Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

NEW SITUATION IN THE NEAR EAST. 41

from Suvla, and a French division from Cape Helles. This was the force whose landing at Salonika we have already seen beginning. It was destined to be placed under General Sarrail, who had formerly commanded the 3rd French Army at Verdun, and had been for some months the designated successor of General Gouraud in the command of the French Corps Expéditionnaire.

e must leave the military operations in the Balkans for later chapters, and consider here the general situation in the Near East. Assuming that in some way or other, with greater or lesser loss, the Gallipoli problem could be solved, what were the dangers to be feared from the new German and Bulgarian move ? If it succeeded wholly, if Serbia were vanquished, and Germany won the river and railway routes to Constantinople, then, apart from the advantages she would gain in regard to her own supplies, she might be able to equip an offensive against Britain in two localities. One was Egypt and the other Mesopotamia. It was unlikely that she could send troops of her own, but she could send officers and munitions, and do precisely what she had already done at the Dardanelles. If she were once placed firmly at Constantinople with an open road behind her, it was conceivable that she could inspire an offensive against Egypt more serious than the fiasco of the preceding February. Following Bismarck, who described Egypt as the «neck of the British Empire,” German political thought had always looked to the banks of the Nile as the quarter where the power of England could be most vitally crippled. There was a railway from the Bosphorus to Aleppo, with two