12 January 1915, 10 Downing Street, London, Prime Minister's Residence.

"It seems that we have no choice, and I agree to cancel the Battle of the Straits."

Compared with the super-handsome image of graceful and generous when he first joined the cabinet a few years ago, Winston Churchill has become a little blessed by this time, and a few wrinkles have faintly appeared on his forehead, even so, he is still Britain's youngest Admiralty - he was not yet 36 years old when he sat in this high-profile position four years ago!

War Secretary Kitchener was satisfied with Churchill's concession and magnanimous, nodded slightly, and said: "That's right, for the whole year 1915, we have no other way out but defense." ”

Just before the East Asian coalition attacked Pearl Harbor and finally announced that it would join the Allied side of the war, Churchill and Kitchener had a heated debate on the formulation of the 1915 war plan, representing the "Eastern Europeans" and the "Western Europeans" respectively.

In fact, at the end of the war in 1914, the Entente countries still did not have a unified strategic plan for the entire alliance, and each member of the alliance tried to maximize its own interests, even at the expense of the other members of the alliance. However, because Britain and France were geographically close, and their interests were less divergent, and the coordination between all sides was much closer, when drawing up the war plan for 1915, the two countries did not hesitate to make Russia pay even greater sacrifices to ensure that Britain and France had a respite on the Western Front.

The war situation of 1914 did not bring any of the two major coalitions a clear victory in the European war, and the military operations on the Western Front completely turned into a positional war with no hope in a short period of time.

On this premise, the British and French commands believed that only by gathering overwhelming forces and weapons on the Western Front could the stalemate be broken and a truly meaningful victory could be won. To this end, it is necessary to focus on enhancing the military and economic potential and giving full play to the resource and manpower advantages of the two countries due to their vast colonies, but this will take time, and it will not be possible to fully mobilize the respective colonial empires in a year or two.

Therefore, the overall plan of the two countries boils down to strategic defense in exchange for mobilization time. On the Western Front, limited local offensive campaigns were planned only in the vicinity of Artois and Shambani in order to gain a more favorable defensive posture. In the Near East, efforts were made to prevent Turkish troops from invading the British and French colonies.

However, on the question of whether positive action should be taken in the Balkans, a divide arose between the "Eastern Europeans" and the "Western Europeans". The former advocated the opening of a new Balkan front - that is, the launching of a landing campaign to seize the Black Sea straits and Constantinople; The latter, on the other hand, opposed the dispersal of British and French forces to other fronts, and demanded the greatest possible concentration of forces to hold the Western Front.

After a fierce struggle, a compromise was finally reached, and the "Western Europeans" agreed to conduct a landing campaign in the strait, but only with a limited number of troops.

The plan for the landing operation was drawn up under Churchill's leadership, and it was planned to use as many as 12 battleships and battle cruisers, as well as one aircraft carrier, three water engine carriers, six light cruisers, 24 fleet destroyers, eight submarines, 21 minesweepers, three shallow-water heavy gunboats, and a large number of auxiliary ships.

The landing force would include one British and French infantry division each, one Australian-New Zealand force, and three brigades of British marines, with one British infantry division and two Indian infantry divisions in reserve – a total of 128,000 men.

The sudden attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent defeat at Lingayen Bay dealt a blow to Churchill and his "Eastern Europeans", and the plan to storm the Straits was aborted, and the British and French commands reassessed their necessity and feasibility.

The Entente were not unaware of the threat posed by the growing military power of the East Asian Alliance, but out of trust in the military strength of the United States, especially the strength of its fleet, Britain and France agreed that China was unlikely to ignore the huge fleet of the United States and launch a war against the Entente alone. On the other hand, in view of the fact that the trade ties between the United States and the Entente countries, especially Britain and France, have become increasingly close since the European War, and that the trade between the United States and the Allies has become more and more insignificant in comparison, and that the major empires of the Entente camp have such vast markets and extremely rich resources, Britain and France believe that the United States will never sit idly by and watch the defeat of the Entente and allow the two emerging "bandit groups" to divide up the world.

If the East Asian alliance does not hesitate to fall into a two-front war and simultaneously wage war against the Entente and the United States, it will do the Entente a great favor. With the strong industrial base and high-quality human resources of the United States, it should be more than enough to overwhelm the East Asian alliance, and then the "more than enough" part will be put into the European theater, and the collapse of Germany will be just around the corner.

With this in mind, and at the same time deploying a sizable combined fleet in the Far East, the Allied High Command was relieved to focus its attention on Europe and the Near East, and in view of the impatience of China to seize the German colonies in the Far East after the outbreak of the European war, the Allied leadership discussed the possibility of drawing China into its own camp to fight.

But Churchill saw it clearly, and he once said to Prime Minister Asquith: "What do we have to gain by China joining us? Who wants to chop themselves up to fill the belly of their allies? If the Far East is to be lost in order to allow China to enter the war, it is better to immediately make peace with Germany, and I dare say that Germany must be a better negotiating opponent than China. ”

As Churchill had predicted, China was still on the side of the Allies, but he did not expect that the United States would lose so badly that it would lose more than half of its capital ships without even touching the shadow of the opposing fleet.

The ensuing defeat of Lingayen made Churchill even more worried, after this battle, the total available strength of the combined fleet of the four countries in the Far East was only one dreadnought battleship and one old battleship, five armored cruisers, and six protective cruisers, while the three dreadnought battleships, one old battleship, and one protective cruiser that were transferred to the rear base for docking and repairing after being damaged could not recover their combat effectiveness within three months.

According to the latest information, a detachment consisting of 3-5 dreadnought battleships and 1-3 battle cruisers has been rushed back to the South China Sea from Hawaii.

If reinforcements cannot be sent in time, the Far Eastern colonies of Britain, France and the Netherlands will fall one after another in a short time, and Burma and India will also be extremely precarious.

Where did the reinforcements come from? Churchill thought about it, racked his brains, and finally had to admit that there were no more reinforcements in the hands of the Allies except for the troops prepared for the attack on the Strait.

However, due to the presence of the two advanced Chinese-built battleships of the Turkish Navy, it is obviously impossible to empty all the Strait Raider forces...... The conspiracy of the Chinese is really everywhere!