“No one knows our final destination up to date, but I fancy we will be in India for a couple of months at least, and then go on. I am looking forward to seeing India awfully, and hope we stay there for a short time at any rate.... I have enjoyed the voyage very much, but am just getting bored with it to-day, and want to see a paper and hear the war news: of course we have had none for over a week. This is a topping ship, but we have come along very slowly to save coal. They feed us very well. We had to run for it once in the Mediterranean, but we did not know it at the time, only guessed. It has been very much too rough to play cricket, but to-day it is much calmer. We’ve had two frightfully heavy rainstorms. Only two horses have died, and both mine are all right. I sang several times after dinner, and on the whole I think the time has flown. I am longing to hear about the Western Front. There is an excellent library on board, and I must have read twenty books, &c.” _Bombay, Royal Bombay Yacht Club--July 17._--“This is an extraordinary place, and awfully pretty by night; Daniell (the Staff Captain) gave a large dinner-party here last night, and very nice it was too. I went to the Cathedral yesterday evening after a very busy day, and this morning I have been rushing round shopping. You hardly see two people dressed alike here. This is a ripping Club, and we are all honorary members, Indian Expeditionary Force (D). To-day’s paper tells us a little about the part played by what would have been us in the West!” The hope of staying a short time and seeing India was not to be fulfilled. The state of affairs in Mesopotamia admitted of no delay, and it was soon known that the Regiment was to embark at once for Basra. It was to be carried in two vessels, the _Islanda_ and _Chilka_, the former taking “A” and “D” Squadrons, less one troop of “D,” under Captain Eve, and the latter the Headquarters and remainder of the Regiment under Colonel Richardson. By the 19th of July both ships had sailed. CHAPTER IX. MESOPOTAMIA. The campaign in which the Thirteenth Hussars were now to share was of great importance to England, and not without importance to the decision of the world-war. It may be well to say something here on the subject. The designs of Germany in bringing about, after many years of elaborate preparation, the conflict of 1914, were not fully understood until they were laid bare in Chéradame’s book, ‘The German Plot Unmasked,’ which was published in 1916, with an Introduction by Lord Cromer. Though England was the greatest of Asiatic powers, and more concerned in the march of events in the East than any other nation of Europe, except possibly Russia, she had to learn from a Frenchman how her Eastern Empire was threatened by Germany--just as she had formerly had to learn from an American sailor, though she was the greatest of maritime nations, the influence of sea-power upon History.