Thus Turkey, which in different circumstances might have been in a precarious military situation, felt reasonably secure, despite her isolation. In the early part of the war, however, events moved rapidly and not exactly to her liking. For they threatened to sweep the whole Balkans into the whirl of war, and no man could tell exactly how the various petty states, under the stress of sympathy, military and naval considerations and dynastic control, would align themselves. With these events came, too, the first participation of France in the war against Turkey in the campaign in the Dardanelles, now to be described. CHAPTER V THE DARDANELLES--STRATEGY OF THE CAMPAIGN The beginning of the bombardments in the Dardanelles opens a remarkable chapter in military and naval warfare. The desperate campaign to batter down the fortifications which lead to Constantinople and the disastrous attempt to conquer the most strongly barricaded city in the world, probably excited more world-wide interest or put to the test more theories of warfare than did the Dardanelles campaign undertaken by Great Britain with the assistance of France. It was fiercely attacked by military critics almost from the start. It was, however, a boldly conceived operation, calculated to have a most important effect upon the war as a whole--certainly upon the war in the southeast corner of Europe. The Dardanelles campaign was largely conceived and controlled by the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, the remarkable and able British Secretary of the Admiralty. He has been widely condemned for his share of the operation, but revelations that have been made would appear to clear him of a great measure of the blame. What were the considerations that weighed with the British admiralty in deciding to undertake one of the most difficult operations in the whole world? Primarily it seems to have had the idea of relieving the pressure on Russia. The Turkish offensive in the Caucasus had come to grief about the end of December but a resumption was momentarily expected and feared. Hindenburg's victory at Tannenberg in East Prussia had been a terrible blow to Russia and she had no troops to spare for defense in the Caucasus.