If the broad lines of an Eastern policy had been laid down and insisted on by the Allied Governments, a plan could have been put into execution which, while offensive operations were in progress in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Macedonia, would have directed against the heart of the Ottoman Empire a strategic reserve, concentrated with that objective in view at one or more of the Eastern Mediterranean ports. The force required would not have been considerable. The Turkish and Bulgarian armies were held on three widely separated fronts, leaving weak and scattered garrisons in Thrace for the protection of the Dardanelles. The difficulties were many, but the stakes were big. The fall of Constantinople would have revolutionized the Near Eastern situation. It would have forced Turkey to make a separate peace, and would, thereby, have freed a large proportion of our forces in Palestine and Macedonia for employment in other theatres. It would have had an immediate effect in Bulgaria, where the resentment against Germany, on account of the partitioning of the Dobrudja, was bitter and widespread. It would have opened up communications by sea with the Rumanian and Russian armies in Moldavia, and made it possible to maintain and quicken the Southern Russian front. An opportunity would have presented itself for settling the Macedonian question on its merits, the Western Powers would have been the arbiters, and their decisions would have been respected as those of all-powerful allies or potential conquerors. A just settlement of this question could not have failed to secure a separate peace with Bulgaria. Any Balkan settlement, which fulfilled our treaty and moral obligations to Rumania and Servia respectively, involved the partial dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. An invasion of the Eastern and South-Western provinces of the Dual Monarchy was the natural corollary of an Eastern military policy. This invasion could have been effected by national armies advancing towards their ethnological frontiers. The Rumanians, after the reconquest of Wallachia, could have operated in Transylvania and along the Danube Valley towards the Banat. The Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina towards the Dalmatian Coast. In all these provinces the populations were awaiting with impatience the arrival of the Allies to throw off the hated yoke of Austria-Hungary. Operations of this nature would have had a repercussion in Croatia and Bohemia, where the inhabitants were disaffected and ready to revolt. Their attitude would have facilitated an extension of the invasion in the direction of Trieste. The occupation of Trieste would have completed the encirclement of German Austria and Germany. The German Western front would have been turned strategically, policy and strategy, working in harmony, could have undertaken the task of isolating Prussia, the centre of militarism and the birthplace of Pan-Germanism. Munich and Dresden are closer to Trieste than to any point in France or Flanders.