THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
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NEIGHBOURS OF OURS: Scenes of East End
Life.
IN THE VALLEY OF TOPHET: Scenes of
Black Country Life.
THE THIRTY DAYS’ WAR: Scenes in the
Greek and Turkish War of 1897.
LADYSMITH: A Diary of the Siege.
CLASSIC GREEK LANDSCAPE AND
ARCHITECTURE: Text to John
Fulleylove’s Pictures of Greece.
THE PLEA OF PAN.
BETWEEN THE ACTS: Scenes in the
Author’s Experience.
ON THE OLD ROAD THROUGH FRANCE TO
FLORENCE: French Chapters to Hallam
Murray’s Pictures.
BOOKS AND PERSONALITIES: A Volume of
Criticism.
A MODERN SLAVERY: An Investigation of
the Slave System in Angola and the
Islands of San Thomé and Principe.
THE DAWN IN RUSSIA: Scenes in the
Revolution of 1905–1906.
THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA: Scenes during
the Unrest of 1907–1908.
ESSAYS IN FREEDOM.
THE GROWTH OF FREEDOM: A Summary of
the History of Democracy.
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON. G.C.B., D.S.O.
FROM A PORTRAIT BY JOHN S. SARGENT. R.A.]
THE DARDANELLES
CAMPAIGN
BY
HENRY W. NEVINSON
_THIRD AND REVISED EDITION_
[Illustration]
London
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET W. 1
_First Published_ _November 1918_
_Second Edition_ _December 1918_
_Third and Revised Edition_ _March 1920_
DEDICATED TO
THOSE WHO FELL ON THE
GALLIPOLI PENINSULA
Οἱ δ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τεῖχος
θήκας Ἰλιάδος γᾶς
εὔμορφοι κατέχουσιν’ ἐχθρὰ δ’ ἔχοντας ἔκρυψεν.
Beside the ruins of Troy they lie buried,
those men so beautiful; there they have their
burial-place, hidden in an enemy’s land.
_The Agamemnon, 453–455._
Ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος, καὶ οὐ στηλῶν
μόνον ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ σημαίνει ἐπιγραφὴ, ἀλλὰ
καὶ ἐν τῇ μὴ προσηκούσῃ ἄγραφος μνήμη
παρ᾽ ἑκάστῳ τῆς γνώμης μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ ἔργου
ἐνδιαιτᾶται.
Of conspicuous men the whole world is the
tomb, and it is not only inscriptions on
tablets in their own country which chronicle
their fame, but rather, even in distant
lands, unwritten memorials living for ever,
not upon visible monuments, but in the hearts
of mankind.
PERICLES’ FUNERAL SPEECH;
_Thucydides_, ii. 43.
PREFACE
From the outset the Dardanelles Campaign attracted me with peculiar
interest. The shores of the Straits were the scene of the Trojan epics
and dramas. They were explored and partly inhabited by a race whose
legends and history had been more familiar to me from boyhood than my
own country’s, and more inspiring. They belonged to that beautiful part
of the world with which I had become personally intimate during the
wars, rebellions, and other disturbances of the previous twenty years.
But, above all, I was attracted to the Campaign because I regarded it
as a strategic conception surpassing others in promise. My reasons are
referred to in various chapters of this book, and indeed they were
obvious. The occupation of Constantinople would have paralysed Turkey
as an ally of the Central Powers; it would have blocked their path to
the Middle East, and averted danger from Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and
India; it would have released the Russian forces in the Caucasus for
action elsewhere; it would have secured the neutrality, if not the
active co-operation, of the Balkan States, and especially of Bulgaria,
not only the most resolute and effective of them, but a State well
disposed to ourselves and the Russian people by history and sentiment;
by securing Bulgaria’s friendship, it would have delivered Serbia from
fear of attack upon her eastern frontier, and have relieved Roumania
from similar apprehensions along the Danube and in the Dobrudja; it
would have confirmed the influence of Venizelos in Greece, and saved
King Constantine from military, financial, and domestic temptations to
Germanise; above all, it would thus have secured Russia’s left flank,
so enabling her to concentrate her entire forces upon the Lithuanian,
Polish, and Galician frontiers from the Memel to the Dniester.
The worst apprehensions of the Central Powers would then have been
fulfilled. Blockaded by the Allied fleets in the Adriatic, and by the
British fleet in the Channel and the North Sea, they would have found
themselves indeed surrounded by an iron ring, and, so far as prophecy
was possible, it seemed likely that the terms which our Alliance openly
professed as our objects in the war might have been obtained in the
spring of 1916. The subsidiary and more immediate consequences of
success in the Dardanelles, such as the supply of munitions to Russia,
and of Ukrainian wheat to our Alliance, were also to be considered.
The saying of Napoleon, in May, 1808, still held good: “At bottom the
great question is--Who shall have Constantinople?”
Under the prevailing influence of “Westerners” upon French and British
strategy, these probable advantages were either disregarded or
dismissed, and to dwell upon them now is a useless speculation. The
hopes suggested by the conception in 1915 have faded like a dream.
The dominant minds in our Alliance either failed to imagine their
significance, or were incapable of supplying the power required for
their realisation while at the same time pressing forward the proposed
offensive in France. The international situation of Europe, and indeed
of the world, is now changed, and the strategic map has been completely
altered. Early belligerents have disappeared from the field, and new
belligerents have entered the shifting scene. Already, in 1918, the
Dardanelles Expedition has passed into history, and may be counted
among the ghosts which history tries in vain to summon up. It is as an
episode of a vanished past that I have attempted to represent it--a
tragic episode enacted in the space of eleven months, but marked by
every attribute of noble tragedy, whether we consider the grandeur of
theme and personality, or the sympathy aroused by the spectacle of
heroic figures struggling against the unconscious adversity of fate and
the malign influences of hostile or deceptive power.
In treatment, I have made no attempt to rival my friend John
Masefield’s _Gallipoli_--that excellent piece of work, at once so
accurate and so brilliantly illuminated by poetic vision. Mine has
been the humbler task of simply recording the events as they occurred,
with such detail as seemed essential to complete the history, or was
accessible to myself. In this endeavour, I have trusted partly to the
books and documents mentioned below, partly to information generously
supplied to me by many of the principal actors upon the scene; also
to my own notes, writings, and memory, especially with regard to the
nature of the country and the events of which I was a witness. Accuracy
and justice have been my only aims, but in a work involving so much
detail and so many controverted questions mistakes in accuracy and
justice are scarcely to be avoided. I know the confusion of mind and
the distorted vision so frequent in all great crises of war, and I know
from long experience how ignorant may be the criticism applied to any
soldier from the Commander-in-Chief down to the private with a rifle.
The mention of the private with a rifle suggests my chief regret.
The method I have followed, in treating divisions or brigades or, at
the lowest, battalions as the units of action, almost obliterates
the individual soldier from consideration. Divisions, brigades, and
battalions are moved like pieces on a board, and Commanding Officers
must regard each of them only as a certain quantity of force acting
under the laws of time and space. Yet each of the so-called units is
made up of living men--men of distinctive personality and incalculably
varying nature. Men are the actual units in war as in the State,
and I do not forget the “common soldiers.” I do not overlook either
their natural failures or their astonishing performance. In various
campaigns and in many countries I have shared their apprehensions,
their hardships, their brief intervals of respite, and their laborious
triumphs. They, like the rest of mankind, have always filled me
with surprised admiration or poignant sympathy. Among the soldiers
of many races, but especially among the natives of these islands,
whom I could best understand, I have always found the fine qualities
which distinguish the majority of hardworking people, all of whom
live perpetually in perilous hardship. I have found a freedom from
rhetoric and vanity, a simple-hearted acceptance of life “in the first
intention,” taking life and death without much criticism as they come,
and concealing kindliness and the longing for happiness under a veil of
silence or protective irony. But a book of this kind has little place
for the mention of them, and that is my regret. Like a general, I have
been obliged to consider forces mainly in the mass, and must leave to
readers the duty of remembering, as I never cease to remember, that
all divisions and all platoons upon the Peninsula were composed of
ordinary men like ourselves--individual personalities subject to the
common sufferings of hunger, thirst, sickness, and pain; filled also
with the common delight in life, the common horror of death, and the
desire for peace and home. As in the case of general mankind, it was
their endurance, their courage, self-sacrifice, and all that is implied
in the ancient meanings of “virtue,” which excited my wonder.
Among those who have given me very kind assistance either on the
Dardanelles Peninsula or in London, I may mention with gratitude
General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B., etc.; General Sir William R.
Birdwood, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., etc.; Major-General Sir Alexander Godley,
K.C.B., etc.; Major-General Sir A. H. Russell, K.C.M.G., etc.; the late
Lieut.-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, K.C.B.; Major-General Sir
W. R. Marshall, K.C.B.; Major-General H. B. Walker, C.B.; Major-General
Sir William Douglas, K.C.M.G.; Major-General F. H. Sykes, C.M.G.;
Major-General Sir D. Mercer, K.C.B.; Brigadier-General Freyberg, V.C.;
Colonel Leslie Wilson, D.S.O., M.P.; and Lieut. Douglas Jerrold,
R.N.V.D.; Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, K.C.B., etc.; Rear-Admiral
Heathcote Grant, C.B., etc.; Captain A. P. Davidson, R.N.; Captain
the Hon. Algernon Boyle, R.N.; Staff-Surgeon Levick, R.N.; and the
Rev. C. J. C. Peshall, R.N. It would indeed be difficult to draw up
a complete list of the Naval and Military officers to whom I owe my
thanks.
Having taken many photographs on the Peninsula, I posted them, as
I was directed, to the War Office, and never saw them again. I can
only hope that any one into whose possession they may happen to have
come upon the route, may find them as useful as I should have found
them in illustrating this book. My friend, Captain C. E. W. Bean, has
generously supplied me with some of his own photographs in their place.
For the rest I am permitted to use official pictures, taken by my
friend, Mr. Brooks. They are of course far superior to any I could have
taken, but some are already familiar.
The maps are for the most part constructed from the Staff Maps
(nominally Turkish, but mainly Austrian I believe) used by the G.H.Q.
upon the Peninsula. Some also are derived from drawings by Generals and
Staff Officers. For the larger maps of Anzac and Suvla I am indebted
to the assistance of Captain Treloar and the Australian Staff in
London, with permission of Sir Alexander Godley, and Brigadier-General
Richardson (formerly of the Royal Naval Division); and to Mr. S. B. K.
Caulfield.
The following is a list of the chief books and documents which I have
found useful:--
Sir Ian Hamilton’s Dispatches.
Sir Charles Monro’s Dispatch on the Evacuation.
The Dardanelles Commission Report, Part I.
_With the Twenty-ninth Division in Gallipoli_, by the Rev. O.
Creighton, Chaplain to the 86th Brigade (killed in France, April
1918).
_The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli_, by Major Bryan Cooper, 5th
Connaught Rangers.
_With the Zionists in Gallipoli_, by Lieut.-Colonel J. S. Patterson.
_The Immortal Gamble_, by A. J. Stewart, Acting Commander, R.N., and
the Rev. C. J. E. Peshall, Chaplain, R.N.
_Uncensored Letters from the Dardanelles_, by a French Medical
Officer.
_Australia in Arms_, by Phillip F. E. Schuler.
_The Story of the Anzacs._ (Messrs. Ingram & Sons, Melbourne.)
Mr. Ashmead Bartlett’s Dispatches from the Dardanelles.
_What of the Dardanelles?_ by Granville Fortescue.
_Two Years in Constantinople_, by Dr. Harry Stürmer.
_Inside Constantinople_, by Lewis Einstein.
_Nelson’s History of the War_, by Colonel John Buchan.
_The “Times” History of the War._
_The “Manchester Guardian” History of the War._
H. W. N.
LONDON, 1918.
_Secrets of the Bosphorus_, by Henry Morgenthau (1919), especially
illustrate pp. 144–145.
An interview with General von Sanders, by Mr. G. Ward Price, of the
_Daily Mail_, in Constantinople (Nov. 13, 1918), contains points of
military interest.
(Note to Second Edition.)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN
PAGE
Naval Bombardment, November 1914--Causes of German-Turkish
Alliance--Germany’s Eastern aims--Mistakes of British
diplomacy--The _Goeben_ and _Breslau_--The position of
Greece--Turkey declares war 1
CHAPTER II
THE INCEPTION
Mr. Churchill first suggests attack on Gallipoli--Russia’s
appeal for aid--A demonstration decided upon--The
War Council--Lord Kitchener--Mr. Asquith--Mr.
Churchill--Objects of his scheme--Lord Kitchener’s
objections--Admirals Fisher and Arthur Wilson--Their duty
as advisers--Lord Fisher’s opinion--Admiral Jackson’s
view--Admiral Carden on the scheme--War Council orders a
naval attack--Lord Fisher’s opposition--He gives reluctant
assent--Decision for a solely naval expedition 12
CHAPTER III
THE NAVAL ATTACKS
Council’s hesitation renewed--A military force prepared--The
29th Division detained--Description of the
Dardanelles--Mudros and the islands--Formation of the
fleet--Bombardment of February 19--Renewed on February
25--Further attacks in early March--Effect on Balkan
States--Mr. Churchill urges greater vigour--Admiral de
Robeck succeeds to command--The naval attack of March
18--Losses and comparative failure--Purely naval attacks
abandoned 40
CHAPTER IV
THE PREPARATION
Sir Ian Hamilton’s appointment--His qualifications--Misfortune
of delay--Transports returned for reloading--Sir Ian
in Egypt--The forces there--The “Anzacs”--Possible
lines of attack considered--The selected scheme--Chief
members of Sir Ian’s staff--Available forces--Sir Ian’s
address--Rupert Brooke’s death 64
CHAPTER V
THE LANDINGS
The Start from Mudros--Landing at De Tott’s Battery--Seddel
Bahr and V Beach--The _River Clyde_--Landing at V
Beach--Night there--W Beach or Lancashire Landing--Landing
at X Beach--Y2 and Y Beaches--Landing at Y Beach--Its
failure--Landing at Anzac--The positions won there--Feint
off Bulair--Captain Freyberg’s exploit--French feint at Kum
Kali 88
CHAPTER VI
THE TEN DAYS AFTER
Sir Ian’s decision to hold Anzac--Advance from V
Beach--Death of Doughty-Wylie--The French at V
Beach--Position of Krithia--Advance of April 28--Turkish
attack of May 1--Reinforcements arrive--Position at
Anzac--Casualties--Underestimate of wounded--Unhappy
results 123
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLES OF MAY
State of Constantinople--Our submarines--Sir Ian’s reduced
forces--The guns--May 6 at Helles--May 7--May 8--The
Australian charge--The 29th Division--Trench warfare--Death
of General Bridges at Anzac--May 19 at Anzac--Armistice at
Anzac--Loss by hostile submarines--G.H.Q. at Imbros--Hope
of Russian aid abandoned--Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher
resign 144
CHAPTER VIII
THE BATTLES OF JUNE
Situation on Peninsula--June 4 at Helles--French Colonial
troops--Arrival of General De Lisle--June 6 to 8 at
Helles--Losses--Want of guns--June 28 at Helles--The Gully
Ravine--Turkish proclamations--Position at Anzac--June 29
at Anzac--Discouragement--General Gouraud wounded--The war
in Poland and Italy 171
CHAPTER IX
THE PAUSE IN JULY
Local Turkish attacks--Turkish reinforcements--Our attacks
of July 12 and 13 at Helles--General Hunter-Weston
invalided--General Stopford’s arrival--Description of
Helles--Rations--Description of Anzac--The _Aragon_ at
Mudros--Arrival of General Altham--The _Saturnia_--Arrival
of Colonel Hankey--The monitors, “blister ships,” and
“beetles”--The 10th, 11th, and 13th Divisions--The 53rd
and 54th Divisions--Total forces in August--New scheme of
attack considered 195
CHAPTER X
THE VINEYARD, LONE PINE, AND THE NEK
Feints and arrangement of forces--August 6 at Helles--August
7 to 13--Fight for the Vineyard--Leane’s trenches at
Anzac--Lone Pine--Assault of August 6--Continuous
fighting till August 12--Assault on German officers’
trenches--Assault on the Nek, August 7 224
CHAPTER XI
SARI BAIR
Description of the range--Nature of the approaches--General
Godley’s force--His dispositions--Evening August 6 to
evening August 7--Capture of Old No. 3 Post--Capture
of Big Table Top--Capture of Bauchop’s Hill--Ascent of
Rhododendron Ridge--General Monash on Aghyl Dere--Evening
August 7 to evening August 8--Fresh dispositions--Summit of
Chunuk Ridge reached--Death of Colonel Malone--Attempt at
Abdel Rahman--Evening August 8 to evening August 9--Error
of Baldwin’s column--Major Allanson on Hill Q--View
of the Dardanelles--Party driven off by shells--Turks
regain the summit--Baldwin at the Farm--Party on Chunuk
Ridge relieved--Evening August 9 to evening August
10--Fresh party on Chunuk Ridge destroyed--Turks swarm
over summit--Fighting at the Farm--Death of General
Baldwin--Turks driven back to summit--Causes of comparative
failure 247
CHAPTER XII
SUVLA BAY
Description of the bay and surrounding country--General
Stopford and IXth Corps--Divisional Generals--Evening
August 6 to evening August 7--The embarkation--Work of the
Navy--The landing beaches--Capture of Lala Baba--Ill-luck
of 34th Brigade--Delay and confusion of Brigades and
Divisions--Hill’s Brigade (31st)--Its advance round Salt
Lake--Capture of Chocolate Hill--General Mahon on Kiretch
Tepe Sirt--Evening August 7 to evening August 8--Silence
at Suvla--Failure of water distribution--Sir Ian visits
Suvla--His orders to General Hammersley--Scimitar Hill
abandoned by mistake--Evening August 8 to evening August
9--Turks reinforced return to positions--Failure of our
attack on Scimitar Hill--Sir Ian proposes occupation
of Kavak and Tekke Tepes--He sends his last reserve to
Suvla--Evening August 9 to evening August 10--Renewed
attack on Scimitar Hill--Its failure--General Stopford
ordered to consolidate line--Evening August 10 to evening
August 11--Landing of 54th Division--Confusion of front
lines--Battalions reorganised--Evening August 11 to evening
August 12--Sir Ian again urges occupation of Kavak and
Tekke Tepes--Disappearance of 5th Norfolks--General
Stopford’s objections--The 10th Division on Kiretch Tepe
Sirt (August 15)--Failure to maintain advance--General De
Lisle succeeds General Stopford temporarily in command of
IXth Corps--Other changes in command 286
CHAPTER XIII
THE LAST EFFORTS
Causes of the failure in August--Advantages gained--Approximate
losses--Adequate reinforcements refused--Arrival of
Peyton’s mounted Division--Renewed attempt against Scimitar
Hill (August 21)--Mistakes in the advance on right--The
29th Division in centre--Advance of the Yeomanry--Failure
to occupy the hill--Attack on Hill 60 from Anzac--Kabak
Kuyu (August 21)--Connaught Rangers--Slow progress of
attack--Second attack (August 27)--Third attack (August
29)--Last battle on the Peninsula 333
CHAPTER XIV
SIR IAN’S RECALL
Sickness increases during September--Monotonous food--Regret
for dead and wounded--New drafts--Fears of winter--Sir
Julian Byng commands IXth Corps--Events in France, Poland,
and the Balkans--Attitude of Bulgaria and Greece--The 10th
Division and one French sent to Salonika--Bulgaria declares
war--Venizelos resigns--Serbia invaded--Salonika expedition
too late, but destroys hope of Dardanelles--Lord Kitchener
inquires about evacuation--Sir Ian’s reply--He is recalled
356
CHAPTER XV
THE FIFTH ACT
Sir Charles Monro arrives--His report--The advocates of
evacuation--Lord Kitchener visits the Peninsula--General
Birdwood appointed to command--Storm and blizzard of
November--General Birdwood ordered to evacuate Suvla and
Anzac--Estimate of Turkish forces--Our ruses--Arrangements
at Suvla--Risks of the final nights--Embarkation at
Suvla--Problem at Anzac--Final arrangements--Evacuation
of Anzac--Uncertainty about Helles--Evacuation
ordered--Turkish attacks--Final withdrawal (January 8,
1916)--Recapitulation of causes of failure--Concluding
observations--The end 374
INDEX 413
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON _Frontispiece_
_From a portrait by John S. Sargent, R.A._
FACING PAGE
SERVICE ON BOARD THE _QUEEN ELIZABETH_ 24
GENERAL SIR WILLIAM BIRDWOOD 44
THE _RIVER CLYDE_, “V” BEACH, AND SEDDEL BAHR 94
LIEUT.-COL. C. H. H. DOUGHTY-WYLIE 128
ANZAC COVE 138
FRENCH DUG-OUT AT HELLES 174
GENERAL GOURAUD STANDING WITH GENERAL BAILLOUD 194
WATER-CARRIERS AT ANZAC 206
A “BEETLE” 214
GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON (_1918_) 228
MONASH GULLY 244
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ALEXANDER GODLEY 256
BIG TABLE TOP 260
OCEAN BEACH 284
ANZAC IN SNOW 384
SCENE ON SUVLA POINT 394
MAPS
FACING PAGE
HELLES AND THE STRAITS 78
POSITIONS AT ANZAC 112
SUVLA LANDING 286
32ND BRIGADE, AUGUST 8 316
11TH DIVISION, AUGUST 21 341
_At End of Book_
1. THE PENINSULA, THE STRAITS, AND CONSTANTINOPLE.
2. BRITISH AND FRENCH TRENCHES AT HELLES.
3. POSITIONS AT ANZAC (END OF AUGUST).
4. POSITIONS AT SUVLA (END OF AUGUST).
THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN
On November 3, 1914, the silence of the Dardanelles was suddenly broken
by an Anglo-French naval squadron, which opened fire upon the forts at
the entrance of that historic strait. The bombardment lasted only ten
minutes, its object being merely to test the range of the Turkish guns,
and no damage seems to have been inflicted on either side. The ships
belonged to the Eastern Mediterranean Allied Squadrons, commanded by
Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, and the order to bombard was given by
the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill being First Lord. The War Council
was not consulted, and Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Commander-in-Chief in
the Mediterranean, in his evidence before the Dardanelles Commission
described the bombardment as a mistake, because it was likely to put
the Turks on the alert. Commodore de Bartolomé, Naval Secretary to
the First Lord, also said he considered it unfortunate, presumably
for the same reason.[1] Even Turks, unaided by Germans, might have
foreseen the ultimate necessity of strengthening the fortification
of the Straits, but at the beginning they would naturally trust to
the long-recognised difficulty of forcing a passage up the swift and
devious channel which protects the entrance to the Imperial City more
securely than a mountain pass.
War between the Allies and Turkey became certain only three days
before (October 31), but from the first the temptation of the Turkish
Government to throw in their lot with “Central Europe” was powerful.
It is true that, during three or four decades of last century, Turkey
counted upon England for protection, and that by the Crimean War
and the Treaty of Berlin England had protected her, with interested
generosity, as a serviceable though frail barrier against Russian
designs. But the British occupation of Egypt, the British intervention
in Crete and Macedonia, and perhaps also the knowledge that a body of
Englishmen fought for Greece in her disastrous campaign of 1897, shook
Turkish confidence in the supposed protection; while, on the other
hand, Abdul Hamid’s atrocious persecution of his subject races proved
to the British middle classes that, though the Turk was described
as “the gentleman of the Near East,” he still possessed qualities
undesirable in an ally of professing Christians. Besides, within the
last eight years (since 1906), the understanding between England and
Russia had continually grown more definite, until it resulted in open
alliance at the outbreak of the war; and Russia had long been Turkey’s
relentless and insatiable foe. For she had her mind steadily set upon
Constantinople, partly because, by a convenient and semi-religious
myth, the Tsars regarded themselves as the natural heirs of the
Byzantine Emperors, and partly in the knowledge that the possession of
the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles was essential for the development of
Russia’s naval power.
[Sidenote: HOW GERMANY WON TURKEY]
Germany was not slow in taking up the part of Turkey’s friend as bit
by bit it fell from England’s hand. If, in Lord Salisbury’s phrase,
England found in the ’nineties that at the time of the Crimean War she
had put her money on the wrong horse, Germany continued to back the
weak-kneed and discarded outsider. Germany’s voice was never heard
in the widespread outcry against “the Red Sultan.” German diplomacy
regarded all Balkan races and Armenians with indifferent scorn. It
called them “sheepstealers” (_Hammeldiebe_), and if Abdul Hamid chose
to stamp upon troublesome subjects, that was his own affair. With that
keen eye to his country’s material interest which, before the war, made
him the most enterprising and successful of commercial travellers,
Kaiser Wilhelm II., repeating the earlier visit of 1889, visited the
Sultan in state at the height of his unpopularity (1898), commemorated
the favour by the gift of a deplorable fountain to the city, and
proceeded upon a speculative pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which holy city
German or Turkish antiquarians patched with the lath and plaster
restorations befitting so curious an occasion.
The prolonged negotiations over the concession of the Bagdad railway
ensued, the interests of Turkey and Germany alike being repeatedly
thwarted by England’s opposition, up to the very eve of the present
war, when Sir Edward Grey withdrew our objection, providing only for
our interests on the section between Bagdad and the Persian Gulf.[2]
During the Young Turk revolution of 1908–1909, English Liberal opinion
was enthusiastic in support of the movement and in the expectation
of reform. But our diplomacy, always irritated at new situations and
suspicious of extended liberties, eyed the change with a chilling
scepticism which threw all the advantage into the hands of Baron
Marschall von Biberstein, the German Ambassador in Constantinople. His
natural politeness and open-hearted industry contrasted favourably with
the habitual aloofness or leisured indifference of British Embassies;
and so it came about that Enver Pasha, the military leader of Young
Turkey, was welcomed indeed by the opponents of Abdul Hamid’s tyranny
at a public dinner in London, but went to reside in Berlin as military
attaché.
[Sidenote: GERMANY’S EASTERN AIMS]
Germany’s object in this astute benevolence was not concealed. With
her rapidly increasing population, laborious, enterprising, and better
trained than other races for the pursuit of commerce and technical
industries, she naturally sought outlets to vast spaces of the world,
such as Great Britain, France, and Russia had already absorbed. The
immense growth of her wealth, combined with formidable naval and
military power, encouraged the belief that such expansion was as
practicable as necessary. But the best places in the sun were now
occupied. She had secured pretty fair portions in Africa, but France,
England, and Belgium had better. Brazil was tempting, but the United
States proclaimed the Monroe doctrine as a bar to the New World.
Portugal might sell Angola under paternal compulsion, but its provinces
were rotten with slavery, and its climate poisonous. Looking round
the world, Germany found in the Turkish Empire alone a sufficiently
salubrious and comparatively vacant sphere for her development; and it
is difficult to say what more suitable sphere we could have chosen to
allot for her satisfaction, without encroaching upon our own preserves.
Even the patch remaining to Turkey in Europe is a fine market-place;
with industry and capital most of Asia Minor would again flourish as
“the bright cities of Asia” have flourished before; there is no reason
but the Ottoman curse why the sites of Nineveh and Babylon should
remain uninhabited, or the Garden of Eden lie desolate as a wilderness
of alternate dust and quagmire.
But to reach this land of hope and commerce the route by sea was
long, and exposed to naval attack throughout its length till the
Dardanelles were reached. The overland route must, therefore, be
kept open, and three points of difficulty intervened, even if the
alliance with Austria-Hungary permanently held good. The overland
route passed through Serbia (by the so-called “corridor”), and behind
Serbia stood the jealous and watchful power of the Tsars; it passed
through Bulgaria, which would have to be persuaded by solid arguments
on which side her material interests lay; and it passed through
Constantinople, ultimately destined to become the bridgehead of the
Bagdad railway--the point from which trains might cross a Bosphorus
suspension bridge without unloading. There the German enterprise
came clashing up against Russia’s naval ambition and Russia’s rooted
sentiment. There the Kaiser, imitating the well-known epigram of
Charles v., might have said: “My cousin the Tsar and I desire the same
object--namely, Constantinople.” There lay the explanation of Professor
Mitrofanoff’s terrible sentence in the _Preussische Jahrbücher_ of June
1914: “Russians now see plainly that the road to Constantinople lies
through Berlin.” The Serajevo murders on the 28th of the same month
were but the occasion of the Great War. The corridor through Serbia,
and the bridgehead of the Bosphorus, ranked among the ultimate causes.
The appearance (Dec. 1913) of a German General, Liman von Sanders,
in Constantinople shortly after the second Balkan War, if it did not
make the Great War inevitable, drove the Turkish alliance in case
of war inevitably to the German side. He succeeded to more than the
position of General Colman von der Goltz, appointed to reorganise the
Turkish army in 1882. Accompanied by a German staff, the Kaiser’s
delegate began at once to act as a kind of Inspector-General of the
Turkish forces, and when war broke out they fell naturally under his
control or command. The Turkish Government appeared to hesitate nearly
three months before definitely adopting a side. The uneasy Sultan,
decrepit with forty years of palatial imprisonment under a brother
who, upon those terms only, had borne his existence near the throne,
still retained the Turk’s traditional respect for England and France.
So did his Grand Vizier, Said Halim. So did a large number of his
subjects, among whom tradition dies slowly. With tact and a reasonable
expenditure of financial persuasion, the ancient sympathy might have
been revived when all had given it over; and such a revival would have
saved us millions of money and thousands of young and noble lives,
beyond all calculation of value.
[Sidenote: ENGLAND’S ATTITUDE TO TURKEY]
But, most disastrously for our cause, the tact and financial persuasion
were all on the other side. The Allies, it is true, gave the Porte
“definite assurances that, if Turkey remained neutral, her independence
and integrity would be respected during the war and in the terms of
peace.”[3] But similar and stronger assurances had been given both at
the Treaty of Berlin and at the outbreak of the first Balkan War in
1912. Unfortunately for our peace, Turkey had discovered that at the
Powers’ perjuries Time laughs, nor had Time long to wait for laughter.
Following upon successive jiltings, protestations of future affection
are cautiously regarded unless backed by solid evidences of good faith;
but the Allies, having previously refused loans which Berlin hastened
to advance, had further revealed the frivolity of their intentions
the very day before war with Germany was declared, by seizing the
two Dreadnought battleships, _Sultan Osman_ and _Reshadie_, then
building for the Turkish service in British dockyards. Upon these two
battleships the Turks had set high, perhaps exaggerated, hopes, and
Turkish peasants had contributed to their purchase; for they regarded
them as insurance against further Greek aggression among the islands
of the Asiatic coast. Coming on the top of the Egyptian occupation,
the philanthropic interference with sovereign atrocity, the Russian
alliance, and the refusal of loans, their seizure overthrew the shaken
credit of England’s honesty, and one might almost say that for a couple
of Dreadnoughts we lost Constantinople and the Straits.[4]
[Sidenote: GERMANY TAKES HER ADVANTAGE]
With lightning rapidity, Germany seized the advantage of our
blunder. At the declaration of war, the _Goeben_, one of her finest
battle-cruisers, a ship of 22,625 tons, capable of 28 knots, and armed
with ten 11-inch guns, twelve 5·9-inch, and twelve lesser guns, was
stationed off Algeria, accompanied by the fast light cruiser _Breslau_
(4478 tons, twelve 4·1 inch guns), which had formed part of the
international force at Durazzo during the farcical rule of Prince von
Wied in Albania. After bombarding two Algerian towns, they coaled at
Messina, and, escaping thence with melodramatic success, eluded the
Allied Mediterranean command, and reached Constantinople through the
Dardanelles, though suffering slight damage from the light cruiser
_Gloucester_ (August 8 or 9). When Sir Louis Mallet and the other
Allied Ambassadors demanded their dismantlement, the Kaiser, with
constrained but calculated charity, nominally sold or presented them
to Turkey as a gift, crews, guns, and all. Here, then, were two fine
ships, not merely building, but solidly afloat and ready to hand. The
gift was worth an overwhelming victory to the foreseeing donor.[5]
Germany’s representatives pressed this enormous advantage by inducing
the Turkish Government to appoint General Liman Commander-in-Chief, and
to abrogate the Capitulations. They advanced fresh loans, and fomented
the Pan-Islamic movement in Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, and perhaps in
Northern India. They even disseminated the peculiar rumour that the
Kaiser, in addition to his material activities, had adopted the Moslem
faith. The dangerous tendency was so obvious that, after three weeks’
war, Mr. Winston Churchill concluded that Turkey might join the Central
Powers and declare war at any moment. On September 1 he wrote privately
to General Douglas, Chief of the Imperial General Staff:
“I arranged with Lord Kitchener yesterday that two officers from
the Admiralty should meet two officers from the D.M.O.’s (Director
of Military Operations) Department of the War Office to-day to
examine and work out a plan for the seizure, by means of a Greek army
of adequate strength, of the Gallipoli Peninsula, with a view to
admitting a British Fleet to the Sea of Marmora.”
Two days later, General Callwell, the D.M.O., wrote a memorandum upon
the subject, in which he said:
“It ought to be clearly understood that an attack upon the Gallipoli
Peninsula from the sea side (outside the Straits) is likely to prove
an extremely difficult operation of war.”
He added that it would not be justifiable to undertake this operation
with an army of less than 60,000 men.[6]
Here, then, we have the first mention of the Dardanelles Expedition.
It will be noticed that the idea was Mr. Churchill’s, that he depended
upon a Greek army to carry it out, and that General Callwell, the
official adviser upon such subjects, considered it extremely difficult,
and not to be attempted with a landing force of less than 60,000 men.
In mentioning a Greek army, Mr. Churchill justly relied upon M.
Venizelos, at that time by far the ablest personality in the Near East,
entirely friendly to ourselves, and Premier of Greece, which he had
saved from chaos and greatly extended in territory by his policy of the
preceding five or six years. But Mr. Churchill forgot to take account
of two important factors. After the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, King
Constantine’s imaginative but unwarlike people had acclaimed him both
as the Napoleon of the Near East and as the “Bulgar-slayer,” a title
borrowed from Byzantine history. Priding himself upon these insignia
of a military fame little justified by his military achievements from
1897 onward, the King of Greece posed as the plain, straightforward
soldier, and, perhaps to his credit, from the first refused approval
of a Dardanelles campaign, though he professed himself willing to
lead his whole army along the coast through Thrace to the City. The
profession was made the more easily through his consciousness that
the offer would not be accepted.[7] For the other factor forgotten by
Mr. Churchill was the certain refusal of the Tsar to allow a single
Greek soldier to advance a yard towards the long-cherished prize of
Constantinople and the Straits.
[Sidenote: TURKEY DECLARES WAR]
Turkish hesitation continued up to the end of October, when the war
party under Enver Pasha, Minister of War, gained a dubious predominance
by sending out the Turkish fleet, which rapidly returned, asserting
that the ships had been fired upon by Russians (Oct. 28)--an assertion
believed by few. On the 29th, Turkish torpedo boats (at first reported
as the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_) bombarded Odessa and Theodosia, and a
swarm of Bedouins invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Turkey declared war on
the 31st. Sir Louis Mallet left Constantinople on November 1, and on
the 5th England formally declared war upon Turkey.