Upon all these points General Monro formed a rapid and decisive opinion. He represented the military situation as unique in history, and in every respect unfavourable. The Force, he maintained, held a line possessing every possible military defect. The position was without depth, the communications insecure and dependent on weather, the entrenchments dominated almost throughout by the enemy, the possible artillery positions insufficient and defective, whereas the enemy enjoyed full powers of observation, abundant artillery positions and opportunity to supplement the natural advantages by all the devices of engineering. For the troops, they could not be withdrawn to rest out of the shell-swept area, because every corner of the Peninsula was exposed; they were much enervated by the endemic diseases of the summer; there was a grave dearth of competent officers; and the Territorial Divisions had been augmented by makeshifts in the form of Yeomanry and Mounted Brigades. As to military objects, the Turks could hold the army in front with a small force; an advance could not be regarded as a reasonable operation to expect; and any idea of capturing Constantinople was quite out of the question. These considerations, in General Monro’s opinion, made it urgent to divert the troops locked up on the Peninsula to a more useful theatre, and convinced him that a complete evacuation was the only wise course to pursue.[227] [Sidenote: THE ADVOCATES OF EVACUATION] About that judgment there was, at all events, no hesitating ambiguity. Having condemned the whole expedition, root and branch, the General was obviously not called upon to discuss such minor details as reinforcements, or the reports of Turkish exhaustion and demoralisation, or the exact “theatre” in which the army would be likely to immobilise so large a Turkish force (Mr. Asquith estimated it as 200,000),[228] and restrain them from co-operating in further assaults upon Mesopotamia or Egypt. To be sure, there was Salonika as a possible alternative; but Sir Charles Monro must have been aware that Serbia was by that time past saving, and that the transference of the Gallipoli army to Salonika would simply relieve Turkey of all anxiety and restraint. The probable loss of prestige and of men involved in the evacuation does not appear to have influenced his decision; and, indeed, as the event afterwards proved, the loss in both was vastly overestimated by the advocates of evacuation as well as by its opponents.