Part 4 (2/2)

TO HIS FATHER.

We get hardly any news up here, so please kindly continue your function of war correspondent whenever you have time, and especially mention any casualties which affect me.

One of the few bits of news which have reached us is a report of a speech of yours in which you mention that Milner's Committee recommended the Government to guarantee 45s. a year for four years, but the Government wouldn't. Reuter deduces from this that we have found a way of keeping the whip hand of submarines: but it looks to me much more like Free Trade s.h.i.+bboleths + the fact that there has already been a 30% increase in the area under wheat. I hope you will have written me something about this.

Now for the military news. This battalion, when we arrived here, was nominally nearly 300 strong, but actually it could hardly have paraded 100. This reduction is nearly all due to sickness. The deaths from all causes only total between forty and fifty, out of the original 800: and of these about twenty-five, I think, were killed in action. But there has been an enormous amount of sickness during the hot weather, four-fifths of which has been heat-stroke and malaria. There have been a few cases of enteric and a certain number of dysentery; but next to heat and malaria more men have been knocked out by sores and boils than by any disease. It takes ages for the smallest sore to heal.

Of the original thirty officers, eight are left here, Major Stillwell, who is C.O., one Captain, Page-Roberts, a particularly nice fellow, and five subalterns, named Harris, Forbes, Burrell, Bucknill and Chitty: (Chitty is in hospital): and Jones, the M.O., also a very nice man and a pretty good M.O. too. The new Adjutant is a Captain from 2nd Norfolks named Floyd: he is also nice and seems good: was on Willingdon's staff and knows Jimmy.

In honour of our arrival, they have adopted Double Company system. I am posted to ”A” Double Company, of which the Company Commander and only other officer is Harris, aet. 19. So I am second in command and four platoon commanders at once, besides having charge of the machine-guns (not that I am ever to parade with them) while Chitty is sick. It sounds a lot, but with next to no men about, the work is lessened. On paper, ”A” D.C was seventy-two strong, which, with my fifty, makes 122: but in fact, of these 122, twenty-five are sick and sixteen detached permanently for duties at headquarters and so on, leaving eighty-one. And these eighty-one are being daily more and more absorbed into fatigues of various kinds and less and less available for parade. In a day or two we shall be the only English battalion remaining here, so that all the duties which can't be entrusted to Indian troops will fall on us.

I haven't had time to observe the birds here very much yet, but they seem interesting, especially the water-birds. With regard to what I wrote to Mamma about the teal, people who have been up the river say they saw a very big flock of them at Kut. There were a lot of snipe with them and about twenty bitterns, which surprises me. And about eighty miles north of here there is a mud flat where great numbers of mallards are a.s.sembling for migration northwards: and there are more bitterns there than there are higher up even. These flocks about the equinoxes are very curious. I expect the mallards will migrate northwards, and the teal soon afterwards will become very scarce, but I hope the bitterns will stay where they are. The snipe are less interesting: they move about all over the place, wherever they can pick up most food. These people put the size of the flock of teal at a hundred and fifty and the mallards at five hundred, but you should, I think, multiply the first by a hundred and the second only by ten.

I got Mamma's letter via the India Office just after we got here. I quite agree with her view of war, though I must admit the officers of 1/4 Hants seem to me improved by it. While sitting on that court martial at Agra I expressed my view in a sonnet which I append, for you to show to Mamma:

How long, O Lord, how long, before the flood Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate?

From sodden plains in West and East the blood Of kindly men streams up in mists of hate Polluting Thy clear air: and nations great In reputation of the arts that bind The world with hopes of Heaven, sink to the state Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind Gloats o'er the b.l.o.o.d.y havoc of their kind, Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long Shall Satan in high places lead the blind To battle for the pa.s.sions of the strong?

Oh, touch thy children's hearts, that they may know Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest foe.

I must stop now, as a mail is going out and one never knows when the next will be.

NORFOLK HOUSE.

AMARAH, _September 13th_, 1915.

TO HIS FATHER.

As I have written the news to Mamma this week I will tell you what I gather of the campaign and country generally.

There's no doubt that old Townshend, the G.O.C., means to push on to Baghdad ”ekdum”; and if the Foreign Office stops him there will be huge indigna. It seems to me that the F.O. should have made itself quite explicit on the point, one way or the other months ago: to pull up your general in full career is exasperating to him and very wasteful, as he has acc.u.mulated six months' supplies for an army of 16,000 up here, which will have to be mostly s.h.i.+pped back if he is pulled up at Kut. The soldiers all say the F.O. played the same trick on Barratt in the cold weather. They let him get to Qurnah, and he wanted and prepared to push on here and to Nasiryah, which were then the Turkish bases. But the F.O. stopped him and consequently the Turks could resume the offensive, and nearly beat us at Shaibah. The _political_ people say that the soldiers had only themselves to thank they were nearly beaten at Shaibah. They were warned in December that the whole area between Sh. and Basrah would be flooded later on, and were urged either to dig a ca.n.a.l or build a causeway; but they pooh-poohed it: and consequently all supplies and ammunition at Shaibah had to be carried across 8 miles of marsh, 4ft. to 1in. deep.

As for the country, it is said to be very fertile wherever properly irrigated. At present the water is distributed about as badly as it could be. The annual rise of the river makes vast feverish swamps, and the rest of the country is waterless. Any stray Bedouin tribe that feels like growing a crop can go and cut a hole in the bank and irrigate a patch for one season and then leave it; and these cuts form new channels which as often as not lose themselves in a swamp.

Meanwhile this haphazard draining off of the water is seriously impairing the main streams, especially that of the Euphrates, which is now almost unnavigable in the low water season. To develop the country therefore means (1) a comprehensive irrigation and drainage scheme.

Willc.o.c.k's scheme I believe is only for irrigation. I don't know how much the extreme flatness of the country would hamper such a scheme.

Here we are 200 miles by river from the sea and only 28ft. above sea-level. It follows (2) that we must control the country and the nomad tribes from the highest _barrage_ continuously down to the sea.

(3) We must have security that the Turks don't interfere with the rivers above our barrage, or even neglect the river banks.

All this seems to me to point to a repet.i.tion of our Egyptian experience. We shall be drawn, whether we like it or not, into a virtual protectorate at least as far up as the line Kut-Nasiryah, along the Shatt-al-Hai, and that will have to extend laterally on the east to the Persian frontier and on the west to the Arabian tableland.

I don't see how we can hope to get off with less: and that being so, I believe it would be better to take on the whole at once. North of the Shatt-al-Hai line (_i.e_. Kut-Nasiryah) it would be very exhausting to go, and very awkward politically, as you soon get among the holy places of the s.h.i.+ahs, especially Karbala, which is their Mecca. But it's no use blinking the fact that a river is a continuous whole, and experience shows that the power which controls the mouth is sooner or later forced to climb to its source, especially when its up-stream neighbours are hostile and not civilised. And what power of Government will be left to Turkey after the war? It looks as if she will be as bankrupt, both financially and politically, as Persia; and I see no real hope of avoiding a part.i.tion a la Persia into British and Russian spheres of interest. In that case it seems to me the British sphere should go to the Shatt-al-Hai, and the Russian begin where the plain ends, or at any rate north of Mosul. Are you at liberty to tell me whether there is already an understanding with Russia about this country, and if so how far it goes?

As for the climate, I don't think it is any worse than the plains of India. When it is properly drained the fever will be much less: and under peace conditions the water can be properly purified and the heat dealt with. The obvious port is Basra; it is said that the bar outside Fao could easily be dredged to 26ft. The only other really good harbour is Koweit, I gather: but our game is to support the independence of K.: make it the railway terminus, but by using Basra you make your rail-freight as low as possible and have your commercial port where you can directly control matters.

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