Grand lunch at the Abdin Palace with the Sultan. Most of the Cabinet present. The Sultan spoke French well and seems clever as well as most gracious and friendly. He assured me that the Turkish Forts at the Dardanelles were absolutely impregnable. The words "absolute" and "impregnable" don't impress me overmuch. They are only human opinions used to gloss over flaws in the human knowledge or will. Nothing is impregnable either—that's a sure thing. No reasons were given me by His Highness.
Have just written home about these things: midnight.
29th March, 1915. 9.30 p.m. Palace Hotel, Alexandria. Early start to the Mena Camp to see the Australians. A devil of a blinding storm gave a foretaste of dust to dust. That was when they were marching past, but afterwards I inspected the Infantry at close quarters, taking a good look at each man and speaking to hundreds. Many had been at my inspections in their own country a year ago, but most were new hands who had never worn uniform till they 'listed for the war. The troops then marched back to Camp in mass of quarter columns—or rather swept by like a huge yellow cloud at the heart of which sparkled thousands of bayonets.
Next I reviewed the Artillery, Engineers and Cavalry; winding up with the overhaul of the supply and transport column. This took time, and I had to make the motor travel getting across twelve miles or so to inspect a mixed Division of Australians and New Zealanders at Heliopolis. Godley commanded. Great fun seeing him again. These fellows made a real good show; superb physique: numbers of old friends especially amongst the New Zealanders. Another scurry in the motor to catch the 4.15 for Alexandria. Tiring day if I had it in my mind to be tired, but this 30,000 crowd of Birdwood's would straighten up the back of a pacifist. There is a bravery in their air—a keenness upon their clean cut features—they are spoiling for a scrap! Where they have sprung from it is hard to say. Not in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth—no, nor in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland, did I meet specimens like unto these. The spirit of War has breathed its fires into their hearts; the drill sergeant has taken thought and has added one cubit to their stature.
D'Amade has just been to make me known to a couple of Frenchmen about to join my Staff. They seem to be nice fellows. The French have been here some days and they are getting on well. Hunter-Weston landed this morning; his first batch of transports are in the harbour. I am to see the French troops in four days' time; Hunter-Weston's 29th Division on the fifth day. Neither Commander has yet worked out how long it will take before he has reloaded his transports. They declare it takes three times as long to repack a ship loaded at haphazard as it would have taken to have loaded her on a system in the first instance. Six days per ship is their notion of what they can do, but I trust to improve a bit on that.
Hunter-Weston had written me a letter from Malta (just to hand) putting it down in black and white that we have not a reasonable prospect of success. He seemed keen and sanguine when we met and made no reference to this letter: so it comes in now as rather a startler. But it is best to have the black points thrust upon one's notice beforehand—so long always as I keep it fixed in the back of my mind that there was never yet a great thought or a great deed which was not cried down as unreasonable before the fact by a number of reasonable people!
30th March, 1915. Alexandria. Have just dictated a long letter to Lord K. in the course of which I have forced myself to say something which may cause the great man annoyance. I feel it is up to me to risk that. One thing—he knows I am not one of those rotters who ask for more than they can possibly be given so that, if things go wrong, they may complain of their tools. I have promised K. to help him by keeping my demands down to bedrock necessities. I make no demand for ammunition on the France and Flanders scale but—we must have some! There must be a depot somewhere within hail. Here is the crucial para.—
"I realise how hard up you must be for ammunition, but I hope the M.G.O. will have by now put in hand the building up of some reserves at our base in Alexandria. If our batteries or battalions now serving in France run short, something, at a pinch, can always be scraped together in England and issued to them within 24 hours. Here it would be a question of almost as many days, and, if it were to turn out that we have a long and severe struggle, with no reserves nearer us than Woolwich—well—it would not be pleasant! Moreover the number of howitzers, guns and rifles in France is so enormous that it is morally impossible they should all be hotly engaged at the same time. Thus they automatically form their own reserves. In other words, a force possessing only ten howitzers ought to have at least twice the reserves of a force possessing a hundred howitzers. So at least it seems to me."
In the same letter I tell him about "Birdwood's crowd" and of their splendid physique; their growing sense of discipline, their exceeding great keenness, and wind up by saying that, given a fair chance, they will, for certain, "render a very good account of themselves."
Confabs with d'Amade and Hunter-Weston. Hunter-Weston's "appreciation" of the situation at the Dardanelles is to be treated as an ad interim paper; he wrote it, he says now, without the fuller knowledge he is daily acquiring—knowledge which is tending to make him more sanguine. His stay at Malta and his talks with Officers there had greatly impressed him with the hardness of the nut we have to try and crack; so much so that his paper suggests an indefinite putting off of the attempt to throw open the Straits. I asked him if he had laid his view before K. in London and he said, No; that he had not then come to it and that he had not definitely come to it now.