TURKISH MENACE TO EGYPT

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2357, 13 January 1915, Page 6

TURKISH MENACE TO EGYPT

'AWAITING THE ENEMY. Eastern Egypt, November 29. "Do you think they will.come onP" is a question which one hears most often from British officers in this region, Especially when one is known recently to have left Constantinople.. Though not so waterless as is usually believed, the Sinai, Peninsula offers few lines for westward advance which an army can follow without eventually finding too much water on its front and too little in' its rear. The northern road which has been followed by all previous armies which have attacked Egypt from the east is by no means ideal for'artillery, : sea power prevents the use of Akaba as an advanced base, and the BirsabaEossaima route is supposed to be none too well supplied with water in its later. stages. The Irregulars, -mostly Sawarka- Terabin and Howeytat Beduin, who were-engaged with the Bikanirs on November 20, seem, after sending a patrol within a short distance of the Canal, to have evacuated Katia and retired towards El Arish.

Captain Ghope, whose men accounted for at. least 60. of the enemy in the recent fight at Bir el Abd, had'several narrow escapes. A bullet shivered his sword hilt and another his camera, while his camel was wounded by a shot from a Martini rifle. Luckily for his little force, the enemy hung back every time the Bikanirs dismounted to fire during their retirement. One of our wounded, a marksman, accounted for five of the Beduiri. . Another man, who was at first missing and was picked up vounded, reported that the enemy, after stripping him, found he was a Moslem and contented themselves with gashing his neck, apparently with a blunt sword, inflicting a painful but not a dangerous wound. The Turks do not seem to have participated in tho encounter.—London "Times" correspondent..