[27] On analogous grounds almost every military critic has condemned the policy of this disastrous expedition as involving a dispersal of our slender military force at a time when everything called for its concentration in Europe.

It is obvious that the foregoing considerations, beyond the strategical reactions already noted, will have another of the first importance, in that they must influence the choice of a landing place.  The interest of the army will always be to fix it as near to the objective as is compatible with an unopposed landing.  The ideal was one night’s march, but this could rarely be attained except in the case of very small expeditions, which could be landed rapidly at the close of day and advance in the dark.  In larger expeditions, the aim was to effect the landing far enough from the objective to prevent the garrison of the place or the enemy’s local forces offering opposition before a footing was secured.  The tendency of the navy will usually be in the opposite direction; for normally the further they can land the army away from the enemy’s strength, the surer are they of being able to protect it against naval interference.  Their ideal will be a place far enough away to be out of torpedo range, and to enable them to work the covering and the transport squadron in sound strategical independence.

To reduce these divergencies to a mean of efficiency some kind of joint Staff is necessary, and to ensure its smooth working it is no less desirable to ascertain, so far as possible, the principles and method on which it should proceed.  In the best recent precedents the process has been for the Army Staff to present the limits of coast-line within which the landing must take place for the operation to have the desired effect, and to indicate the known practicable landing points in the order they would prefer them.  It will then be for the Naval Staff to say how nearly in accordance with the views of the army they are prepared to act.  Their decision will turn on the difficulties of protection and the essentials of a landing place from the point of view of weather, currents, beach and the like, and also in a secondary measure upon the extent to which the conformation of the coast will permit of tactical support by gun-fire and feints.  If the Naval Staff are unwilling to agree to the point or points their colleagues most desire, a question of balance of risk is set up, which the higher Joint Staff must adjust.  It will be the duty of the Naval Staff to set out frankly and clearly all the sea risks the proposal of the army entails, and if possible to suggest an alternative by which the risk of naval interference can be lessened without laying too heavy a burden on the army.  Balancing these risks against those stated by the army, the superior Staff must decide which line is to be taken, and each service then will do its best to minimise the difficulties it has to face.  Whether the superior Staff will incline to the naval or the military view will depend upon whether the greater danger likely to be incurred is from the sea or on land.