The general said:
"Then what am I to do with my letter? It's a damn good letter. I don't like wasting letters."
Tietjens said:
"You want it to show through that you back the single command for all you are worth, yet you don't want them to put their finger on your definitely saying so yourself?"
The general said:
". . . That's it. That's just what I do want. . . ." He added: "I suppose you take my view of the whole matter. The Government's pretence of evacuating the Western front in favour of the Middle East is probably only a put-up job to frighten our Allies into giving up the single command. Just as this railway strike is a counterdemonstration by way of showing what would happen to us if we did begin to evacuate. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"It looks like that. . . . I'm not, of course, in the confidence of the Cabinet. I'm not even in contact with them as I used to be. . . . But I should put it that the section of the Cabinet that is in favour of the Eastern expedition is very small. It's said to be a one-man party—with hangers-on—but arguing him out of it has caused all this delay. That's how I see it."
The general exclaimed:
"But, good God! . . . How is such a thing possible? That man must walk along his corridors with the blood of a million—I mean it, of a million—men round his head. He could not stand up under it. . . . That fellow is prolonging the war indefinitely by delaying us now. And men being killed all the time! . . . I can't. . . ." He stood up and paced, stamping up and down the hut. . . . "At Bonderstrom," he said, "I had half a company wiped out under me. . . . By my own fault, I admit. I had wrong information . . ." He stopped and said: "Good God! . . . Good God! . . . I can see it now. . . . And it's unbearable! After eighteen years. I was a brigadier then. It was your own regiment—the Glamorganshires. . . . They were crowded into a little nullah and shelled to extinction. . . . I could see it going on and we could not get on to the Boer guns with ours to stop 'em. . . . That's hell," he said, "that's the real hell. . . . I never inspected the Glamorganshires after that for the whole war. I could not bear the thought of facing their eyes. . . . Buller was the same. . . . Buller was worse than I. . . . He never held up his head again after. . . ."