Britain reluctantly entered the Middle East after preserving Ottoman integrity

Evidence

At the out­ break of war in 1914, the Prime Minister Mr. Asquith, in a speech at the Guildhall, informed his audience with deep and obvious regret that the Ottoman Empire had chosen to enter the war on the other side. Until then it had been a cardinal principal of British policy in the region to preserve “the independence and integrity” of the Ottoman Empire as the best way of protecting the Middle East from other incursions. Mr. Asquith remarked on that occasion, with pro­ phetic insight, that the Ottoman Empire in making this decision was in effect committing suicide and sealing its own doom. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 809