As a means of promoting closer relationships with Turkey numerous societies were established in Germany for the purpose of disseminating information on the Near East and its importance in the war. For example, Dr. Hugo Grothe conducted at Leipzig the work of the _Deutsches Vorderasienkomitee_—_Vereinigung zur Förderung deutscher Kulturarbeit im islamischen Orient_. This organization published and distributed hundreds of thousands of books, pamphlets, and maps regarding Asiatic Turkey; conducted a Near East Institute, at which lectures and courses of instruction were given; maintained an information bureau for business men interested in commercial and industrial opportunities in the Ottoman Empire; and established German libraries in Constantinople, Aleppo, Bagdad, Konia, and elsewhere along the line of the Bagdad Railway. A similar organization, the _Deutsch-türkische Vereinigung_, was maintained at Berlin under the honorary presidency of Dr. von Gwinner of the _Deutsche Bank_ and the active supervision of Dr. Ernest Jäckh. The two societies numbered among their members and patrons Herr Ballin, of the Hamburg-American Line, General von der Goltz, Baron von Wangenheim, and the Ottoman ambassador at Berlin.[8] The watchdogs of British imperial welfare, however, were not asleep. Lord Crewe, the Secretary of State for India, was busily engaged in plans for safeguarding British economic and strategic interests in Mesopotamia. Early in September, 1914, General Sir Edmund Barrow, Military Secretary of the India Office, prepared a memorandum, “The Rôle of India in a Turkish War,” which proposed the immediate occupation of Basra on the grounds that it was “the psychological moment to take action” and that “so unexpected a stroke at this moment would have a startling effect” in checkmating Turkish intrigues, encouraging the Arabs to revolt and thus forestalling an Ottoman attack on the Suez, and in protecting the oil installations at the head of the Persian Gulf.[9] Supporters of a pro-Balkan policy, in the meantime, were urging an attack on Turkey from the Mediterranean. Winston Churchill, Chief Lord of the Admiralty, for example, in a memorandum of August 19, 1914, to Sir Edward Grey, advocated an alliance with Greece against Turkey; by September 4 he had completed plans for a military and naval attack on the Dardanelles; on September 21 he telegraphed Admiral Carden, at Malta, to “sink the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_, no matter what flag they fly, if they come out of the Straits.” Mr. Churchill, with whose name will ever be associated the disastrous expedition to the Dardanelles, believed that, whatever the outcome of the war on the Western Front, the success or failure of Germany would be measured in terms of her power in the Near East after the termination of hostilities. To destroy German economic and political domination of Turkey it was necessary to have an expedition at the head