§ Viscount WOLMERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Shipping Controller whether he is aware that the majority of the present Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force were originally sent out to India or Mesopotamia in 1914 in transports which were not specially equipped for tropical seas, and, insomuch as the journey was then successfully accomplished, whether he will state why transports which are now taking American troops from France to America cannot be devoted for the return of British troops from Mesopotamia?
Colonel WILSONThe white troops sent out to India in 1914 were carried mainly in vessels built for warm weather voyages. Of the twenty-seven ships so used, eight were ships not built or adapted for warm weather voyages, but I would point out that the men were taken out in these vessels in October and December of that year, whereas the homeward conveyances of the forces from Basra did not begin till the end of January and the major part of it falls into the months of March and April, during which it is most undesirable to bring white troops through the Red Sea in ships not built for warm weather voyages. Satisfactory1318W arrangements have been made for the repatriation of the British troops from Basra. The Ministry of Shipping is providing for the full number to be repatriated according to the requests received from the War Office, and with the utmost possible rapidity. Diversion of ships from the North Atlantic has not, therefore, been found necessary, and in any case would have been undesirable for the reasons already stated.