The suggestion made by General Chetwode for General Allenby's
consideration was that the enemy should be led to believe we intended
to attack him in front of Gaza, and that we should pin him down to
his defences in the centre, while the real attack should begin on
Beersheba and continue at Hareira and Sheria, and so force the enemy
by manoeuvre to abandon Gaza. That plan General Allenby adopted after
seeing all the ground, and the events of the last day of October and
the first week of November supported General Chetwode's predictions to
the letter. Indeed it would be hard to find a parallel in history for
such another complete and absolute justification of a plan drawn up
several months previously, and it is doubtful if, supposing the Turks
had succeeded in doing what their German advisers advocated, namely
forestalling our blow by a vigorous attack on our positions, there
would have been any material alteration in the working out of the
scheme. The staff work of General Headquarters and of the staffs of
the three corps proved wholly sound. Each department gave of its best,
and from the moment when Beersheba was taken in a day and we secured
its water supply, there was never a doubt that the enemy could be kept
on the move until we got into the rough rocky hills about Jerusalem.
And by that time, as events proved, his moral had had such a
tremendous shaking that he never again made the most of his many
opportunities.

The soundness of the plan can quite easily be made apparent to the
unmilitary eye. Yet the Turk was absolutely deceived as to General
Allenby's intentions. If it be conceded that to deceive the enemy is
one of the greatest accomplishments in the soldier's art, it must be
admitted that the battle of Gaza showed General Allenby's consummate
generalship, just as it was proved again, and perhaps to an even
greater extent, in the wonderful days of September 1918, in Northern