and each of the Entente Powers was to escape a
separate defeat while the others were doomed to a forced inactivity,
it was necessary that their military, economic, and financial affairs
should be so coordinated and administered that they should be directed
with one object only in view--the winning of the war.

For this purpose representatives of the allied powers met in Paris and
discussed plans. One of the first results of these discussions was to
be seen in the military field. The armies of France and England in the
field became, for all practical purposes, one. The supreme command of
the allied forces in France was placed in the hands of the commander
in chief of the French army.

General French, who had been only nominally under the orders of the
French commander in chief, retired from command of the British army in
France and one of his subordinates, Sir Douglas Haig, took his place.
Similarly, in the southwestern theatre of the war, where Sir Ian
Hamilton was in supreme command, the leadership passed to France,
Hamilton resigning and his place being taken by Sir Charles Monro.
When the British and French troops from Gallipoli were ultimately
landed at Saloniki the supreme command of the allied forces in that
theatre of war was given to General Sarrail of the French army.

Undoubtedly, too, the influence of France, and of Joffre individually,
was thrown into the scales at these Paris meetings against a
continuance of the Dardanelles operations. French public opinion was
strongly in favor of sending immediate succor to the Serbians. So
strong, in fact, was this public opinion that, when the expected help
failed to arrive, it forced the immediate downfall of Delcasse and the
ultimate resignation of the French Cabinet.

Soon after Kitchener returned to London from these Paris conferences a
sensation was caused by the announcement that he was leaving the War
Office temporarily and would undertake an important mission in the
Near East. Ultimately it developed that this important mission was
nothing more nor less than a first-hand examination of the problems
confronting the British commander in withdrawing his force from
Gallipoli and a study of the field into which it was proposed to
transfer, not only these troops, but hundreds of thousands of others.

Probably no high officer of the British army was more fitted for the
mission. Whatever one may think of Kitchener's administration of the
British War Office during