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personality, combining keen love of power with an intense devotion to his country and countrymen’. Bean approved of Murdoch’s letter, although he wrote that ‘the picture given in this letter was undoubtedly overcoloured, and some of its statements were not facts’.
    The first point to note about Murdoch’s letter is its conversational tone. Ashmead-Bartlett would not have written to Asquith in this way but Murdoch was writing to a friend and his letter has greater power because of that. ‘I shall talk to you as if you were by my side,’ Murdoch began, ‘as in the good old days.’ Murdoch shows that he and Fisher had closely discussed Fisher’s fears for the Australians at the Dardanelles before Murdoch had set off for Anzac. Murdoch wrote of Gallipoli ‘as one of the most terrible chapters in our history. Your fears have been justified.’ So Fisher must already have told Murdoch that he thought the campaign was in deep trouble, strengthening the view that Fisher wanted accurate information on which he could act. Murdoch intended to reinforce Fisher’s concern, perhaps even alarm.
    The construction of the letter also shows how dependent Murdoch was on the talk of the men among whom he had moved on Anzac. He wrote as if he were trying to transport his prime minister to Anzac to hear the Australian officers’ and soldiers’ views on their predicament, to give Fisher the viewpoints of these ordinary Australians. If ‘some of the statements were not facts’, nevertheless, as Murdoch understood it, he was repeating to the Australian prime minister what Australian soldiers, officers and the Australian official correspondent believed to be true. Murdoch had come to listen to the Australians and then to tell the prime minister what he had heard.
    This is best shown in the early part of the letter where Murdoch concentrated on the landing at Suvla Bay, which began on the night of 6 August. Among the Australians at Gallipoli a special anger was reserved for those who had designed and led the attack by the British at Suvla. There had been good sense in the attempt: in the plan, troops would have landed at points around the bay and then moved quickly to the hills ringing it. Once established on the ridge line they would have been in a good position to support the attempt of the Anzacs and others on Chunuk Bair and Hill 971, the vital points on the peninsula. Suvla’s attackers would have come behind the Turks defending Chunuk Bair and help to drive them from the heights.
    The Suvla Bay landing was a central piece of the August offensive which was in turn the path to victory, perhaps the only path to victory at Gallipoli. For the campaign at Suvla, and the August offensive in general, the War Council in London had given Hamilton an additional four divisions. He had the men he had asked for, now he had to make the ambitious plan work.
    But the Anzacs, watching the landing at Suvla as if in the dress circle of a theatre, could not believe what they saw unfolding before them. The British, in numbers, landed unopposed and then seemed to stop, seemingly making no attempt to rush forward to the hills.
    â€˜The Suvla Bay tea party’ Anzacs called it, as they watched the British apparently settle down to a brew rather than rush to the hills with the advantage of surprise. Alerted to what was happening as the British assault faltered, the Turkish commanders rushed their own troops to Suvla’s hills and the element of surprise was promptly lost.
    There were reasons for the slowing of the British momentum, of which the soldiers at Anzac could not be aware, but Murdoch accepted their anger and contempt for the failure at Suvla and this coloured his letter to Fisher, justifying, to an extent, Bean’s criticism of the letter. But Murdoch was not writing history; he was reporting what he had heard.
    Much of the blame for the catastrophe at Suvla has fallen on the