

LETTER FROM GENERAL D'AMADE TO THE AUTHOR

MON GENERAL,

Dans la guerre Sud Africaine, ensuite en Angleterre, j'avais en
spectateur vecu avec votre armee. Avec elle je souhaitais revivre en
frere d'armes, combattant pour la meme cause.

Les Dardanelles ont realise mon reve. Mais le lecteur ne doit pas
s'attarder avec moi. Lire le recit de celui meme qui a commande: quel
avantage! L'Histoire, comme un fleuve, se charge d'impuretes en
s'eloignent de ses sources. En en remontant le cours, dans votre
Journal, j'ai decouvert les causes de certains effets demeure, pour moi