Maoris originally came.  They were first employed at El Arish, where they made it a point of honour to get a job done well and quickly, and, on a given day, it was found that thirty of them had done as much labourers’ work as 170 British soldiers.  They were men of fine physical strength and endurance, and some one who knew they had the instincts of sportsmen, devised a simple plan to get the best out of them.  He presented a small flag to be won each day by the crew accomplishing the best work with the boats.  The result was amazing.  Every minute the boats were afloat the Raratongas strained their muscles to win the day’s competition, and when the day’s task was ended the victorious crew marched with their flag to their camp, singing a weird song and as proud as champions.  Some Raratongas worked at ammunition dumps, and it was the boast of most of them that they could carry four 60-pounder shells at a time.  A few of these stalwart men from Southern Seas received a promotion which made them the most envied men of their race—­they became loading numbers in heavy howitzer batteries, fighting side by side with the Motherland gunners.

However well the Navy and all associated with it worked, only a very small proportion of the Army’s supplies was water borne.  The great bulk had to be carried by rail.  Enormously long trains, most of them hauled by London and South-Western locomotives, bore munitions, food for men and animals, water, equipment, medical comforts, guns, wagons, caterpillar tractors, motor cars, and other paraphernalia required for the largest army which had ever operated about the town of Gaza in the thousands of years of its history.  The main line had thrown out from it great tentacles embracing in their iron clasp vital centres for the supply of our front, and over these spur lines the trains ran with the regularity of British main-line expresses.  Besides 96,000 actual fighting men, there was a vast army of men behind the line, and there were over 100,000 animals to be fed.  There were 46,000 horses, 40,000 camels, 15,000 mules, and 3500 donkeys on Army work east of the Canal, and not a man or beast went short of rations.  We used to think Kitchener’s advance on Khartoum the perfection of military organisation.  Beside the Palestine expedition that Soudan campaign fades into insignificance.  In fighting men and labour corps, in animals and the machinery of war, this Army was vastly larger and more important, and the method by which it was brought to Palestine and was supplied, and the low sick rate, constitute a tribute to the master minds of the organisers.  The Army had fresh meat, bread, and vegetables in a country which under the lash of war yielded nothing, but which under our rule in peace will furnish three times the produce of the best of past years of plenty.