The thing which it would most interest us to know
was not touched on by Mr. Churchill. He failed to tell us what was meant by the words of the War Council, which presumably he bed a hand in drafting, or which at any rate he allowed to pass—" with Constantinople as its objective." What did Mr. Churchill hold the Fleet• should and could do when the Dardanelles had been forced by naval action alone ? That is the question we have asked on several occasions, but no one has ever suggested a satisfactory answer. We suspect the reply, if it could be insisted on, would be not unlike
that of the agnostic Cockney boy, who, when the Magistrate asked him whether he knew where he would go if he told lies, said : " I don't know, nor you don't know, nor none of us don't know." Except for the breezily optimistic view expressed by Sir Edward Grey and others that there would be sure to be a revolution in Constantinople, everybody seems to have been quite vague as to what the Fleet was to do. " Never mind what it's to do. Get it there. We'll soon find it plenty of work." Only Admiral Micawber could have done justice to a Fleet sent forth on such an errand.
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