and three other officers not
on the Admiralty Board. The working of this improvised and not
altogether ideal machinery for the supreme task of conducting the
war is interestingly revealed in the report[1] of the commission
subsequently, appointed to investigate the Dardanelles Campaign.

[Footnote 1: British ANNUAL REGISTER, 1918, Appendix, pp. 24 ff.,
from which quotations here are taken.]

"Mr. Churchill," according to this report, "appears to have advocated
the attack by ships alone before the War Council on a certain amount
of half-hearted and hesitating expert opinion." Encouraged by his
sanguine and aggressive spirit, the Council decided that "the Admiralty
should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and
take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective."
In view of the fact that the operation as then conceived was to be
purely naval, the word "take" suggests an initial misconception
of what the navy could do. The support for the decision, especially
from the naval experts, was chiefly on the assumption that if Admiral
Carden's first operation were unpromising, the whole plan might
be dropped.

Admiral Fisher's misgivings as to the wisdom of the enterprise
soon increased, owing primarily to his desire to employ the full
naval strength in the home field. He did not believe that "cutting
off the enemy's big toe in the East was better than stabbing him
to the heart." He had begun the construction of 612 new vessels
ranging from "hush-hush" ships of 33 knots and 20-inch guns to
200 motor-boats, and he wished to strike for access to the Baltic,
with a threat of invasion on Germany's Baltic coast. The validity
of his objections to the Dardanelles plan appears to depend on the
practicability of this alternative, which was not attempted later
in the war. The First Lord and the First Sea Lord presented their
difference of opinion to the Premier, but it appears that there was
no ill feeling; Admiral Fisher later writes that "Churchill had
courage and imagination--he was a war man."

At a Council meeting on January 28, when the decision was made
definite, Admiral Fisher was not asked for an opinion and expressed
none. (The Investigation Commission declare that the naval experts
should have been asked, and should have expressed their views whether
asked or not.) But there was a dramatic moment when, after rising as
if to leave the Council, he was quickly followed by Lord Kitchener,
who p