he Wireless Stations -- Kiao Chao -- The Shatt-el-Arab
-- Egypt -- Question whether the Australasian forces ought to
have been kept for the East -- The East African operations -- Our
lack of preparation for a campaign in this quarter -- Something
wrong -- My own visit to Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam in 1908 -- The
bad start of the campaign -- Question of utilizing South African
troops to restore the situation -- How this was managed --
Reasons why this was a justifiable side-show -- Mesopotamia --
The War Office ought to have interfered -- The question of an
advance on Baghdad by General Townshend suddenly referred to the
General Staff -- Our mistake -- The question of Egyptian defence
in the latter part of 1915 -- The Alexandretta project -- A later
Alexandretta project propounded by the War Cabinet in 1917 -- Its
absurdity -- The amateur strategist on the war-path -- The
Palestine campaign of 1918 carried out almost entirely by troops
not required on the Western Front, and therefore a legitimate
side-show -- The same principle to some extent holds good with
regard to the conquest of Mesopotamia -- The Downing Street
project to substitute Sir W. Robertson for Sir C. Monro, a
miss-fire.

"There must have been a baker's dozen of them," writes Lord Fisher in
his _Memories_ in reference to what he calls the "wild-cat
expeditions" on which troops were engaged while he was First Sea Lord
in 1914-15. There were a baker's dozen of them, and more, if the
occupation by Australasian contingents of certain islands in the
Indian Archipelago and the Pacific are included. But a correct
appreciation of the merits and of the demerits of our numerous
side-shows of those and later days is not covered by ejaculatory
generalizations. Some of the very greatest of soldiers--Marlborough,
Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington--all countenanced
side-shows that were kept within limits.

The truth about side-shows is that they may be divided up roughly into
three categories: (1) The necessary, (2) the excusable, (3) the
unjustifiable and mischievous. But there is no sharp dividing-line
between the three categories. Of those for which we made ourselves
responsible in the Great War, the majority undoubtedly come within the
first category. Most of the remainder may, upon the whole, be classed
as excusable. Unfortunately the small number which come u