“We might have done the same bluff with the Turks, had promptitude and decision directed us, but procrastination, indecision, and vacillation dogged us instead. The 29th Division oscillated for weeks between France and Turkey. (_See_ below my notes of the War Council Meetings of February 19th and 24th.) “_Note._--_See_ Mr. Churchill’s statement at the 19th Meeting of the War Council on May 14th, 1915, that had it been known three months previously that an English army of 100,000 men would have been available for the attack on the Dardanelles, _the naval attack would never have been undertaken_. “The War Council met on May 14th, 1915, and certain steps proposed to be taken by Mr. Churchill immediately afterwards, decided Lord Fisher that he could no longer support the Dardanelles operations. He could not go further in this project with Mr. Churchill, and was himself convinced that we should seize that moment to give up the Dardanelles operations. So Lord Fisher went. “Lord Fisher’s parting with Mr. Churchill was pathetic, but it was the only way out. When the Prime Minister read to Lord Fisher Lord Kitchener’s letter to the Prime Minister attacking Lord Fisher for withdrawing the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ from certain destruction at the Dardanelles, Lord Fisher then realised how splendid had been Mr. Churchill’s support of him as to her withdrawal. A few days afterwards the German submarine that had been hovering round the British Fleet for a fortnight blew up the wooden image of the super-Dreadnought we had sent out there as a bait for the German submarines, showing how the Germans realised the ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’ value in letting all the other older battleships alone for about a fortnight till they thought they really had the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in this wooden prototype! “It must be emphasised on Mr. Churchill’s behalf that he had the whole Naval opinion at the Admiralty as well as the Naval opinion at the Dardanelles with him--Lord Fisher was the only dissentient. “It must be again repeated that though Lord Fisher was so decidedly against the Dardanelles operations from the very first, yet he was very largely influenced to remain because he was convinced it was of vital importance to the nation to carry out the large building programme initiated by him, which was to enable the Navy to deal such a decisive blow in the decisive theatre (in Northern Waters) as would shorten the war--by the great projects alluded to by Mr. Churchill at the 9th meeting of the War Council on January 28th, 1915, when he described the Three Naval phases of the War, leading to our occupation of the Baltic as being the supreme end to be attained.