objects to devote those
funds to. Had the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1906 taken the line
that, even admitting an attack upon the Straits to be a difficult
business, its effect if successful was nevertheless likely to be so
great that the matter was one to be followed up, a pretty substantial
share of the secret funds coming to hand in the Intelligence
Department between 1906 and 1914 would surely have been devoted to
this region. All kinds of topographical details concerning the
immediate neighbourhood of the Dardanelles would thereby have been got
together, ready for use; it would somehow have been discovered in the
environs of Stamboul that the Gallipoli Peninsula had been surveyed
and that good large-scale maps of that region actually existed, and
copies of those large-scale maps would have found their way into the
War Office, where they would speedily have been reproduced.

It was made plain to me when giving evidence before the Commission
that the Rt. Hon. A. Fisher and Sir T. Mackenzie, its members
representing the Antipodes, considered that there had been great
neglect on the part of the War Office in obtaining information with
regard to the environs of the Dardanelles in advance. But, quite
apart from the peculiar situation created by the decision of the
Committee of Imperial Defence, there must have been serious
difficulties in obtaining such information about the Gallipoli
Peninsula--only those who have had experience in such matters know how
great the difficulties are. Intelligence service in peace time is a
subject of which the average civilian does not understand the meaning
nor realize the dangers. The Commission, which included experts in
such matters in the shape of Admiral Sir W. May and Lord Nicholson,
made no comment on this point in its final Report, evidently taking
the broad view that the lack of information was, under all the
circumstances of the case, excusable. In his special Report, Sir T.
Mackenzie on the other hand blames the Imperial General Staff for
being "unprepared for operations against the Dardanelles and
Bosphorus," obviously having the question of information in his mind,
as he must be perfectly well aware that the planning of actual
operations was just as much a matter for the Admiralty as for the
General Staff, the whole problem being manifestly an amphibious one.

As a matter of fact, considering the kind of place that the Gallipoli
Peninsula was, and taking into consider