"There seems to be a lull in this tooth-and-nail struggle which has kept me on tenterhooks during the past four days and nights. But we have on our maps little blue arrows showing the movements of at least a Division of troops in various little columns from above Kereves Dere, from Soghon Dere river, from Kilid Bahr and even from within gun-shot of Achi Baba, all converging on a point a mile or two north-west of Krithia. So it looks as if they were going to have one more desperate go at the Gurkha knoll due west of Krithia, and at the line of trench we call J.13 immediately behind it which was also held by the Gurkhas.

"Last night they bombed the Gurkhas out of the eastern half of J.13 and the Inniskilling Fusiliers had to take it again at the point of the bayonet just as day broke.

"You can have small idea of what the troops are going through. The same old battalions being called on again and again to do the forlorn hope sort of business. However, each day that passes, these captured positions get better dug in, and make the Turks' counter-attack more costly.

"The cause of the attack made the night before last on Anzac has been made quite clear to us by a highly intelligent Armenian prisoner we have taken. The strictest orders had been issued by His Excellency Commanding-in-Chief on the Peninsula that no further attacks against our works were to be made unless, of course, we took any ground from them when we must be vigorously countered. But it was explained to the men that the losses in attack had proved too heavy, whereas, if they had patience and waited a week or ten days in their trenches, then at last we would come out and try to attack them when they would kill us in great quantities. However, Enver Pasha appeared in person amongst the troops at Anzac, and ordered three regiments to attack whilst the whole of the rest of the line supported them by demonstrations and by fire. It was objected this was against the command of their local chief. He brushed this objection aside, and told them never to look him in the face again if they failed to drive the Australians into the sea. So off they went and they certainly did not drive the Australians into the sea (although they got into their support trenches at one time) and certainly most of them never looked Enver in the face again, or anyone else for that matter.

"The old battle tactics have clean vanished. I have only quite lately realized the new conditions. Whether your entrenchments are on the top of a hill or at the bottom of a valley matters precious little: whether you are outflanked matters precious little—you may hold one half of a straight trench and the enemy may hold the other half, and this situation may endure for weeks. The only thing is by cunning or surprise, or skill, or tremendous expenditure of high explosives, or great expenditure of good troops, to win some small tactical position which the enemy may be bound, perhaps for military or perhaps for political reasons, to attack. Then you can begin to kill them pretty fast."

3rd July, 1915. Imbros. Very hot; very limp with the prevalent disease but greatly cheered up by the news of yesterday evening's battle at Helles. The Turks must have got hold of a lot of fresh shell for, at 5.30 p.m., they began as heavy a bombardment as any yet seen at Helles, concentrating on our extreme left. We could only send a feeble reply. At 6 o'clock the enemy advanced in swarms, but before they had covered more than 100 yards they were driven back again into the Ravine some 800 yards to our front. H.M.S. Scorpion and our machine guns played the chief hand. At 7 p.m. the Turkish guns began again, blazing away as if shells were a drug in the market, whilst, under cover of this very intense fire, another two of their battalions had the nerve to emerge from the Ravine to the north-east of our forward trenches and to move in regular lines—shoulder to shoulder—right across the open. Hardly had they shown themselves when the 10th Battery R.F.A. sprayed them beautifully with shrapnel. The Gurkha supports were rushed up, and as there was no room for them in the fire trenches they crept into shell craters and any sort of hole they could find from which to rake the Turks as they made their advance. The enemy's officers greatly distinguished themselves, waving their swords and running well out into the open to get the men forward. The men also had screwed up their courage to the sticking point and made a big push for it, but, in the end, they could not face our fire, and fell back helter-skelter to their mullah. Along the spot where they had stood wavering awhile before they broke and ran, there are still two clearly marked lines of corpses.

Wrote a letter to Sclater saying I cannot understand his request for fuller information about the drafts needed to make my units up to strength. We have regularly cabled strengths; the figures are correct and it is the A.G. himself who has ordered us to furnish the optimistic "ration" strengths instead of the customary "fighting" strengths. The ration strength are for the Q.M.G., but unless the A.G. wishes to go on living in a fool's paradise, why should he be afraid of knowing the numbers we cannot put into the line of battle!

Have also written Cowans protesting once more that we should have business brains to run the most intricate business proposition at present on tap in the world—our communications. During the past month the confusion at Mudros, our advanced base, becomes daily worse confounded. Things meant for Anzac go to Helles, and vice versa: or, not infrequently, stores, supplies or luxuries arrive and are sent off on a little tour to Alexandria and Malta before delivery. The system would be perfect for the mellowing of port or madeira, but when it is applied to plum and apple jam or, when 18 pr. shell are sent to howitzers, the system needs overhauling. I know the job is out of the way difficult. There is work here for Lesseps, Goethals and Morgan rolled into one:—work that may change the face of the world far, far more than the Suez or Panama Canals and, to do it, they have put in a good fighting soldier, quite out of his setting, and merely because they did not know what to do with him in Egypt! In case Cowans shares K.'s suspicions about my sneaking desire for Ellison, I say, "I assure you; most solemnly I assure you, that the personal equation does not, even in the vaguest fashion, enter into my thoughts. Put the greatest enemy I possess in the world, and the person I most dislike, into that post, and I would thank God for his appointment, on my knees, provided he was a competent business man."

Again—

"I am in despair myself over it. Perhaps that is putting it rather strong as I try never to despair, but seriously I worry just as much over things behind me as I do over the enemy in front of me. What I want is a really big man there, and I don't care one D. who he is. A man I mean who, if he saw the real necessity, would wire for a great English contractor and 300 navvies without bothering or referring the matter to anyone."