n Irak five months earlier than, as it turned
out, Kut hauled down the flag.

But, be that as it may, we made ourselves to some extent responsible
for the disaster which occurred to General Townshend's force, owing to
our not taking a decided line on the subject and not obeying the
elementary principle that resources must not in war be wasted upon
unnecessary subsidiary enterprises. Whether it was or was not feasible
to get to Baghdad at the time was a matter of some uncertainty. But
that the whole business of all this pouring of troops into Mesopotamia
was fundamentally unsound scarcely admitted of dispute. That ought to
have determined our attitude on the minor Baghdad point.

Egypt gave rise to little anxiety during the spring and summer of 1915
in consequence of the signal discomfiture which the Turks had suffered
on the Canal early in the year; the arid tract known as the Sinai
desert indeed provided a satisfactory defence in itself during the dry
months. But as autumn approached, the prospect of Ottoman efforts
against the Nile Delta had to be taken into serious consideration, the
more so that neither the Dardanelles Committee nor the War Council
which took its place could disguise from themselves that the
abandonment of the Dardanelles enterprise was at least on the cards,
and that this would liberate Osmanli forces for efforts in other
directions. There had been a school of thought in Egypt all along that
the best defence of that region against Turkish invasion was by
undertaking operations on the Syrian or Palestine coast, based on the
Gulf of Iskanderun for preference, but possibly based on Beirut or
Haifa. As the situation in the Near East grew rapidly worse during
September, the War Council began to dream of diversions in new
directions, quite apart from the Gallipoli Peninsula and Salonika,
and some of them pitched upon the shores of the Gulf of Iskanderun,
the strategical importance of which was unquestionable. A force landed
in that quarter would give the enemy something to think about, would
afford excellent protection to Egypt, and would indirectly assist our
troops, which had been gradually penetrating along the Tigris right up
into Mesopotamia.

On this project the General Staff was called upon to report, as
already mentioned in Chapter IV, and as stated above, and the General
Staff rejected the project without hesitation. This was a very
different scheme from that which had been regarded with appr