Slavs of the Adriatic and with their natural supporters in Bohemia and Poland. For her, the dismemberment of Austria is an essential aim; but it is an aim not to be achieved solely by negative methods. In the Pact concluded at Corfu on the 20th of July 1917 between the Serbian Government and the representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Southern Slavs, the door was left open for a just agreement with Italy. Article 9 of the Pact declares that the territory of the kingdom of the 'Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes will include all the territory 'inhabited compactly and in territorial continuity by our nation.' It would be difficult to say more pointedly that in regard to all territories not inhabited by compact masses of their race, the Southern Slavs are ready for compromise; and those territories include precisely the districts of greatest importance to Italy. No feature of the necessary European settlement is weightier than a sincere and just agreement between the Italian and the Southern Slav peoples, for none is more intimately connected with the question of the survival of Austria. While the Southern Slavs will need foresight, moderation, and prudence in the precise definition of their national claims, Italy should have a care lest, in placing too narrow an interpretation upon the requirements of her security, she estrange the foes and encourage the partisans of the Hapsburgs only to find even the integral execution of her bond unavailing to assure her a tranquil future.

HENRY WICKHAM STEED.

VOL 226. NO. 462.

2 C

THE

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR BAGHDAD

HE Report of the Commission Appointed by Act of 'Parliament to Enquire into the Operations of War ' in Mesopotamia' aroused so much passionate anger in Great Britain that it has not received the calm and impartial consideration it deserves. By speech and by pen, its findings have been alternately distorted and obscured. Its publication produced bitter controversies and personal attacks. It brought about the resignation of Mr. Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for India, who was personally the most blameless of all the prominent people involved. It imperilled for a week the stability of the Second Coalition Ministry. It was the subject of violent misrepresentation and of many unfair accusations. The Cabinet made the storm worse by its provocative indecision regarding the Report, and in the end it took the only course possible by practically dropping the subject altogether. The sequel was astonishing, even in a period so crowded with stirring events. Within a week the Mesopotamia Report seemed to have passed from the public mind, which soon afterwards turned with somewhat vain expectancy to the new British offensive on the Ypres front. Yet, if the Report has temporarily receded from view, it is most assuredly not destined to lie for ever unregarded on dusty shelves. It raises issues of the gravest moment, both for Great Britain and for India. It requires the most careful study and reflection. Parliament was entirely right in ordering the Mesopotamian inquiry, and the Government were equally right in directing that the Report should be published. The country is entitled to know the truth about these momentous matters. Even though the publication caused heated quarrels and much perversion of the true aims of the investigation, the principle involved is not affected. No one can tell how long the war will last, and the Administration have no right to resort incessantly to the facile process of postponing every awkward issue until the war is over. If the Report and the subsequent public discussions shattered some reputations and

gravely compromised others, the net result was undoubtedly good. The British public, already greatly enlightened by the Dardanelles Report, received further knowledge regarding the way in which its rulers have waged war. It is gradually accumulating materials for passing a considered judgment upon the conduct of the war and upon the administrative problems which lie ahead.

The Mesopotamia Expedition was the outcome of Turkey's appearance as a combatant. Notwithstanding the statements made in Berlin in August 1914, it is abundantly clear that the participation of Turkey in the war was at first by no means certain. Hostilities Hostilities were only precipitated when, under German instigation, Turkish torpedo-boats shelled Odessa on October 29, 1914, and sank a Russian warship. By this act the efforts of the peace party in Turkey were rendered useless, and Enver Pasha and his associates secured undisputed control with Germans as their guides and masters. Two steps should have been taken by Great Britain the moment war with Turkey began. The first was to force the passage of the Dardanelles and seize Constantinople under the guns of a British squadron. The operation was expected by the Turks, who made preparations to transfer the capital to Konia in Asia Minor. A Franco-British squadron had already established a blockade of the Dardanelles. The Cabinet were at that time engrossed by the German attempt to reach Calais and Boulogne, which reached its culminating point on October 31. Nothing was done concerning the Dardanelles for many weeks, though on November 3 some of the blockading warships bombarded the forts at the entrance for ten minutes, in order to verify the range and to test the defences. The later story of the Gallipoli enterprise and of its attendant disasters is familiar to the whole world. The attempt to force the Dardanelles was begun on February 19, 1915, more than three months too late, and its fa lure was inevitable, though it is perhaps not clear that a combined land and sea attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula was inevitably doomed.

The second obvious step imposed upon Great Britain was the seizure of the Turkish port of Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and of the deltaic region traversed by the Shattal-Arab, the name given to the navigable channel formed by the junction of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The primary

objects of this move were to cut off the Turks from access to the Persian Gulf, where British influence is paramount, and to encourage the Arab communities to throw in their lot with the Allied cause. The secondary object was to protect the oil refinery on Abadan Island, in the Shatt-al-Arab, and the oil-pipe line which traversed Persian territory to Maidan-iNaphtun, about 150 miles inland. Two months before the war began, the Admiralty had acquired a controlling interest in the oil-fields, pipe-line, and refinery, without much regard to the question of protecting these scattered properties. The Government of India are believed to have opposed the Admiralty's oil scheme, because they foresaw quite accurately that in the event of trouble the defence of the pipe-line would be thrust upon the Army of India. The Admiralty proposed to leave the defence of the pipe-line to the wild Bakhtiari tribesmen, who even at that time were holding some of the cities of Persia to ransom. Viscount Grey of Fallodon, plumbing unwonted depths of strategy, said that a couple of brigades could protect the property if hostilities developed. Within a few weeks these views were put to the test.

Although the protection of the Abadan refinery was a very secondary object from the military point of view, there is absolutely no doubt that the Mesopotamia Expedition originated in the anxiety of the Admiralty to protect Abadan. The point is made clear in the telegram from Lord Crewe, then Secretary of State, to the Government of India, dated October 5, 1914. It is also clear, and not denied, that at the outset the Government of India were not very eager to go to Mesopotamia at all, because they had already sent a large proportion of their forces to England, France, and East Africa, and were preparing to send other forces to Egypt. The orders came from the Home Government through the India Office, and they were instigated by the Admiralty. At the same time, it should be noted that General Sir Edmund Barrow, the distinguished soldier who held the post of Military Secretary at the India Office, had prepared a minute in September advocating the seizure of Basra in the event of Turkey entering the war. It is also important to note that both the Home and Indian Governments had become aware of the intention of Enver Pasha and a number of German agents to stir up strife in Persia, in the hope of stimulating movements through Afghanistan against

389 India. No one at this stage seems to have seriously contemplated an advance above Basra, although there was an allusion to Baghdad in an unofficial letter written by Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, to Lord Crewe early in October. So little did the Home Government realise the possible magnitude of the operation they were initiating, that they thought a single division would suffice. The authorities do not seem to have foreseen that both Germany and Turkey were certain to make desperate efforts to retain their route to the Middle East, the development of which was almost the greatest of the war aims of Berlin.

War with Turkey began on October 31, 1914, and Basra was occupied on November 22, the refinery on Abadan island having been previously relieved from menace. At first the Expedition consisted solely of the 6th Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Barrett, and the casualties in the successful actions which preceded the fall of Basra numbered about eight hundred in all. On November 23 Colonel Sir Percy Cox, the very experienced and prudent political officer who accompanied the Expedition, submitted in a telegram to the Viceroy the first serious suggestion for an advance to Baghdad, which he considered practicable. Sir Percy Cox has almost unrivalled knowledge of Persia and Mesopotamia, and he has kept a British peace in the Persian Gulf for many years by the exercise of a wise and cautious diplomacy. He is to-day in charge of our political interests in the occupied vilayets, and deservedly enjoys full confidence; but the suggestion he submitted the day after Basra fell was an error of judgment. His proposal was uniformly rejected by Lord Crewe, Lord Hardinge, and by General Sir Beauchamp Duff, the Commander-in-Chief in India. Lord Crewe said that the Home Government were not 'disposed to authorise an advance to Baghdad at present.' Lord Hardinge's telegram on the subject is instructive. He said he had consulted General Duff, and had come to the conclusion that the proposal would be impossible to execute at 'present.' He added that in General Duff's opinion it would be necessary to have a whole division in Baghdad and another on the line of communications; and in view of the large forces already sent overseas, and the very reduced garrison left in India, the scheme could not be carried out with reasonable 'safety. Had this sound view, which was telegraphed on