And still in London the tug of war between Gallipoli and Salonika went on among the politicians.

But it was the uncertainty of Kitchener’s own position which was the most unsettling aspect of these confused events. Outwardly his prestige remained untouched, the generals and the politicians still revolved around him; yet it was becoming every day more apparent that his former steadiness was deserting him, that he too was being sucked into the fatal limbo of the Dardanelles. As the commanders at Gallipoli and the cabinet Ministers in London were pulled first in one way and then in another, he drifted with the rest and it began to seem that he was no more capable of finding a solution than anybody else. And in fact by the beginning of November only two men appeared to be standing on firm ground. One was Keyes and the other Monro, and the real issue — whether to stay or to go, to attack or retreat — was bound to be decided between them. These too were the champions of the two great opposing camps, and it was simply a question of which was going to be more successful in imposing his will. Kitchener, in other words, was going to Gallipoli not as a leader but as an umpire, and it was a game in which there were no precedents at all.

At first Keyes did not stand a chance. He was still far away on his outward journey to the Dardanelles when Kitchener arrived at Lemnos. The Field Marshal was met by Monro, de Robeck, Birdwood, General Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief in Egypt, and Sir Henry MacMahon, the Egyptian High Commissioner. Maxwell and MacMahon had come over to express their fears about the safety of Egypt in the event of the Gallipoli evacuation taking place, and in the course of their journey they had reached an agreement with Monro. They were prepared to back an evacuation, they told him, provided he made a new landing on the Asiatic coast of Turkey at Ayas Bay in the Gulf of Iskanderun. This was to prevent the Turks from advancing on the Suez Canal. Monro did not think much of the plan, but he was ready to fall in with it provided he got the troops out of Gallipoli. These three, then, formed a solid block. De Robeck concerned himself chiefly with the technical problems of the Navy. He could get the troops off Suvla and Anzac, he said, but he wanted Cape Helles retained as a base to assist him in blockading the Dardanelles. Birdwood too was coming round to the idea of evacuation, but was absolutely opposed to the Ayas Bay scheme. No one spoke in favour of the Navy making a new attempt on the Narrows — de Robeck indeed expressly repeated that he regarded it as folly.

So now they were all evacuators, all eager to find some way of getting out without losing too much face, and the safety of Egypt had become more important than the capture of Constantinople.

But Kitchener was still not persuaded. He liked the Ayas Bay idea, and sent off a cable to London saying so; but he held his hand about evacuation. After two days of argument on Imbros he went off to the peninsula and methodically inspected the three bridgeheads, giving a full day to each one.

Like Monro he was depressed by the difficulties of the country, and the precarious hold of the Army on the beaches. But he was not quite so hopeless; he believed they might hold on through the winter, and that, if forced to evacuate, they might get out with fewer casualties than had been anticipated, perhaps no more than 25,000 men. He said all this in a cable to London on his return to Imbros on November 15, but still made no recommendation one way or another as to what should be done. By now a week had gone by.

It was the General Staff at the War Office in London which brought a note of reality into this drifting scene. The Ayas Bay scheme they turned down flat, pointing out that with two fronts already on their hands at Salonika and Gallipoli it was unwise to add a third, and that if the Turks were going to attack Egypt it was much better to meet them after they had crossed the desert than at the outset of their journey. The French in any case hated the idea, since they regarded Ayas Bay and the Alexandretta area as their own sphere of influence. It was many months since anyone, least of all the General Staff, had rejected Kitchener’s advice in such terms as these.

And now more troubles arose. The Salonika force had accomplished nothing in Bulgaria — it had not even made contact with the Serbs — and was now about to fall back into Greece. King Constantine spoke of disarming the troops as they crossed the border. In haste Kitchener set off with Monro on November 16 for Salonika to see what could be done; and it was there at last on the following day that Keyes caught up with him. They met aboard the Dartmouth.

‘Well, I have seen the place,’ Kitchener began. ‘It is an awful place and you will never get through.’ Keyes attacked this at once. What had happened to change Lord Kitchener’s mind? Why had he dropped his support of the naval plan? Nothing had altered since they had left London; if anything the position was even better than it was before. The naval reinforcements were arriving. It was agreed that de Robeck, who was a sick man, should go home and that Wemyss should take his place. As for the Dardanelles being such an awful place, Kitchener had had no opportunity of studying it. He, Keyes, had been there eight months. He knew the possibilities intimately and he knew they could get through. All the Navy needed was the word to go ahead.

To Kitchener, who wanted to believe it, yet saw no escape from his ever-increasing difficulties, this was a siren’s song and scarcely bearable. He got up and walked into his sleeping cabin, closing the door behind him. ‘I could not help feeling sorry for him,’ Keyes wrote that night in his diary. ‘He looked so terribly weary and harassed.’

That night they steamed back to Mudros to take up the argument all over again. Keyes lost no time in heartening the reluctant generals. Any argument served: on November 17 a heavy southerly gale had again wrecked the piers at Cape Helles, and he pointed out to General Davies that evacuation had become too dangerous. To MacMahon, the Egyptian High Commissioner, he said, ‘If we fight the Turk and beat him in Gallipoli isn’t that the best way to defend Egypt?’ MacMahon was forced to agree, and said he would approach Kitchener again. A General Horne had been brought out by Kitchener as an adviser, and Keyes tackled him with, ‘If you western-front generals don’t like the idea of attacking, at least be ready to take advantage of our naval attack when we deliver it.’ Horne, according to Keyes, was ‘enthusiastic before I finished’. Then there was Birdwood. Keyes braced him with a preliminary harangue, and then left it to Admiral Wemyss to continue the argument. By November 21, when the generals assembled again at Mudros for a final conference, Birdwood had been brought round. He was reassured, no doubt, by the fact that his own officers at Anzac had now come out definitely against evacuation, while at Cape Helles a new Turkish attack had collapsed. It collapsed because the Turkish soldiers, having jumped up from their trenches, absolutely refused to go forward against the British fire. They fell back with heavy loss. Keyes began to feel that he had recovered all his lost ground at last.

Yet the truth was that Monro with his slow persistence had by now begun to dominate them all. The subordinate generals might privately agree with Keyes, but they were still unable to stand up to Monro — and it was to Monro and not Kitchener that they were turning for the last word. Birdwood was perfectly clear about this. He said to Keyes, ‘Everything depends upon Monro.’ It was time now for the two adversaries to meet.

Monro had broken his ankle getting into a boat at Salonika and Keyes found him lying on a sofa aboard the Chatham. Lynden-Bell was with him. The argument began quite pleasantly and it was not until the end that Keyes burst out with, ‘If you don’t want to share in the glory, then there are some soldiers who will.’