No. Leaving out of consideration the blunder of having drifted into the Dardanelles enterprise at all, the real mistake lay in not abandoning that enterprise when it became apparent that the troops originally detailed could not accomplish their purpose, when it became apparent that gaining a footing on the Gallipoli Peninsula meant gaining a footing and no more and that no aid was to be expected from Bulgaria or from Greece. It was just at that juncture that Russia began to give out and that the tide turned in favour of the Central Powers on the eastern side of Europe. The matter was primarily one for H.M. Government, because the French were not deeply committed to the effort against the Straits; but H.M. Government at that moment happened to be in a state of flux. The staff at G.H.Q., St. Omer, were no doubt not absolutely unprejudiced judges; but I was hearing constantly from General H. Wilson between August 1914 and the end of 1915, and he always wrote in the same strain about the Dardanelles from April onwards: "Cut your losses and come out." Some mention has already been made of M. Briand's inclination for Entente efforts based on Salonika. In the autumn of 1915 that eminent French statesman was head of the Government in Paris, and his Cabinet took up a very strong line indeed over this question. We all agreed that neither the city, linked as it was by railway with Central Europe, nor yet its spacious land-locked haven must fall into enemy hands. Our naval authorities were in full agreement with the French naval authorities on that point. But when it came to projects for planting down large military forces in this area, with the idea of ultimate offensive operations northward ever in the background, we of the General Staff at the War Office demurred, and we were, at all events in principle, supported by the majority of the War Council. Lord Kitchener left for the Aegean at this time; but both before going and after his return he always, as far as I know, deprecated locking up fighting resources in Macedonia. Our Allies across the Channel were, however, somewhat insistent. Two conferences took place: one, a military one at Chantilly at the very end of October, and a more authoritative one a few days later in Paris, both of which I attended. More will be said about these _reunions_ in Chapter XII. General Joffre, with some of his staff, also paid a visit to London in connection with the matter. The upshot was that the French practically forced us into the policy of maintaining a large force about Salonika. But H.M. Government were placed in a difficult position in the matter, seeing that their pet project (or at all events the pet project of the pre-Coalition Government), that of attacking the Dardanelles, had so completely failed.