The Wat 207
soum sector on the pontoons brought from Constanti-
nople and on improvised petroleum-tin rafts (February 2,
1915). But the steadiness of the defence, the fire of
the French cruisers, Requin and d'Entrecasteaux, and a
severe sandstorm broke the force of the attack. The
Turks, after considerable loss, retired in good order un-
pursued, and recrossed the desert at a heavy cost of
transport camels. The following day, traffic through the
Canal was resumed.
The result of this repulse was to put the Turks politi-
cally on the defensive and to substitute the Canal for
Cairo as the Turkish military objective. For Egypt had
given no indication of any inclination to rise in support
of the Turkish invasion. While the object of the
Germans was not to divert large Turkish forces
for the conquest and control of Egypt, but to
immobilise as large forces of the enemy as pos-
sible in that remote region, by raids on the Canal
and by risings in its neighbourhood. In which they were
greatly aided by the character of the wild tribes and terri-
tories in the neighbourhood of the Canal, and by the fact
that the Indian regiments had shown themselves not
impervious to Pan-Islamic propaganda. With these
advantages, the activities of their very able military
leader in the Sinai peninsula, Kress von Kressenstein,
kept the British defence occupied resisting native raids
both on and behind the Canal; and through that highly
sensitive spot so irritated the nervous centres of war con-
trol in London, that eventually no less than three army
corps were massed in Egypt as the British Expeditionary
Force (1916).
Meantime the Turkish blow against Cairo had been
closely followed by the British counter-stroke against
Constantinople, for which Egypt served as a base. This