GERMANY CLOSES THE DARDANELLES AND SO SEPARATES RUSSIA FROM HER ALLIES
On September 27th Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, entered my
office in a considerably disturbed state of mind. The Khedive of Egypt
had just left me, and I began to talk to Sir Louis about Egyptian
matters.
“Let’s discuss that some other time,” he said. “I have something far
more important to tell you. They have closed the Dardanelles.”
By “they” he meant, of course, not the Turkish Government, the only
Power which had the legal right to take this drastic step, but the
actual ruling powers in Turkey, the Germans. Sir Louis had good reason
for bringing me this piece of news, since this was an outrage against
the United States as well as against the Allies. He asked me to go with
him and make a joint protest. I suggested, however, that it would be
better for us to act separately, and I immediately started for the House
of the Grand Vizier.
When I arrived a Cabinet conference was in session, and, as I sat in the
ante-room, I could hear several voices in excited discussion. Among them
all I could distinctly distinguish the familiar tones of Talaat, Enver,
Djavid, and other members of the Government. It was quite plain, from
all that I could overhear through the thin partitions, that these
nominal rulers of Turkey were almost as worked up over the closing as
were Sir Louis Mallet and myself.
The Grand Vizier came out in answer to my request. He presented a
pitiable sight. This was, in title at least, the most important official
of the Turkish Government, the mouthpiece of the Sultan himself, yet now
he presented a picture of abject helplessness and fear. His face was
blanched and he was trembling from head to foot. He was so overcome with
his emotions that he could hardly speak. When I asked him whether the
news was true that the Dardanelles had been closed he finally stammered
out that it was.
“You know this means war,” I said, and I protested as strongly as I
could in the name of the United States.
All the time that we were talking I could hear the loud tones of Talaat
and his associates in the interior apartment. The Grand Vizier excused
himself and went back into the room. He then sent out Djavid, the
Minister of Finance, to discuss the matter with me.
“It’s all a surprise to us,” were Djavid’s first words--this statement
being a complete admission that the Cabinet had had nothing to do with
it. I repeated that the United States would not submit to closing the
Dardanelles; since Turkey was at peace she had no legal right to shut
the Straits to merchant ships, except in case of war. I said that an
American ship laden with supplies and stores for the American Embassy
was outside at that moment waiting to come in. Djavid suggested that I
have this vessel unload her cargo at Smyrna; that the Turkish
Government, he obligingly added, would pay the cost of transporting it
overland to Constantinople. This proposal, of course, was a ridiculous
evasion of the issue, and I brushed it aside.
Djavid then said that the Cabinet proposed to investigate the matter,
and, in fact, they were discussing it at that moment. He told me how it
had happened. A Turkish torpedo-boat had passed through the Dardanelles
and attempted to enter the Ægean. The British warships stationed outside
hailed the ship, examined it, and found that there were German sailors
on board. The English admiral at once ordered the vessel to go back;
this, under the circumstances, he had a right to do. Weber Pasha, the
German general who was then in charge of the fortifications, did not
consult the Turks, but he immediately gave orders to close the Straits.
Wangenheim had already boasted to me, as I have said, that the
Dardanelles could be closed in thirty minutes, and the Germans now made
good his words. Down went the mines and the nets; the lights in the
lighthouses were extinguished; signals were put up notifying all ships
that there was “no thoroughfare,” and the deed, the most high-handed
which the Germans had yet committed, was done. And here I found these
Turkish statesmen, who alone had authority over this indispensable strip
of water, trembling and stammering with fear, running hither and yon
like a lot of frightened rabbits, appalled at the enormity of the German
act, yet apparently powerless to take any decisive action. I certainly
had a graphic picture of the extremities to which Teutonic bullying had
reduced the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. And at the same moment
before my mind rose the figure of the Sultan, whose signature was
essential to close legally these waters, quietly dozing at his palace,
entirely oblivious of the whole transaction.
Though Djavid informed me that the Cabinet might decide to reopen the
Dardanelles, it never did so. This great passage-way has remained closed
from September 27, 1914, to the present time. I saw, of course,
precisely what this action signified. That month of September had been a
disillusioning one for the Germans. The French had beaten back the
invasion and had driven the German armies to entrenchments along the
Aisne. The Russians were sweeping triumphantly through Galicia; already
they had captured Lemburg, and it seemed not improbable that they would
soon cross the Carpathians to Austria-Hungary. In those days
Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador, was a discouraged, lamentable
figure. He confided to me his fears for the future, telling me that the
German programme of a short, decisive war had clearly failed and that it
was now quite evident that Germany could only win, if she could win at
all, which was exceedingly doubtful, after a protracted struggle. I have
described how Wangenheim, while preparing the Turkish Army and Navy for
any eventualities, was simply holding Turkey in his hand, intending
actively to use her forces only in case Germany failed to crush France
and Russia in the first campaign. Now that that failure was manifest,
Wangenheim was instructed to use the Turkish Empire as an active ally.
Hitherto, this nation of 20,000,000 had been a passive partner, being
held back by Wangenheim until Germany decided that it would be necessary
to pay the price of letting her into the war as a real participant. The
time had come when Germany needed her men, and the outward sign that the
situation had changed was the closing of the Dardanelles. Thus
Wangenheim had accomplished the task for which he had been working, and
in this act had fittingly crowned his achievement of bringing in the
_Goeben_ and the _Breslau_. Few Americans realise, even to-day, what an
overwhelming influence this act had upon future military operations. Yet
the fact that the war has lasted for so many years, and that the burden
has been ultimately thrown on America, is explained by this closing of
the Dardanelles.
For this is the element in the situation that separated Russia from her
allies, that, in less than a year, led to her defeat and collapse, which
in turn was the reason why the Russian revolution became possible. The
map discloses that this enormous land of Russia has just four ways of
reaching the seas. One is by way of the Baltic, and this the German
fleet had already closed. Another is Archangel, on the Arctic Ocean, a
port that is frozen over several months in the year, and which connects
with the heart of Russia only by a long, single-track railroad. Another
is the Pacific port of Vladivostok, also ice-bound for three months,
and reaching Russia only by the thin line of the Siberian Railway,
5,000 miles long. The fourth passage was that of the Dardanelles; in
fact, this was the only practicable one. This was the narrow gate
through which the surplus products of 175,000,000 people reached Europe,
and nine-tenths of all Russian exports and imports had gone this way for
years. By suddenly closing it, Germany destroyed Russia both as an
economic and a military Power. By shutting off the exports of Russian
grain she deprived Russia of the financial power essential to successful
warfare. What was perhaps even more fatal, she prevented England and
France from getting munitions to the Russian battlefront in sufficient
quantity to stem the German onslaught. As soon as the Dardanelles was
closed, Russia had to fall back on Archangel and Vladivostok for such
supplies as she could get from these ports. The cause of the military
collapse of Russia in 1915 is now well known; the soldiers simply had no
ammunition with which to fight. The larger part of 1918 Germany spent in
a desperate attempt to drive a “wedge” between the French and English
armies on the Western front, to separate one ally from another, and so
obtain a position where she could attack each one separately. The
attempt has proved to be a very difficult one. Yet the task of undoing
the Franco-Russian treaty, and driving such a “wedge” between Russia and
her Western associates, proved to have been an easy one. It was simply a
matter, as I have described, of controlling a corrupt and degenerate
Government, getting possession, while she was still at peace, of her
main executions, her army, her navy, her resources, and then, at the
proper moment, ignoring the nominal rulers and closing a little strip of
water about twenty miles long and two or three wide! It did not cost a
single human life or the firing of a single gun, yet, in a twinkling,
Germany accomplished this, what probably three million men, opposed to a
well-equipped Russian force, could not have brought to pass. It was one
of the most dramatic military triumphs of the war, and it was all the
work of German propaganda, German penetration, and German diplomacy.
In the days following this bottling up of Russia the Bosphorus began to
look like a harbour which has been suddenly stricken with the plague.
Hundreds of ships arrived from Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, loaded
with grain, lumber, and other products, only to discover that they could
go no farther. There were not docks enough to berth them, and they had
to swing out into the stream, drop anchor, and await developments. The
waters were a cluster of masts and smoke-stacks, and the crowded
vessels became so dense that a motor-boat had difficulty in picking its
way through the tangled forest. The Turks held out hopes that they might
reopen the waterway, and for this reason these vessels, constantly
increasing in number, waited patiently for a month or so. Then one by
one they turned around, pointed their noses toward the Black Sea, and
lugubriously started for their home ports. In a few weeks the Bosphorus
and adjoining waters had become a desolate waste. What for years had
been one of the most animated shipping points in the world was ruffled
only by an occasional launch or a tiny Turkish _caique_, or now and then
a little sailing vessel. And for an accurate idea of what this meant,
from a military standpoint, we need only call to mind the Russian
battlefront in the next year. There the peasants were fighting German
artillery with their unprotected bodies, having no rifles and no heavy
guns, while mountains of useless ammunition were piling up in their
distant Arctic and Pacific ports, with no railroads to send them to the
field of action.