March 15, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
13 
i 
Council on February i6th. This led to a delay of three 
weeks in the arrival of troops on the spot, and, as tilings 
ultimately turned out, with very unhappy results to the 
adventure, when it ceased to be a naval, and became a 
military undertaking. The censure of Tord Kitchener 
is twofold. He is blamed for the decision on its merits 
and he is blamed for the irregularity of the action. He 
acted without informing the First Lord or the Council. 
But on the merits it must be remembered that the 
desirability of having troops to assist was mentioned 
for the first time on February ytli. When preparation 
was made for their employment on the i6tli, it was only 
for minor operations — clearing the mobile guns and the 
destruction of forts already silenced by the fleet. At the 
most, it seemed to be thought that this assistance might 
be necessary to expedite the naval victory and to 
secure the safe return of the fleet after victory was 
assured. Even on March 13th, Sir Ian Hamilton's instruc- 
tions forbade his occupation of any part of the (iallipoli 
Peninsula, and limited him to operations on the scale 
mentioned. His orders, indeed, began with the formula 
of the day. " The Fleet have undertaken to force the 
passage of the Dardanelles." Military force then, was 
only to be available if it w^as found necessary for assisting) 
the Navy to success. 
Indeed, there is one possible explanation of Lord 
Kitchener's action on the 20th, which has been overlooked. 
The report is silent as to the extreme surprise of every- 
one concerned at the completeness of the Fleet's success 
on February iqth. Can it be doubted that it was this 
success, coupled with his knowledge of , the needs of the 
arrny in France, that naturally led Lird Kitchener to 
suppose that it was as safe from the Dardanelles point of 
view, as it was prudent from the French point of view, to 
hold these troops in reserve ? To criticise this action 
as " vacillating and dilatory " in the hght of subsecjuent 
events, seems to present it in a light altogether false. 
The real need for troops at the Dardanelles was in cir- 
cumstances that would arise if the navy succeeded. The 
delay in sending them is judged from the result when the 
navy had failed. It is not to the point to say that Lord 
Kitchener's proceeding was irregular. All the proceed- 
ings were irregular in form. The real point is different. 
Were the proceedings as a whole taken in defiance of 
principles held by the professional advisers ? There is 
no evidence to suggest that if all the forms of sound 
administration had been observed, without any more 
competent technical guidance, that any sounder policy 
would have ensued. 
The Commissioners' main criticisms seem, therefore, 
against the weight of evidence. Remembering that the 
operation examined was purely naval, it is the lirst error 
of the Commissioners that is the more important. How is 
it that they failed to put their hands on the real weakness 
of the situation, and have instead explained this huge 
blunder by the hackneyed theory that all naval and 
military' disasters arise from political interference with 
professional advisers ? Is it that the Commissioners 
found the alternative explanation, that the naval advice 
was altogether incompetent, too staggering and unbe- 
lievable a fact to put forward ? Yet it obviously was the 
fact, and if the only excuse for publishing the report 
is that the people are to be told the truth, then it is 
this truth, and no other, that is the lesson the facts of the 
case convey. 
The Fundamental Error 
It does not in the least relieve Mr. Asquith or Mr. 
Churchill. They were, after all, responsible not only for 
bringing Lord Fisher back in 1914, but for continuing the 
Fisher system after the Beresford Committee in igog had 
pricked the bubble of the materialists' naval policy. 
We then had had five years of undiluted Fislierism. 
Even in peace it had become painfully clear that it was a 
systen^ based on doctrines essentially unwarlikc, and was 
producing results manifestly chaotic. But the exposure 
in iqoQ did not, unhappily, end it. After Lord Fisher 
was gone, the Fisher methods continued. No one of the 
vital matters, on which success in war depends, was 
brought under supervision of a staff selected and 
charged with serious preparation for war. At the opening 
of 1912, immediately after Mr. Churchill had taken the 
Admiralty over from Mr. McKenna, there seemed — but 
for a very brief period only — a chance that the lesson of 
t'he encjuiry had been learned. It was almost Mr. 
Churchill's first action to announce the constitution of a 
War Staff, in a document which set out, in brilliant and 
unanswerable reasoning, the fundamental truth of all 
preparation for naval war. Though the Staff he pro- 
posed to create was to be concerned only with the study 
and preparation of plans of a strategical kind, he re- 
minded us that unless strategy and tactics had the unit 
efficiency of ships behind them, they were, however 
skilful, but the preliminaries of defeat. Obviously, 
then, the War Staff announced on New Year's Day 1912, 
must itself only be the preliminary of the far more im- 
portant War Staff that would fathom the art of 
using naval weapons in offence and foiling their use in 
the hands of the enemy. 
Fisherism 
It had been the whole complaint against Fisherism 
that it was mad about material and blind to the methods 
by which it should be used. Now, at last, we were 
surely to have an organisation that would put things 
right. At last brains would rule. But Mr. Churchill 
soon forgot — if he had ever understood — the meaning 
of his words. So far from committees being created to 
study torpedoes, or submarines, or mines, or gunnery, 
the only staff that did exist for the study of the latter 
was abolished. And we drifted into war vvitljout any 
organisation for studying the matters that He at the 
root of it. Mr. Churchill has paid a high price for his 
failure to protect Admiralty policy by expert knowledge. 
The price the countrj^and its Allies have paid, is paying,, 
and must still pay, is incalculable. 
" War," said an American General, " is fighting, and 
fighting i.s killing." It is a matter of weapons. The 
starting point is the combat. You must kill your enemy, 
or at sea sink or destroy his ship, or, as in this case, pound 
up and silence his forts, before he can sink you. Combat 
involves then offensive and defensive activities. The 
Fisher system left all of these for discovery when war 
came. The thing that stands out in the transactions 
described in this report is, that from beginning to end, 
the operations were recognised to be experimental. 
Between January 2nd and February igtli it would have 
been very easy to have made a dummy fort and tested 
ships' guns against it. It would have been easy to have 
discovered what might be expected when aircraft were 
employed to observe. But it never occurred to anyone 
to do either. The Queen Elizabeth, whose armament 
turned the scale of military objection, was actually, in 
attacking the Callipoli forts, trying her guns for the 
first time ! It was known that ships would have to stand 
still to fire and would be exposed to the guns of the 
forts, to anchored.and drifting mines, and, if they ever got 
to the Narrows, to torpedoes fired at a range of half a 
mile. No provision was made for protecting a single one 
of them against the enemy's offensive. It was taken for 
granted, as in the jmntomime rehearsal, that " every- 
thing would be alright on the night." It was Fisherism 
in excelsis, and it brought its inevitable Nemesis. 
In naval warfare the units of force are few but of 
enormous power, of enormous reach, of astounding speed 
and unparalleled mobility. LIsed with effect, no hostile 
ship and no hostile fort could survive the fire of a single 
■ modern battleship for five minutes. But unless the 
weapons can be used with effect, the force is only 
nominal. It is a bluff. It is not a reality. And 
weapons cannot be used with effect unless the difficulties 
in the way are discovered, and analysed, and overcome 
by the methods which skilled impartial judgment shows 
to be required. The problems which modern weapons 
present never were inquired into, because the Admiralty 
was run on the lines Lord Fisher had laid down. It 
is this issue that the Commissioners have not detected. 
It is the only lesson of the Dardanelles adventure 
that is worth learning. 
Arthur Pollen 
The article -by "An Officer ,"_ entitled, "A Village of 
Northern France," has been unavoidably held over this week 
owing to extra pressure on our space at the last moment, 
