holding Sari Bair than
they could be fed from the bad, cramped beaches of Anzac Cove. This will
be the more necessary as the process of starving out the Turks to the
south must take time. Suvla Bay should be an easy base to seize as it is
weakly held and unentrenched whilst, tactically, any troops landed there
will, by a very short advance, be able to make Birdwood's mind easy
about his left. Altogether, the plan seems to me simple in outline, and
sound in principle. The ground between Anzac and the Sari Bair crestline
is worse than the Khyber Pass but both Birdwood and Godley say that
their troops can tackle it. There are one or two in the know who think
me "venturesome" but, after all, is not "nothing venture nothing win" an
unanswerable retort?

De Robeck is excited over some new anti-submarine nets. They are so
strong and he can run them out so swiftly that they open, he seems to
think, new possibilities of making landings,--not on open coasts like
the North of the Aegean but at places like Yukeri Bay, where the nets
could be spread from the North and South ends of Tenedos to shoals
connecting with Asia so as to make a torpedo proof basin for transports.
The Navy, in fact, suddenly seem rather bitten with the idea of landing
opposite Tenedos. But whereas, this very afternoon, our own eyes
confirmed the aeroplane reports that Suvla Bay is unentrenched, weakly
held and quiescent, only yesterday a division of the enemy were reputed
to be busy along the whole of the coastline to the South of Besika Bay.

I have raised a hornet's nest by my objection to faked cables; but I
will not have it done. They may suppress but they shall not invent.

"(No. M.F. 366). From General Sir Ian Hamilton to War Office. Your No.
12431. I do not object to General Officer Commanding, Egypt, publishing
any telegram I send him, as I write them for that purpose. But I do
object to the addition of news which is untrue, and which can surely be
seen through by any reading public. If we can take trenches at our will,
why are we still on this side of Achi Baba?

"In compliance with Lord Kitchener's instructions I send a telegram to
the Secretary of State for War and repeat it to Egypt; also to Australia
and New Zealand if it affect these Dominions. Please see your No.
10,475, code, and my No. M.F. 285, instructing me to do this. These
telegrams are practically identical when they leave here, and are
intended to be used as a communique and to be p