“The struggle will be heavy, the risks numerous, the losses cruel; but victory, when it comes, will make amends for all. There never was a great subsidiary operation of war in which a more complete harmony of strategic, political, and economic advantages has combined, or which stood in truer relation to the main decision which is in the central theatre. Through the Narrows of the Dardanelles and across the ridges of the Gallipoli Peninsula lie some of the shortest paths to a triumphant peace.”[18] [Sidenote: LORD KITCHENER’S EARLY OBJECTION] The strategic design, though not above criticism (for many critics advised leaving the Near East alone, and concentrating all our force upon the Western front)--the design in itself was brilliant. All depended upon success, and success depended upon the method of execution. Like every sane man, professional or lay, Mr. Churchill favoured a joint naval and military attack. The trouble--the fatal trouble--was that in January 1915 Lord Kitchener could not spare the men. He was anxious about home defence, anxious about Egypt (always his special care), and most anxious not to diminish the fighting strength in France, where the army was concentrating for an offensive which was subsequently abandoned, except for the attack at Neuve Chapelle (in March). He estimated the troops required for a Dardanelles landing at 150,000, and at this time he appears hardly to have considered the suggested scheme except as a demonstration from which the navy could easily withdraw. Mr. Churchill’s object was already far more extensive. Like the rest of the world, he had marvelled at the power of the German big guns--guns of unsuspected calibre--in destroying the forts of Liége and Namur. In his quixotic attempt to save Antwerp (an attempt justly conceived but revealing the amateur in execution) by stiffening the Belgian troops with a detachment of British marines and the unorganised and ill-equipped Royal Naval Division under General Paris, he had himself witnessed another proof of such power. For he was present in the doomed city from October 4 to 7, two days before it fell. Misled by a false analogy between land and sea warfare, he asked himself why the guns of super-Dreadnoughts like the _Queen Elizabeth_ should not have a similarly overwhelming effect upon the Turkish forts in the Dardanelles; especially since, under the new conditions of war, their fire could be directed and controlled by aeroplane observation, while the ships themselves remained out of sight upon the sea side of the Peninsula. It was this argument which ultimately induced Lord Kitchener to assent, though reluctantly, to a purely naval attempt to force the Straits, for he admitted that “as to the power of the _Queen Elizabeth_ he had no means of judging.”[19] But, for the moment, Mr. Churchill contented himself with telegraphing to Vice-Admiral Carden (January 3):