So much for the past. Whether these entries have not served their turn is now the question. They were written red-hot amidst tumult, but faintly now, and as in some far echo, sounds the battle-cry that once stopped the beating of thousands of human hearts as it was borne out upon the night wind to the ships. Those dread shapes we saw through our periscopes are dust: "the pestilence that walketh in darkness" and "the destruction that wasteth at noonday" are already images of speech: only the vastness of the stakes; the intensity of the effort and the grandeur of the sacrifice still stand out clearly when we, in dreams, behold the Dardanelles. Why not leave that shining impression as a martial cloak to cover the errors and vicissitudes of all the poor mortals who, in the words of Thucydides, "dared beyond their strength, hazarded against their judgment, and in extremities were of an excellent hope?"
Why not? The tendency of every diary is towards self-justification and complaint; yet, to-day, personally, I have "no complaints." Would it not be wiser, then, as well as more dignified, to let the Dardanelles R.I.P.? The public will not be starved. A Dardanelles library exists--- nothing less--from which three luminous works by Masefield, Nevinson and Callwell stand out; works each written by a man who had the right to write; each as distinct from its fellow as one primary colour from another, each essentially true. On the top of these comes the Report of the Dardanelles Commission and the Life of Lord Kitchener, where his side of the story is so admirably set forth by his intimate friend, Sir George Arthur. The tale has been told and retold. Every morsel of the wreckage of our Armada seems to have been brought to the surface. There are fifty reasons against publishing, reasons which I know by heart. On the other side there are only three things to be said:--
(1) Though the bodies recovered from the tragedy have been stripped and laid out in the Morgue, no hand has yet dared remove the masks from their faces.
(2) I cannot destroy this diary. Before his death Cranmer thrust his own hand into the flames: "his heart was found entire amidst the ashes."
(3) I will not leave my diary to be flung at posterity from behind the cover of my coffin. In case anyone wishes to challenge anything I have said, I must be above ground to give him satisfaction.