as weakening his prospects, and even Enver, the ambitious creature and
tool of Germany, postponed his approval. It would seem the taking over
of the command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force by General Allenby
set the Turks thinking, and made the German Military Mission in
Constantinople reconsider their plans, not with a view to a complete
abandonment of the proposal to advance on Bagdad, as would have been
wise, but in order to see how few of the Yilderim troops they could
allot to Jemal's army to make safe the Sinai front. There was an
all-important meeting of Turkish Generals in the latter half of
August, and Jemal stood to his guns. Von Falkenhayn could not get
him to abate one item of his demands, and there can be no doubt that
Falkenhayn, obsessed though he was with the importance of getting
Bagdad, could see that Jemal was right. He admitted that the Yilderim
operation was only practicable if it had freedom for retirement
through the removal of the danger on the Palestine front. With that
end in view he advocated that the British should be attacked, and
suggested that two divisions and the 'Asia Corps' should be sent from
Aleppo to move round our right. Jemal was in favour of defensive
action; Enver procrastinated and proposed sending one division to
strengthen the IVth Army on the Gaza front and to proceed with the
Bagdad preparations. The wait-and-see policy prevailed, but long
before we exerted our full strength Bagdad was out of the danger zone.
General Allenby's force was so disposed that any suggestion of
the Yilderim operation being put into execution was ruled out of
consideration.

Several documents captured at Yilderim headquarters at Nazareth in
September 1918, when General Allenby made his big drive through Syria,
show very clearly how our Palestine operations changed the whole of
the German plans, and reading between the lines one can realise how