In any criticism of H.M. Government's action in connection with the Antwerp affair (as regards the prosecution of the war in the field, H.M. Government for all practical purposes then meant Mr. Asquith, Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Churchill) it must be allowed that the situation at the time was a most complicated and perplexing one. Lord French in his book makes it clear that, while he objected strongly to the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry Division being sent to the Belgian coast under the independent command of Sir H. Rawlinson instead of their being sent to Boulogne and placed under his own orders, he did not wish Antwerp to be abandoned. Lord Kitchener had, as a matter of fact, seized upon Antwerp as a means of inducing reluctant colleagues to assent to the United Kingdom being denuded of these regular troops and their being hurried to the theatre of war. Knowing what we know now, it seems almost certain that, no matter where the fresh troops from England turned up or whose orders they were under, the Belgian army and the Naval Division would have been lost for good and all had they not cleared out of the fortress when they did. The verdict of history will probably be that both H.M. Government and the commander of the British Expeditionary Force misread the situation, that H.M. Government's misreading was very much the graver of the two, that there was excuse for such misreadings when the inevitable fog of war is taken into consideration, and that the Germans threw away their chances and bungled the business worst of all. A few days after Antwerp had fallen, and a week or so before that tremendous conflict which has come to be known as the First Battle of Ypres was fairly launched, Sir C. Douglas, who for a long time past had not been in the best of health and upon whom the strain had been telling severely during the previous two and a half months, did not make his appearance at the office one morning. He had struggled on with splendid grit and determination almost to the very end, for he died within a few days, a victim of devotion to duty and of overwork. His place was taken by Sir J. Wolfe-Murray. CHAPTER III LORD KITCHENER'S START