But, be that as it may, we made ourselves to some extent responsible for the disaster which occurred to General Townshend's force, owing to our not taking a decided line on the subject and not obeying the elementary principle that resources must not in war be wasted upon unnecessary subsidiary enterprises. Whether it was or was not feasible to get to Baghdad at the time was a matter of some uncertainty. But that the whole business of all this pouring of troops into Mesopotamia was fundamentally unsound scarcely admitted of dispute. That ought to have determined our attitude on the minor Baghdad point.
Egypt gave rise to little anxiety during the spring and summer of 1915 in consequence of the signal discomfiture which the Turks had suffered on the Canal early in the year; the arid tract known as the Sinai desert indeed provided a satisfactory defence in itself during the dry months. But as autumn approached, the prospect of Ottoman efforts against the Nile Delta had to be taken into serious consideration, the more so that neither the Dardanelles Committee nor the War Council which took its place could disguise from themselves that the abandonment of the Dardanelles enterprise was at least on the cards, and that this would liberate Osmanli forces for efforts in other directions. There had been a school of thought in Egypt all along that the best defence of that region against Turkish invasion was by undertaking operations on the Syrian or Palestine coast, based on the Gulf of Iskanderun for preference, but possibly based on Beirut or Haifa. As the situation in the Near East grew rapidly worse during September, the War Council began to dream of diversions in new directions, quite apart from the Gallipoli Peninsula and Salonika, and some of them pitched upon the shores of the Gulf of Iskanderun, the strategical importance of which was unquestionable. A force landed in that quarter would give the enemy something to think about, would afford excellent protection to Egypt, and would indirectly assist our troops, which had been gradually penetrating along the Tigris right up into Mesopotamia.
On this project the General Staff was called upon to report, as already mentioned in Chapter IV, and as stated above, and the General Staff rejected the project without hesitation. This was a very different scheme from that which had been regarded with approval in the winter of 1914-15. Then the enemy resources in these environs had been insignificant, the Turkish communications leading thither had still been interrupted by the Taurus Mountains, and there had been no U-boats in the Mediterranean. Now the enemy was fully prepared in this quarter and would be on the look-out for our troops, the tunnels through the Taurus had been completed, and warships and transports could not possibly have lain moored in the roadstead of Alexandretta for fear of submarines. The landing would have had to take place in the inner portion of the Gulf of Iskanderun, Ayas Bay, where there were no facilities, where the surroundings were unhealthy, and where it would be particularly easy for the Turks to put up a stolid resistance. Our view was that for any operation of this kind to be initiated with reasonable safety, a very large body of troops would be necessary, that as far as Egypt was concerned the Nile Delta could be rendered absolutely secure with a much smaller expenditure of force, and that the inevitable result of embarking on a campaign in this new region would be to withdraw yet more of the Entente fighting resources from the main theatre of war in France. It would have been a side-show for which very little could be said and the objections to which seemed to us manifest and overwhelming. The War Council took our advice and dropped the scheme, although Lord Kitchener, who was out in the Aegean, favoured it. Any anxiety that prevailed as to Egypt settled itself shortly afterwards owing to the Gallipoli troops, so skilfully withdrawn from Anzac, Suvla and Helles, all assembling in the Nile Delta, where they were refitted and obtained some rest after their terribly arduous campaign in the Thracian Chersonese. This practically synchronized with the time of my leaving the War Office for the time being and proceeding to Russia.
As will be mentioned in Chapter XIV., one heard more about Alexandretta while out in that country. I, moreover, became indirectly concerned in that same old question again at a considerably later date. For, early in October 1917, the War Cabinet hit upon a great notion. On the close of the Flanders operations a portion of Sir D. Haig's forces were to be switched thither to succour Generals Allenby and Marshall in their respective campaigns, and were to be switched back again so as to be on hand for the opening of active work on the Western Front at the beginning of March 1918—a three months' excursion. This scheme seems to have been evolved quite au grand sérieux and not as a joke. At all events, a conference (which I was called in to attend as knowing more about the Dardanelles business from the War Office end than anybody else) assembled in the Chief of the Imperial General Staff's room one Sunday morning—the First Sea Lord and the Deputy First Sea Lord with subordinates, together with General Horne who happened to be over on leave from his First Army, and prominent members of the General Staff—and we gravely debated the idiotic project.
Nobody but a lunatic would, after Gallipoli experiences, undertake serious land operations in the Alexandretta region with less than six divisions. To ship six divisions absorbs a million tons. There were United States troops at this time unable to cross the Atlantic for want of tonnage, and, allowing for disembarkation difficulties on the Syrian coast, two soldiers or animals or vehicles could be transported from America to French or English ports for every one soldier or animal or vehicle that could be shifted from Marseilles or Toulon to the War Cabinet's fresh theatre of operations, given the same amount of shipping. Our Italian allies were in sore straits over coal for munitions and transportation purposes, simply because sufficient tonnage could not be placed at their disposal. Our own food supplies were causing anxiety, and the maintenance of the forces at Salonika afforded constant proof of the insecurity of the Mediterranean as a sea route. But fatuous diversion of shipping represented quite a minor objection to this opera-bouffe proposal. For, allowing for railing troops from the Western Front to the Côte Azure and embarking them, and for the inevitable delays in landing a force of all arms on a beach with improvised piers, the troops at the head of the hunt would already have to be re-embarking in Ayas Bay by the time that those at the tail of the hunt came to be emptied out on the shores of the Gulf of Iskanderun; otherwise the wanderers would miss the venue on the Western Front.
Had this been suggested by a brand-new Ministry—a Labour Cabinet, say, reviewing the military situation at its very first meeting—nobody could reasonably have complained. People quite new to the game naturally enough overlook practical questions connected with moving troops by land and sea, and do not realize that those questions govern the whole business. Any third-form boy, given a map of Turkey-in-Asia and told of campaigns in Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and of the bulk of enemy resources being found about Constantinople and in Anatolia, who did not instantly perceive how nice it would be to dump an army down at Alexandretta, would, it is earnestly to be hoped, be sent up to have his dormant intelligence awakened by outward applications according to plan. Quite knowledgeable and well-educated people call this sort of thing "strategy," and so in a sense it is—it is strategy in the same sense as the multiplication table is mathematics. If you don't know that two added to two makes four, and divided by two makes one, the integral calculus and functional equations will defeat you; if it has never occurred to you that by throwing your army, or part of it, across the route that your opponent gets his food and his ammunition and his reinforcements by you will cause him inconvenience, then your name is not likely to be handed down to posterity with those of the Great Captains. But the War Cabinet of October 1917 contained personages of light and leading who had been immersed up to the neck in the conduct of hostilities ever since early in 1915.
The Royal Navy could always be trusted to play the game on these occasions. When you cannot get your own way in the army, you beslaver the local martial Esculapius with soft words and prevail upon him to back you up. "Oh, if the medical authorities pronounce it necessary," thereupon declare the Solons up top who have been sticking their toes in, "it's of course got to be done." Similarly, when the amateur strategist gets out of hand, you appeal to the sailors to save the situation. "Just look at what these owls are after now," you say; "they'll upset the coach before they've done with it. You won't be able to do your share in the business, and we——" "Not do our share in the business? Why not? Of course we——" "Yes, yes, I know that; but you really must help us. One of those unintelligible masterpieces of yours all about prostitution of sea-power, and periscopes and that sort of poppy-cock with which you always know how to bluff the lubbers." "Well, we'll see what we can do"—and the extinguisher is dexterously and effectually applied. Co-operation between the two great fighting services is the master-key opening every impeditive doorway on the path to victory.
The operations which brought about the occupation of Palestine and Syria constituted a side-show on a very important scale indeed, and they at one period swallowed up contingents of British troops that were somewhat badly needed on the Western Front, just as the Salonika business did. Troops of that character, troops fit to throw against the Hindenburg Line, however, represented quite an insignificant proportion of the forces with which General Allenby achieved his startling triumphs in the year 1918. The urgent need of increasing our strength in France and Flanders during the winter of 1917-18 was fully realized by the General Staff at the War Office, and efforts were made to induce the War Cabinet to consent to withdraw some of the British troops from Palestine. But nothing was done in the matter until after the successful German offensive of March, when the enemy almost drove a wedge through the Allies' front near Amiens. After that the bulk of General Allenby's British infantry were taken from him and rushed off to France, native troops from India which had been created by Sir C. Monro since he had taken up the chief command there in 1916, together with some veteran Indian companies from Mesopotamia, being sent in their place. The brilliant offensive which carried our flag to Damascus and on to Aleppo after utterly defeating the Turks was executed with a soldiery of whom the greater part could be spared from the decisive theatre. The conquering army was composed almost entirely of mounted men for whom there was little scope in France, or of Indian troops. Even had the results been infinitely less satisfactory to the Entente in themselves than they actually were, a side-show run on such lines was a perfectly legitimate undertaking.
The same principle to some extent holds good in respect to the conquest of Mesopotamia by Sir S. Maude and Sir W. Marshall. The troops which won such striking successes in that theatre of war included a considerable proportion of units which would not have been employed on the Western Front in any case. The army was to a large extent a native Indian one, and latterly it included its quota of the freshly organized units which General Monro had created. The fact remains, however, that from April 1916 (when Kut fell) until the end of the war, a considerable force of British white troops was continuously locked up in this remote region, engaged upon what can hardly be called a necessary side-show.
In connection with the remarkably successful efforts made by the Commander-in-Chief in India to expand the local forces during the last two years of the conflict, there is a matter which may be mentioned here. That the victorious campaigns in Palestine and in Mesopotamia in 1917 and 1918 were in no small degree attributable, indirectly, to what General Monro had accomplished by energy and administrative capacity, is well known to all who were behind the scenes, and has been cordially acknowledged by Lord Allenby and Sir W. Marshall. Especially was this the case in Palestine in 1918, when brand-new native Indian regiments took the place of British troops belatedly summoned to the Western Front after our line had been broken at St. Quentin. Nevertheless, a Downing Street intrigue was set on foot about the end of April 1918 to substitute Sir W. Robertson for the commander of the forces in India who had accomplished so much since taking over charge.