There is another matter to which I should like to refer, and it is the
suggestion that our forces have been dissipated on a subsidiary
enterprise. Not a single division was sent from France to the East. With
regard to Italy, had it not been for the fact that there are battalions
of French and British divisions there, the Austrian Army would have been
free to throw the whole of its strength on the western front. If there
were not some there now the Austrian Army would be more powerfully
represented than it is on the western front.
With regard to Saloniki, the only thing the present Government did was
to reduce the forces there by two divisions. In Mesopotamia there is
only one white division in all, and in Egypt and Palestine together
there are only two white divisions, and the rest are either Indians or
mixed with a very small proportion of British troops. I am referring to
infantry divisions.
I want the House really to consider what that means. There is a menace
to our Eastern empire through Persia, because through Persia you
approach Afghanistan, and through Afghanistan you menace the whole of
India. Had it not been for the blows inflicted upon the Turks, what
would have happened? Before these attacks there were Turkish divisions
helping the Germans in Russia. They would have been there helping the
Germans on the west, exactly as they helped them on the east.