se are available. The Turks were mustering for an attack
upon Egypt across the Isthmus of Sinai at that time. It was an axiom
in our military policy that the Nile delta must be rendered secure
against such efforts. There was something decidedly attractive about
employing the troops--or a portion of them--who must in any case be
charged with the protection of Egypt, actively against the enemy's
line of communications instead of their hanging about, a stationary
force, on the Suez Canal awaiting the onset of the Osmanli. Right
through the war, the region about the Gulf of Iskanderun was one of
prime strategical importance, seeing that Entente forces planted down
in those parts automatically threatened, if they did not actually
sever, the Ottoman communications between Anatolia and the theatres of
war in Palestine and in Mesopotamia. But at dates subsequent to the
winter of 1914-15 the enemy had fully realized that this was the case,
was in a position to provide against the eventuality, and had taken
steps accordingly.

At the time I speak of, the Turks were not, however, in strong force
at or near Alexandretta. Nor were they in a position to assemble
formidable bodies of troops in that neighbourhood at short notice. For
railway communications running westward towards Smyrna and the Golden
Horn remained interrupted by the great Taurus range of mountains, the
tunnels through which were making slow progress, and the tunnels
through the Amanus hills which sever Aleppo from the Cilician Plain
were likewise incomplete. One of our light cruisers (H.M.S. _Doris_,
if my memory is not at fault) was stationed in the Gulf of Iskanderun,
and was having a high old time. She dodged up and down the coast,
appeared unexpectedly at unwelcome moments, and carried terror into
the hearts of the local representatives of the Sublime Porte. She
landed boats' crews from time to time just to show that she was
top-dog, without their even being fired upon. Somebody ashore having
done something that she disapproved of, she ordered the Ottoman
officials to blow up certain of the bridges on their own railway, and
when these harassed individuals, anxious to oblige, proffered the
excuse that they lacked the wherewithal to carry her instructions out,
she lent them explosives and saw to it that they were properly used.
Her activities made it plain to us that there was absolutely no fight
in the enemy at the moment in this quarter.

The whole subject of a