So far as definite action was concerned, the opening of the war with Turkey and the months that immediately followed falsified all these predictions of disaster to British rule in India. Many of the native princes were effusive in their professions of loyalty to the British Empire, and several offered personal service at the front or financial contributions to the huge cost of the struggle.
Notable, and perhaps decisive, was the open adherence to Britain of the Agar Khan, the immensely powerful ruler of millions of Indian Mohammedans. The Agar Khan had spent many of the years previous to the war in England in daily association with English high society and official circles. At the outbreak of the war with Turkey, in October, 1914, at the request of the British Government, he visited Egypt, and it was largely upon his advice that the former khedive was deposed and the new one elevated to the post. Indeed, at one time there were strong rumors, afterward energetically denied by the British Government, that the Agar Khan had advised a Mohammedan repudiation of the authority of the caliph and the elevation of another to his place under a British guarantee. In support of this plan it was pointed out that Great Britain, judged by the number of adherents under her rule, was the world's greatest Mohammedan power. It was intolerable to many English people, especially to those of strong imperialistic tendencies, that the real control, even in theory, of so large and important a section of the people of the British Empire should be in Constantinople, safe from the "influence" and "persuasion" of the British Government. By these people it was held that the sultan's lineal claim was weak, and that an even better claim to the headship of the Moslems could be established for any one of several other men who might have been named. However, the plan was never achieved.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER IV
RESULTS OF FIRST SIX MONTHS OF TURKISH CAMPAIGN
What was the situation as a whole, so far as Turkey and her military actions against the Allies were concerned, as to the outcome of these various operations in three fields—the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt—during the first six months of the war? The military narrative is recorded in the chapter following. It will be seen that all of them were inconclusive. Indeed, from what we knew of the circumstances surrounding them, all we are justified in saying is that none of them was serious in the sense that they were not intended to have any decisive effect, directly, upon the progress of the war. Of them all it might be urged by a military authority that they were subsidiary operations, dangerous and wasteful in that they withdrew valuable men, munitions, brains, and energy from the decisive fronts. Their only justification is that they imposed similar action on the part of both armies, and so, in just that degree, scattered their forces. For the Turk it can be urged that at least two of the campaigns were forced upon him by his German mentors, while the third was imposed upon him by a British offensive. Furthermore, the Turk was entirely cut off from his Austro-German allies, and there was no possibility of his bringing his weight to bear in one of the main fields. From that point of view it is possible to justify the Turkish offensives as sound strategy.
Aside from a desire to protect the oil supply in Persia, it is hardly as easy to justify the British offensive in Mesopotamia. As events subsequently demonstrated, it was possible for the Turks to throw an overwhelming number of troops into Bagdad and to the south, and, furthermore, they were fighting under vastly more advantageous conditions than were the invaders. Only on the assumption that the Turks were hopelessly demoralized and disorganized, and that as fighting men they would belie all their past history, was it possible to visualize success for the British operations in Mesopotamia.
Turkey had definitely come to grips with England and with Russia. She had in none of these fields measured swords with France, although she was equally at war with that country. The exact apportionment of the actual work to be done by the individual powers of the Entente seems to have led to considerable disagreement, and resulted at times in serious delay. Such arrangements depend, of course, upon each country's idea of its spheres of influence. Obviously, no country, if it can help it, is going to waste its men or its efforts in a field in which it has only a minor political or commercial interest. So far as France was concerned, the Caucasus, Egypt—aside from the possibility of the closing of the canal—and Mesopotamia were not of enough importance to justify her in participating in the struggle with the Turks even were it physically possible. All these remarks, of course, are subject to modifications imposed by considerations of the larger strategy of the Entente Powers; but for many months of the war the agreement of the Entente Powers in the matter of general strategy was conspicuous by its absence.
With her neighbors in the Balkans Turkey had maintained remarkably good relations considering the bitterness engendered, not only by centuries of strife, but by the recent events of the two Balkan wars. Bulgaria, smarting under the loss of territory through the attack upon her by Serbia, Greece, and Rumania in the Second Balkan War, was openly conducting friendly negotiations with Turkey for the acquisition of valuable territory—a compact that could mean only one thing. Greece, frightened by the menace of the German power, had resisted up to the moment all the blandishments of the Entente Powers, who urged her to active participation in the struggle. Rumania, largely isolated from the Entente Powers, menaced on the north by Austro-German forces, on the south by a revengeful Bulgaria, borrowed heavily from Britain, the universal money bag, but straddled the fence.
Thus Turkey, which in different circumstances might have been in a precarious military situation, felt reasonably secure, despite her isolation. In the early part of the war, however, events moved rapidly and not exactly to her liking. For they threatened to sweep the whole Balkans into the whirl of war, and no man could tell exactly how the various petty states, under the stress of sympathy, military and naval considerations and dynastic control, would align themselves. With these events came, too, the first participation of France in the war against Turkey in the campaign in the Dardanelles, now to be described.[Back to Contents]