CHURCHILL'S STRATEGY.

WAS GALLIPOLI A BLUNDER ?

DEFENDS HIS POLICY

NAVAL DIVISION AT ANTWERP.

ilr. Winston Churchill, who was present at a reunion of the Royal Naval Division, defended his policy during the war of sending an expedition to Gallipoli to capture the Dardanelles, and of ordering a Naval Division to Antwerp to defend the Channel ports from the oncoming Germans. He was First Lord of the Admiralty when these decisions were taken. Mr. Churchill said he was grateful that the officers and men of the Royal Naval Division had owed him no grudge for the part he played—sometimes a decisive part—in shaping their fortunes. As time passed men's judgment altered about the episodes of the Great War; prejudices died as more knowledge came to hand. He was uot at all afraid when he' heard the names Gallipoli and Dardanelles mentioned. "If you read the official military history prepared by impartial officers, you will see it stated that the prolongation of the resistance of Antwerp, while it did not save that city from capture, had given the necessary time for the British Army to deploy before Ypres. The Royal Naval Division were sent to Antwerp because there was nobody else to go." Fewer Critics. He was glad to see that those people who thought that Gallipoli and the Dardanelles were blunders were steadily becoming fewer and fewer. Only those people who were prejudiced, or those who were ignorant, endeavoured to argue that the forcing of the Straits of the Dardanelles was not the right strategic act in 1915. It was the only way by which the horrors of the prolongation of the struggle on the Vfestern Front and throughout the> combatant world could have been avoided. Commodore Sir Richard H. WilliamsBuckley, who commanded H.M.s. Crystal Palace during the war, opened an exhibition containing 500 war trophies of the R.N.V.R. Without being accused of undue levity, he said, he could say that the Admiralty used the depot, and indeed the whole R.N.V.R, organisation pretty much as a hat and umbrella stand, upon which they hung anything which they found difficulty in stowing away elsewhere, and they added pegs as convenient. "But 1916 was not the time in which any part of H.M. Forces would have been justified in standing on their dignity," he addtd, "and moreover the central strut was so strong that the extra pegs made no difference whatever, and it bore the weights hung on the pegs with ease." Sir Richard mentioned that all told some '20,000 men and 5000 officers passed through the depot, and such was the spirit of devotion to the service and duty that in the four years the Palace was in existence as a naval depot it was only found necessary to hold three courts-martial. A Division Without Guns. In proposing the Royal Naval Division at the luncheon, at which Earl Howe presided, General Sir lan Hamilton recalled the days of the Dardanelles, and the saying that the Division had "cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, but devil a cannon of their own did those poor boys have." (Laughter.) They were, he said, the only Division on either side of the war in the Dardanelles, who had no cannon and not so much as one solitary trench mortar. Earl Howe, in replying, said that the Antwerp expedition made by the Howe battalion played an almost vital part. [ They were in the nature of a live bait and delayed the German Army Corps for about ten days. Had that corps been free, it might have taken each of the Channel ports and turned each of them into a Zeebrugge. Sir E. Hilton Young, who took part in the attack on Zeebrugge, also replied.