The Spectator

Disaster in the Dardanelles

The Spectator considers the official report into a military misstep, 1917

issue 18 March 2017

From ‘The Dardanelles report’, 17 March 1917: The plan of the government in the case of the Dardanelles Expedition had the worst fault which any naval or military plan, or naval and military plan combined, can have. It had no real objective… or rather, to put it in another way, it only had a vague and general objective, not one which was clear and specific and could be carried through by a series of definite acts… To say vaguely that Constantinople was its objective was nonsense. A tourist, a mere sightseer, might have Constantinople as his objective, but not a fleet or an army, or even a commercial traveller.

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