ABSTRACT
Russia's communications with the outside world for the transport of war materials, at that time, via the Trans-Siberian railways, along the Murman coast, to which the railway from Petrograd was still under construction, and far from completion, and, in summer, by the White Sea. An attack at Alexandretta, though tending to relieve Russia in the Caucasus, would not have exercised much influence in the Balkans, and as the French always treated Syria as their preserve, they would not have countenanced our intervention there. The Government had to choose between renewing the naval attack, utilizing the military forces already assembling on the spot for an attack, or abandoning all action in the East. Kitchener, the greatest authority of the day on Oriental psychology, could not contemplate the latter course, and no one was hardly enough to suggest it. The effects in Russia would have been shattering particularly after the Western Allies had consented to a Russian occupation of Constantinople.
