TO HIS FATHER.

We get hardly any news up here, so please kindly continue your
function of war correspondent whenever you have time, and especially
mention any casualties which affect me.

One of the few bits of news which have reached us is a report of a
speech of yours in which you mention that Milner's Committee
recommended the Government to guarantee 45s. a year for four years,
but the Government wouldn't. Reuter deduces from this that we have
found a way of keeping the whip hand of submarines: but it looks to me
much more like Free Trade shibboleths + the fact that there has
already been a 30% increase in the area under wheat. I hope you will
have written me something about this.

Now for the military news. This battalion, when we arrived here, was
nominally nearly 300 strong, but actually it could hardly have paraded
100. This reduction is nearly all due to sickness. The deaths from all
causes only total between forty and fifty, out of the original 800:
and of these about twenty-five, I think, were killed in action. But
there has been an enormous amount of sickness during the hot weather,
four-fifths of which has been heat-stroke and malaria. There have been
a few cases of enteric and a certain number of dysentery; but next to
heat and malaria more men have been knocked out by sores and boils
than by any disease. It takes ages for the smallest sore to heal.

Of the original thirty officers, eight are left here, Major Stillwell,
who is C.O., one Captain, Page-Roberts, a particularly nice fellow,
and five subalterns, named Harris, Forbes, Burrell, Bucknill and