TURKISH GIBRALTAR

Evening Star, Issue 15907, 13 September 1915, Page 7

TURKISH GIBRALTAR

Writing about the Dardanelles campaign in the 'Weekly Despatch,' Mr Robert Blatchford says : I want to remind our readers of the speech made, recently- by Mr Winston Churchill, in which he said that we were " within a few miles" of the greatest victory of the war. and in which he said that any person who suggested that the War Office was not sending out a force equal to the task before us was "presumptuous." I want to ask our readers whether it is presumptuous to declare that an allied force ordered to attack a position of great strength, held by double their number, could not be described as a force equal to the trtsk before it. I am going to be so presumptuous as to say that the Dardanelles campaign has been shamefully mismanaged. We began by a naval attack which warned the enemy of our intentions. We allowed two months to elapse before we sent out any force to act on land. In those two months the enemy moved up reinforcements and made the position, as they claim, "a second Gibraltar." When 'we sent our force to act ashore we did not send nearly enough. Now, after we have thrown away 7.000 lives, we are attacking a second Gibraltar held by forces twice the strength of our own. I urge upon the public -the seriousness of this situation. I earnestly ask members of Parliament, to insist upon knowing who is responsible for the conduct of this campaign. In the House the Prime Minister, in answer to Mr Jaynson-Hicks, said : " He could nob in the public interest make a statement at the present time as to the reason for starting the campaign in the Dardanelles in the way it was started, and as to the progress of such campaign." It is to be hoped the House will not allow the Prime Minister to cloak the tragic blunders of the Dardanelles campaign behind that specious excuse. Why is it contrary .to the public interest for'the public to know what the enemy knows : that the Dardanelles campaign has been muddled and -the lives of brave men thrown away? If tho House will insist upon knowing why Lord Fisher resigned they will get at the root of the whole affair. In the very important debate on the Munitions Bill, when the head of a State department was impeached hy hon. members, Mr Will Crooks said : " The country might, suffer disaster, before superior persons would consent to lose their superiority.'- He also asked: "Was it too much to ask that no man should stand in the way of the nation?" _ Who-is running this war? "It is not in the public interest" for us to know perhaps. But it is to our interest to knowthat the person or persons conducting this war will have to be scrapped if we are to win it.