A Brief Record of the Advance of the Egyptian Expeditionory
Force. (Cairo : Government Press for the Palestine News.)— This highly interesting book may be described as a semi-official commentary, mainly in the fogm of maps, on General Allenby's despatches. We all know that the advance to Gaza and to Jeru- salem and the battle of Samaria, as we may call last September's offensive, constituted one of the most brilliant campaiglis in the history of war. But the details of the operations are knOwn to few. The " Record," however, shows in a long series of excellent maps the order of battle from day to day in the chief phases of the campaign. General Allenby's Staff and his principal officers have assisted in correcting the maps and the notes which accom- pany them. Full details of the E.E.F. are prefixed, with a brief record of the services of each corps and division. There is a great deal of new matter in the book. The battle of Gaza was a far sterner task than the public generally supposed. The repeated advances into Gilead, to Es Salt and Amman, were undertaken mainly to persuade the enemy that General Allenby would go that way to Damascus ; the enemy therefore kept large forces east of the Jordan and weakened his right wing in the coastal plain. Last September the enemy expected an attack, but was completely mistaken in regard to its direction. He knew nothing about the concentration of large bodies of cavalry near tho coast, ready to make that famous march into Galilee which de- cided the fate of the last Turkish armies. The operations of the Hedjaz forces arc clearly described. The beaten Turks and Germans fought one another as they retreated, especially at Damascus, the day before British cavalry and Arab horse entered the city from opposite sides. For purposes of military adminis- tration, Palestine, including Haifa, is controlled from Jerusalem, and Western Syria up to Alexandretta from Beirut, while the whole route of the Hedjsz Railway up to Aleppo and Muslimie is under the control of Ali Riza Pasha at Damascus. A final map illustrates the terms of the Armistice.
Previous page
