Last meeting of the Dardanelles Committee

On 30 October 1915 the Dardanelles Committee, the body of the British government which since its first meeting on 7 June had directed the conduct of the war, met in London for the last time. In the catalogue of the British National Archives the committee’s minutes end on that day, and from 3 November a new, smaller War Committee was meeting instead. The last meeting was devoted not to Gallipoli but to Serbia and the expedition to Salonika. The day before, 29 October, a conference had been held in Downing Street with the French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, and it was his demands that the ministers now had to decide on.

A government that could not decide

By the autumn of 1915 the committee was already widely criticised. The British official history describes it as an unwieldy assembly of ministers, pulled in three directions: by the General Staff towards France, by the promises made to the French towards Salonika, and by the First Sea Lord towards Gallipoli. Since the failure of the August offensive it had not decided whether the troops should stay on the peninsula or leave it. On 11 October it decided only to send strong forces to Egypt “without prejudice to their ultimate destination”. Because of these decisions the Attorney General, Edward Carson, who demanded immediate help for Serbia, left the government. On 14 October the committee recalled General Ian Hamilton and sent General Charles Monro in his place, making further decisions dependent on his report. Monro reached Imbros only on 28 October.

Meanwhile Serbia’s fate was being decided quickly. The Bulgarians had cut the railway from Salonika to Niš, and French units were advancing up the Vardar valley. On 25 October Kitchener informed the committee that the French were firmly demanding that six British divisions, so far intended for Egypt, be sent straight to Salonika “to prevent the destruction of the Serbian army”. Kitchener and the General Staff believed it was too late to save Serbia. It was decided to talk to Joffre himself.

Joffre in London

At the conference on 29 October Joffre tried to persuade the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, Kitchener, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour, and the military that operations in Serbia had to continue and her army had to be saved. He hoped that if the Central Powers could be held up for a while, Greece would still join the Entente. From the British he wanted only that they secure Salonika and the railway line to Krivolak on the Vardar. He assured them that the port of Salonika would handle 2,000 tons of cargo a day, whereas the Admiralty put it at 500 tons. He also made it clear that his position, and even the cordiality of the alliance, depended on the British answer. In Paris that same day René Viviani’s government fell, and Joffre seemed the only fixed point in France.

Concession

When the committee met on 30 October, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Archibald Murray, declared that the General Staff was firmly opposed to an expedition to Serbia. The ministers nevertheless decided to give way, while maintaining the fundamental British position. The written answer was approved by the cabinet and, according to the British official history of the operations in Macedonia, handed to Joffre the same day. Britain agreed to co-operate with the French, relying on their calculations of the capacity of the port and the railway, for which the British staff took no responsibility. The British were to hold the line from Salonika to Krivolak, and the French to protect the railway from Krivolak to Veles and the communications with the Serbian army. Operations were not to go beyond the line Monastir (Bitola)–Skopje–Štip–Salonika. The last condition was the most important: if communication with the Serbs could not be established and maintained, the Allied troops would be withdrawn.

The British official history of the Gallipoli campaign points out that this promise, given even before Monro’s report, seriously hindered the sending of new troops to the Dardanelles. And it was just then that a new idea appeared in London. On 28 October Commodore Roger Keyes, chief of staff of the fleet at the Dardanelles, arrived there with a plan for the ships to force the straits again. By the evening of 30 October he had managed to win over Balfour and the First Sea Lord to it. The next day Monro, from Imbros, recommended the evacuation of the peninsula.

The War Committee

On 2 November Asquith transformed the committee into the War Committee, responsible to the cabinet for the whole conduct of the war. According to Winston Churchill, it initially had only five members: the Prime Minister, Balfour, Kitchener, the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey and David Lloyd George, and about ten days later Andrew Bonar Law joined them. Churchill, one of the originators of the Dardanelles expedition, was left out of it and soon left the government. At its first meeting, on 3 November, the new committee decided that Kitchener would go to the Mediterranean himself and decide the fate of Gallipoli on the spot.