THE DARDANELLES.

Shannon News, 27 June 1924, Page 4

THE DARDANELLES.

SIR lAN'HAMH/TON'ON ) "'■ DIRECTORS' CAMPAIGN. I SOME OF THE BLUNDERS. ] KITCHENER, THE PRIMITIVE ORIGINAL.., Speaking at Hull on the Dardanelles campaign General Sir -lan Hamilton 'offered some frank personal opinions upon a few of those who helped"to direct the military and naval operations. "By the winter of 3 914-15," ho saad. •'the J< v ir«st Sea Lord was Winston Churchill. That is a name to conjure up brickbats or bouquets according to i'aiicv. But wo need not here trouble ourselves with his goodness or badness. Genius is an X-ray faculty which enables a mortal to see what is on the other side of the mountains. Whether having 1 seen, he uses his knowledge "I or well ia-anothcr maltur. Mr Churchill saw. Alter all, he is an artist—a seer. Ho caw sec; he saw the Dardanelles, and so seeing he resolved to use.the long distance boots given us by our fleet to get round the enemy's eastern flank. ' . .

"Next in power to this young genius sj't an old maw of the sea. Lord Fisher also understood that the series of, assaults on fortiited positions which was o-oing on in France was; bound to end hi the defeat ot Europe. He understood that to escape from the misfortunes -which are actually on us to-day we mustxiuickly find a way round. But his eyes were glued on the other flank—the Western flank. For years he had dreamed of the three mouths of the Baltic; of Borlcum, and of ttie Kiel Canal. Brilliant as he was, sensible as he could be, he Avas more narrow than Wii ston Churchill in that he was essentially a one-element man. He never wasted a thought on anythink so dry as the land. He reckoned ■to mask Borkum, force an entrance to the Baltic, unci land luissian and British armies within seventy miles of Berlin. . ■ • - *"* ' " .

KITCHKiViyt'S LIMITATIONS,

••„\Vxt as to tin* War Office. The chief of llio War Office was FieldMarshall Lord Kitclumor, who had boon pulled off. his-ship just as he was starting to cany on the iil'th year of his civilian work> 'in ISgypt. Lord Kitchener was 'eager to save the nation, l)itt lie was badly handicapped. Oii' tiic day of declaration of war he found himself committed to'the foolish French Plan XVII., and he also found that all the biggest generals ■wetv about to scamper off to France, taking with them the pick of the General Staff. Tako.ilie War Office as a whole —there were shining exceptions like the Q/M-G., Sir John Cowan, and a dug-outi'P.M.O., Sir Charles Oallwell —but generally speaking either the officers wre capable but in the wrong posts, or they were capable but too terrified of Lord Kitchener to say 'No". to him. , . .

"In some ways lie was reminiscent of Scobeleff. Certainly lie bolonged to a tiypc which can flourish only in Russia or the British Empire. In the more closely organised Continental systems tliere is no room tor these primitive originals. He had, not vdsion, or if he luul v he could never'explain what he saw; but he had instinct, and, given ,s free fun, it rarely failed him." '"■ 'A MISSING DOCUMENT. .

Lt was the morning or: the 12lli. JMarcli, 1915, when Lord Kitchener sent for Sir lan Hamilton. Sir lan thus described it: "I entered liis room. .After a moment lie looked up and said. 'Wo are sending a military force to support the Meet now at the Dardanelles," and you are to have command." When the King of Denmark' sent Hai> lel. "to Knglainl," observed Sir lan, "Ho. commanded him to make himself scarce 'with fiery quickness.' Thus it was with King Kitchener and Hamilton. Within tw'enty-four hours he must hand over a -command three .times larger than the British Expeditionary Force;; receive his instructions; select a staff; get the hang'-of the Dardanelles and of the nature of the whereabouts of hi u new fOTce, and - -bundle off!

"As was to be expected/in so much ag-itatioir, all sorts of things were overlooked. For instance, in 190-6, the General Staff had drawn up a considered -.memorandum upon the question of forcing the Dardanelles But'the Geil- . oral Staff wei-o hi Fi-amie,-and no one •'at the War Office knew iof the existence of the document. Nod' until 1916, (long after last of,our troops, had. quiti ted the Gallipoli Peninsula, did I myself ever hear o.f it. So now you see ' our party of thirteen officers starting off on 13th. /March—a Friday—for the Dardanelles. My. iivstructio'ns, on a half-sheet of foolscap, were vague.".... THE BRAIN..WAVE. Sir lan Hamilton spoke,in detail of the- operations at the Dardanelles. ",V Beach," he said, "had we. but known it. was next door to impossible as a landingvOur evil genius had.planned our ruin here, and yet, at the last hour, good angels came and saved us by sending - into the naval minds the thought of how, by.the gift of a Avoodon' horse, Troy and all her citadels had fallen. Commander Unwin was the name of the hero who had the brain wave, and as he is miraculously still alive I can still take my hat* off when I meet him. So it came about that Admiral Weinyss fixed up an old steamer called the River Clyde to bear fwithin her womb two battalions of infantry. Not one of our men would have returned to tell the tale but for the River Clyde—sold now to the Spaniards by a Government of spendthrifts who could find millions for anything except sentiment." THE BRIGADE IN EGYRT. Sir lan> spoke of the lack of reinforcements, and declared that it ivas easier t<o get butter out of a dog's ! mouth than troops out of the War | Uilioe—excel-'-, thai, was lo say, for the Western. Front. We had the sworn testimony of General Street, the General Staff (•llice of the iMith Regular Division, before the i:°- vai Commission on the. Dardanelles, that "even a fresh, weii-lr-ained brigade would, have

turned the scale" on 28th. April. Had England then no fresh, -well-trained ib*-igade? 'j.cs, indeed, in Egypti it was .standing- by—idle. So far back as 25th March he had begged for leave to» take these troops. The voyage from Egypt to the Dardanelles took three days. Afterwards tliey came, but by that)" "afterwards" twice as many Turks had also arrived on the Peninsula. *• In the end the Higher Direction of - the British at home proved less tenacious than the Turk, although it was not really so much the Turk as pressure ■from Western theorists which caused them to' give. way. Then, sadly, the army of the Dardanelles lefti its ' battlefields and its .dead, and, without having lost guns or trenches, «fc#*