ALLENBY had first mentioned Damascus as a target during his conversation with Chauvel on 22 September, but both Damascus and Aleppo had already been suggested as suitable targets for his continuing campaign – indeed, an attack on Aleppo had been mooted months beforehand. He had slapped it down then, and he did so once more in September. A ‘cavalry raid’ to Aleppo was, he said, ‘not feasible’. As he explained – and this should have been obvious in London – the distance from Nazareth to Aleppo was 300 miles and there were probably 25,000 Turkish troops in the Aleppo region, with more on the way. This latter point had already been made by Wilson two days before, when he claimed that Allenby's victories had already had its effect on Turkish operations in the Caucasus and in Persia (though the evidence for this is nonexistent now, and it was probably only a guess on Wilson's part).

Allenby was ‘firmly of the opinion that the only sound policy is to advance by stages’, and that the first stage was to ‘advance to the line Damascus-Beirut’. The three cavalry divisions of the Desert Mounted Corps would head for Damascus, and an infantry division, supplied by sea at a succession of ports, would move along the coast to Beirut. He did not wait for approval or comments from London, but that same day, 25 September, drew up the orders to his forces and wrote to Prince Faisal (copying in Lawrence) of his intention to march on Damascus: ‘there is no objection to Your Highness entering Damascus as soon as you consider that you can do so with safety.’