To the Turk no operation of the war appeared more important than did the campaign against Egypt. That in the early days of the struggle in 1914 he contented himself with what amounted to little more than a demonstration designed to hold as many British troops in Egypt as possible was due primarily to considerations of larger strategy. Undoubtedly, by his incursion into the Sinai Peninsula and his half-hearted attempt with a hopelessly small force to cross the Suez Canal, he learned many lessons invaluable in any future and more ambitious campaign. Considered as a diversion the early advance upon the Suez was a success: as a serious military operation, resting on its own legs, it was a fiasco. No operation the Turks might have conducted could have been so unwelcome to the British as was that against Egypt. For weeks in advance it was discussed by English writers and, while they all, naturally, agreed that it was foredoomed to failure, there was an undercurrent of apprehension in official circles. It was realized that many untried problems and theories would be put to a severe test by such a campaign, if undertaken in a serious way by a large and well-equipped force. Of a purely Turkish force, commanded and organized by Turkish officers, there was no fear, but such wonderful organizers had the Germans proved themselves to be that the combination of Teuton brains and Turkish fighting qualities and endurance was regarded as formidable. It was realized in England also that any measure of success that might come to an invading force would have two very serious results. It would not only threaten, and perhaps sever, the shortest route to the east and so seriously embarrass the trade, military and naval efficiency of the Allies, but it would have a grave and perhaps decisive effect upon Mohammedan malcontents in Egypt and India. The exact truth of the conditions in India and Egypt will possibly never be known, so rigorous were the operations of the censorship set up by the British War Office. One thing is certain, however: in both countries political conditions were serious before the war and they could not, by any stretch of optimism, be conceived as improving with the coming of a great struggle aimed at the only remaining independent Mohammedan power.