'HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BASED ON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS. THE CAMPAIGN IN MESOPOTAMIA 1914-1918. VOLUME I.' [‎45v] (95/454)

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HISTORY OF THE WAR : MESOPOTAMIA
was responsible for the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. including the port of Basra
and for a portion of Arabia ; and the General Staff at the War
Office was responsible for the rest of Arabia and Mesopotamia.
There was no pre-war plan* for operations in Mesopotamia;
and the reasons for this are quite clear. There are very few
parts of the inhabited globe in which British military operations
are not possible. But as the army is the national weapon for
enforcing its policy, military preparatory plans are limited
strictly, by financial and political considerations, to areas
where in the opinion of our statesmen the national policy
seems most likely to require military support. Turkey was not
such an area, and, even if it had been one, Mesopotamia was
not regarded as a suitable avenue of attack for any but the
most subsidiary movement.f Anyone experienced in pre-war
public affairs has only to visualise the effect of an announce
ment, or even a hint, that money from the military budget
was being devoted to the preparation of a plan of campaign
against Turkey to realise the correctness of the above view.
The idea of hostilities with Turkey occurring as a mere incident
in a world war, in which national service in the United Kingdom
and the Dominions would bring into the conflict a great part
of the manhood of the Empire, was at that time certainly
not considered.
As the probability of hostilities with Turkey became imminent
the question received its due attention and consideration.
The apparent reasons, speaking broadly, why Germany
brought Turkey into the war were to create a diversion against
Russia and to sever her direct communication with the Allies,
to threaten British communications with the East, and to
create such a menace to our Eastern possessions as would
oblige us to retain forces there which would otherwise be
available for utilisation in one of the main or subsidiary
theatres of the war outside Eastern limits. The view of the
General Staff, speaking in a similarly broad sense, was that
Russia had sufficient forces to deal adequately with any
* The General Staff in India had drawn up a plan for the occupation of
Basra, but for nothing beyond that.
f An interesting sidelight on this question is the fact that a few years before
the war the students at the Staff College in India were given, as an academic
study to be worked out, the problems arising from a possible war with Turkey.
In the results it was found that the majority of students had arrived at
the conclusion that operations in Mesopotamia, via the Tigris and Baghdad,
should form an important part of any such operations. The directing Staff
of the College, however, decided that the distances and difficulties of com
munications involved, with the lack of attainable decisive objectives and the
forces that would be available, ruled such an operation out, having regard
to other possible avenues of attack.