2110-4-2-8

PADD. 1583.

63 UPPER BERKELEY STREET, W.l.

19th Sept. 1922.

My dear Buchan, Having just bought Volume IV of your monumental work, I want to send you my thanks for the contents of the first three. The reason I did not do so immediatly after reading then is that it is best, I think, for one who has been an actor on the stage not to intrude himself personally upon a critic until he has "done finished". But now that all you have thought is stereotyped I am free to express my admiration which amounts to astonishment at the grip and power you have manifested in the writing of this History. To have made those battles of material become human and alive is a top-knotch feat and I congratulate you with all my heart. I shall not read this last volume for sometime yet as I am

overwhelmed with all sorts of work but I am sure it will be up to the first three.

This further emergence of the Dardanelles is a strange thing, is it not? The fact is, when a certain locality happens to be the strategical hub of the universe, nothing will prevent the people of the world struggling to put it in their pockets. The French were looking upon it as a plum for a reorganised and allied Russia. Hence this rage on their part; also it puts their relations with Roumania in the soup. But I hope Mustapha Kemal will not "see" our "bluff".

I hope I may see you sometime this winter. All good luck.

Yours sincerely, Ian Hamilton