reciation, that both the British and Turkish Armies were
strategically on the defensive. The forces were nearly equal in
numbers, though we were slightly superior in artillery, but we had no
advantage sufficient to enable us to attack a well-entrenched enemy
who only offered us a flank on which we could not operate owing to
lack of water and the extreme difficulty of supply. General Chetwode
thought it was possible the enemy might make an offensive against
us--we have since learned he had such designs--but he gave weighty
reasons against the Turk embarking upon a campaign conducted with
a view to throwing us beyond the Egyptian frontier into the desert
again. If the enemy contemplated even minor operations in the Sinai
Desert he had not the means of undertaking them. We should be retiring
on positions we had prepared, for, during his advance across the
desert, General Chetwode had always taken the precaution of having his
force dug in against the unlikely event of a Turkish attack. Every
step we went back would make our supply easier, and there was no water
difficulty, the pipe line, then 130 miles long, which carried the
purified waters of the Nile to the amount of hundreds of thousands
of gallons daily, being always available for our troops. It would be
necessary for the Turks to repair the Beersheba-Auja railway. They
had lifted some of the rails for use north of Gaza, and a raid we had
carried out showed that we could stop this railway being put into a
state of preparedness for military traffic. An attack which aimed at
again threatening the Suez Canal was therefore ruled as outside the
range of possibilities.

On the other hand, now that the Russian collapse had relieved the Turk
of his anxieties in the Caucasus and permitted him to concentrate his
attention on the Mesopotamian and Palestine fronts, what hope had he
of resisting our attack when we should be in a position to launch it?
The enemy had a single narrow-gauge railway line connecting with the
Jaffa-Jerusalem railway at Junction Station about six miles south-east
of Ramleh. This line ran to Beersheba, and there was a spur line
running past Deir Sineid to Beit Hanun from which the Gaza position
was supplied. There was a shortage of rolling stock and, there being
no coal for the engines, whole olive orchards had been hacked down to
provide fuel. The Hebron road, which could keep Beersheba supplied if
the railway was cut, was in good order, but in other parts