ige. I had no authority from Lord K. or the
C.I.G.S. to express views on this subject on paper for the benefit of
the Committee. Furthermore--and perhaps this weighed more heavily in
the scale than did official considerations--I was "fed up." One
generally was by 7 P.M. at the War Office. The very idea of starting
at this hour upon a memorandum about anything, let alone the
Dardanelles, was infuriating.

Swinton, however, eventually prevailed upon me to lend a hand on the
distinct understanding, pressed for by me, that it remained a hidden
hand. After all, this intrusion of his did provide some sort of
opportunity for putting the situation plainly before the Committee,
and for expressing a vertebrate opinion. We proceeded to the club and
dined together, and thereafter, refreshed and my equanimity restored
by a rest and hearing the news from across the water, we grappled with
the subject in the C.I.D. office. "Ole Luke Oie" could be trusted to
put a thing tersely and with vigour once he knew what to say, and the
document did not take long to draft. We took the line that in the
Gallipoli Peninsula it was a case of getting on or of getting out. The
core of this memorandum is quoted in the "Final Report" of the
Dardanelles Commission, where it is pointed out that no mention is
made of a middle course. That was intentional. A middle course was
regarded by us as wholly unjustifiable, although it was the one which
the Dardanelles Committee adopted; for that body did not take our
advice--it neither got on nor got out.

The situation in the Near East as a whole became a more anxious one
than ever after the failure of Sir I. Hamilton's August offensive,
because by this time Russia's collapse was complete, and the legions
of the Central Powers which had been flooding Poland, Grodno and
Volhynia, impeded by sparsity of communications rather than by the
resistance of the Grand Duke Nicholas's ammunitionless army, had
become available for operations in a new direction. The portents all
pointed to an attack upon Serbia. If Serbia was to receive effective
aid at the hands of the Western Powers, that aid must be well in
motion before the enemy hosts should gather on the northern and
western frontiers of our threatened Ally, otherwise the aid would
assuredly be late owing to the difficulty of moving troops rapidly
from board ship in Salonika roads, up to the theatre of operations.
Hopes still existed, on the other hand, at least in the