Then followed the decision to advance on Bagdad—a move which will go down in history as one of the chief blunders of the war, as well as a conspicuous instance of the manner in which political desiderata were allowed to outweigh military considerations. The soldiers on the ground were opposed to the move. General Nixon believed it would be disastrous to advance farther than Kut without substantial reënforcements. General Townshend was convinced that “Mesopotamia was a secondary theatre of war, and on principle should be held on the defensive with a minimum force,” and he warned his superiors that his troops “were tired, and their tails were not up, but slightly down,” that they were fearful of the distance from the sea and “were going down, in consequence, with every imaginable disease.” But the statesmen at London were thinking not only of winning the war but of eliminating Germany from all future political and economic competition in the backward areas of the world. “Because of the great political and military advantages to be derived from the capture of Bagdad,” and because the “uncertainty” of the situation at the Dardanelles made apparent “the great need of a striking success in the East,” Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, telegraphed the Viceroy on October 23, 1915, that an immediate advance should be begun. Fearful of the consequences, but faithful to his trust, General Townshend began the hundred-mile march to Bagdad. Worn out, but heroic beyond words, his troops drove the Turkish forces back and, on November 22, occupied Ctesiphon, only eighteen miles from their goal. This, however, marked the high tide of Allied success in the Near East during 1915, for General Townshend was destined to reach Bagdad only as a prisoner of war.[16] GERMANY WINS TEMPORARY DOMINATION OF THE NEAR EAST Allied military successes in Turkey were not looked upon with equanimity in Germany. There was a realization in Berlin, as well as London and Paris and Petrograd, that the stakes of the war were as much imperial as Continental. Nothing had as yet occurred which had lessened the importance of establishing an economically self-sufficient Middle European _bloc_ of nations. In the event that the German oversea colonies could not be recovered, Asiatic Turkey—because of its favorable geographical position, its natural resources, and its potentialities as a market—would be almost indispensable in the German imperial scheme of things. As Paul Rohrbach wrote in _Das grössere Deutschland_ in August, 1915, “After a year of war almost everybody in Germany is of the opinion that victory or defeat—at least political victory or defeat—depends upon the preservation of Turkey and the maintenance of our communications with her.”