We have dealt elsewhere with the prospects of a Turkish
advance on Egypt, but may note here that Friday's Daily Mail contains a Cairo telegram which states that some skirmishing took place on Wednesday in the vicinity of the eightieth milestone on the Suez Canal, about three miles north of Suez. A curious fact is that a dead Indian was picked up. It is presumed that he was a pilgrim captured at Jeddah and placed in the front of the battle, in order to prove how thoroughly the Turks are learn- ing the German military system. For ourselves, we do not attach much importance to this Suez incident We feel confident that the main advance is by El-Arieb. That was Napoleon's road, a road indeed which has sustained the drums and tramplings, not merely of three, but of a hundred invasions and retreats. If a roll call of the dead of the desert could be sounded, how mighty and how strange would be the assembled host The Sudanese infantry of the Egyptian monarchs of Isaiah's age, Jewish captives, the cavalry of Cambyses, Greek hoplites, French Crusaders, Turks and Mamelukes, Jacobins of the Terror, Egyptian Fellaheen of Mehemet Airs army —truly a motley crowd. With such dust will now mingle the dust of British, Australian, and Indian dead.
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