The Story of the Great War, Volume 4 / Champagne, Artois, Grodno; Fall of Nish; Caucasus; Mesopotamia; Development of Air Strategy; United States and the War

by Unknown

Finally, so powerful became the influences calling upon the Government to retire from the Dardanelles with as much grace as possible that the opinion of Sir Ian Hamilton was asked. Probably the inside truth of the affair will not be known for some years, but it later developed that there was considerable friction between Sir Ian Hamilton and the British War Office at the time. Sir Ian, it is known, laid a large part of blame for the failure at the Strait to the fact that Earl Kitchener did not send him large reenforcements that were expressly promised. At any rate he was against a withdrawal from Gallipoli in the circumstances and in favor of a swift and overwhelming assault with all the troops and forces that could be gathered. He was still firmly convinced that the forcing of the Dardanelles was possible and probable.

Just what were the relations between France and England, and especially how they each regarded the Dardanelles campaign in the winter of 1915, it is impossible to say with any degree of assurance. It is known, however, that there were serious differences of opinion, not only among the more influential men in both Paris and London, but between the two Governments.

Obviously, the British were the more reluctant to abandon the project, which had been entered upon with so much confidence and enthusiasm. It was distinctly a British operation, although the French Government had given its unqualified approval at the start and had loyally contributed all the troops it could spare. But the plans had been drawn up in London and had been worked out by British commanders; and the acknowledgment of failure was a confession of British, not French, incompetency. It was a blow at British prestige such as had not been dealt since the early disasters of the Boer War.

While the whole question of the Gallipoli campaign was being reconsidered there occurred something that had a profound effect upon subsequent events in that part of the war area and elsewhere. The defeat of the Russians while the French and British troops were unable, through lack of preparation and foresight, to carry on an energetic offensive that might have drawn the Germans from their Slav prey, convinced all the allied Governments that the time had arrived for a thorough revision of their system of cooperation. In short, if the war was to be won and each of the Entente Powers was to escape a separate defeat while the others were doomed to a forced inactivity, it was necessary that their military, economic, and financial affairs should be so coordinated and administered that they should be directed with one object only in view—the winning of the war.

For this purpose representatives of the allied powers met in Paris and discussed plans. One of the first results of these discussions was to be seen in the military field. The armies of France and England in the field became, for all practical purposes, one. The supreme command of the allied forces in France was placed in the hands of the commander in chief of the French army.

General French, who had been only nominally under the orders of the French commander in chief, retired from command of the British army in France and one of his subordinates, Sir Douglas Haig, took his place. Similarly, in the southwestern theatre of the war, where Sir Ian Hamilton was in supreme command, the leadership passed to France, Hamilton resigning and his place being taken by Sir Charles Monro. When the British and French troops from Gallipoli were ultimately landed at Saloniki the supreme command of the allied forces in that theatre of war was given to General Sarrail of the French army.

Undoubtedly, too, the influence of France, and of Joffre individually, was thrown into the scales at these Paris meetings against a continuance of the Dardanelles operations. French public opinion was strongly in favor of sending immediate succor to the Serbians. So strong, in fact, was this public opinion that, when the expected help failed to arrive, it forced the immediate downfall of Delcassé and the ultimate resignation of the French Cabinet.

Soon after Kitchener returned to London from these Paris conferences a sensation was caused by the announcement that he was leaving the War Office temporarily and would undertake an important mission in the Near East. Ultimately it developed that this important mission was nothing more nor less than a first-hand examination of the problems confronting the British commander in withdrawing his force from Gallipoli and a study of the field into which it was proposed to transfer, not only these troops, but hundreds of thousands of others.

Probably no high officer of the British army was more fitted for the mission. Whatever one may think of Kitchener's administration of the British War Office during a period of unprecedented difficulty, no one can deny his success in India and Egypt. With those commands had necessarily gone an exhaustive study of military operations that might conceivably have to be undertaken for the protection of British prestige and power in the Mohammedan world.

Thus he was thoroughly at home in the Near East and he brought back to London an encouraging report. Even high military opinion in England had been of the opinion that the withdrawal of the allied troops from Gallipoli could not be effected without terrible losses. Some even held that it would be better and less costly in human lives to leave the troops there on the defensive until the end of the war than to attempt to get them out of the death hole into which they had been dumped.