At Ypres with Best-Dunkley | Page 5

the line for a few days, but by the time your reply to this reaches me I shall be there...."
My diary of that same day, May 28, records: "To Paris Plage in the evening." And my letter written home the following day proceeds as follows:
"After writing home yesterday I walked down town, and took a car to the seaside place opposite. The country through which the car went was pretty, and the seaside place quite passable; all right in peace-time I should think. Unfortunately the last car back leaves at 8.15, so I came by it....
"To-day, Royal Oak Day, we have spent on the 'bull ring' again....
"I have seen David Morgan (who was in the same billet with me when we were privates together in the 29th Royal Fusiliers at Oxford, in January, 1916) this evening. I managed to find the C.R.E. offices where he works. He saw me, and came out to me. I went inside. He is very cosy there, in a nice new hut. He was working at a drawing. His hours daily are from 9 in the morning until 8 in the evening; but, as I had come, he managed to get a pass to go down town with me this evening. We therefore had a walk. He looks very well with his stripe, and he seems to be having a good time. He desires to be remembered to you both. I left him at about 8. Then I had dinner at the Officers' Club, but was not struck by it....
"It is now 'lights out,' so I had better stop."
"May 30th.
" ... We spent the day on the 'bull ring' as usual. It has been fine. We have not, I am thankful to say, had any rain at all since I landed in France on Saturday last.
"This evening I have spent parading the streets of the town. I have become heartily 'fed up' with the dirty antediluvian place. Morgan actually, after nine solid months of residence here, says that he likes it and the people. I could not have imagined that there were many of the latter whose acquaintance would be particularly charming; but he speaks upon the authority of long experience!"
I also wrote down the following note at that time while I was still in étaples:
"One noticeable thing to-day (May 30) has been the number of men and transport which have been passing through on the trains all day and going north, obviously coming from one part of the Front and going round this way, to avoid the observation of the Germans, to another. We are massing troops round the great city where great battles have been fought before--concentrating for a great offensive. So there will very soon be a third battle of Ypres, and I expect I shall be present on the occasion myself. It should be very exciting. In the two former battles we were on the defensive; this time we shall be on the offensive. And I must say--pessimistic as I am on all Western offensives--this idea holds forth a faint ray of hope of success. I have always held that there is only one way in which the war can be won in the West--by a flanking offensive in the North. This is not entirely the type of flanking movement I would myself recommend, but it is an attempt at the idea--and that is something. It may prove a semi-fiasco like the awful tragedies of Neuve Chapelle, Loos, the Somme, and Arras; but it might possibly turn out a success. Then it would be simply a case of _veni, vidi, vici_!"
That memorandum is particularly interesting in view of the events which followed, and the story which this narrative will tell. I always held very strong-views on the conduct of the war. I was not one of those who looked upon this great bid for world power on the part, of the German Empire as purely a campaign on the Western Front, all other campaigns in other corners of the globe being mere "side shows." I was always a firm and consistent supporter of the "East End" school of strategy. I looked upon the war as a World War and, since the decisive Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, when the German hopes of complete and crushing victory in the West were shattered (which decision was still more finally confirmed at First Ypres), as primarily a south-eastern war. I held with that great statesman and strategist, Mr. Winston Churchill, that Constantinople was "the great strategic nerve-centre of the world war." I realized that a deadlock had been reached on the Western Front, and that nothing was to be hoped from any frontal attack there; and I also realized that Germany held Constantinople and the Dardanelles--the gateway to the East. And the