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forcibly, General Ellison limiting his brief to the tragic episode of Gallipoli, while the Field Marshal bases his indictment on a wider survey of the war in Europe and Asia, and on an intimate personal experience of British statesmen during the critical period when he filled the high office of chief of the Imperial General Staff. A contribution to the investigation of a difficult and complex problem may be of the utmost value without itself containing the whole truth on the matter; the case for the plaintiff rarely does, even when he is right. Before we come to the pleadings it is as well to note that we have to consider two questions, in their essence distinct, although during the war they became entangled: (1) the relations between soldiers and statesmen, and (2) the soundness or unsoundness of the opinions held by either party on certain operations or proposals for operations.

Sir William Robertson acquits the government of the charge of undue delay in declaring war in August, 1914, while emphasising the consequences of its failure to lay down beforehand an appropriate military policy upon which comprehensive preparations and plans could be based. An immediate consequence of this neglect was that "the French authorities were forced to frame their plan of campaign not knowing whether they would or would not receive British assistance, while we on our side were not able to insist upon our right to examine the French plan in return for our co-operation. When the crisis arose there was no' time to examine it, and consequently our military policy was for long wholly subordinate to the French policy, of which we knew very little."

This was the more unfortunate as the French plan, now notorious under the name of plan dixsept, was fundamentally unsound and of itself would have ensured the defeat of the allied armies but for the incompetent leading of the German Higher Command. An immediate repercussion of plan dixsept was that, before the British Expeditionary Force had fired a shot, Sir William Robertson, as Quarter-Master General, had to consider abandoning its bases at Havre and Boulogne, owing to the danger to the line of communications presented by the probability of an enveloping movement on the left flank. A few days later this change of base was made. One could give no better example of the immediate effect in war of pre-war inaction. Whether any British Government would have had the approval of public

opinion before the war in concluding an alliance with France will remain an open question. It is, however, highly improbable that without a formal treaty, with a military convention attached to it, any French Government would have allowed so vital a secret as plan dixsept to be revealed to our General Staff.

Once the war had begun the first great divergence of opinion between soldiers and statesmen came over the question of the Dardanelles. How we drifted from a purely naval operation— which failed-into a military operation-which likewise failed— is so present to the memory of this generation that there is no need to repeat here the story of what Mr. Page has called "the horrible tragedy of Gallipoli, where the best soldiers in the world were sacrificed to politicians' policies." The principal authors and actors in that tragedy have published what they believe to be their defence, a Royal Commission has investigated the question, and now, with all this mass of material before them-material not only copious, but adequate for the formation of a final judgment—Sir William Robertson and Sir Gerald Ellison unhesitatingly condemn the conception and higher control of that catastrophic enterprise. If anybody has still any doubt remaining in his mind as to the wisdom of the Dardanelles operations, naval and military, he should, without delay, make himself acquainted with their devastating and reasoned criticism. At the same time, it should be noted that the two critics are not in complete agreement on all their reasons for condemning the undertaking. Sir William Robertson, while duly emphasising the deplorable way in which the operation was embarked on by the Government, bases his main criticism on the argument that it was essentially a major operation of war carried out in a minor theatre, for which troops and munitions could not be provided except at the expense of our army in the main theatre of war. He says:

An essential condition of success in war being the concentration of effort on the decisive front,' or place where the main issue will probably be fought out, it follows that statesmen and soldiers charged with the direction of military operations should be agreed amongst themselves as to where that front is.

In the Great War the decisive front was fixed for us by the deployment of the enemy's masses in France and Belgium, which compelled us to go to the direct assistance of those countries, and at first there was little or no inducement to disseminate our forces in other and secondary enterprises. The entry of Turkey into the war at the end

of October, 1914, created a more complicated situation, and one offering many temptations for dispersion, against which it was important to be on our guard. A careful review of the new conditions was therefore necessary in order to decide in what respect our war plans should be modified, and unfortunately there was at the time no adequate machinery available, in the shape of an efficient general staff, for conducting the investigation.

The field of strategy thus lay open to those ministers who, as members of the Government, claimed the right to put forward for Cabinet consideration such schemes of operations as they deemed fit ; who saw in our sea-power a ready means for embarking upon such adventures as they might conceive, and could persuade their colleagues to accept or not to oppose; and who were indifferent to, or ignorant of, the disadvantages which always attend changes of plan and the omission to concentrate on one thing at a time.

He also tells us that, having in mind the many competing policies put forward by various ministers (which ranged from Mr. Lloyd George's projected withdrawal of the British Army from France for attack on Austria through the Balkans to the Indian Government's campaign in Mesopotamia), Lord Kitchener wrote to Sir John French, on January 2, 1915:

Asking for the views of his staff as to the possibility of accomplishing anything useful elsewhere than on the Western Front, where there seemed to be no prospect of breaking through the enemy's lines. In his reply, Sir John dealt with the various alternative theatres of war, and went on to say that any attack on Turkey (in Gallipoli, Asia Minor, or Syria) would be devoid of decisive result.

In the most favourable circumstances it could only cause the relaxation of pressure against Russia in the Caucasus and enable her to transfer two or three corps to the West—a result quite incommensurate with the effort involved. To attack Turkey would be to play the German game and to bring about the very end which Germany had in mind when she induced Turkey to join in the war, namely, to draw off troops from the decisive spot, which is Germany itself. . . . There are no theatres, other than those in which operations are now in progress, in which decisive results could be attained.

He quotes Sir John French as rejecting the theory" that the enemies' lines could not be breached, given a better supply of men, guns, and ammunition." In short, his opinion on every suggested operation was governed by his fundamental outlook on the war as a whole, viz., that it could only be won on the Western Front and could be won there if sufficient troops and material were provided.

Sir Gerald Ellison, on the other hand, while he is quite as uncompromising as Sir William Robertson in his condemnation of what he calls "the attack on the Dardanelles fortress," makes it clear that, in his opinion, Turkey's challenge to the Entente not only could not be neglected but had to be adequately met. He is a strong advocate of Lord Kitchener's proposal to land an army at Alexandretta, a scheme which does not meet with Sir William Robertson's approval. General Ellison condemns the conception of forcing the Dardanelles on three grounds, viz., that it was uncalled for at the time it was undertaken, that it could not succeed, and that if, by some happy fluke, the Straits had been forced, the fleet could not have remained at Constantinople. As is well-known, the naval attack was conceived in response to a request by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army for a demonstration against Turkey, in order to relieve the pressure felt at that moment by the Russians in the Caucasus. The request for a demonstration came on January 2nd on January 4th the Turkish offensive was smashed at Sarikamish; after that date there was no need for a demonstration as the Russians were more than able to hold their own in the Caucasus. As to the possibility of success in the circumstances in which the operations were undertaken, General Ellison has proved his case that there was none.

General Ellison points out that, had the fleet got through to Constantinople, it could have done nothing except come back again as soon as possible, for it could not have maintained itself there as its supply ships would have been exposed to destruction by the artillery of the Turkish Field Armies. As a matter of fact, the problem of controlling the surface of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, and the Dardanelles is essentially the same as that of controlling the surface of a big river flowing into and out of a large lake. This postulates military command of both banks. It is now common knowledge that the situation of the British fleet at Constantinople in 1922 was dangerous, although, as General Ellison reminds us, Mustapha Kemal had “behind him an army nothing like so numerous or so well equipped as Enver commanded in 1915." He goes on to say: "In the face of an undefeated Turkish army, no fleet could remain for long in the Sea of Marmora. The problem throughout was military and not naval." One is tempted sometimes to

speculate whether if those "straits" and that "sea" had flowed with fresh water instead of salt we should ever have heard of the naval attack on the Dardanelles.

Assuming that it was wrong to embark on the naval operation undertaken against the Dardanelles, the question remains to be answered: "What ought the Allies to have done about Turkey ? " This at once raises the issue which so sharply divided the statesmen and the soldiers during the war, the former urging time and again that the war could be shortened and won at less cost of life if Germany's allies were knocked out one by one, beginning with Turkey, the latter replying much as Sir John French replied to Lord Kitchener's letter of January 2, 1915, viz., there are no theatres of war other than the Western Front in which the war can be won, because the enemy's masses are there ; while to attack Turkey will be to play the German game by drawing forces away from the decisive spot-which is Germany itself. It is said to be easy to be wise after the event; if that trite saying is true it ought not to be difficult, now that the war has been fought and won, to decide which of these two opinions is correct. The would-be investigator of this, the most important question of British war policy which arose during the conflict, is at once faced with a very remarkable psychological fact: that both parties to the quarrel are still confident that they were right, the representative soldiers are still unrepentant "Westerners,' those representative statesmen who were Easterners are so still. Apparently the passing of the "event" has failed to bring illumination to those minds which held the wrong opinion while the events themselves were in progress. This may be due to the truth of Benedetto Croce's assertion as to the fundamental inter-repulsion between two specialisations; on the other hand it may be due to a cause less abstract, but perhaps more probable in this world of fallible mortals, namely that absolute truth is not to be found in the reasoning of either side, that both are right and both are wrong. This amounts to asserting that the truth of the matter is to be found only in a synthesis, to be reached by combining whatever may be discovered of correct reasoning, based on fact as proved by after events, in the arguments of each party to the controversy.

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To turn first to the soldiers, whose case is put by Sir William Robertson in his important and timely book with a clearness, force,

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