No sooner did disquieting intelligence come to hand to the effect that the Ottoman authorities had given the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ a suspicious welcome in Turkish waters during the opening weeks of the great struggle, than it became apparent that war with a fresh antagonist was at least on the cards. It was, moreover, obvious that if there were to be a rupture between the Entente and the Sublime Porte, the Bosphorus was certain to be closed as a line of communication between the Western Powers and Russia. Such an eventuality was bound to exercise a far-reaching influence over the course of the war as a whole. One therefore naturally gave some attention to the possibilities involved in an undertaking against Constantinople and the Straits--a subject with which by chance I happened to be probably as familiar as anybody in the army. Some eight years before, in the early part of 1906, H.M. Government had found itself at variance with the Sublime Porte in connection with a spot called Tabah at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, which we regarded as within the dominions of the Khedive but which Osmanli troops had truculently taken possession of. The Sultan's advisers had been rather troublesome about the business, and Downing Street and the Foreign Office had been obliged to take up a firm attitude before the Ottoman Government unwillingly climbed down. I had been in charge of the strategical section of the Military Operations Directorate at that time, and, in considering what we might be able to do in the military line supposing that things came to a head, had investigated the problems involved in gaining possession of the Dardanelles. Some years earlier, moreover, I had passed through the Straits and had spent a night at Chanak in the Narrows, taking careful note of the lie of the land, of the batteries as then existing, and so forth.