Of the many brilliant episodes of those marvellous twelve days, perhaps the most brilliant was the converging movement of the British Desert Corps and Feisal's Arabs on the most ancient of the world's cities. Damascus had been an emporium when Tyre was young, and she was still a mighty city centuries after Tyre had become a shadow. Rich in holy places, she had one shrine of peculiar interest for this last crusade. Within her walls lay the tomb of Saladin, the greatest of those who fought in Palestine in the battle of Asia against Europe. One of Feisal's first acts was to remove the tawdry bronze wreath with which the German Emperor in 1898 had seen fit to adorn the sleeping-place of the great Sultan.
Allenby did not rest upon his laurels. On the 8th he was in Beirut, on the 11th in Baalbek. The next and last stage was Aleppo, that mart through which in the Middle Ages the wealth of Asia flowed to Venice and the West. A cavalry division went forward, and on the 26th October entered the town. Patrols advanced 15 miles farther, and occupied Muslimie railway junction. This last was a fitting conclusion to a great exploit, for it meant the cutting of the Bagdad railway, the line which was to link Berlin with the Persian Gulf and threaten our Indian Empire. Four days later Turkey signed the Armistice which was her surrender. Bulgaria had already laid down her arms, Austria was on the eve of collapse, and Germany was left without allies, and with her front crumbling before Foch and Haig.
PART IV.
THE SILENT SERVICE.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SILENT SERVICE.
The British Navy earned during the war the title of "The Silent Service," and the phrase needs a word of comment, for it is full of meaning. There has always been a feeling in the Service that sea-power is the one thing vitally necessary to the safety of the Empire, and that so long as this is being maintained the less talk about it the better; for where the life of nations is daily and hourly in trust, all advertisement is unworthy and all description inadequate. Then the Great War came, and the landsmen, who form the bulk of our people all over the world, naturally wished to know how the Sea Service was handling the affair; but the rule of silence still held. For the Navy, besides their old tradition, had now the reason of policy on their side; operations at sea can be, and must be, kept secret to a degree which is not possible in a land campaign. To inform the public at home would be to take the chance of being overheard by the enemy.
Moreover the work of the Navy is so multifarious, so technical, and so far-sighted in its aims, that by far the greater part of it would always be difficult to grasp. The ordinary news-reading citizen must be content to judge of it by its results, and he is not always capable of doing even that. Neither in this country, nor in the Dominions overseas, still less in the outer world, has the supreme importance or the decisive achievement of our naval Service been realized. Yet to those who understand, the influence of sea-power on history has never been so conclusively demonstrated. In this war, as in the war of a hundred years before, it was from first to last our ships that lay between a military despot and the domination of the world.
To prove this it is only necessary to make a plain statement of the tasks which the British Navy had to undertake in August 1914, to mark the fact that a failure in any one of them would have involved the ruin of the Allied cause; and to remember that no such failure occurred. The gigantic scope of the effort may then be seen; but even then only by those whose vision is wide enough to survey the whole world at once as one vast field of conflict.
First, then, our Fleet undertook to blockade the enemy; to drive his commerce from the seas; to stop his sea-borne supplies, especially foodstuffs, cotton—the raw material of explosives—and munitions of all kinds; also to disable his credit by the stoppage of his export trade.