He also said that at the beginning, when the _Bouvet_ and other boats were lost, there was nothing to do but push right on without looking back; that we should have squeezed through and that Constantinople would have been reduced by our guns, except for a lot of diplomatic delays beforehand and a lot of wobbling at the time; but that now there is no use worrying ourselves about it any more. We shall only lose men and ships and money and be obliged to go away in the end without having done anything. I repeat this as Plantat said it. But I omit his arguments, which you must understand better than I, on the _Auvergne_, where you get all the wireless news. This is the first time that Fourgues and I have heard anything serious about Eastern matters, for we have only the newspapers and the statements of official persons who all keep saying that Constantinople will be taken to-morrow. Ever since I began the Naval History you sent me, I have been saying to myself, as I read the accounts of the Admirals and Ambassadors of the old time, “What humbugs!” But I forgot that no one perceives this until one or two hundred years afterwards on searching the records, and that at the time they seemed to be “It.” Now, as I ponder and listen to men like Fourgues and Plantat, who are not easily fooled, I see clearly that in this war it is the same old business. The more newspapers there are, the less one knows of the truth. Of course, it’s not the _Pamir_ that will win the war, but I’ll be hanged if ever we know why or for what reason they send us here, there and then away again! When we are in one place, the authorities say that there is evidently a bit of a wash-out round there, but that it’s all going to straighten out soon, and that, anyway, everything is going well everywhere else. We are reassured. And then the _Pamir_ arrives somewhere else--and she gets about a good deal, as you can testify--and we hear the same old story. What does it mean? They are a lot of liars and Tommy and Jack are the ones who suffer! And who can think that everything is going for the best in face of a job like ours after Gallipoli? I wrote you on another page how that brigade without guns was shelled for two days. The coast is as hard as marble, the Turkish guns are on the heights, and there is no way of sheltering yourself from them. When they had got the range and things began to fall too close, there was nothing to do but move away if you could, since you can’t stop those shells with your hand. So there were not a few wounded, without counting those who had caught fever or colic before they had been there forty-eight hours and were half dead. And not a hospital-ship in the roads!