me into a ticklish position.
Reinforcements are now to be diverted elsewhere and my command is not an
enviable one. I quite understand the necessity of trying to maintain a
barrier between Essen and Constantinople. I quite understand also the
danger of doing so at the expense of this attenuated, exhausted force. I
have represented the facts home, and it is for them to decide."

Dined with the Admiral.

_2nd October, 1915._ The despatch of the Salonika force and their outfit
are absorbing all my energies. Our whole Expeditionary Force is being
drawn upon to send the 10th Division creditably turned out to the new
theatre. The twenty-four hours' delay caused by the political crisis at
Athens has been a godsend in enabling me to reclothe and re-equip the
detachment from top to toe. The supplies for my own force are now
exhausted, but,--on the principle of the starving garrison who threw
loaves over the ramparts at the besiegers, we must try and make a good
first impression on the Greeks.

The submarine catcher, or the "Silver Baby" as the men call it, has been
flying about all day, without luck. Gascoigne and Bertier dined. Blazing
hot; quite a setback to August temperatures.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: We had to get into Kephalos Harbour before dark; otherwise
the submarine indicator nets were damaged.--IAN H.]

[Footnote 13: The last time this subject was broached between Lord
Kitchener and myself was immediately after the evacuation of Helles.
Everyone was intensely relieved, especially Lord Kitchener, for he had
realized better than our politicians the desperate stakes we had planked
down in our gamble with the Clerk of the Weather. Yet in that very
moment when the burden of an intolerable anxiety had just been lifted
from his shoulders he took the occasion to declare to me that he stood
by every word he had said. What he "had said," was that any withdrawal
from the Dardanelles must react in due course upon Islam, and especially
upon Egypt. Cairo, he held to be the centre of the Mahomedan doctrine
and the pivotal point of our great Mahomedan Imperium. An evacuation of
the Dardanelles would serve as an object lesson to Egypt just as our
blunders in the Crimea had served as a motive to the Indian mutineers.
Ultimate success was not the point in either case. The point was that
the legend of the invincibility of British troops should be shattered in
some signal and quite unmistakable fashion. "The East," he said, "mov