le business. Any third-form boy, given a map of
Turkey-in-Asia and told of campaigns in Palestine, and Mesopotamia,
and Armenia, and of the bulk of enemy resources being found about
Constantinople and in Anatolia, who did not instantly perceive how
nice it would be to dump an army down at Alexandretta, would, it is
earnestly to be hoped, be sent up to have his dormant intelligence
awakened by outward applications according to plan. Quite
knowledgeable and well-educated people call this sort of thing
"strategy," and so in a sense it is--it is strategy in the same sense
as the multiplication table is mathematics. If you don't know that two
added to two makes four, and divided by two makes one, the integral
calculus and functional equations will defeat you; if it has never
occurred to you that by throwing your army, or part of it, across the
route that your opponent gets his food and his ammunition and his
reinforcements by you will cause him inconvenience, then your name is
not likely to be handed down to posterity with those of the Great
Captains. But the War Cabinet of October 1917 contained personages of
light and leading who had been immersed up to the neck in the conduct
of hostilities ever since early in 1915.

The Royal Navy could always be trusted to play the game on these
occasions. When you cannot get your own way in the army, you beslaver
the local martial Esculapius with soft words and prevail upon him to
back you up. "Oh, if the medical authorities pronounce it necessary,"
thereupon declare the Solons up top who have been sticking their toes
in, "it's of course got to be done." Similarly, when the amateur
strategist gets out of hand, you appeal to the sailors to save the
situation. "Just look at what these owls are after now," you say;
"they'll upset the coach before they've done with it. _You_ won't be
able to do your share in the business, and we----" "Not do our share
in the business? Why not? Of course we----" "Yes, yes, I know that;
but you really must help us. One of those unintelligible masterpieces
of yours all about prostitution of sea-power, and periscopes and that
sort of poppy-cock with which you always know how to bluff the
lubbers." "Well, we'll see what we can do"--and the extinguisher is
dexterously and effectually applied. Co-operation between the two
great fighting services is the master-key opening every impeditive
doorway on the path to victory.

The operations which brought about the oc