On the 24th November I attended my first conference at General Headquarters. All the Corps Commanders were present, and although I knew some of them and had casually met others at manœuvres which I had attended when on leave from India (and I may here add that every time I came home on leave I never missed attending manœuvres, British or foreign, as opportunity offered), I felt for the first time in France that I was a stranger. I heard as I came into the hall, “Who is that?” “He commands the Indians.” It was as if some foreign general had suddenly dropped into the sacred haunts of Whitehall in pre-war days. However, I was prepared for it. I knew that most of them would hold out the hand of welcome to our Indian soldiers, and it was satisfactory that at our first meeting I was able to tell the Commander-in-Chief the results of our fighting that very morning. Sir John French and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien congratulated me on the conduct of all ranks, and I was rather pleased than otherwise that I was not one of those present who might be referred to as Tom, Dick, or Harry. On the 26th November I wrote to G.H.Q. giving a statement of the strength of the Indian Corps which, including the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade, then numbered only 14,000 rifles or little over that of a British Division, and was reducing at the rate of about eighty a day and stating that I could receive no further reinforcements from India before the 5th December, when the Sirhind Brigade should rejoin from Egypt. In addition I pointed out that the British battalions averaged only 700 men each, a pitifully low one for work in this Corps. I laid stress on the fact that there were indications we might be again attacked, and that one Brigade would, before the arrival of reinforcements, have done forty-five days, and all the others thirty-five days actually in, or in support of, the trenches, with only scraps of such rest as could be arranged. I requested that under these conditions the Corps might be given a complete rest of a few days when the reinforcements arrived; gave full reasons why I considered it absolutely necessary, and suggested remedies for our shortage in numbers and for increasing them. One of these was the addition of Territorial battalions, and I may add that, although G.H.Q. did not at first appear to approve of this, I did get first two, and later a total of six, of these fine battalions, and of them I shall have much to say as I progress. I said plainly that unless my request was agreed to, the Corps would soon only be equivalent to a single Division.