(4) That "power of digestion, sleeping and nerve power are what are essential above all things to anyone who would command successfully at the Dardanelles. Compared with these qualifications most others are secondary."
(5) That the British and Australians are marvels of endurance, but that I am having to pull the Indian Brigade right out and send them to Imbros. Their Commander, fine soldier though he be, is too old for the post of Brigadier; he ought to be commanding a Division; and the men are morally and physically tired and have lost three-fourths of their officers: with rest they will all of them come round.
(6) That Baldwin's Brigade of the 13th Division have been landed on the Peninsula and are now mixed up by platoons with the 29th Division where they are tumbling to their new conditions quite quickly. They have already created a very good impression at Helles.
Godley and his New Zealander A.D.C. (Lieutenant Rhodes), both old friends, came over from H.M.S. Triad to lunch. Hunter-Weston crossed from Helles to dine and stay the night.
10th July, 1915. Imbros. These Imbros flies actually drink my fountain pen dry! Hunter-Weston left for Helles in the evening.
Yesterday a cable saying there were no men left in England to fill either the 42nd Division or the 52nd. We have already heard that the Naval Division must fade away. Poor old Territorials! The War Office are behaving like an architect who tries to mend shaky foundations by clapping on another storey to the top of the building. Once upon a time President Lincoln and the Federal States let their matured units starve and thought to balance the account by the dispatch of untried formations. Why go on making these assurances to the B.P. that we have as many men coming in voluntarily as we can use?
Have refused the request made by His Excellency, Weber Pasha, who signs himself Commandant of the Ottoman Forces, to have a five hours' truce for burying their piles of dead. The British Officers who have been out to meet the Turkish parlementaires say that the sight of the Turkish dead lying in thousands just over the crestline where Baikie's guns caught them on the 5th inst. is indeed an astonishing sight. Our Intelligence are clear that the reason the Turks make this request is that they cannot get their men to charge over the corpses of their comrades. Dead Turks are better than barbed wire and so, though on grounds of humanity as well as health, I should like the poor chaps to be decently buried, I find myself forced to say no.
Patrick Shaw Stewart came to see me. I made Peter take his photo. He was on a rat of a pony and sported a long red beard. How his lady friends would laugh!
