e of General Townshend's from Kut to
Azizieh, the project for an advance right up to Baghdad assumed shape
at Army Headquarters on the Tigris, in Simla, and at the India Office,
and it was then that the General Staff, now with Sir A. Murray in
charge, was suddenly called upon to give a considered opinion
concerning this ambitious scheme for the information of the War
Council. Now it is an interesting fact that just at that very same
time we were called upon to give a considered opinion on the subject
of the best plan of rendering Egypt secure, and that this necessarily
raised the question whether the plan should favour an active form of
defence involving an expedition to Alexandretta or thereabouts, or
whether it should take a more passive form of holding positions away
back near the Suez Canal. The two Memoranda were as a matter of fact
printed in the one secret document.

As regards Alexandretta we had no doubts whatever, although, as
already mentioned on p. 79, Lord K. and the experts in connection with
Egypt favoured operations in that direction. We made up our minds
without the slightest difficulty, and pronounced dead against a
forward policy of that kind at such a time. But in reference to
Baghdad we all of us, I think, felt undecided and in a quandary.
Unacquainted with General Townshend's views, assuming that the river
transport upon which military operations up-Tigris necessarily hinged
was in a reasonably efficient condition, ignorant of the obstacles
which forbade a prompt start from Azizieh, we pictured to ourselves a
bound forward at a very early date. Actually the advance did not
materialize for more than a month, and in the meantime the Turks were
gathering reinforcements apace. The city might have been occupied had
General Townshend been able to push forward at once; for an army
(favoured, it is true, by incomparably more effectual administrative
arrangements) did sixteen months later reach the place within seven
days of quitting Azizieh, although strongly opposed. But so exiguous
an expeditionary force could not have maintained itself in that
isolated situation in face of swelling hostile numbers. In falling
back to his advanced base its leader would have been faced with
nearly double the distance to cover that he compassed so successfully
in his retreat from Ctesiphon. The little army would almost certainly
have been cornered and compelled for lack of supplies to surrender in
some advanced position i