Late in the fall of 1914, a hastily scribbled card reached me in California. “Things looming large at last,” it read. “Am off for the ‘P.G.’[1] to-morrow with big work in prospect. Will write when I can get anything of interest passed.” The card was post-marked Karachi, and dated but a few days previous to Turkey’s official entry into the war. I took it, therefore, that the Indian Government had discounted this action, and that at the moment the Turks opened hostilities by bombarding the Russian coast, F----, doubtless with considerable forces, was on the way to his “sphere.” [1] Persian Gulf. The promised letter was long delayed, and when it came bore the post-mark Bassorah, not in the pothook Turkish characters, but in plain English letters, while the blue two-and-a-half anna stamp of India appeared in the corner formerly sacred to the narrow, pink, half-gummed one-piastre sticker which you had often to affix with a pin to keep it from falling off. Thus ran the letter:-- “I am writing you this from the one-time home port of ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ which, I am rejoiced to say, has been under our flag for some days. The Turks had considerable forces of seasoned troops here,--doubtless you remember how much of the old town was taken up by barracks,--but, evidently because they did not expect us so soon, or in such force, had done little in the way of outpost defence. This, coupled with the facts that our naval strength was overwhelming and the river very ineffectively mined, made what might have been an operation of tremendous difficulty comparatively easy. The guns of our cruisers outranged those of the old forts at the mouth of the Shat-el-Arab, and, with sweepers working ahead of them, the light-draught gunboats peppered so hotly those dense palm groves which fringe the river banks that we had little difficulty in fighting our way through them without great loss. “Co-operating with the advance up the river, our main force was landed above Koweit and marched across the open desert to attack Bassorah on the west, threatening the rear of the Turkish positions on the left bank. Here the Turk could have made us no end of trouble had he been in sufficient force, for the lowlands were partly inundated and a defence of the practicable routes could have been made very effective.