GALLIPOLI ONCE MORE

Hokitika Guardian, 26 April 1929, Page 2

GALLIPOLI ONCE MORE

(Auckland Paper)

Hie wonderful story of Gallipoli lias been told so often that we can hardly expect even an official history of the campaign to throw much new light upon it. However, 'General Oglander seems io "have succeeded in putting some of the circumstances of momentous struggle in their proper relation to the main course of the war, and has thereby • cleared away some of the obscurities that have hitherto clouded p'lihlic judgement labout it. Summarising the cabled abstract of the book, we may say that it appears to emphasise more especially two principal features of the war—the difficulties of a divided command, and the dangers involved in the intrusion of politicians into the sphere of military and naval strategists. According to General Oglander the responsibility for the attack on Gallipoli rests primarily with Mr. Lloyd George. As early as December, 1914, Mr Lloyd George had persuaded himself that “the Western front was impregnable,” and had conceived the idea that, while the Allied lines in France were held t>y the French, the entire British force should be transported to another area. His idea was that preparations should be made for a “push” against Austria from Salonika, and that meantime Turkey’s position should be jeopardised and Britain’s hold on Egypt and the Canal strengtened by landing Allied forces on the Syrian coast, threatening to take the Turks in the rear. Many of the ablest military authorities on the war have maintained that a well-directed and vigorous attack upon Austria, made through the Balkans, would at any stage have relieved the pressure on France and probably brought about the collapse of Germany. As the sequel showed, Austria was the vulnerable point of the Central Powers. Also it is probable that a diversion against Turkey early in the war would have encouraged Greece and Rumania to side at once with the Allies, and thus might have saved Serbia and changed the whole character of the conflict. But while we may give Mr Lloyd George this much credit for his insight info the realities of the situation, his project, in the form in which this book presents it, was crude and dangerous in the extreme. What would have happened in France if the British troops had been withdrawn from the Allied front in 1915 we cannot pretend to guess. But very shortly afterwards the appeal of the llussian Government for a diversion

that might help to extricate their

armies from- a desperate position in Asia Minor seems to have turned the scale at Home in favour of an attack upon the Straits. General Oglander tells us that, by the time the naval demonstration was made, the necessity for it in regard to the Russian armies had “ceased to exist,” thus illustrating most impressively the harm done to the Allied cause by lack of proper co-ordination between Russia and the Western Powers. But it is also clear that, in General Oglander’s opinion, the separate naval attack, without military backing, was a grave mistake, as it gave the Turks ample time to prepare for the Allied descent upon Gallipoli. It may be some consolation to those who hold Gallipoli as a name of sacred memories that this official history of the campaign eulogises the An/.acs in the most enthusiastic terms, and that though the troops failed in their actual objective they inflicted heavy losses on the enemy and made a material difference to the main course of the war.