The infantry of the Expeditionary Force, largely augmented by troops in Egypt, was formed into two corps of three divisions each, the 20th under Sir Philip Chetwode, and the 21st commanded by Lieutenant-General Bulfin, with one other infantry division. The 20th Corps (10th, 53rd, and 74th Divisions, with the 60th Division attached) was in the eastern sector of our line, while the 21st Corps (53rd, 54th, and 75th Divisions) held the trenches opposite Gaza.[6]

The Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade was attached to the 21st Corps during the operations. This brigade had not yet seen any serious service, and its fighting qualities were rather an unknown factor. Later on in the campaign, however, all three regiments distinguished themselves greatly, and established a fine reputation for dash.

Our total forces numbered some 76,000 fighting men, of whom about 20,000 were mounted, with 550 guns. The enemy troops opposed to us consisted of nine Turkish divisions, organised in two armies, the VIIth and VIIIth, and one cavalry division, a total of about 49,000 fighting men, 3000 of whom were mounted, with 360 guns.[7] Our superiority in numbers, though considerable, thus fell short of the Napoleonic minimum for the attack of entrenched positions, but our large preponderance of cavalry promised great results, if we could succeed in driving the Turks out of their fortifications.
FOOTNOTES:


[7] The VIIth Army was commanded by the German General Kress von Kressenstein, and the VIIIth by Fevzi Pasha. The general staff of all the enemy formations was in the hands of the Germans. All ranks of the flying corps, heavy artillery and motor transport corps, and the officers of the engineer and supply services and of the railway administration were also Germans. There were a few German and Austrian infantry battalions it is inevitable that the country must suffer..

plan was bold and simple, and promised great results. It depended for its success largely on the resolution and vigour with which the first part of the plan, the attack of Beersheba, was carried out. Owing to the waterless nature of the country, this place had to be in our hands within twenty-four hours from the commencement of the operations. If it were not, the troops would have to be withdrawn, owing to lack of water, the attack abandoned, and the operations commenced anew at some later date, against an enemy forewarned of our plans, and with the prospect of the winter rains putting a stop to our advance before it had well begun.
 

We must cease the process of classifying referred to just now, and also that of the illusion of naturalism connected with it, by means of which imaginary entities created by abstraction are changed into historical facts and classificatory schemes into history, if we wish to understand the difference between history that is history and that due to what are called the natural sciences. This is also called history—'history of nature'—but is so only in name. Some few years ago a lively protest was made[1] against the confusion of these two forms of mental labour, one of which offers us genuine history, such as might, for instance, be that of the Peloponnesian War or of Hannibal's wars or of ancient Egyptian civilization, and the other a spurious history, such as that known as the history of animal organisms, of the earth's structure or geology, of the formation of the solar system or cosmogony. It was observed with reason that in many treatises the one has been wrongly connected with the other—that is to say, history of civilization with history of nature, as though the former follows the latter historically. The bottomless abyss between the two was pointed out. This has been observed, however, in a confused way by all, and better by historians of purely historical temperament, who have an instinctive[Pg 129] repugnance for natural history and hold themselves carefully aloof from it. It was remembered with reason that the history of historians has always the individually determinate as its object, and proceeds by internal reconstruction, whereas that of the naturalists depends upon types and abstractions and proceeds by analogies. Finally, this so-called history or quasi-history was very accurately defined as an apparently chronological arrangement of things spatially distinct, and it was proposed to describe it with a new and proper name, that of Metastoria.

Indeed, constructions of this sort are really nothing but classificatory schemes, from the more simple to the more complex. Their terms are obtained by abstract analyses and generalization, and their series appears to the imagination as a history of the successive development of the more complex from the more simple. Their right to exist as classificatory schemes is incontestable, and their utility is also incontestable, for they avail themselves of imagination to assist learning and to aid the memory The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879..

when they are estranged from themselves, lose their real nature, lay claim to illegitimate functions, and take their imaginary historicity too seriously. We find this in the metaphysic of naturalism, especially in evolutionism, which has been its most recent form. This is due, not so much to the men of science (who are as a rule cautious and possess a more or less clear consciousness of the limits of those schemes and series) as to the dilettante scientists and dilettante philosophers to whom we owe the many books that undertake to narrate the origin of the world, and which, aided by the acrisia of their authors, run on without meeting any obstacle, from the cell, indeed from the nebula, to the French Revolution,[Pg 130] and even to the socialist movements of the nineteenth century. 'Universal histories,' and therefore cosmological romances (as we have already remarked in relation to universal histories), are composed, not of pure thought, which is criticism, but of thought mingled with imagination, which finds its outlet in myths. It is useless to prove in detail that the evolutionists of to-day are creators of myths, and that they weary themselves with attempts to write the first chapters of Genesis in modern style (their description is more elaborate, but they confuse such description with history in a manner by no means inferior to that of Babylonian or Israelitish priests), because this becomes evident as soon as such works are placed in their proper position. Their logical origin will at once make clear their true character.
 

She put the ticket into the opening of her glove, and went into the first-class waiting-room. She looked about her quite indifferently, as if it was impossible that Cesare Dias or indeed any one of her acquaintance should see her there. She was conscious of nothing save a great need to go on, to go on; nothing else. It was the first time in her life that she had been out alone like this, yet she felt no surprise. It seemed to her that she had been travelling alone for years; that Cesare Dias, Laura Acquaviva, and Stella Martini were pale shadows of an infinitely distant past, a past anterior to her present existence; that they were people she had known in another world. She kept repeating to herself, like a child trying to remember a word,

"Pompeii, Pompeii, Pompeii."

But when she was climbing into the first-class compartment of the train, it seemed suddenly as if a force held her back, as if a mysterious hand forbade her going on. She trembled, and had to make a violent effort to enter the carriage, as if to brush aside an invisible obstacle. And, from that moment, a voice within her seemed to be murmuring confusedly to her conscience, warning her of the great moral crisis she was approaching; while before her eyes the blue Neapolitan coast was passing rapidly, where the wintry cold had given way to a warm scirocco. On, on, the morning train hurried her, over the land, by the sea, between the white houses of Portici, the pink houses of Torre del Greco, the houses, pink, white, and yellow, of Torre Annunziata—on, on. And Anna, motionless in her corner, gazing out of the window, beheld a vague, delicious vision of flowers and stars and kisses and caresses; and an icy terror, a sense of imminent peril, lay upon her heart. Oh, yes! In a brilliant vision she saw a future of love, of passion and tenderness, a fire-hued vision of all that soul and body could desire; yet constantly that still, small voice kept whispering to her conscience: "Don't go, don't go. If you go, you are lost　The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879.."

so unbearable that, when the train entered the brown, burnt-up country at the foot of Vesuvius, the country that surrounds the great ruin of Pompeii, despair was making her twist the handle of her purse violently with her fingers. The green vines and the laughing villages had disappeared from the landscape; the blue sea, with its dancing white waves, had disappeared; she was crossing a wide, desolate plain; and the volcano, with its eternal wreath of smoke, rose before her. And also had disappeared for ever the phantasms of her happiness! Anna was travelling alone, through a sterile land, where fire had passed, devastating all life, killing the flowers, destroying the people, their homes, their pleasures, their loves. And the voice within her cried: "This is a symbol of Passion, which destroys all things, and then dies itself."

Finally, it may be asked whether, in the case of horses having unequal chances, it is possible that wagers can be so proportioned (just odds being given and taken), that, as in the former case, a person backing or287 laying against all the four shall neither gain nor lose. It is so. All that is necessary is, that the sum actually pending about each horse shall be the same. Thus, in the preceding case, if the wagers 9l. to 6l., 10l. to 5l., 12l. to 3l., and 14l. to 1l., are either laid or taken by the same person, he will neither gain nor lose by the event, whatever it may be. And therefore, if unfair odds are laid or taken about all the horses, in such a manner that the amounts pending on the several horses are equal (or nearly so), the unfair bettor must win by the result. Say, for instance, that instead of the above odds, he lays 8l. to 6l., 9l. to 5l., 11l. to 3l. and 13l. to 1l., against the four horses respectively; it will be found that he must win 1l. Or if he takes the odds 18l. to 11l., 20l. to 9l., 24l. to 5l., and 28l. to 1l. (the just odds being 18l. to 12l., 20l. to 10l., 24l. to 6l., and 28l. to 2l. respectively), he will win 1l. by the race. So that, by giving or taking such odds to a sufficiently great amount, a bettor would be certain of pocketing a large sum, whatever the event of a given race might be.

a man who bets on a race must risk his money, unless he can succeed in taking unfair advantages over those with whom he bets. My readers will conceive how small must be the chance that an unpractised bettor will gain anything but dearly-bought experience by speculating on horse-races. I would recommend those who are tempted to hold another opinion to follow the plan suggested by Thackeray in a similar case—to take a good look at professional and288 practised betting-men, and to decide ‘which of those men they are most likely to get the better of’ in turf transactions Two considerations must have caused Scheer the gravest possible anxiety.Two considerations.

(From Chambers’s Journal, July 1869.)
SQUARING THE CIRCLE.
There must be a singular charm about insoluble problems, since there are never wanting persons who are willing to attack them. I doubt not that at this moment there are persons who are devoting their energies to Squaring the Circle, in the full belief that important advantages would accrue to science—and possibly a considerable pecuniary profit to themselves—if they could succeed in solving it. Quite recently, applications have been made to the Paris Academy of Sciences, to ascertain what was the amount which that body was authorised to pay over to anyone who should square the circle. So seriously, indeed, was the secretary annoyed by applications of this sort, that it was found necessary to announce in the daily journals that not only was the Academy not authorised to pay any sum at all, but that it had determined never to give the least attention to those who fancied they had mastered the famous problem.
 

, Mr. Dancer, F.R.A.S., has been examining the dust of our cities. The results are not pleasing. We had always recognised city dust as a nuisance, and had supposed that it derived the peculiar grittiness and flintiness of its structure from the constant macadamizing of city roads. But it now appears that the effects produced by dust, when, as is usual, it finds its way to our eyes, our nostrils, and our throats, are as nothing compared with the mischief it is calculated to produce in a more subtle manner. In every specimen examined by Mr. Dancer animal life was abundant. But the amount of ‘molecular activity’—such is the euphuism under which what is exceedingly disagreeable to contemplate is spoken about—is variable according to the height at which the dust is collected. And of all heights which these molecular wretches could select for the display of their activity, the height of five feet is that which has been found to be the favourite. Just at the average height of the foot-passenger’s mouth these moving organisms are always waiting to be devoured and to make us ill. And this is not all.

As if animal abominations were insufficient, a large proportion of vegetable matter also disports itself in the light dust of our streets. The observations show that in thoroughfares where there are many animals engaged in the traffic, the greater part of the vegetable matter thus floating about266 ‘consists of what has passed through the stomachs of animals,’ or has suffered decomposition in some way or other. This unpleasing matter, like the ‘molecular activity,’ floats about at a height of five feet, or thereabouts.

After this, one begins to recognise the manner in which some diseases propagate themselves. What had been mysterious in the history of plagues and pestilences seems to receive at least a partial solution. Take cholera, for example. It has been shown by the clearest and most positive evidence that this disease is not propagated in any way save one—that is, by the actual swallowing of the cholera poison. In Professor Thudichum’s masterly paper on the subject in the ‘Monthly Microscopical Journal,’ it is stated that doctors have inhaled a full breathing from a person in the last stage of this terrible malady without any evil effects. Yet the minutest atom of the cholera poison received into the stomach will cause an attack of cholera　Two considerations must have caused Scheer the gravest possible anxiety.. A small quantity of this matter drying on the floor of the patient’s room, and afterwards caused to float about in the form of dust, would suffice to prostrate a houseful of people.

We can understand, then, how matter might be flung into the streets, and, after drying, its dust be wafted through a whole district, causing the death of hundreds. One of the lessons to be learned from these interesting researches of Mr. Dancer is clearly this, that the watering-cart should be regarded as one of the most important of our hygienic institutions. Supplemented by careful scavengering, it267 might be effective in dispossessing many a terrible malady which now holds sway from time to time over our towns.