Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/32

20 beat us then; nobody knows. Some think that it was because their General Staff did not trust their chemists.

Just at the time when the gas attack was preparing outside Ypres, a little army of the Allies was landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula, "to assist the passage of the fleets through the Dardanelles."

I have been asked about the Gallipoli campaign. People have complained to me that it was a blunder. I don't agree. It had to be undertaken; to keep Bulgaria quiet, to keep Greece from coming in against us, to protect Egypt and to draw the Turkish Army from the Caucasus, where Russia was hard pressed. People say, "Well, at least it was a blunder to attack in the way you did." I say that when we did attack, we attacked with the only men and the only weapons we had, and in the only possible places.

In war one has to attempt many things, not because they are wise or likely to succeed, but because they have to be done. In this war, we had to attempt them with insufficient means, because we were unprepared for war.

Consider what that attempt meant.

In the original scheme, the Russians were to