ring anxieties, by hopes shattered
and fears realised, by a succession of victories and defeats on a
colossal scale, and by a sudden collapse of the enemy, may fail to see
the Palestine campaign in true perspective. But in a future generation
the calm judgment of the historian in reviewing the greatest of all
wars will, if I mistake not, pay a great tribute to General Allenby's
strategy, not only as marking the commencement of the enemy's
downfall, but as preserving from the scourge of war those holy places
which symbolise the example by which most people rule their lives.
Britons who value the good name of their country will appreciate what
this means to those who shall come after us--that the record of a
great campaign carried out exclusively by British Imperial troops was
unsullied by a single act to disturb the sacred monuments, and left
the land in the full possession of those rich treasures which stand
for the principles that guided our actions and which, if posterity
observes them, will make a better and happier world.

A few months after the Turks entered the war it was obvious that
unaided they could never realise the Kaiser's hope of cutting the Suez
Canal communications of the British Empire. The German commitments in
Europe were too overwhelming to permit of their rendering the Turks
adequate support for a renewed effort against Egypt after the failure
of the attack on the Canal in February 1915. There was an attempt
by the Turks in August 1916, but it was crushed by Anzac horse and
British infantry at Romani,[1] a score of miles from Port Said, and
thereafter the Turks in this theatre were on the defensive. Some
declare the Dardanelles enterprise to have been a mistake; others
believe that had we not threatened the Turks there Egypt would
have had to share with us the anxieties that war brings alike upon
attackers and defenders. Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, however we regard
those expeditions in the first years of the struggle, undoubtedly
prevented the Turks employing a large army against Egypt, and the
possibilities resulting from a defeat there were so full of danger to
us, not merely in that half-way house of the Empire but in India and
the East generally, that if Gallipoli served to avert the disaster
that ill-starred expedition was worth undertaking. We had to drive
the Turks out of the Sinai Peninsula--Egyptian territory--and, that
accomplished, an attack on the Turks through Palestine was imperative