fluid assets through various channels beyond the reach of his sorrowing subjects and the Egyptian Government. When an official inventory was taken in Abdin Palace at the accession of the late Sultan Husein, it was ascertained that the famous inlaid and begemmed coffee-service, which, like our Crown jewels, was not supposed to leave the country, had been sent after the ex-Khedive to his new address—truly a man of parts. I have often wondered whether his Hunnish friends got him to disgorge by means of a forced loan or war-bonds, or something of that sort. If so, they achieved something notable, for he has left behind him, beside his liabilities, the name of being a difficult man to get money out of.

When the Turco-Teuton blade was actually drawn in Holy War I was down with enteric, which I had contracted while working in disguise among seditious circles in the slums of Old Cairo. I just convalesced in time to join the Intelligence Staff on the Canal the day before Jemal Pasha's army attacked. His German staff had everything provided for in advance with their usual thoroughness. From the documents and prisoners that came through our hands we learnt that the hotel in Cairo where the victors were to dine after their triumphant entry had actually been selected, and some enthusiasts went so far as to insist that the menu had been prepared. If so, they omitted to get the Canal Army on toast, and for want of this indispensable item the event fell through. All the same, it was a soldierly enterprise, and if the Senussis had invaded in force or the population risen behind us, as they hoped would be the case, the result might have been different.

As it was they put up a very good fight and their arrangements for getting across the Sinaitic desert were excellent. For the last ten miles they man-handled their pontoons to the edge of the Canal. These craft were marvels of lightness and carrying capacity, but, of course, no protection whatever against even a rifle-bullet, and they had not fully reckoned with the Franco-British naval flotilla, which proved a formidable factor.

The morning after the main fight a little Syrian subaltern passed through my hands. He had been slightly wounded in the leg and still showed signs of nervous shock, so I made him sit down with a cigarette while I questioned him. He had been in charge of a pontoon manned by his party and said that they had got halfway across the Canal in perfect silence when "the mouth of hell opened" and the pontoon was sinking in a swirl of stricken men amid a hail of projectiles. He and two others swam to our side of the Canal, where they surrendered to an Indian detachment.

Our Indian troops on the Canal were naturally a mark for pan-Islamic propaganda reinforced by Hindu literature of the Bande Mataram type,—a double-barrelled enterprise to bag both the great creeds of India. The astute propagandists had a pamphlet or two aimed at Sikhism, which they seemed to consider a nation, as they spoke of their national aspirations, though an elementary study of the subject might have taught them that it was a religious and secular movement originally intended to curb Moslem power in India during the sway of the later Moguls. Anyone but a Moslem can be a Sikh.

Naturally I was on the qui vive for signs of pan-Islamic activity on the enemy's side, and I questioned my little Syrian very closely to ascertain how far the movement was used as a driving force among the troops engaged against us. He, personally, had rather a grievance on the subject, for the Indian Moslems who took him had reproached him bitterly for fighting on the wrong side. "I fought," he said, "because it was my duty as an officer of the Ottoman Army. I know that men were invited to join as for a jihad, but we officers did not deceive ourselves. Par exemple, I think myself a better Moslem than any Turk, but what would you?" I consoled the little man while concealing my satisfaction at the feeling displayed against him. An extraordinarily heterogeneous collection of prisoners came dribbling through my hands directly after the Turks were repulsed. Most were practically deserters who had been forcibly enrolled, given a Mauser and a bandoleer, and told to go and fight for the Holy Places of Islam. As one of the more intelligent remarked, "If the Holy Places are really in danger, what are we doing down this way?"

They came from all over the Moslem world. There were one or two Russian pilgrims returning from Mecca to be snapped up by the military authorities at Damascus railway station when they got out of the pilgrim train from Medina. There were cabdrivers from Jerusalem, a stranded pilgrim from China, several Tripolitans who had been roped in on the Palestine seaboard while trying to get a passage home, a Moor who tried to embrace my feet when I spoke of the snow-crowned Atlas above Morocco City (Marraksh) and told him that he would be landed at Tangier in due course—Inshallah. Of course we released, and repatriated as far as we could, men who were not Ottoman subjects and had obviously been forced into service against us. A few days later, when Jemal Pasha's army was getting into commissariat difficulties out in the Sinaitic desert (for the Staff had relied on entering Egypt), we began to get the real Turks among our prisoners.

I was very curious to ascertain if they had been worked up with pan-Islamic propaganda or carried any of it on them, for there was not even a Red Crescent Koran on any of the Arabic-speaking prisoners. A search of their effects revealed a remarkable phase of propaganda. There was hardly any religious literature except a loose page or two of some pious work like the "Traditions of Muhammad," but there were quantities of rather crude (and very lewd) picture-cards portraying soldiers in Turkish uniform outraging and murdering nude or semi-nude women and children, while corpses in priestly garb, shattered crucifixes, and burning churches indicated the creed that was being so harried and gave the scene a stimulating background. From their appearance I should say these pictures were originally engraved to commemorate Balkan or Armenian atrocities, but their possessors, on being closely questioned, admitted that the impression conveyed to them was of the joyous licence which was to be theirs among the Frankish civilians after forcing the Canal. One Kurdish gentleman had among his kit fancy socks, knitted craftily in several vivid colours, also ornate slippers to wear in his promised palatial billet at Cairo. There were some odd articles among the kit of these Turkish prisoners, to wit, a brand-new garden thermometer, which some wag insisted was for testing the temperature of the Canal before immersion, and a lavatory towel looted from the Hejaz railway. Still, nothing was quite so remarkable as a white flag with a jointed staff in a neat, compact case which had been carried by a German officer. Among his papers was an indecent post-card not connected, I think, with propaganda of any sort, as it portrayed a bright-coloured female of ripe figure and Teutonic aspect, wearing a pair of long stockings and high-heeled shoes, and bore the legend "Gruss von München."

A certain coyness, or possibly an appreciation of their personal value, kept most of the German officers from actual contact with our line. Only one reached the Canal bank, and he is there still. The German touch, however, was much in evidence. There were detailed written orders about manning the pontoons, not to talk, cough, sneeze, etc., and for each man to move along the craft as far as feasible and then sit down. They seem to have relied entirely on surprise, and ignored the chance of its occurring on the wrong side