the potentialities of a
fleet under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated. My
exposition was intended to be dissuasive, and I think that Mr.
Churchill was disappointed.

We had a most pleasant discussion, the First Lord having a good
working knowledge of military questions owing to his early career and
training, and being therefore able to appreciate professional points
which might puzzle the majority of civilians. At the end of it he
seemed to clearly realize what a very serious operation of war a
military undertaking against the Straits was likely to be, but he
dwelt forcibly, and indeed enthusiastically, upon the results that
would be gained by the Entente in the event of such an undertaking
being successfully carried out--on that subject we were all quite at
one. The story of this informal pow-wow has been recorded thus at
length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General
Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing
an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after the
country had been engulfed up to the neck in the morass and was
irretrievably committed to an amphibious campaign on a great scale in
the Gallipoli Peninsula. Prince Louis resigned his position as First
Sea Lord a few days later; Commodore Lambert often mentioned the
pow-wow in conversation with me in later days, after the mischief (for
which the professional side of the Admiralty was only very partially
to blame) had been done.

As one gradually became acquainted in the following January with the
nature of the naval scheme for dealing with the Straits, it was
difficult not to feel apprehension. While, as Brigade-Major R.A. in
the Western Command and later as commanding a company of R.G.A. at
Malta, concerned with coast defence principles, the tactical rather
than the technical scientific side of such problems had always
interested me. When musing, during those interminable waits which take
place in the course of a day's gun practice from a coast-defence
battery, as to what would be likely to happen in the event of the work
actually engaging a hostile armament, one could picture oneself driven
from the guns under the hail of flying fragments of rock, concrete,
and metal thrown up by the ships' huge projectiles. But one did not
picture the battery as destroyed and rendered of no effect. Anybody
who has tried both is aware how infinitely easier gun practice is at
even a moving t