L'Attaque clu Canal de Suez (3 Février, 1915).
3 Par Georges in, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, (Paris:
Delagrave. 15f.)
This. well-written book, admirable alike in its accuracy, style, and general tone, may challenge comparison with Sir Julian Corbett's description of the same incident in the second volume of the official "Naval Operations." The author brings out the best side of the entente cordiale, which, as he says, in spite of the historic difficulties in Egypt, existed in the fullest sense of the word between the French Navy and the authorities of the Suez Canal on the one side, and the British civil and military administration on the other. Thus, speaking of the end of 1914, he quotes.an eminent Frenchman as saying: Jamais notre entente avec les authorities anglaises civiles et militaire n'a ete plus étroite. cest entente cordiale dans toute Vacceptation clu terme." He even lays the blame for the escape of the Goeben and Breslau on French shoulders; and bears witness to the high skill and great enterprise with which Colonel Kress von Kressesstein and his small German staff conceived and under immense difficulties carried out the attack. The narrative is authoritative, for Lieutenant Deum was not only present but has been given access to the French Naval archives and the records of the Suez Canal Company. We ave apt, perhaps, in cur insular way _to overlook (and even Sir Julian Corbett does make the point) that the guns of two French warships took a large part in repelling the attack; that the defenders were mainly dependent on French hydroplanes for air reconnaissance; and that the Canal Company placed the whole of its enormous resources in men and m&terial at the disposal of the British Commander-in-Chief, at a time when stores were hard to come by, and provided ferries across the Canal to connect the posts on the eastern side with the western.
The plan for defending the Canal line is fully approved of as suitable in 1915, and the schemes of the amateur-strategists for drawing off the Turks by:.attacking them at home are ridiculed.
It is useless to think of defending the Sinai frontier, a conventional line traced in the middle of the desert, where it is impossible to supply and maintain any important number of troops without, very considerable preparatory work. To await the enemy on the Canal was to utilize the desert as an obstacle against him, as well as that offered by the Canal itself. It permitted the length of front to be reduced fonly parts of the Canal—by of the desert routes—were
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.