and the
incapabilities of the port of Salonika for the discharge of what was
animate and what was inanimate. It was a case of an extensive haven
that provided shelter in all weathers for ocean-going ships, but
possessing most indifferent facilities for landing merchandise, or
animals, or persons, considering the importance of the site. And it
was, moreover, a case of one single line of railway meandering up a
trough-like valley which at some points narrowed into a defile, a
railway of severe gradients with few passing stations, a railway which
assuredly would be very short of rolling stock--although this latter
disability could no doubt be overcome easily enough. One somehow did
not quite picture to oneself an army of many divisions comfortably
advancing from Belgrade on Vienna based on Salonika, and depending
upon the Salonika-Belgrade railway for its food, for its munitions,
and for its own means of transit from the Mediterranean to its
launching place. Besides, there were no reserves of troops ready to
hand for projecting into the Balkans at this juncture. Only a very few
weeks had passed since those days of peril when Sir J. French and the
"Old Contemptibles" had, thanks to resolute leadership and to a
splendid heroism on the part of regimental officers and rank-and-file,
just managed to bring the German multitudes up short as these were
surging towards the Channel Ports. Fancy stunts seemed to be at a
discount at the moment, and I found it hard to be encouraging.

Some statesmen are ever, unconsciously perhaps but none the less
instinctively, gravitating towards the line of least resistance, or
towards what they imagine to be the line of least resistance. This,
peradventure, accounts to some extent for the singular attraction
which operations in the Near East, or Palestine, or anywhere other
than on the Western Front, always seemed to present to certain highly
placed men of affairs. The idea that the actual strategical position
in those somewhat remote regions was such as to constitute any one of
them the line of least resistance from the Entente point of view, was
based on a complete misreading of the military situation. That theory
was founded on the fallacy that the Western Front represented the
enemy's strongest point. It was, on the contrary, the enemy's weakest
point, because this front was from its geographical position the one
where British and French troops could most easily be assembled, and it
was the