"There must have been a baker's dozen of them," writes Lord Fisher in his _Memories_ in reference to what he calls the "wild-cat expeditions" on which troops were engaged while he was First Sea Lord in 1914-15. There were a baker's dozen of them, and more, if the occupation by Australasian contingents of certain islands in the Indian Archipelago and the Pacific are included. But a correct appreciation of the merits and of the demerits of our numerous side-shows of those and later days is not covered by ejaculatory generalizations. Some of the very greatest of soldiers--Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington--all countenanced side-shows that were kept within limits. The truth about side-shows is that they may be divided up roughly into three categories: (1) The necessary, (2) the excusable, (3) the unjustifiable and mischievous. But there is no sharp dividing-line between the three categories. Of those for which we made ourselves responsible in the Great War, the majority undoubtedly come within the first category. Most of the remainder may, upon the whole, be classed as excusable. Unfortunately the small number which come under the third heading were just those which absorbed the greatest military effort, and which were the only ones that really reckoned as vital factors in influencing the course of the conflict as a whole. Amongst the necessary and unavoidable side-shows were those which were undertaken, at all events in the first instance, in the interests of sea power. Amongst the side-shows which may be regarded as justifiable, although not unavoidable, may be mentioned the continuation of the Cameroons operations after the taking of Duala, the continuation of the operations in "German East" after the capture of Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam, and the continuation of the operations in "German South-West" after the great wireless station had been dealt with; in each of these cases the forces and resources of various kinds absorbed were, for various reasons, of no great relative importance, and the conquest of the Boche territories involved was desirable. Two unjustifiable side-shows have already been discussed, the Dardanelles and Salonika; another that comes within this third category was Mesopotamia subsequent to the securing of the Shatt-el-Arab and the Karun oil-fields, and yet another is represented by the excessive resources which were devoted to Palestine operations during certain periods of the war.