arget on the water than it is at a target on land. One
foresaw that the enemy's warships would plaster the vicinity of the
work with projectiles, and would create conditions disastrous to human
life if the gun-detachments did not go to ground, but that they would
not often, if ever, actually hit the mark and demolish guns and
mountings.

The Admiralty's creeping form of attack, chosen on Admiral Carden's
initiative, ignored this aspect of the question altogether. The whole
scheme hinged upon _destroying_ the Ottoman coast batteries, the very
thing that ships find it hardest to do. They can silence batteries;
but what is the good of that if they then clear out and allow the
defenders to come back and clean up? The creeping plan, moreover,
obviously played into the hands of Turkish mobile guns, which would
turn up in new positions on successive days, and which, as I had told
Mr. Churchill three months before, our ships would find most difficult
to deal with; these guns would probably give the mine-sweepers much
more trouble than the heavy ordnance in the enemy's fixed defences.
Then, again, one could not but be aware that the Sister Service was
none too well equipped for dealing with the enigma of mines in any
form--that had become obvious to those behind the scenes during the
first six months of the war--and one's information pointed to the
Turkish mine-defence of the Dardanelles being more up to date than was
their gun-defence. Finally, and much the most important of all, this
deliberate procedure was the worst possible method to adopt from the
army's point of view, supposing the plan to fail and the army then to
be called in to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The enemy would
have been given full warning, and would deliberately have been allowed
what the Turk always stands in need of when on the war-path--time to
prepare.

The "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, as well as
sidelights thrown upon the affair from other quarters, have
established that of the three eminent naval experts who dealt with the
project and who were more or less responsible for its being put into
execution, two, Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Henry Jackson, were by no
means enthusiastic about it, while the third, Lord Fisher, was opposed
to it but allowed himself to be overruled by the War Council. Had
those three admirals met three representatives of the General Staff,
Sir J. Wolfe-Murray, General Kiggell and myself, let us say, sittin