seldom be decently civil to him and considers him almost
beneath contempt. This is the conquering Tartar pose that has earned the
Turk such detestation and final ruin in Arabia, but it seems to have
fascinated the Egyptian like a rabbit in the presence of a python. Quite
early in the Turkish invasion of Sinai a detachment of Egyptian camelry,
operating in conjunction with the Bikanirs, deserted _en masse_ to the
enemy. It was at first supposed that they had been captured, but we
afterwards heard of their being feted somewhere in Palestine. On the
other hand, an Egyptian battery did yeoman service on the Canal; I saw a
pontoon that looked like a carelessly opened sardine-tin as a result of
its attentions.

The most tragic aspect of this spurious and mischievous propaganda was
its victims from Indian regiments. The Indian Moslem as a rule has no
illusions about the Turks, and will fight them at sight, but there will
always be a few misguided bigots to whom a specious and dogmatic
argument will appeal. There is no occasion to dwell on these cases,
which were sporadic only and generally soon met with the fate incurred
by attempted desertion to the enemy.

We looked on the movement as an insidious and dangerous disease and did
our best to trace it to its source and stop the distributing channels.
After events on the Canal had simmered down, I was seconded to Cairo to
help tackle the movement there: to show how little hold it had over the
minds of thinking Moslems. I may mention that my colleague was a Pathan
major who was a very strict Moslem and a first-rate fellow to boot.

We both served under an Anglo-Indian major belonging to the C.I.D., one
of the most active little men I have ever met. There were also several
"ferrets," or Intelligence agents, who came into close contact with the
"suspects" and could be trusted up to a certain point if you looked
sharply after them. This is as much as can be said for any of these men,
though some are better, and some worse, than others. On the Canal we
employed numbers of them to keep us informed of the enemy's movements
and used to check them with the aerial reconnaissance--they needed it.
It did not take us long to find out that these sophisticated Sinaites
had established an Intelligence bureau of their own. They used to meet
their "opposite numbers" employed by the enemy at pre-arranged spots
between the lines and swop information, thereby avoiding unnecessary
toil or risk (the