How can economic victory be won? (1) by enlisting the sympathy of America; (2) by taking Constantinople.
The idea that we can hustle the Kaiser back over the Rhine and march on to Berlin at the double emanates from a school of thought who have devoted much study to the French Army, not so much to that of the Germans. But we can (no one denies it) hustle the Turks out of Constantinople if we will make an effort, big, no doubt, in itself but not very big compared to that entailed by a few miles' advance in the West. Let us do that and, forthwith, we enlist economics on our side.
None of these things can be carried through without the help of the Press. Second only to enthusiasm of our own folk comes the sweetening of the temper of the neutral. Hard to say at present whether our Censorship has done most harm in the U.K. or the U.S.A. Before leaving for the Dardanelles I begged hard for Hare and Frederick Palmer, the Americans, knowing they would help us with the Yanks just as much as aeroplanes would help us with the Turks, but I was turned down on the plea that the London Press would be jealous.
These are the feelings which have prompted my pen to-day. Writing one of the few great men I know I put the matter like this:—
"From my individual point of view a hideous mistake has been made on the correspondence side of the whole of this Dardanelles business. Had we had a dozen good newspaper correspondents here, the vital life-giving interest of these stupendous proceedings would have been brought right into the hearths and homes of the humblest people in Britain....
"As for information to the enemy, this is too puerile altogether. The things these fellows produce are all read and checked by competent General Staff Officers. To think that it matters to the Turks whether a certain trench was taken by the 7th Royal Scots or the 3rd Warwicks is just really like children playing at secrets. The Censors who are by way of keeping everyone in England in darkness allow extremely accurate outline panoramas of the Australian position from the back; trenches, communication tracks, etc., all to scale; a true military sketch, to appear in the Illustrated London News of 5th June. The wildest indiscretions in words could not equal this."
Again I say the Press must win. On no subject is there more hypocrisy amongst big men in England. They pretend they do not care for the Press and sub rosa they try all they are worth to work it. How well I remember my Chief of the General Staff coming up to me at a big conference on Salisbury Plain where I had spent five very useful minutes explaining the inwardness of things to old Bennett Burleigh, the War Correspondent. He (the C.G.S.) begged me to see Burleigh privately, afterwards, as it would "create a bad impression" were I seen by everyone to be on friendly terms with the old man! He meant it very kindly: from his point of view he was quite right. I lay no claim to be more candid than the rest of them: quite the contrary. Only, over that particular line of country, I am more candid. Whenever anyone ostentatiously washes his hands of the Press in my hearing I chuckle over the memory of the administrator who was admonishing me as to the unsuitability of a public servant having a journalistic acquaintance when, suddenly, the door opened; the parlour-maid entered and said, "Lord Northcliffe is on the 'phone."
Have told Lord K. in my letter we have just enough shell for one more attack. After that, we fold our hands and wait the arrival of the new troops and the new outfit of ammunition:—not "wait and see" but "wait and suffer." A month is a desperate long halt to have in a battle. A month, at least, to let weariness and sickness spread whilst new armies of enemies replace those whose hearts we have broken,—at a cost of how many broken hearts, I wonder, in Australasia and England?
This enforced pause in our operations is a desperate bad business: for to-day there is a feeling in the air—thrilling through the ranks—that at last the upper hand is ours. Now is the moment to fall on with might and main,—to press unrelentingly and without break or pause until we wrest victory from Fortune. Morally, we are confident but,—materially? Alas, to-morrow, for our last "dart" before reinforcements arrive a month hence, my shell only runs to a forty minutes' bombardment of some half a mile of the enemy's trenches. We simply have not shell wherewith to cover more or keep it up any longer.
A General laying down the law to a Field Marshal is as obnoxious to military "form" as a vacuum was once supposed to be to the sentiments of nature. The child, who teaches its grandmother to suck eggs, commits a venial fault in comparison. So I have had to convey my precepts insensibly to Milord K.—to convey them in homeopathic doses of parable. The brilliant French success of the 21st-22nd, I explain to him, was due to the showers of shell wherewith they deluged the Turkish lines until their defenders were sitting dazed with their dugouts in ruins about them. Also, in the same epistle, I have tried to explain Anzac.