The Commissioners add in comment that Mr. Churchill here “probably assigned to himself a more unobtrusive part than that which he actually played.” The comment is justified in relation to the Dardanelles, not merely because it is difficult to imagine Mr. Churchill playing an unobtrusive part upon any occasion, but because, as we have seen, the idea of a Dardanelles Expedition was specially his own. It was one of those ideas for which we are sometimes indebted to the inspired amateur. For the amateur, untrammelled by habitual routine, and not easily appalled by obstacles which he cannot realise, allows his imagination the freer scope, and contemplates his own particular vision under a light that never was in office or in training-school. In Mr. Churchill’s case, the vision of the Dardanelles was, in truth, beatific. His strategic conception, if carried out, would have implied, not merely victory, but peace. Success would at once have secured the defence of Egypt, but far more besides. It would have opened a high road, winter and summer, for the supply of munitions and equipment to Russia, and a high road for returning ships laden with the harvests of the Black Earth. It would have severed the German communication with the Middle East, and rendered our Mesopotamian campaign either unnecessary or far more speedily fortunate. On the political side, it would have held Bulgaria steady in neutrality or brought her into our alliance. It might have saved Serbia without even an effort at Salonika, and certainly it would have averted all the subsequent entanglements with Greece. Throughout the whole Balkans, the Allies would at once have obtained the position which the enemy afterwards held, and have surrounded the Central Powers with an iron circle complete at every point except upon the Baltic coast, the frontiers of Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland, and a strip of the Adriatic. Under those conditions, it is hardly possible that the war could have continued after 1916. In a speech made during the summer of the year before that (after his resignation as First Lord), Mr. Churchill was justified in saying:
“The struggle will be heavy, the risks numerous, the losses cruel; but victory, when it comes, will make amends for all. There never was a great subsidiary operation of war in which a more complete harmony of strategic, political, and economic advantages has combined, or which stood in truer relation to the main decision which is in the central theatre. Through the Narrows of the Dardanelles and across the ridges of the Gallipoli Peninsula lie some of the shortest paths to a triumphant peace.”[18]
LORD KITCHENER’S EARLY OBJECTION
The strategic design, though not above criticism (for many critics advised leaving the Near East alone, and concentrating all our force upon the Western front)—the design in itself was brilliant. All depended upon success, and success depended upon the method of execution. Like every sane man, professional or lay, Mr. Churchill favoured a joint naval and military attack. The trouble—the fatal trouble—was that in January 1915 Lord Kitchener could not spare the men. He was anxious about home defence, anxious about Egypt (always his special care), and most anxious not to diminish the fighting strength in France, where the army was concentrating for an offensive which was subsequently abandoned, except for the attack at Neuve Chapelle (in March). He estimated the troops required for a Dardanelles landing at 150,000, and at this time he appears hardly to have considered the suggested scheme except as a demonstration from which the navy could easily withdraw.
Mr. Churchill’s object was already far more extensive. Like the rest of the world, he had marvelled at the power of the German big guns—guns of unsuspected calibre—in destroying the forts of Liége and Namur. In his quixotic attempt to save Antwerp (an attempt justly conceived but revealing the amateur in execution) by stiffening the Belgian troops with a detachment of British marines and the unorganised and ill-equipped Royal Naval Division under General Paris, he had himself witnessed another proof of such power. For he was present in the doomed city from October 4 to 7, two days before it fell. Misled by a false analogy between land and sea warfare, he asked himself why the guns of super-Dreadnoughts like the Queen Elizabeth should not have a similarly overwhelming effect upon the Turkish forts in the Dardanelles; especially since, under the new conditions of war, their fire could be directed and controlled by aeroplane observation, while the ships themselves remained out of sight upon the sea side of the Peninsula. It was this argument which ultimately induced Lord Kitchener to assent, though reluctantly, to a purely naval attempt to force the Straits, for he admitted that “as to the power of the Queen Elizabeth he had no means of judging.”[19]
But, for the moment, Mr. Churchill contented himself with telegraphing to Vice-Admiral Carden (January 3):
“Do you think that it is a practicable operation to force the Dardanelles by the use of ships alone?... The importance of the results would justify severe loss.”
SERVICE ON BOARD H.M.S. QUEEN ELIZABETH, SEEN BETWEEN HER 15-INCH GUNS
At the same time he stated that it was assumed that “older battleships” would be employed, furnished with mine-sweepers, and preceded by colliers or other merchant vessels as sweepers and bumpers. On January 5 Carden replied: