With the approach of the hot weather season of 1897135it became known that a proportion of officers might havewhat was called 'three months' accumulated privilege' leaveto England. Having so newly arrived, hardly anybodywanted to go. I thought it was a pity that such goodthings should go a-begging, and I therefore volunteeredto fill the gap. I sailed from Bombay towards the end ofMay in sweltering heat, rough weather and fearfulseasickness. When I sat up again, we were two-thirds acrossthe Indian Ocean, and I soon struck up an acquaintancewith a tall thin Colonel, then in charge of MusketryTraining in India, named Ian Hamilton. He pointed outto me what I had hitherto overlooked, that tension existedbetween Greece and Turkey. In fact those powers wereon the point of war. Being romantic, he was for the Greeks,and hoped to serve with them in some capacity. Havingbeen brought up a Tory, I was for the Turks; and I thoughtI might follow their armies as a newspaper correspondent.I also declared that they would certainly defeat the Greeks,as they were at least five to one and much better armed.He was genuinely pained; so I made it clear that I wouldtake no part in the operations, but would merely see the funand tell the tale. When we arrived at Port Said it was clearthat the Greeks had already been defeated. They had runaway from the unfair contest with equal prudence andrapidity, and the Great Powers were endeavouring to protectthem by diplomacy from destruction. So instead of goingto the battlefields of Thrace, I spent a fortnight in Italy,climbing Vesuvius, 'doing' Pompeii and, above all, seeingRome. I read again the sentences in which Gibbon hasdescribed the emotions with which in his later years forthe first time he approached the Eternal City, and thoughI had none of his credentials of learning, it was not withoutreverence that I followed in his footsteps.
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