re should
have priority over action in France, then I might have been of some use.
But that is settled: the four French Divisions earmarked for the East
will not now be sent until _after_ "the results of the coming offensive
in France have been determined." "If the success of this push equals
expectations you will reap the benefit." If indecisive then, "by the
10th October," two British Divisions and four French Divisions will be
at Marseilles ready to sail out here: "about the middle of November
would be the time when everything would be ready." There are altogether
too many ifs and ands and pots and pans about Millerand's question.
When a man starts going West who can foretell how long it will take him
to arrive at the East?

(1) If the push in the West is victorious we will score, says K. That is
so. Far as the Western battlefield lies from the scene of our struggle,
the report of a German defeat in France would reverberate Eastwards and
would lend us a brave moral impetus. But the point I would raise is
this:--did K., as representing a huge Eastern Empire, press firmly upon
Millerand and Joffre the alternative,--_if the push in the East is
victorious the West will score_?

What express strategical gain do they expect from pushing back the
Germans? A blow which merely destroys a proportion of men and material
without paralysing the resources of the enemy is a blow in the air. War
cannot be waged by tactics alone. That is a barbaric method. To bend
back the German lines in the West, or to push the first line back on to
the second or third, or twentieth, has of itself but slight strategical
or economic import.

Here, on the other hand, we have literally in our grasp a clear cut gift
offered us by the Gods. The impossible part, the landing, is done. All
that remains is so many fresh men and so many thousand shell. The result
is not problematical, but mathematical. Napoleon is the only man who has
waged a world war in the world as we know it to-day. Napoleon said, I
think it was on the famous raft, "Who holds Constantinople is master of
the world." And there it lies at the mercy of the Briton--could he only
convince Joffre that the shortest cut to freeing his country from the
Germans lies through the Dardanelles.

The principles which should underlie Entente strategy will be clear to
military historians although obscured to-day by jealousies and
amateurishness: just the usual one, two, three they are, in this
order: