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 CHAPTER XI

FACTS TO REMEMBER

have heard a good deal about "Business as usual": it would be well if we heard a little more of the companion saw—"Do it now." For if this campaign, for good or ill, is to finish before the snows of next winter come, the need for an instant redoubling of our energies is pressing beyond words.

In his gallant defence of the Press Bureau against overwhelming odds—few people share his admiration for that most unhappy institution—Sir Stanley Buckmaster denied that information was ever "kept back." So far as I know no one has ever suggested that the Press Bureau had anything to say about the circulation of official news: its unhappily directed energies seem to operate in other directions. But that it is keeping back news of the very gravest kind admits of no shadow of doubt. The official reports have assured us of late, with irritating frequency, that there is "nothin' doin'." Now and again we hear of a trench being heroically captured. But we hear very little of the reverse side of the picture, upon which the casualty lists, a month or six weeks later, throw such a lurid light.

Time and again lately we have read in the casualty lists of battalions losing anything from two hundred to four hundred men in killed or wounded or "missing," which means, in effect, prisoners. Even the 171