s from time to time one acquired the
impression that an undue amount of attention was being given in
Government circles to the Aegean theatre of war, an attention out of
all proportion either to its importance or to our prospects of
success; for the talk ranged over the whole wide world at times and
the Committee dealt with a good deal besides the Dardanelles. Its
members always took the utmost interest in the events in the Gallipoli
Peninsula, and, up to the date when the August offensive in that
region definitely failed, they were mostly in sanguine mood. One or
two optimistic statements made in public at that time were indeed
quite inappropriate and had much better been left unspoken. The
amateur strategist, that inexhaustible source of original and
unprofitable proposals, was by no means inarticulate at these
confabulations in 10 Downing Street. He would pick up Sir I.
Hamilton's Army and would deposit it in some new locality, just as one
might pick up one's pen-wiper and shift it from one side of the
blotting-pad to the other. That is how some people who are simply
bursting with intelligence, people who will produce whole newspaper
columns of what to the uninformed reads like sensible matter, love to
make war. In a way, the U-boats in the Aegean served as a blessing in
disguise; they helped to squash many hare-brained schemes inchoated
around Whitehall, and to consign them to oblivion before they became
really dangerous.

After the failure of the August offensive in the Gallipoli Peninsula,
the members of the Dardanelles Committee became extremely anxious, and
with good reason. They would come round to my room and discuss the
situation individually, and I am afraid they seldom found me in
optimistic vein. I had run over to Ulster in April 1914 on the
occasion of certain stirring events taking place, which brought
General Hubert Gough and his cavalry brigade into some public
prominence, and which robbed the War Office of the services of Colonel
Seely, Sir J. French and Sir Spencer Ewart. I had been allowed behind
the scenes in the north of Ireland as a sympathiser, had visited
Omagh, Enniskillen, historic Derry and other places, had noted the
grim determination of the loyalists, and had been deeply impressed by
the efficiency and the foresight of the inner organization. Necessity
makes strange bedfellows. It was almost startling to find within
fifteen months of that experience Sir E. Carson arriving in my
apartmen