t criticism and some personal attacks.
The War Office is famous for its short ways when it does make up its
mind to do something disagreeable, and its treatment of Sir Archibald
Murray is said to have lacked nothing in discourtesy. Since then a good
deal has come out about the early part of our war in the East and the
work done by General Murray, and the nearness he got to success with
quite inadequate support had become recognized even before Sir Edmund
Allenby's dispatch was published, which officially re-established his
military reputation.

To-day, at Dover, Sir Edmund Allenby spoke even more clearly of the debt
he owed for the foundations laid by General Murray and for the loyal way
in which he started him off as a beginner. It is not too common in our
military history to find great commanders on the same battle-ground as
sensitive about one another's reputation as they are of their own. It is
so easy to say nothing and leave matters to history. The lustre of
Allenby's achievement is even greater for his acknowledgment of his debt
to his predecessor.

_The First Palestine Campaign._

Something may be added now about General Murray's work in the East. He
commanded in Egypt from January, 1916, to May, 1917. During that time he
dealt with the Gallipoli forces, disorganized and with most of their
supplies gone. He had to reorganize them into a fighting force again and
to send them West. He had to organize and plan the campaign against the
Senussi, to be responsible for the internal condition of Egypt, and to
defend Egypt from the Turks, then relieved of the Gallipoli operations.
The Turkish attack was beaten off and four thousand prisoners taken, the
defences of Egypt were pushed forward through the Sinai desert,
water-lines carried up and wire ways laid, and all the vast preparations
made by which it became possible to take Palestine. His two assaults on
Gaza failed, but he held the ground he had taken, including the Wadi
Ghuzze, which would have been a big natural defence of Palestine.

He was fighting with three divisions very far short of their full
strength and several battalions of dismounted yeomanry, four big guns,
and thirty aeroplanes, all of old-fashioned type. His pipe-line was
within distance from which it seemed possible to "snap" the Turks at
Gaza, but fog delayed the start, and the manoeuvre took too long, and
the cavalry fell back from want of water. The snap was so near a success
that they picke