At the time I speak of, the Turks were not, however, in strong force at or near Alexandretta. Nor were they in a position to assemble formidable bodies of troops in that neighbourhood at short notice. For railway communications running westward towards Smyrna and the Golden Horn remained interrupted by the great Taurus range of mountains, the tunnels through which were making slow progress, and the tunnels through the Amanus hills which sever Aleppo from the Cilician Plain were likewise incomplete. One of our light cruisers (H.M.S. _Doris_, if my memory is not at fault) was stationed in the Gulf of Iskanderun, and was having a high old time. She dodged up and down the coast, appeared unexpectedly at unwelcome moments, and carried terror into the hearts of the local representatives of the Sublime Porte. She landed boats' crews from time to time just to show that she was top-dog, without their even being fired upon. Somebody ashore having done something that she disapproved of, she ordered the Ottoman officials to blow up certain of the bridges on their own railway, and when these harassed individuals, anxious to oblige, proffered the excuse that they lacked the wherewithal to carry her instructions out, she lent them explosives and saw to it that they were properly used. Her activities made it plain to us that there was absolutely no fight in the enemy at the moment in this quarter. The whole subject of an expedition to Alexandretta was carefully gone into, in consultation with Sir J. Maxwell who was commanding the forces in Egypt, and we came to the conclusion that a comparatively small force could quite easily effect a landing and gain sufficient ground to make itself comfortable on enemy soil, even if the Turks managed gradually to assemble reinforcements. One realized that securing a considerable sector of ground [p.63] at once was essential in an amphibious operation of this kind, the very thing that was never accomplished on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Lord K. was much interested in the project for a time; he believed that it would help the Russians, who were in some straits in Armenia, and he was satisfied that if it was successfully carried into effect, hostile designs against the Suez Canal line would automatically be brought to nought. A job of this sort would have served as a capital exercise for some of the Australasian troops then in Egypt, who from the training point of view were still a raw soldiery; such a task would have represented a very different class of trial from that which they were actually to undergo three months later when getting ashore at Anzac Cove. But Mr. Churchill's naval project against the Dardanelles began to take shape early in January, and it put an end to any thoughts about Alexandretta. The matter is, indeed, only mentioned here because its consideration marked about the first occasion on which Lord Kitchener made any use of the General Staff within the War Office in connection