Some random WWI thoughts

It's wonderful what you can rediscover while cleaning out your room - I've just spent the last couple of days re-reading Colin Simpson's excellent 1972 book, Lusitania, which you really should read if you have any interest in naval issues or transatlantic politics in WWI.

What caught my eye, though, was a paragraph in the Epilogue, added in 1983, which quotes from Martin Gilbert's biography of Winston Churchill (one of the main figures in the Lusitania disaster):

Martin Gilbert (from 'Lusitania') said:
"He was one of the first Ministerial advocates of the bombing of military targets inside towns. He contemplated the violation of Dutch and Danish neutrality in an attempt to launch an invasion of Germany. He was prepared to allow neutral Spain to annex Britain's ally Portugal, hoping, thereby, to secure the use of Portuguese colonial ports for Britain. He was a persistent advocate of the use of poison gas against the Turks at Gallipolli; a policy rejected by the Commander of the troops on the peninsular[sic]..."

Leaving aside debate regarding Churchill's motives and morals, or indeed the accuracy of quoting a source that is itself a quote in another work, any one of these decisions being decided differently would have interesting (in the Chinese sense) effects on the global stage (obviously...). It's interesting to question how the war might have gone had any of these ideas been taken even slightly more seriously (for those of you who doubt the possibility of that, bear in mind that the Admiralty's first plan of combating submarines was to train seagulls to defecate on their periscopes).

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I'm sure you lot can come up with far more interesting ideas and expound on them far more eloquently than can I. So hop to it!
 
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