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Hankey), late of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and its role was clearly defined by its title. It was a sensible response to a deteriorating world situation as anxiety began to grow about the rapid expansion of the German High Seas Fleet, adevelopment which had already led to an unprecedented understanding with Japan in 1902 and would soon lead to rapprochements with France and Russia.
    One of the main worries of the CID in the opening years of the century was the possibility of war between the Far Eastern rivals Japan and Russia, which might lead the latter to send her Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles to reinforce, albeit circuitously, the Pacific Fleet. This would entail a breach of the international conventions mentioned above. In the event, the Russo-Japanese War fought in 1904–5 led to the even more outlandish, and ultimately disastrous, Russian decision to send their Northern Fleet from Archangel right round the Eurasian land-mass to reinforce the Pacific Fleet, both of which were then destroyed by the victorious Japanese.
    At its ninety-second meeting in July 1906, ‘War with Turkey’ dominated the agenda of the CID. Britain and Turkey were at odds about the border between British-controlled Egypt and Ottoman Syria; the Sultan laid claim to the Sinai Desert and the territory bordering the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, declared that a decision was needed on whether it was possible to force the Dardanelles in defence of Egypt, a question originally raised by General Sir John French. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Tweedmouth, said there was no doubt that the Royal Navy could force the strait alone. But he added that it would be a costly business as the forts had powerful guns and German artillery officers were helping the Turks to man them. Ships would therefore be lost. Seizing islands commanding the mouth of the Dardanelles (Tenedos, Imbros, Lemnos, then all Turkish) might be enough to coerce the Turks. One naval adviser said the question had been considered before, but events at Port Arthur, the Russian enclave in Manchuria, in the war with Japan, had shown that forts had a natural advantage over attacking ships (although the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russians at Tsushima, near the port, the land-based guns repelled the seaborne victors and Japan had to send a large army overland to take it from the rear). The consensus at the CID was that a combined navy– army operation was the only realistic approach; but also that the current border dispute did not justify an attack on the Dardanelles.
    At the next CID meeting in November, Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, said, ‘Germany now controls the Dardanelles, and we could no longer hope to bribe the defenders to let us pass.’ He was opposed to any attack on the strait, especially one by the navy alone, and hoped it would never happen. The General Staff and the Naval Intelligence Division agreed at a conference on the Dardanelles question in December 1906 thata squadron of older armoured ships might break through to Constantinople but would be battered on the way back; and if the Turks abandoned the city there would be no real profit anyway. The army might be able to land 5,000 troops on Gallipoli for a surprise coup de main against the coastal artillery from the rear, but the force would be difficult to extricate and would have to hold on until heavily telegraphed, heavy reinforcements could be landed. That left the possibility of a large-scale combined operation, which could hardly expect to achieve surprise and would therefore have to make a landing opposed by strong defensive forces with modern guns – unless the fleet could somehow cover the landing in such a way as to enable the troops to seize a sufficiently large beachhead from which to launch a landward advance. Naval officers thought their army colleagues were overlooking the huge and swift recent advances in warship