were no roads at all, except several miles of badly metalled track from Junction Station to Julis.  We could not keep many troops with such ill-conditioned communications, but Turkish soldiers require far less supplies than European troops, and the enemy had done such remarkable things in surmounting supply difficulties that he was given credit for being able to support between sixty and seventy battalions in the line and reserve, with an artillery somewhat weaker than our own.

If we made another frontal attack at Gaza we should find ourselves up against a desperately strong defensive system, but even supposing we got through it we should come to another halt in a few miles, as the enemy had selected, and in most cases had prepared, a number of positions right up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, where he would be in a land of comparative plenty, with his supply and transport troubles very considerably reduced.  No one could doubt that the Turks intended to defend Jerusalem to the last, not only because of the moral effect its capture would have on the peoples of the world, but because its possession by us would threaten their enterprise in the Hedjaz, and the enormous amount of work we afterwards found they had done on the Judean hills proved that they were determined to do all in their power to prevent our driving them from the Holy City.  The enemy, too, imagined that our progress could not exceed the rate at which our standard gauge railway could be built.  Water-borne supplies were limited as to quantity, and during the winter the landing of supplies on an open beach was hazardous.  In the coastal belt there were no roads, and the wide fringe of sand which has accumulated for centuries and still encroaches on the Maritime Plain can only be crossed by camels.  Wells are few and yield but small volumes of water.  With the transport allotted to the force in the middle of 1917 it was not possible to maintain more than one infantry division at a distance of twenty to twenty-five miles beyond railhead, and this could only be done by allotting to them all the camels and wheels of other divisions and rendering these immobile.  This was insufficient to keep the enemy on the move after a tactical success, and he would have ample time to reorganise.

General Chetwode held that careful preliminary arrangements, suitable and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at railhead, the training of platelaying gangs provided by the troops, the utilisation of the earthwork of the enemy’s line for our own railway, luck as regards the weather and the fullest use of sea transport, should enable us to give the enemy less breathing time than appeared possible on paper.  It was beyond hope, however, whatever preparations were made, that we should be able to pursue at a speed approaching that which the river made possible in Mesopotamia.  General Chetwode considered it would be fatal to attempt an offensive with forces which might permit us to attack and occupy the enemy’s