Dealing with a Secretary of State of Lord Kitchener's temperament, reticence of this kind did not work. Lord K. liked you to say what you thought without hesitation, and, once he knew you, he never resented your giving an opinion even uninvited if you did so tactfully. As for the personnel who constitute War Councils and their like, it is not the habit of the politician to hide his light under a bushel, nor to recoil from laying down the law about any matter with which he has a bowing acquaintance. That an expert should sit mute when his own subject is in debate, surprises your statesman profoundly. That the expert should not be brimming over with a didactic and confident flow of words when he has been invited to promulgate his views, confounds your statesman altogether. General Wolfe-Murray never seemed to succeed in getting on quite the proper terms either with his immediate superior, the War Minister, or yet with the members of the Government included in the War Council and the Dardanelles Committee; and it was cruel luck that, with so fine a record in almost all parts of the world to look back upon, this most meritorious public servant should towards the close of his career have found himself unwillingly thrust into a position for which, as he foresaw himself when he assumed it, he was not altogether well suited. Subsequent to returning from Russia, and very shortly after the loss of the _Hampshire_ with Lord Kitchener and his party, I came to be for some weeks unemployed, afterwards taking up a fresh appointment--one in connection with Russian supplies, which later developed into one covering supplies for all the Allies and to which reference will be made in a special chapter. But the result was that, as a retired officer, I ceased for the time being to be on the active list and became a gentleman at large. Thereby hangs a tale; because it was just at this juncture that I was asked by the Army Council to go into the question of papers which were to be presented to the House of Commons in connection with the Dardanelles Campaign. Badgered by inquisitive members of that assembly, Mr. Asquith had committed himself to the production of papers; and Mr. Churchill had got together a dossier dealing with his share in the affair, which was sent to me to consider, together with all the telegrams, and so forth, that bore on the operations and their prologue.