united in vain struggles against the overwhelming power of nature. Along the other sections of the lines, the men stood miserably in the trenches, soaked to the skin, and in places up to their waists in water. Then, of a sudden, the wind swung round to the north and fell upon the wrecked and inundated scene with icy blast. For nearly two days and nights snow descended in whirling blizzards, and two days and nights of bitter frost succeeded the snow. The surface of the pools and trenches froze thick. The men’s greatcoats, being soaked through with the rain, froze stiff upon them. Men staggered down from the lines numbed and bemused with the intensity of cold. They could neither hear nor speak, but stared about them like bewildered bullocks. The sentries and outposts in the advanced trenches could not pull the triggers of their rifles for cold. They saw the Turks standing up on their firing steps and gazing at them over the parapets, and still they did not fire. It was reported at the time that the General, knowing that the condition of the enemy was probably worse than ours, desired a general attack. But movement was hardly possible. Overcome by the common affliction, our men also stood up and gazed back at the Turks. Few can realise the suffering of those four days. [Illustration: ANZAC IN SNOW] [Sidenote: EFFECT OF THE BLIZZARD] As though to test their power of endurance up to the very last, the full weight of misery fell upon the 29th Division, detained at Suvla since their final battle of August 21. Of that Division’s celebrated battalions, the 2nd Royal Fusiliers (86th Brigade) suffered most, their sentries standing immovable at their posts until they froze to death, and being found afterwards watching from the parapet, rifle in hand. The dead in the IXth Army Corps alone numbered over 200. From the Peninsula about 10,000 sick had to be removed. Many were “frost-bitten”; many lost their limbs; some, their reason. It is probable that the Turks suffered even worse; for prisoners said their men had no blankets, no covering at all except their thin uniforms and frozen greatcoats. But an enemy’s suffering is small consolation for one’s own; nor throughout the campaign was the element of vengeful hatred of the Turk ever one of the impelling motives among our fighting men, whether British, Irish, Anzac, or Hindu.[232] This disastrous storm, though none raged again with such fury, may have hastened the approaching end; but the Cabinet’s decision was probably taken immediately after Lord Kitchener’s visit. On November 15, Mr. Winston Churchill, in resigning his office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster--an office, it is true, which afforded little scope for the activity of his restless interests--defended his conception of the Dardanelles Expedition in the House of Commons, and expressed a judgment which I believe will be the judgment of future time until the campaign fades from memory: