"ALLENBY'S FINAL TRIUMPH."
ITo THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sus,—May I protest against an injustice, no doubt uninten- tional, done in your notice of .4llenby's Final Triumph, by Mr. Massey? You say : "lie emphasizes the fact that Lord Allenby had to part with fifty thousand of his veteran British infantry and to replace them by raw Indian recruits." This is hardly fair to the Indian battalions of the 7th Division, all of which had served in Mesopotamia, the 1st Guides being the newest comers to the division, all the other battalions having taken part in the operations of the winter 1916-1917 in Mesopotamia, and the Guides in the Tekrit operations. I believe also that the battalions of the 3rd Division had a similar record, but writing from memory cannot be certain.—I am, [Mr. Massey stated the facts, which deserve to be better known. It is true that the 3rd (Lahore) and the 7th (Meerut) Division had served in France and in Mesopotamia. But the 10th, 53rd, and 60th Divisions had to part with nearly all their British battalions, which went to France, and to replace them with newly raised Indian battalions. Further, She 75th Division, constituted in 1918, was composed mainly of new Indian battalions. We may assume that the 3rd (Lahore) and 7th (Meerut) had to fill their much depleted ranks with drafts from India. Thus there may well have been 50,000 raw Indian recruits in the summer of 1918. Lord Allenby refers in his despatches to the need for training these troops, who behaved extremely well after a few months in Palestine. The full details are given in the excellent Advance of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, published in London by Mr. Hugh Rees. —ED. Spectator.]
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