this time thoroughly alarmed,
ordered them back for the defence of Aden, and they returned without
definite achievement other than the accidental shooting of the Lahej
sultan. This was hardly the fault of the heroic little band which
reached Lahej; that ill-starred potentate was escaping with his mounted
retinue before dawn and cantered on top of an Indian outpost without the
formality of answering their challenge. He was brought away in a
motor-car and died at Aden a few days later--another victim to this
deplorable blunder. Any intelligent and timely grasp of the enemy's
strength and intention would have given the poor man ample time to pack
his inlaid hookahs, Persian carpets, and other palace treasures and
withdraw in safety to Aden while our troops made good the Sheikh Othman
line along the British frontier. I am presuming that Aden was too much
taken by surprise to have met the Turks in a position of her own
choosing while they were still entangled in hilly country where levies
of the right sort could have harried them to some purpose, backed by
disciplined, unspent troops and adequate guns. What I wish to impress
is that the Intelligence Department at Aden must have been abominably
served and organised, for I decline to believe that _any_ G.O.C. would
have attempted such an enterprise with such a force and at such a time
had he any information as to the real nature of his task. As it was, the
British town of Sheikh Othman, within easy sight of Aden across the
harbour, was held by the Turks until a reinforcing column came down from
the Canal and drove them out of it, while the protectorate has been
overrun by the Turks and the Turco-Arabs until long after the armistice,
and the state of British prestige there can be imagined.

Official attempts to gloze over the incident would have been amusing if
they were not pathetic. Needless to say they did not deceive Moslems in
Egypt or the rest of Arabia.

Here is the most accurate account they gave the public:

"TURKS AND ADEN.

"ENGAGEMENT AT LAHEJ.

"The India Office issued the following _communique_ last night
through the Press Bureau:

"'In consequence of rumours that a Turkish force from the
Yamen had crossed the frontier of the Aden Hinterland and
was advancing towards Lahej, the General Officer Commanding
at Aden recently dispatched the Aden Camel Troop to
reconnoitre.

"'They reported the presence of a