LAND A N D W A 1 1'. R 
January 13, 1916, 
Irom the beginning, it was, from tlie standpoint of 
national strategy, a sorr\- nndertaking from first to 
last, redeemed only by brilliant generalship, by 
heroic fighting and by the amazing service by the 
seamen. 
A PERSONAL NOTE. 
It was only the other day that I heard the 
news of a naval ofticer being killed in Ciallipoli, 
Commander George Gipps, who was associated 
with me in my work from 1910 till 191 2. 
Shortly after he rejoined he was sent to China 
as second in command of Newcastle. When war 
broke out he was detailed for special work in the 
far East. Triumph, not at that time com- 
missioned, was at once liastily got ready for sea, 
and Gipps joined as Senior Lieutenant Com- 
mander. He served through all the operations 
of the attack on Tsing Tau, and was constantly 
in action. In February Triumph joined up with 
Sir Sackville ("arden's fleet off Gallipoli. How 
often she was in action altogether I do not know, 
but it must have been nearer thirty than twenty 
times. In all these affairs Gipps distinguished 
himself greatly. His knowledge of gunnery was 
almost unique, and the new problems of fire control 
which bombardments presented, insoluble as they 
actually were, came as near being solved by him 
as they could be. He was in Triumph when she 
went down, and the small loss of hfe was a proof 
of how thorough had been his work as an executive 
officer. When he had lost his shiphcvelunteered 
to build and equip a heavy battery for. Hellcs, 
and remained in command of it for some time. 
The battery was then turned over to the army 
and Gipps was detailed to prepare a naval siege 
train, a business which entailed much preparation 
in Egypt. The failure at Suvla left the siege train 
without an object and Gipps became N.T.O. at 
Anzac. He was one of the few who was present 
first at the landing and then at the evacuation of 
that much-contested area. 
There have been few men of more brilliant 
promise. He got every first that a sub-lieutenant 
could get and won the earliest possible promotion 
to lieutenant's rank. When he specialised in 
gunnery at Whale Island he passed so brilliantly 
that he was selected tor the special course at" 
Greenwich, and got an easy first in one of the, 
most . exacting mathematical ordeals there is. 
But no one who knew him, either in his pro- 
fessional work or in private life, would have taken 
him primarily for a student. Brimful of energy, 
activity, enterprise and initiative, he was crazily 
fond of sport, rode to hounds with the hardest 
and was a lirst-class slujt, and in working for a 
private firm was as indefatigable as he had been 
when gunnery lieutenant of a battleship. Gipps 
had a kind of fury for getting things done in the 
way they should be done, and his friends in the 
Navy — and no man had more— sometimes wondered 
whether what seemed a sort of ungovernable im- 
patience with those who were slower witted, 
slower footed, slower handed than himself, could 
ever be sufficiently got under to make him a 
real leader. No man is a great leader unless he 
has the gift of making all those around him work 
towards his aim as a single whole-hearted unit. 
Organisation is after all only a long word for the 
art of making others understand what we want, 
training them how to do it, arid making them wish 
to do it in our way. You cannot attain these 
objects unless you win their affection as well as 
their respect and admiration, and affection is not 
won unless you are tender to all faults that are not 
those of heart and spirit. Nelson, the greatest 
of all organisers, owed his success to the recognition 
of these simple truths. 
His friends, I say, sometimes wondered 
whether George would ever learn the " long- 
suflering " essential to such success, but I take 
it from Ins ' admirable war record and its recog- 
nition in the promotions last July, that, once 
faced with the real thing, he learned this lesson 
just as easily ias he learned every other. If he was 
sometimes impatient and rough spoken to sub- 
ordinates, the least cjuick witted must have recog- 
nised the generosity of his spirit, and that, after 
all, in nothing was he so exacting as in his example. 
Death has taken him as I think he would have 
preferred to die, and once more it is his example 
that is his sternest legacy to those that follow him. 
God rest his gallant soul. 
ARTHUR POLLEN. 
A PLAYER IN THE GREAT GAME. 
By Lewis R. Freeman. 
{All who- have read " Kim " will remember 
Mr. Kipling's description of the Great Game. 
Persons unacquainted 'with India sometimes deem 
it mere fiction, tut this account from the pen of an 
American journalist will show how the Great Game 
was played in Mesopotamia only three years ago.] 
I had noted on several occasions tlie surprising 
amount of detailed information concerning 
.\rabia and the Lower Tigro-Euphrates Valley 
displayed by certain Anglo-Indian militarv 
uHicers whom I encountered at Peshawar, Quetta and 
other points along the North-Western Border during my 
visit of 1911-12, b\it no adequate e.xplanation of how 
they came to be so informed was vouchsafed until my 
friend. Captain Landers' (I will call him by that nam'j 
because it carries no suggestion of his real one) succumbed 
to the influence of the seductive atmosphere that broods 
on spring nights over the storied " Iran's Sea," lifted the 
mask of his reserve and took me into his confidence for 
one memorable and magic half hour. 
1 had played through a Bengal tennis tournament 
with L^nd' rs, followed the cheetah and shot panther with 
him in Jammu, and circled in his company the big bend 
of the Upper Indus ; but never until the "night that our 
old British India Coaster lay oft the Shat-cl-.Arab bar 
waiting for the turn of the tide to run up to Basra, did 
1 hear him speak of the things that were really next hii- 
heart. .\ lounging chair, a pipe and a tropical sea are 
conducive, to confidences the world over, but the com- 
bination is niver so compelling as on the deck of a Persian 
(iulf Mail Packet, with a crisp slice of new moon setting 
behind the date palms, the waves lip-lapping under the 
stern, the whine of Arab pipes welling up from the waist, 
and the half-guessed odours of goats, camels, musk and 
rugs mingling intlu^ mjlk-warm off-shore breeze. At any 
rate. Landers yielded' to the.intluence, and I, as a conse- 
quence, w^ds granted 'transient vision of the outer strands 
of the previsionai-y weh Britain was weaving beyond the 
marches of India against the menace to come. 
" For the best part of the last live years," he began 
suddenly after a long spell of silence, "I have been coming 
to Arabia and ^lesopptamia on ' language study.' In all 
that time I haVe no^ been back to England, and I am 
almost a straixger to the officers of my own regiment. 
-My speech. arid liientgir processes are alreadv more those 
of the Arab than the white man, and, what with sunlight 
