to his new address--truly a man of parts. I
have often wondered whether his Hunnish friends got him to disgorge by
means of a forced loan or war-bonds, or something of that sort. If so,
they achieved something notable, for he has left behind him, beside his
liabilities, the name of being a difficult man to get money out of.

When the Turco-Teuton blade was actually drawn in Holy War I was down
with enteric, which I had contracted while working in disguise among
seditious circles in the slums of Old Cairo. I just convalesced in time
to join the Intelligence Staff on the Canal the day before Jemal Pasha's
army attacked. His German staff had everything provided for in advance
with their usual thoroughness. From the documents and prisoners that
came through our hands we learnt that the hotel in Cairo where the
victors were to dine after their triumphant entry had actually been
selected, and some enthusiasts went so far as to insist that the menu
had been prepared. If so, they omitted to get the Canal Army on toast,
and for want of this indispensable item the event fell through. All the
same, it was a soldierly enterprise, and if the Senussis had invaded in
force or the population risen behind us, as they hoped would be the
case, the result might have been different.

As it was they put up a very good fight and their arrangements for
getting across the Sinaitic desert were excellent. For the last ten
miles they man-handled their pontoons to the edge of the Canal. These
craft were marvels of lightness and carrying capacity, but, of course,
no protection whatever against even a rifle-bullet, and they had not
fully reckoned with the Franco-British naval flotilla, which proved a
formidable factor.

The morning after the main fight a little Syrian subaltern passed
through my hands. He had been slightly wounded in the leg and still
showed signs of nervous shock, so I made him sit down with a cigarette
while I questioned him. He had been in charge of a pontoon manned by his
party and said that they had got halfway across the Canal in perfect
silence when "the mouth of hell opened" and the pontoon was sinking in a
swirl of stricken men amid a hail of projectiles. He and two others swam
to our side of the Canal, where they surrendered to an Indian
detachment.

Our Indian troops on the Canal were naturally a mark for pan-Islamic
propaganda reinforced by Hindu literature of the _Bande Mataram_
type,--a double-barrelled enterprise t