Despite its self-imposed discomfort and its devotion, Imbros was not a very inspiring place for an outsider. Of necessity it was a club. There was a disguised but inescapable atmosphere of privilege, of the old school and the old regiment, of breeding and manners. Hamilton found some of the most devoted of his admirers among the many young men of good family who as civilians had joined his staff. To strangers they sometimes conveyed an impression of superiority and complacency, and their good humour and politeness were often mistaken for dilettantism. No one questioned their courage; from Hamilton downwards senior officers made a point of deliberately and nonchalantly exposing themselves to enemy fire when they were at the front. Still, there was something lacking: a toughness, a roughness, the reassurance of the common touch. Among the troops it was rumoured that Hamilton wrote poetry in his spare time, and he was supposed to be very much under Braithwaite’s thumb. His charm, his integrity and his subtle intelligence were recognized by those who met him, but somehow these qualities did not work at a distance — and the soldiers were always at a distance. In brief, he seemed soft.
It was against these things that Ashmead-Bartlett, burning with his own ideas, waged his private war. Hamilton’s outward attitude to him was polite and helpful, but he felt privately that Ashmead-Bartlett had too much power and that his depressing attitude was damaging the expedition. Ashmead-Bartlett’s persistent theme was that the Army should have landed at Bulair, and with this Hamilton did not agree. Nor was he very encouraging when Ashmead-Bartlett came to him one day with the suggestion that the Turkish soldiers in the trenches should be induced to desert by the offer of ten shillings and a free pardon. ‘This makes one wonder,’ Hamilton wrote after the interview, ‘what would Ashmead-Bartlett himself do if he were offered ten shillings and a good supper by a Mahommedan when he was feeling a bit hungry and hard-up among the Christians.’ In May, when Ashmead-Bartlett went home on leave, Hamilton appointed Mackenzie to fill his place and tried to make the arrangement permanent, but neither Mackenzie nor the authorities in London were enthusiastic. Ashmead-Bartlett came back and was more glum and despondent than ever.
Mackenzie’s description of him at their first meeting is of ‘a slim man in khaki with a soft felt hat the colour of verdigris, a camera slung around his shoulders, and an unrelaxing expression of nervous exasperation.’
He ‘walked along the deck with the air of one convinced that his presence there annoyed everybody, and that we all wanted a jolly good dose of physic. Presently he came away from an interview with Sir Ian Hamilton, looking the way Cassandra must have often looked some three thousand years before. After telling me that the whole expedition was doomed to failure, and that he expected to be torpedoed aboard the Majestic (in which he was about to sail) he left the ship.’
Yet the really irritating thing about Ashmead-Bartlett was that he was so often right. He was torpedoed aboard the Majestic that same night. And there was indeed a great deal to criticize in the generals’ plans since they so frequently did end in disaster. Moreover, he could not be ignored. In London he had the ear of a number of important people in the cabinet, and however much he was disliked on Imbros the soldiers at the front were glad enough to see him, and he was often at the front. As a war correspondent, Ashmead-Bartlett was extremely capable.
He was still with the expedition and more exasperated than ever when at the conclusion of the August battles Murdoch arrived.
Murdoch was not really a war correspondent at all. He was on his way to London to act as the representative of various Australian newspapers there, and had been given a temporary official mission by his government to call in at Egypt and report upon the postal arrangements for the Australian troops. He was carrying letters of introduction from the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, and the Australian Minister for Defence, Senator Pearce.
On August 17 Murdoch wrote to Hamilton from Cairo saying that he was finding it difficult to complete his inquiries in Egypt. He asked for permission to come to Gallipoli, and added, ‘I should like to go across in only a semi-official capacity, so that I might record censored impressions in the London and Australian newspapers I represent, but any conditions you impose I should, of course, faithfully observe… May I add that I had the honour of meeting you at the Melbourne Town Hall, and wrote fully of your visit in the Sydney Sun and Melbourne Punch;[29] also may I say that my anxiety as an Australian to visit the sacred shores of Gallipoli while our army is there is intense.’
Hamilton says that he was not much impressed at having been written up in the Sun and Punch, but he sent off the necessary permission and on September 2 Murdoch arrived. Hamilton, at their single meeting, found him ‘a sensible man’. He was to prove, however, much more than that: so far as Hamilton was concerned he was a very dangerous man.
Murdoch signed the usual war correspondent’s declaration saying that he would submit all he wrote to the censor at headquarters, and then made a brief visit to the Anzac bridgehead. On his return to Imbros he set up at the Press Camp, and there found Ashmead-Bartlett. The two at once discovered that they had much in common.
Murdoch had been genuinely appalled by what he had heard and seen at Anzac: the danger and the squalor of the men’s lives, the sickness, the monotonous food, the general air of depression. The Australians he talked to were extremely critical of G.H.Q., and they said that they dreaded the approach of winter. Ashmead-Bardett was able to corroborate all this and add a good deal more. He gave it as his opinion that a major catastrophe was about to occur unless something was done. The authorities and the public at home, he said, were in complete ignorance of what was going on, and under the existing censorship at Imbros there was no way of enlightening them — unless, of course, one broke the rules and sent out an uncensored letter. After some discussion they agreed that this must be done. Murdoch was due to leave for England in a day or two; it was arranged that he would take a letter written by Ashmead-Bartlett and get it into the hands of the authorities in London.
While they were waiting for the next ship for Marseilles, Ashmead-Bartlett wrote his letter, and then coached Murdoch very fully in the mistakes and dangers of the campaign so that Murdoch would be able to furnish information on his own account on his arrival in London. ‘I further,’ Ashmead-Bartlett says in his book The Uncensored Dardanelles, ‘gave Murdoch letters of introduction to others who might be useful in organizing a campaign to save the Army on Gallipoli, and arranged for him to see Harry Lawson[30] to urge him to allow me to return. I promised him that if he was held up in his mission, or if the authorities refused to listen to his warnings, I would at once resign and join forces with him in London.’
Early in the second week of September Murdoch set off. When he arrived at Marseilles a few days later he was met on the quay by a British officer with an escort of British troops and French gendarmes. They proceeded to place him under arrest, and it was not until he had handed over Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter that he was released and allowed to go on his way to London.