L A X D A N D W A T E R . 
January 13, 1916. 
Seba, which is the Beersheba of the Bible. It is 
the extreme southern limit of the habitable land, 
and is upon the last continuous source of super- 
ficial water supply, the Wady-es-Seba. Southward 
and eaiitward from the mouth of the valley on 
which Beersheba stands opens that desert region, 
Et-tih, or the Sinaitic Desert, which has through- 
out human history formed the principal obstacle 
to an invasion of Egyi)t. 
The water supply therein is exceedingly 
scanty. Upon an organisation and proper use of 
it has dejjendod throughout history the advance 
of armies from lCg\pt into Asia or Asia into Egj'pt. 
Apart from this difficulty of water supply there 
arises as Egypt is approached a difficulty of 
ground. The Eastern portion of the. Desert is for 
the greater part hard. Good going is not so much 
cut up by differences of level as to pre\'ent roads 
"being engineered without too much difficulty, 
but the belt near the sea, and so round by the west 
to the Isthmus of Suez e\'ery where along the east 
of the Canal itself, is a surface formation of drift 
sand which is, after marsh, the worst obstacle to 
modern construction. This is particularly the case 
with the belt, a\eraging o\er thirty miles wide, 
which lies immediately to the east of the Canal 
from Kantara (the bridge) right down to Suez itself. 
Tlie railway through Palestine is, we believe, 
completed as far as Beersheba. at which point has 
already begun the accumulation of stores which 
will make it the base of any campaign directed 
against the Canal. To this I shall return in a 
moment. 
DIGRESSION ON A FUNCTION 
OF THE CENSORSHIP. 
My readers will, I hope, permit me at this 
point to digress for a moment upon an aspect of 
the censorship which has been greatly misunder- 
stood. It is frequently said that we should only 
keep silent upon points which might inform the 
enemv and that there is no sense in forbidding the 
])ublication of matter on which he is alread\' 
informed. But this is an error. It is often just 
as important to prevent the enemy knowing how 
much you know about his plans as it is to prevent 
his knowing things which he as vet ignores about 
yourself. 
To take a simple tactical ni^tance. The 
enemy in an attempt to outflank you detaches a 
certain body from his force and sends it round the 
end of your line to catch you unawares. While 
his force is on the march it is, if the flanking 
movement be a wide one, in peril of being cut off 
bv vou should you liave wind of the movement. 
Should he know that you have heard of his de- 
taching this force, should he become aware of 
your being informed while he still had time to go 
back, he would, of course, go back ; becau-;e to go 
forward under such circumstances would mean 
the cutting of his detachment's communciations 
and its destruction. So long as he thinks you 
ignorant of his movement and of the road it has 
taken, so long he believes himself in safety. 
If, as a fact, you are aware all the time of that 
movement and of the road it has taken, every 
day that he advances and every moment of his 
advance puts him into greater peril and gives you 
an increasing chance of cutting him off. Under 
such circumstances it is clearly imperative for 
the' commander upon your side to prevent any 
news being jniblished of the enemy's flanking 
movement, not because it would inform the cnemv 
with regard to that movement, which he knows 
in far greater detail than you can, but because if 
he learns in time that you do know it he can save 
himself from destruction, whereas if he cannot 
measure the weight of your information he may 
very well walk into the trap and be destroyed. 
The whole of war is full of opportunities of 
this kind in which it is just as essential to keep 
one's information upon the enemy private as 
it is necessary to prevent the ei'.emy having 
information upon one's own movements. The 
authorities are therefore amply justified in keeping 
silence as they have done so far upon the extent 
and nature of the enemy's preparations in Palestine 
and beyond, and it must be clearly understood 
that such remarks as those of this week in this 
place are either based upon what has already 
been admitted to publication in the foreign or 
British Press or to conjectures only, based upon 
such publication. 
To continue the examination of the Desert 
conditions : 
THREE MAIN APPROACHES. 
One may state without indiscretion this 
much, which is common knowledge : 
The railway has reached Beersheba and this 
point already serves as a base for any force con- 
templating an attack upon Egypt. 
From Beersheba to the canal is, as the crow 
flies, 175 miles, and the first 40 miles or so of these 
are through territory technically Turkish by 
international agreement, up to tlae point of El 
Aigua, or Audja, just beyond which runs the 
abritrary line established a little while Itelore the 
war in that desert country as the last frontier 
. between Egypt and Syria. 
From Beersheba to El Audja it would seem 
that the line is not only surveyed, but its embank- 
ments, culverts, etc., prepared, onlv the rails not 
yet laid down. 
It is to be remarked that the provision of 
water for these 30 to 40 miles (nearer 50 as the 
turns of the railway will make it) is a problem 
that has to be surmounted and that this will 
necessarily delay the completion of the railway 
even to that point. 
From the Egyptian frontier, as established 
before the war by Treaty between the Egyptian 
Ciovernment and the Porte, there are three main 
approaches to Egypt on the Suez Canal, that is 
to the Isthmus of Suez. 
The first is the immemonal caravan route, 
(marked upon Sketch II i, 1), upon the coast line 
of the Mediterranean. It is the best watered of all 
(though the water supply is very scanty, the wells 
far between and often brackish) ; it is in touch 
with the sea for succour or for supply, and it is 
the shortest direct line from fertile land in the 
Philistine Plain to fertile land in the Delta of 
the Nile. It has a starting place at Rafa, a point 
already well within the Desert region, and strikes 
the Canal at the point where there used to be a 
bridge across the last arm of the lagoon. It was 
this bridge which gave the name Kantara to this 
point, which is now a station upon the railway, 
and the Canal, about 37 miles south of Port Said. 
From Rafa to Kantara, is, as the crow flies, 
rather less than 150 miles, and by the track about 
160, but the edge of the really habitable land near 
Gaza is at least another day's march behind Rafa. 
The second line of advance is that central 
one marked in Sketch II by the figures 2, 2, 2. 
