CHURCHILL'S WAR BOOK

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 105, 31 October 1923, Page 7

CHURCHILL'S WAR BOOK

THE DARDANELLES FAILURE

ADMIRAL'S CRITICAL REVIEW.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COFTRIGHT.)

LONDON, 30th October.

Mr. Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis of 1915" has been published and widely reviewed.

Admiral Mark Kerv, in a five-column review in the "Morning Post," describes it as "Mr. Churchill's apologia for his part in the Dardanelles failure." Admiral Kerr says : "Mr. Churchill's great talents, personality, and imagination, enabled him to perform many and various services for the country, particularly in connection with the anti-submarine warfare, but he distributes blame with a lavish hand to his colleagues and subordinates in this apologia. The reader feels that he is a man with a clever pen, who persuaded meri whose experience was gained with the sword, to certain action against their wills. No man of any account seems to have been wholeheartedly with Mr. Churchill 'in the efforts to conquer the Dardanelles without an adequate* army on the spot. As early as 4th September, 1914, Mr. Churchill approached Greece, asking the most feasib.'e way of striking at the heart of the Turkish Empire,. and the number of British ships requhed to supplement the Greek Navy. The Greek reply was that, the British Fleet, backed by all the navies in the world, could not force the Dardanelles, which must be a military operation. Owing to seventeen rows of mines, torpedo tubes, and batteries, it was no use forcing the passage, as the ships sacrificed would block the hole in the minefield they made."

"BLUFFING THE TURK"

Admiral Kerr further says:- "Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher were strategically correct in desiring to open a passage for Russian wheat and munitions going to Russia. The error which caused the failure was trying to bluff the lurk, and thus making him build up defences on Gallipoli which otherwise would have been left severely alons. Be-' lore the first bombardment only t'n'e thousand Turks were on Gallipoli. There were no guns on the northern and western sides of Bulair, and the lines were empty of men and guns, but after v ? a disasters of 18th March' to the battleships Inflexible, Ocean, and Irresistible, the Turks believed that Allah was with them. As the Greeks knew, to give the lurks this warning was madness \ high official in the Ministry of Marine in £ft c"8 > ™. h<f he heard the news, said ihat will be ths end of the Dardanelles expedition. Now the Turks will make it impregnable before troops can ?«n' 1V« ♦ i ßl Kitcllffl6t ™ 8 of opinion that 150,000 mell would b e sufficient for the capture of the Dardanelles. 1 hus, in agreement with the considered plan of the Greek General Staff, they proposed that 20,000 men should seize in tIAI« Xa, ndretta railway; 30,000 land m the Gmf of Adramyti, to contain the Smyrna Army Corps ; 30,000 to seize the Bulau- lines; 60,000 to 80,000 to poh forts in the rear, then turn the Ken- ? tn* Aaatit shore: Admiral Jieu ,sajs this operation would not heft them. ***» Ul6 D^nelles, ,but