But they revealed the hesitating reluctance with which the Dardanelles campaign was regarded, not only by Lord Kitchener himself, but by his subordinate generals at home and in France. The “Westerners” were, naturally, in the ascendant. The danger to the Allied cause lay close at hand. It had only recently been averted from the Channel and from Paris. The British Staff, equally with the French, represented that not a man could be spared from France, and that the only assured road to victory lay straight through the German lines. The opposition to any “side-show,” especially if it diverted a Regular Division such as the 29th, was expressed with the emphasis of jealous alarm. [Sidenote: SIR IAN’S QUALIFICATIONS] Even the appointment of Sir Ian Hamilton to the distant enterprise was likely to be received with mingled sentiments. He counted forty-two years of service in the army. Since the days of the Afghan War and Majuba Hill (where his left hand was shattered), he had risen step by step to all but the highest commands. The Nile, Burma, Chitral, and Tirah had known him. He commanded the infantry in the rapid but vital engagement at Elandslaagte, and during the siege of Ladysmith had charge of the extensive and dangerous sector known as Cæsar’s Camp and Wagon Hill. In the final months of the Boer War he was Lord Kitchener’s Chief of Staff, and commanded mobile columns in the Western Transvaal, greatly contributing to the conclusion of the war. Since then he had served at home as Quartermaster-General, as G.O.C.-in-Chief of the Southern Command, and as Adjutant-General. Abroad he had served as Military Representative of India with the Japanese army in Manchuria (1904–1905, when, in _A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book_, he foretold the disappearance of cavalry and the prevalence of the trench in future warfare), as General Officer-Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and Inspector-General of the Overseas Forces (1910–1915). Except that he had never yet held supreme command in any considerable campaign, his experience in military affairs and in almost every phase of our army’s activity was hardly to be surpassed.