So far so good, but something more was needed. Did our immediate commanders grasp the fact that our strength in bare numbers as compared with a British Army Corps was 5400 bayonets short? Did they realise that our reinforcements were precarious, and had to come thousands of miles across the seas? They could not know what I did, viz. that a very large proportion of our reservists, which must form a great part of such reinforcements, were quite useless for European warfare, owing to the pernicious reserve system then prevailing in India. Could they tell that the drafts, before many months had gone by, would begin to consist of recruits enlisted immediately before or during the war? A former War Minister in England had once told me that in four months Britishers could be turned into good soldiers, fit to fight in Europe. Perhaps he was right; perhaps this great war has proved it; but “East is East and West is West,” and notwithstanding my admiration for the Indians and believing them to be first-class fighting material, I can positively assert that it is impossible to make good soldiers of them in four months or even in a much longer period. Education, temperament, the difference between having and not having a cause in the quarrel, must perforce be considered. From the day I left India I had revolved all these matters in my mind, and now the time had come when we must put our whole soul into the battle. The day of my arrival at St. Omer, the British Headquarters, was indeed one to be remembered. Asia had dropped into Europe; the descendants of Timour, of Guru Govind, of the ancient Hindus, had come to fight the Huns on the historic plains of Flanders. Seventy miles in a direct line from us lay the immortal field of Waterloo; seventy-five miles away were the cliffs of Dover. The man must have been carved out of wood who would not have rejoiced at his good fortune; the heart atrophied that did not beat the faster at the thought that he was given a chance, however humble, of taking his share in the greatest conflict of all times.