By the middle of February the War Council had tacitly abandoned the idea of a mere demonstration from which the ships could be at any moment withdrawn. But both Lord Kitchener and Mr. Churchill still thought that troops, if used at all, would be wanted only for “minor operations,” such as the final destruction of batteries, and both clung to this idea for about four weeks longer. Yet, in the first week of March, General Birdwood, who had been sent from Egypt to report upon this very question, telegraphed to Lord Kitchener that he was doubtful if the navy could force a passage unassisted, and that Admiral Carden’s forecast was too sanguine.[58] [Sidenote: THE DARDANELLES] By that time General Birdwood had definite experience to guide him; for, in obedience to Mr. Churchill’s orders, Admiral Carden had on February 19 begun to execute his detailed plan for forcing the Straits by naval power alone. The scene of our narrative accordingly shifts from the Council Chambers of Whitehall to that famous channel which, like a broad, deep river, divides the European from the Asiatic coast. Celebrated beyond all other waters of the world by legend and history, and by one of mankind’s noblest poems, it is haunted by almost overwhelming memories, to which the great tragedy here described has added new. At the very entrance, where the passage is three miles broad, you see upon your right hand the flat and gently curving beach upon which Agamemnon tied his ships for the prolonged siege of a low hill, formed even in his time of ruined and piled-up cities. It rises, still quite visible from the opposite shore, above the marshes where Simois and Scamander unite their small and immortal streams. [Illustration: _Vandyk_] GENERAL SIR WILLIAM BIRDWOOD]