Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 671
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[Page 671]
17-11-15 11 p.m.
Train loads of wounded are again rolling into this part of the world a signal to the fighting along the littoral of the Aegean sea. It has been British so far, but today it was Frenchmen, 'tis said from Servia.
What a nuisance this is? Those who are killed occupy, for the most part, in the foreign lands nameless graves, the most severely wounded die soon thereafter, the deeply injured are dealt with on the hospital ships or sent to England, the minor cases for the most part coming to Egypt, Cairo being at the periphery of the whole system.
Daily is it becoming more apparent that the safety of our Empire lies in our capacity to fight well with strong arms against all foes. There is in this war such factors great as never before confronted powers, and to the best informed there can hardly be a clear outlook to the end.
Should the British government keep on disintegrating and totter to a fall, trouble will truly be ours. From recent reports to hand doubt has arisen in the minds of some as to whether Lord Kitchener has not been shunted, for reasons unknown to all outside the charmed circles of inner officialdom, & following upon the resignation of Churchill, one wonders what next is in the wind, and surprise would not follow upon the wayward purposes, be they what they may, coming upon the horizon of politics and war.
Bonar Law has thought it necessary to tell the people of the Dominions that they must not take too seriously the portraits of disunion mongst the rulers or the people of Britain; this very disclaimer is a warning that all may not be right, oft such denial is but a prelude to the thing denied. Let us hope that precedent may not in this case be but a misleading jade. It were sad indeed, portending much evil for us if at this time of national crisis the Captains and the helmsmen of the ship of state had to be changed. What think you?
Yet out if it might arise the strong man for whom we all have been looking for a twelve month. His
[Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) was First Lord of the Admiralty in the early part of WW1 until the failure of the Dardanelles Campaign resulted in his resignation his post and, in the middle of November 1915, from parliament.
Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), known as Bonar Law, British Conservative politician, became secretary for the colonies in the wartime coalition government led by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith on 25 May 1915.]