Letters from Mesopotamia in 1915 and January, 1916 Part 7

As to being pessimistic about the future, I think our mistake was to underestimate Germany's striking force. You must always keep the German calculations in mind as well as our hopes, and you will see that the former have been falsified quite as much as the latter--in fact much more. They calculated--and not without having worked it all out thoroughly--that their superior armaments and mobility would enable them (1) to smash France within a few weeks, (2) to manoeuvre round the Russians and defeat their armies in detail till they sued for peace, (3) to dominate the continent and organise it for the settlement with England. We ought to be devoutly thankful that (1) failed: but Instead we a.s.sumed that the worst was over and that (2) would fail as signally. As a matter of fact (2) looks like failing after all; but it has been near success for much longer than (1) was and consequently has achieved more. But if you remember, both Papa and K. said at the outset it would be a three years' war: which clearly meant that they expected us to get the worst of it the first year, equalise matters the second year and not be decisively victorious till the third year.

Luly has plenty of friends at Agra and is really very happy there, so you may be at ease about him.

Many thanks for your offer to send us things for the cold. But the danger is overlapping, so I will refer you to Mamma, to whom I wrote about it some time back: and I hope _she_ is combining with Mrs.

Bowker of Winchester (wife of 1/4th Colonel) who is organising the sending of things to the battalion as a whole. You might mention to Mamma that, in addition to the articles I've told her of, newspapers and magazines would be very acceptable.

AMARAH.

_October_ 17, 1915.

TO N.B.

Many thanks for your little letter wishing me G.o.dspeed out here, it has only just followed me on, and reached me soon after your letter of September 12th in which you ask me about Persia. I a.s.sure you I know less of what is happening in Persia--though we can see the Persian hills from here--than you do. Your letter was my first news of the Consul General's death, which I have seen since in _The Times_ as well. All I know is that German gold working on the chronic lawlessness has made the whole country intolerably disturbed. The Government is powerless. The disorder is mainly miscellaneous robbery: in the north there is a good deal of hostility to Russia, but nothing approaching organised war or a national rising. In May Arab raiders threatened Ahwaz where the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's pipe-line runs; and at the Persian Government's request a force, including 1/4 Hants, went up there and dispersed them. Then in August the unrest in Bushire got acute, and two officers were killed in an ambush. So they sent a force to occupy it. I don't know how large it was; I imagine two battalions or so and a few guns. Since then I've heard nothing. Mark Sykes, whom I saw about October 6th, said he thought things were quieter there now.

For the Persian situation generally, up to last year, the best account I've seen is in Gilbert Murray's pamphlet on "The Foreign Policy of Sir E. Grey." There's no doubt these weak corrupt semi-civilised States are a standing temptation to intriguers like the Germans and so a standing danger to peace. That is going to be the crux here too, after the war. If I make up my mind and have the energy, I will write my views more fully on the subject in a week or two.

There is a lull here and no news. But there seems no doubt that we are going to push up to Baghdad. The enemy are now in their last and strongest position, only twenty miles from B.: and we are concentrating against it. Undoubtedly large reinforcements are on their way up, but we don't know how many. I expect you may look for news from these parts about November 7th.

It is getting quite cold. Yesterday the wind began again and we all had to take to our overcoats, which seems absurd as it was over 80.

To-day it was only 74 indoors all the morning and we sat about in "British warms." And the nights seem Arctic. To get warm last night I had to get into my flea-bag and pile a sheet, a rug and a kaross on top of that: it was 70 when I went to bed and went down to 62 at dawn. As it goes down to 32 later on, I foresee we shall be smothered in the piles of bed-clothes we shall have to acc.u.mulate.

I continue to play football and ride intermittently. I believe I could mount a middle-sized English horse without serious inconvenience now.

I have begun to try to pick up a little Arabic from the functionary known as the Interpreter.

AMARAH.

_October_ 18, 1915.

TO M.H.

I'm so glad the saris are what you wanted. If you pay 5 into my a/c at Childs, it will be simplest.

Everyone--except I suppose the victims--seems to have regarded the Zeppelin raid as a first-cla.s.s entertainment. I think they do us vastly more good than harm, but it would be a satisfaction to bag one.

So poor Charles Lister was killed after all. He is a tremendous loss.

And ----, who could have been spared much better, has been under fire in Gallipoli for months without being touched.

I agree with Charlie's sentiments. What is so desperately trying about the Army system is that mere efflux of time puts a man who may be, and generally is, grossly stupid, in command of much more intelligent people, whose lives are at his bungling mercy. If Napoleon, who won his Italian campaign at 27, had been in the British Army he wouldn't have become a Major till 1811. It is an insane system which no business would dream of adopting. Yet it wouldn't do to abolish it, or you destroy the careers of 4/5 of your Officers. The reform I should like would be to make every third promotion in any regiment compulsorily regardless of seniority.

I am having a few lessons in Arabic now, but it is a much more difficult language than Hindustani, and the only available "Munshi" is the regimental interpreter who can't read and speaks very broken English, and the only available book deals with cla.s.sical Egyptian and Syrian Arabic, which are to the Arabic of to-day as Latin, French and Italian are to Spanish. So my acquirements are likely to be limited.

There is absolutely no news here. Reinforcements are said to be coming but have not arrived. The next show should come off about November 10th.

AMARAH.

_October_ 11, 1915.

TO R.K.

I have just seen in the _Times_ that Charles Lister died of his wounds. It really is heart-breaking. All the men one had so fondly hoped would make the world a little better to live in seem to be taken away. And Charles was a spirit which no country can afford to lose. I feel so sorry for you too: he must have been very dear to you personally. How the world will hate war when it can pause to think about it.

I had quite a cheerful letter from Foss this mail. I wonder he wasn't more damaged, as the bullet seems to have pa.s.sed through some very important parts of him. I am rather dreading the lists which are bound to follow on our much-vaunted advance of three weeks ago. As for the Dardanelles, it is an awful tragedy. And now with Bulgaria against us and Greece obstructed by her King, success is farther off than ever.

No, Luly is not with me: I was the only officer with the draft. As for impressions of our surroundings they are definite but not always communicable.

If this neighbourhood could certainly be identified with Eden, one could supply an entirely new theory of the Fall of Adam. Here at Amarah we are 200 miles by river from the sea and 28ft. above sea level. Within reach of the water anything will grow: but as the Turks levied a tax on trees the date is the only one which has survived.

There are little patches of corn and fodder-stuff along the banks, and a few vegetable gardens round the town. Otherwise the whole place is a desert and as flat as this paper: except that we can see the bare brown Persian mountains about forty miles off to the N.N.E.

The desert grows little tufts of p.r.i.c.kly scrub here and there, otherwise it is like a brick floor. In the spring it is flooded, and as the flood recedes the mud cakes into a hard crust on which a horse's hoof makes no impression; but naturally the surface is very rough in detail, like a muddy lane after a frost. So it is vile for either walking or riding.

The atmosphere can find no mean between absolute stillness--which till lately meant stifling heat--and violent commotion in the form of N.W.

gales which blow periodically, fogging the air with dust and making life almost intolerable while they last. These gales have ceased to be baking hot, and in another month or two they will be piercingly cold.

The inhabitants are divided into Bedouins and town-Arabs. The former are nomadic and naked, and live in hut-tents of reed matting. The latter are just like the ill.u.s.trations in family Bibles.

What I _should_ be grateful for in the way of literature is if you could find a portable and readable book on the history of these parts.

I know it's rather extensive, but if there are any such books on the more interesting periods you might tell Blackwell to send them to me: I've got an account there. My Gibbon sketches the doings of the first four Caliphs: but what I should like most would be the subsequent history, the Baghdad Caliphs, Tartar Invasion, Turkish Conquest, etc.

For the earlier epochs something not too erudite and very popular would be most suitable. Mark Sykes tells me he is about to publish a Little Absul's History of Islam, but as he is still diplomatising out here I doubt if it will be ready for press soon.

As for this campaign, you will probably know more about the Kut battle than I do. Anyway the facts were briefly these. The Turks had a very strongly entrenched position at Kut, with 15,000 men and 35 guns. We feinted at their right and then outflanked their left by a night march of twelve miles. (Two brigades did this, while one brigade held them in front.) Then followed a day's hard fighting as the out-flankers had to storm three redoubts successfully before they could properly enfilade the position. Just as they had done it the whole Turkish reserve turned up on their right and they had to turn on it and defeat it, which they did. But by that time it was dark, the troops were absolutely exhausted and had finished all their water. n.o.body could tell how far the river was, so the only thing to do was to bivouac and wait for daylight. In the night the Turks cleared out and got away. If we could have pressed on and seized their bridge, we should have almost wiped them out: but it was really wonderful we did as much as we did under the circ.u.mstances. Our casualties were 1243, but only 85 killed. The Turkish losses are not known: we captured about 1400 and 12 of the guns: we buried over 400, but don't know how many the local Arabs buried. Our pursuit was delayed by the mud-banks on the river, and the enemy was able to get clear and reform in their next position, about ninety miles further north. We are now concentrating against them and it is authoritatively reported that large reinforcements have been sent from India. This means they intend going for Baghdad. It seems to me rash: but I suppose there is great need to a.s.sert our prestige with the Moslem world, even at the expense of our popularity: for B. is a fearfully sacred place.

I should also like from Blackwell's a good and up-to-date map of these parts, _i.e._ from the Troad to the Persian Gulf.

AMARAH.

_October_ 21, 1915.

TO HIS MOTHER.

It is hard from here to be patient with the Government for not taking a bolder line all round and saying frankly what they want. They are omnipotent if they would only lead. Now we hear that Carson has resigned. I can't hitch that on to the conscription crisis, yet it doesn't say it is from ill-health: it is a puzzle.

Life is as uneventful as usual here. I have nearly finished _The Woman in White_. It is really one of the best thrillers I've read, and Count Fosco more than fulfils my expectations: I wonder if Haldane keeps white mice. I have also finished Tennyson. I have read him right through in the course of the year, which is much the best way to read a poet, as you can follow the development of his thoughts. His mind, to my thinking, was profound but not of very wide range, and strangely abstract. His only pressing intellectual problems are those of immortality and evil, and he reached his point of view on those before he was forty. He never advances or recedes from the position summarised in the preface to "In Memoriam," d. 1849. The result is that his later work lacks the inspiration of restlessness and discovery, and he tends to put more and more of his genius into the technique of his verse and less into the meaning. The versification is marvellous, but one gets tired of it, and he often has nothing to say and has to spin out commonplaces in rich language. One feels this even in the "Idylls of the King," which are the best of his later or middle long efforts: they are artificial, not impulsive; Virgil, not Homer; Meredith calls them 'dandiacal flutings,' which is an exaggeration.

But I can quite see how irritating Tennyson must be to ardent sceptics like Meredith and the school which is now in the ascendant. To them a poet is essentially a rebel, and Tennyson refused to be a rebel. That is why they can't be fair to him and accuse him of being superficial.

I think that a very shallow criticism of him. He saw and states the whole rebels' position--"In Memoriam" is largely a debate between the Sh.e.l.ley-Swinburne point of view and the Christian. Only he states it so abstractly that to people familiar with Browning's concrete and humanised dialectic it seems cold and artificial. But it's really his sincerest and deepest thought, and he deliberately rejects the rebel position as intellectually and morally untenable: and adopts a position of aquiescent agnosticism on the problem of evil subject to an unshakeable faith in immortality and the Love of G.o.d. This is a red rag to your Swinburnes. That is why I asked you to send me Swinburne, as I want to get to the bottom of his position. Sh.e.l.ley's I know, and it is, in my opinion a much more obvious, easier, and more superficial one than Tennyson's: besides being based on a distorted view of Christianity. Sh.e.l.ley in fact wanted to abolish Christianity as the first step towards teaching men to be Christian.

Of all the agnostics, Meredith is the one that appeals to me most: but I've not read his poetry, which I believe has much more of his philosophy in it than his novels have.