have no hand in it. I won't touch it, and I think
he knew that and calculated on that when he cabled. Anyway, let K., cat
or Cabinet leap where they will, I must sleep upon my answer, but that
answer will be NO!

Just as I am turning in, a cable from the S. of S. saying, "there is an
idea that Sir John Maxwell is not sending you as many troops as he might
from Egypt. Have you any complaints on this score?" Rather late in the
day this "idea." Certainly, I have never made any "complaints" and I
don't mean to do so now. The War Office have only to look up their
returns and see how many men are being maintained to defend us from the
Senoussi!

Maxwell has never had less than 70,000 troops in Egypt, a country which
might have been held with 10,000 rifles--ever since we landed here, that
is to say. My troops can sail back to Egypt very much faster than the
Turks--or the Senoussi for that matter--can march to the Canal.

In the same cable the S. of S. asks what is the cause of the sick rate
and remarks that, "some accounts from the Dardanelles indicate that the
men are dispirited." Small wonder if they were! When they see two
Divisions taken away from the Peninsula; when their guns can't answer
those of the enemy; when each unit finds itself half-strength, and
falling--why then, tumbling as they do to the fact that we won't get
through till next year, they _ought_ to be unhappy. But the funny thing
is that the Cabinet, the Secretaries of State, are the people who are
"dispirited" and _not_ the people out here. If the P.M. could walk round
the trenches of the Naval Division at Helles, or if K. could exchange
greetings with the rank and file at Anzac and Suvla, they would find a
sovereign antidote for the blues and would realize that it was they who
were down-hearted and _not_ the men at the Dardanelles. There was an
old French Colonel, killed at Gravelotte; he had studied the classic
world battles and he shows that it was never the front line who gave way
first, but always the reserves:--they, the reserves, watched bloodshed
in cold blood until they could stand it no longer and so took to their
heels whilst the fighting men were still focussed upon victory. Not the
enemy in front but the friends behind are the men who spread despondency
and alarm.

Charley Burn has arrived on the _Imogene_ with Dawnay.

Davies went back to Helles after tea. Dawnay says K. was most interested
in him and most charming to him all through his