Kitchener continued to lose favour with politicians and professional soldiers. He found it “repugnant and unnatural to have to discuss military secrets with a large number of gentlemen with whom he was but barely acquainted”. Esher complained that he would either lapse into “obstinacy and silence” or else mull aloud over various difficulties. Milner told Gwynne (18 August 1915) that he thought Kitchener a “slippery fish”. By autumn 1915, with Asquith's Coalition close to breaking up over conscription, he was blamed for his opposition to that measure (which would eventually be introduced for single men in January 1916) and for the excessive influence which civilians like Churchill and Haldane had come to exert over strategy, allowing "ad hoc" campaigns to develop in Sinai, Mesopotamia and Salonika. Generals such as Sir William Robertson were critical of Kitchener's failure to ask the General Staff (whose chief James Wolfe-Murray was intimidated by Kitchener) to study the feasibility of any of these campaigns. These operations were certainly feasible, but assumed a level of competence that the British armed forces proved unable to achieve at that time. Tactical incompetence in the Gallipoli campaign mean that even a fairly straight forward task ended in disaster.