y wreck the whole enterprise, there
indeed is a Scylla and Charybdis problem, a two-horned dilemma, or
whatever words may best convey the notion of the devil.

The blessed cable is now lying on the well-known desk where K. will
frown at it through his enormous spectacles. Then he calls the
Adjutant-General and tells him Hamilton must be mad as all his
formations are full to overflowing and yet he says he is 45,000 short.
Next enters the Master-General of the Ordnance with a polite bow and K.
tells him Hamilton must be delirious as he keeps on raving for shell,
bombs, grenades although as he, Von Donop, knows well, he has been sent
more guns and explosives than any man has ever enjoyed in war.
Impossible to be so disrespectful to the Field Marshal or so
inconsiderate to their department as to reject the soft impeachment. How
easily do the great ones of this world kid themselves back into a
comfortable frame of mind! Then K. stalks off to the Dardanelles
Committee.

Turns out that Cox and Russell did even better than Birdwood had thought
in the fighting on the 21st and the morning of the 22nd. They have
killed more Turks and the line held runs well out to the North-east and
quite a good long way to the North of Kaiajik Aghala.

Byng left to take over his command. Davies came over from Helles and
stayed for dinner.

The _Imogene_ sailed in with Mails. News by wireless of German Naval
defeat in the Baltic and Italian declaration of war against Turkey.
Well, that part at least of K.'s aspirations has come off; we have
dragged in Italy. Now--will she send us a contingent?

Davies dined. With his ideas still framed on Western standards he puts
it forcibly, not to say ferociously, that we must, must, _must_ be given
our fair share of trench mortars, bombs and gun ammunition. Fresh from
France he watched the artillery preparation at Helles and (although we
had thought it rather grand) says we simply don't know what the word
bombardment means. Instead of seeing, as in the Western theatre, an
unbroken wall of flame and smoke rising above the enemy trenches about
to be stormed, here he saw a sprinkling of shells bursting at intervals
of 20 yards or so--a totally different effect. And yet the Turks are as
tough as the Germans and take as much hammering!

When I read the British Press, starved and yet muzzled, I feel as if I
could render my country no better service than to kill my friend the
Censor and write them one or two a