The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 1917. THE DARDANELLES REPORT.

Southland Times, Issue 17970, 10 March 1917, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 1917. THE DARDANELLES REPORT.

The report of the Dardanelles Commission is not very satisfactorily summarised in the cables. The message is not as dear as coaid be wished, and probably we shall not be able to get a grip of the report until the full text is available. In any case it is doubtful if the publication of the report while the war is in,progress will serve a very useful purpose. It is quite dear that the Dardanelles expedition was a blondjer, and it was due chiefly to a lack of systematic relations between the War Council and the Admiralty on the one hand and the War Office on the other. In both the Admiralty and the War Office, also, the relations between junior and senior officers lacked definition. At the War Office Lord Kitchener’s whole policy tended to centralise power in his own hands, and so far as policy was concerned the Chief of the General Staff exercised merely nominal authority. Lord Kitchener, however, was himself an expert and a member of the War Council and the political

heads therefore had the benefit o

expert advice in regard to the Army, In the Admiralty the position was different. Mr Churchill was not an expert, and the War Council does not appear to have had the benefit of advice from Lord Fisher and Sir A. H. Jackson. Clearly these are matters of administration. No doubt they have been put right long ago,, and it is difficult to see what advantage is to be gained by telling the world just now that Britain muddled the Dardanelles enterprise because her administrative machinery was unequal to the strain of war. Doubtless steps have been taken to define the responsibility and authority of the Chief of the General Staff and of the First and ; Junior Sea Lords, and to base the de- . cisions of the War Council upon the decisions of naval and military exports. Whether Lord Kitchener took I too much power into his own bands I and too much work upon his own shoulders is a question that need not be considered. At a time when speed was the essence of success Lord Kitchener probably had to choose between doing things himself or not getting them done at all and the great achievement of bringing the new armies into being retrieves and condones any mistakes that may have been made. The successful prosecution of a great war depends upon the centralisation of power. Germany ■was fortunate enough to have it at the outset, and the whole tendency of political changes in Allied countries since the outbreak of war has been towards centralisation. In Lord Crewe’s opinion, as recorded by the Commission, the politicians at the War Council talked too much and the experts too little, and we can well understand Lord Kitchener’s impatience with the difficulties that the politicians found in the way of rapid and decided action. It may be taken for granted that Parliament will ask and receive assurances that administrative methods have been simplified and improved. As to the origin of the Dardanelles enterprise responsibility rest chiefly upon Mr Churchill. His idea was that the surest defence of Egypt was to force the Dardanelles and dictate

terms to Turkey at Constantinople. Lord Kitchener said that there were no troops available for military cooperation with the Navy. The Admiralty experts, if they dissented from action by the Navy alone, did not make their disapproval plain. Hence the first naval attack which failed, serving to prove that the Dardanelles could not be forced by the fleet alone and to put the Turks, on their guard. At the beginning of 1915 the Russians in the Caucasus were hard pressed by the Turks and asked Britain to make a “demonstration” that would draw off Turkish troops and relieve the pressure. Hence the landings at Cape Helles and Snvla Bay, the brilliant exploits of the 29th Division and the Anzacs, and the marvellous evacuation of December, 1916. All through Mr Churchill was too sanguine—he overestimated the Queen Elizabeth and he underestimated the Turk. It is not necessary to go into the general question of the results of the again. It was not by any means a total failure for it fully served sojne of the purposes for which it was undertaken. It might have been a brilliant success, altering the whole course of the war in the Near East The report of the Commission discloses some of the reasons of its partial failure.