broken by gaps both in the Taurus and Amanus ranges,
and in the second break the only good road was under
fire from the sea. This exposure interfered with later
reinforcements of the expedition ; but not with the earlier,
owing to a British oversight. For the last push across the
Sinai desert, the usual military and mercantile route by
el Arish along the coast, was rejected as being too near
the sea and too heavy with sand. The invasion was
accordingly planned to advance from a rail-base at Beer-
sheba, across the hard limestone central plateau against
Ismailia and the Canal centre, with false attacks against
either flank of the Canal. The expeditionary force was
originally fixed at forty thousand rifles and thirty bat-
teries, but eventually no more than twenty thousand rifles
and ten batteries left their rail-base (January, 1915).
The expedition dealt very successfully with the diffi-
culties of the desert march, though suffering much from
cold. It was then faced by the main line of defence, the
Canal itself, strengthened with inundations and defended
in places by warships. Though fear lest big ships might
be sunk and block the Channel caused little use to be
made of this obvious method of defence. The British
regulars had left Egypt and the defence force consisted
of a division of Lancashire territorials, the first con-
tingent from Australasia, and two divisions of Indian
infantry, with French and British aeroplanes and the
Egyptian artillery ; some fifty thousand in all of good
troops, though mostly untrained. As air observation
prevented any surprise attack, it seems as though a more
decisive defeat might have been delivered on the invaders
by facing them at Egypt's first line of defence—the
desert—rather than by waiting for them behind the
" ditch.'* As it was, a few units of the Turkish force
had the satisfaction of crossing the Canal in the Tous-