, "_Quand
vous arrivez au Bosphore, pensez a moi_." Well, there is one good side
to working over a narrow Peninsula, under the guns of your own Fleet,
all the Bulgars in the Balkans cannot add a rifle to the number of enemy
troops on Gallipoli, who already, can only be munitioned, watered and
fed with the greatest difficulty. The more targets the enemy cram on to
their present narrow front the merrier for our gunners; the better the
chance for our submarines starving the lot of them. So long as our Fleet
holds the AEgean, we may snap our fingers at the Bulgarians, whereas
they, were they fools enough to come here, would live on tenter hooks
lest haply some fine morning our Fleet should sail into the Marmora.

Yes, two or three battleships in the Marmora! Think of it! The sea
communications, Constantinople-Gallipoli and Asia-Gallipoli, would
cease, _ipso facto_, to exist. The railways between Europe and
Constantinople and Asia and Constantinople must shut down. In a
fortnight the Turks on the Peninsula begin to pack up; in a month the
Turks in Constantinople move bag and baggage from Europe to Asia.
Ferdinand watching the cat's jump, prepares to turn those 400,000
bayonets of his against the Kaiser. So wags my world in the might-be;
very much "might-be" for the Navy are turning down the "to be" for the
third time of asking. Three times the Sibyl makes her prodigious offer:
May--August--September a new world for old battleships:--two--four--six!

_23rd September, 1915._ Stormy weather: the _Imogene_ could hardly crawl
out. Have written K. to tell him how day succeeds day, never without
incident, but never with achievement; how we are burnt up with longing
to get on and how we know that he is as anxious. Yet, as I tell him,
_we_ "can't force the pace." How can we? We have not the
wherewithal--the stuff. "Byng would like to have four days' successive
bombardment for an hour, and then attack, and speaks of one H.E. shell
per yard as pat as if they were shells we could pick up on the seashore.
I have assured him it is no earthly use; that he shall have his share of
what I have got, but that stuff for bombardment is simply not in
existence,--not here, at least."

_24th September, 1915. Imbros._ Fought against exasperation all day. As
I thought:--

* * * * *

"(No. 8193, cipher). From Earl Kitchener to General Sir Ian Hamilton. In
the existing situation, the two battalions referred to in your