"There is only too much truth in all that, although perhaps it will not in the end turn out too badly. Crete was an extremely important point in our ring of defence, like Fort Douaumont at Verdun in 1916.
"His Majesty's Government in their responsibility to Parliament choose the best generals they can find, set before them the broad strategic objects of the campaign, offer them any advice or counsel that may seem fitting, ask necessary searching questions and then support them to the best of their power in men and munitions and also, so long as they retain their confidence, they support them with loyal comradeship in failure or success, "It is impossible to go into tactical details and I never remember in the last war in those great battles which cost something like 40,000, 50,000 or 76,000 men—I am talking of the batties of a single day—end in which sometimes there were grave errors made, they were not often made the subject of arraignment of the government in the House of Commons.
"It is only where the great strategie issues of policy come in that it is fitting for us here to endeavour to form a final opinion. Defeat is bitter. But to explain defeat is more bitter. There is no use in trying to explain defeat. Some people do not like defeat and do not like explanations however elaborate or plausible.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.