nder the
third heading were just those which absorbed the greatest military
effort, and which were the only ones that really reckoned as vital
factors in influencing the course of the conflict as a whole. Amongst
the necessary and unavoidable side-shows were those which were
undertaken, at all events in the first instance, in the interests of
sea power. Amongst the side-shows which may be regarded as
justifiable, although not unavoidable, may be mentioned the
continuation of the Cameroons operations after the taking of Duala,
the continuation of the operations in "German East" after the capture
of Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam, and the continuation of the operations in
"German South-West" after the great wireless station had been dealt
with; in each of these cases the forces and resources of various kinds
absorbed were, for various reasons, of no great relative importance,
and the conquest of the Boche territories involved was desirable. Two
unjustifiable side-shows have already been discussed, the Dardanelles
and Salonika; another that comes within this third category was
Mesopotamia subsequent to the securing of the Shatt-el-Arab and the
Karun oil-fields, and yet another is represented by the excessive
resources which were devoted to Palestine operations during certain
periods of the war.

A special interdepartmental committee, an offshoot of the Committee of
Imperial Defence, was set up on the outbreak of the war, virtually as
an expansion of the already existing Colonial Defence Committee. By a
stroke of good fortune, its chairman was Admiral Sir Henry Jackson,
who was attached to the Admiralty for special service at the time; the
Colonial Office and the India Office, as well as the Admiralty were
represented on it, and I was the War Office delegate. It was on the
recommendations of this body that the operations against Togoland, the
Cameroons, and "German East" were initiated, that every encouragement
was given to the projects set on foot by the Australasian Governments
for the conquest of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago,
Samoa, and other localities in Oceania, and that similar encouragement
was given to the Union Government of South Africa in respect to its
plans for wresting "German South-West" out of the hands of its
possessors and oppressors. The Admiralty attached extreme importance
to Duala, and considerable importance to Dar-es-Salaam and Tanga, as
also to some of the ports in Oceania owing to the pre