I have found it anything but an easy business to strike the happy
mean between executing your wishes promptly and cheerfully on the one
hand, and, on the other, giving you a faithful impression of how we
should stand here once your orders had been carried out.

"If I make too little of the dangers which surround me, then you may be
encouraged to weaken me still further, thereby jeopardizing the whole of
this enterprise. But if I allow my anxieties to get too much the upper
hand, why then I may be ruining some larger enterprise, the bearing of
which I have no means of gauging."

I then explain the situation and wind up:--"In the small hours of the
morning, before I have had my matutinal cup of tea, the immediate
outlook gives me a feeling of cold feet in a more aggravated form than I
have hitherto experienced. The whole plan of the French Asiatic
subsidiary operation has gone, for the meantime, by the board. England
and France between them cannot find men enough, I should think, to send
considerable forces to Asia as well as run an entirely new show
elsewhere. Indeed, Naval requirements alone would seem entirely to
forbid it. But I must not worry you any more with surmises. After all,
nothing great in this world was ever easily accomplished. Never has
there been such an example of that as in the Dardanelles Expedition. How
many times has success seemed to be on the point of crowning our
efforts, and yet, on each occasion, just as we are beginning to see
light through the tangle of obstacles, preparing for an assault, or
whatever it may be, something occurs to upset the apple-cart. None the
less we do advance, and we will succeed in the end. I feel I am playing
it rather low down inflicting on you the outline of my own trouble at a
moment when your own must be infinitely greater.

"Reading over this letter which I have not now time to re-write or
correct, it strikes me that in concentrating my mind purely on the
Dardanelles I may have given a wrong impression of my general attitude
towards your latest demand. No one can realize, I believe, more clearly
than I do that the Dardanelles operations themselves hinge for their
success to a very large extent upon the maintenance of a barrier between
the Central Powers and Constantinople. As far as reinforcements of men
to the enemy in the field are concerned, such inter-communication would
not be so fatal as might perhaps be imagined. The Gallipoli Peninsula is
a limited area,