the narrowest part of the Dardanelles, for here they had stretched a cable and anti-submarine barrage of mines and nets—a device, which, as I shall describe, did not keep the English and French underwater boats out of the Marmora and the Bosphorus. It was not until we rounded this historic point of Nagara that the dull monotony of flat shores gave place to a more diversified landscape. On the European side the cliffs now began to descend precipitously to the water, reminding me of our own Palisades along the Hudson, and I obtained glimpses of the hills and mountain ridges that afterward proved such tragical stumbling blocks to the valiant Allied armies. The configuration of the land south of Nagara, with its many hills and ridges, made it plain why the military engineers had selected this stretch of the Dardanelles as the section best adapted to defense. Our boat was now approaching what was perhaps the most commanding point in the whole strait—the city Tchanak, or, to give it its modern European name, Dardanelles. In normal times this was a thriving port of 16,000 people, its houses built of wood, the headquarters of a considerable trade in wool and other products, and for centuries it had been an important military station. Now, excepting for the soldiers, it was deserted, the large civilian population having been moved into Anatolia. The British fleet, we were told, had bombarded this city; yet this statement seemed hardly probable, for I saw only a single house that had been hit, evidently by a stray shell which had been aimed at the near-by fortifications.

Djevad Pasha, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at the Dardanelles, met us and escorted our party to headquarters. Djevad was a man of culture and of pleasing and cordial manners; as he spoke excellent German I had no need of an interpreter. I was much impressed by the deference with which the German officers treated him; that he was the Commander-in-Chief in this theatre of war, and that the generals of the Kaiser were his subordinates, was made plainly apparent. As we passed into his office, Djevad stopped in front of a piece of a torpedo, mounted in the middle of the hall, evidently as a souvenir.

“There is the great criminal!” he said, calling my attention to the relic.

About this time the newspapers were hailing the exploit of an English submarine, which had sailed from England to the Dardanelles, passed under the mine field, and torpedoed the Turkish warship Mesudié.

“That’s the torpedo that did it!” said Djevad. “You’ll see the wreck of the ship when you go down.”

The first fortification I visited was that of Anadolu Hamidié (that is, Asiatic Hamidié) located on the water’s edge just outside of Tchanak. My first impression was that I was in Germany. The officers were practically all Germans and everywhere Germans were building buttresses with sacks of sand and in other ways strengthening the emplacements. Here German, not Turkish, was the language heard on every side. Colonel Wehrle, who conducted me over these batteries, took the greatest delight in showing them. He had the simple pride of the artist in his work, and told me of the happiness that had come into his days when Germany had at last found herself at war. All his life, he said, he had spent in military practices, and, like most Germans, he had become tired of manœuvres, sham battles, and other forms of mimic hostilities. Yet he was approaching fifty, he had become a colonel, and he was fearful that his career would close without actual military experience—and then the splendid thing had happened and here he was, fighting a real English enemy, firing real guns and shells! There was nothing brutal about Wehrle’s manners; he was a “gemütlich” gentleman from Baden, and thoroughly likable; yet he was all aglow with the spirit of “Der Tag.” His attitude was simply that of a man who had spent his lifetime learning a trade and who now rejoiced at the chance of exercising it. But he furnished an illuminating light on the German military character and the forces that had really caused the war.

Feeling myself so completely in German country, I asked Colonel Wehrle why there were so few Turks on this side of the strait. “You won’t ask me that question this afternoon,” he said, smiling, “when you go over to the other side.”

The location of Anadolu Hamidié seemed ideal. It stands right at the water’s edge, and consists—or it did then—of ten guns, every one completely sweeping the Dardanelles. Walking upon the parapet, I had a clear view of the strait, and Kum Kalé, at the entrance, about fifteen miles away, stood out conspicuously. No warship could enter these waters without immediately coming within complete sight of her gunners. Yet the fortress itself, to an unprofessional eye like my own, was not particularly impressive. The parapet and traverses were merely mounds of earth, and stand to-day practically as they were finished by their French constructors in 1837. There is a general belief that the Germans had completely modernized the Dardanelles defenses, but this was not true at that time. The guns defending Fort Anadolu Hamidié were more than thirty years old, all being the Krupp model of 1885, and the rusted exteriors of some of them gave evidences of their age. Their extreme range was only about nine miles, while the range of the battleships opposing them was about ten miles, and that of the Queen Elizabeth was not far from eleven. The figures which I have given for Anadolu Hamidié apply also to practically all the guns at the other effective fortifications. So far as the advantage of range was concerned, therefore, the Allied fleet had a decided superiority, the Queen Elizabeth alone having them all practically at her mercy. Nor did the fortifications contain very considerable supplies of ammunition. At that time the European and American papers were printing stories that train loads of shells and guns were coming by way of Rumania from Germany to the Dardanelles. From facts which I learned on this trip and subsequently I am convinced that these reports were pure fiction. A small number of “red heads”—that is, non-armour-piercing projectiles useful only for fighting landing parties—had been brought from Adrianople and were reposing in Hamidié at the time of my visit, but these were small in quantity and of no value in fighting ships. I lay this stress upon Hamidié because this was the most important fortification in the Dardanelles. Throughout the whole bombardment it attracted more of the Allied fire than any other position, and it inflicted at least 60 per cent. of all the damage that was done to the attacking ships. It was Anadolu Hamidié which, in the great bombardment of March 18th, sank the Bouvet, the French battleship, and which in the course of the whole attack disabled several other units. All its officers were Germans and eighty-five per cent. of the men on duty came from the crews of the Goeben and the Breslau.

Getting into the automobile, we sped along the military road to Dardanos, passing on the way the wreck of the Mesudié. The Dardanos battery was as completely Turkish as the Hamidié was German. The guns at Dardanos were somewhat more modern than those at Hamidié—they were the Krupp model of 1905. Here also was stationed the only new battery which the Germans had established up to the time of my visit; it consisted of several guns which they had taken from the German and Turkish warships then lying in the Bosphorus. A few days before our inspection the Allied fleet had entered the Bay of Erenkeui and had submitted Dardanos to a terrific bombardment, the evidences of which I saw on every hand. The land for nearly half a mile about seemed to have been completely churned up; it looked like photographs I had seen of the battlefields in France. The strange thing was that, despite all this punishment, the batteries themselves remained intact; not a single gun, my guides told me, had been destroyed.

“After the war is over,” said General Mertens, “we are going to establish a big tourist resort here, build a hotel, and sell relics to you Americans. We shall not have to do much excavating to find them—the British fleet is doing that for us now.”

This sounded like a passing joke, yet the statement was literally true. Dardanos, where this emplacement is located, was one of the famous cities of the ancient world; in Homeric times it was part of the principality of Priam. Fragments of capitals and columns are still visible. And the shells from the Allied fleet were now ploughing up many relics which had been buried for thousands of years. One of my friends picked up a water jug which had perhaps been used in the days of Troy. The effectiveness of modern gunfire in excavating these evidences of a long lost civilization was striking—though unfortunately the relics did not always come to the surface intact.

The Turkish generals were extremely proud of the fight which this Dardanos battery had made against the British ships. They would lead me to the guns that had done particularly good service and pat them affectionately. For my benefit Djevad called out Lieutenant Hassan, the Turkish officer who had defended this position. He was a little fellow, with jet-black hair, black eyes, extremely modest and almost shrinking in the presence of these great generals. Djevad patted Hassan on both cheeks, while another high Turkish officer stroked his hair; one would have thought that he was a faithful dog who had just performed some meritorious service.

“It is men like you of whom great heroes are made,” said General Djevad. He asked Hassan to describe the attack and the way it had been met. The embarrassed lieutenant quietly told his story, though he was moved almost to tears by the appreciation of his exalted chiefs.

“There is a great future for you in the army,” said General Djevad, as we parted from this hero.

Poor Hassan’s “future” came two days afterward when the Allied fleet made its greatest attack. One of the shells struck his dugout, which caved in, killing the young man. Yet his behaviour on the day I visited his battery showed that he regarded the praise of his general as sufficient compensation for all that he had suffered or all that he might suffer.

I was much puzzled by the fact that the Allied fleet, despite its large expenditures of ammunition, had not been able to hit this Dardanos emplacement. I naturally thought at first that such a failure indicated poor marksmanship, but my German guides said that this was not the case. All this misfire merely illustrated once more the familiar fact that a rapidly manœuvring battleship is under a great disadvantage in shooting at a fixed fortification. But there was another point involved in the Dardanos battery. My hosts called my attention to its location; it was perched on the top of the hill, in full view of the ships, forming itself a part of the skyline. Dardanos was merely five steel turrets, each armed with a gun, approached by a winding trench.

“That,” they said, “is the most difficult thing in the world to hit. It is so distinct that it looks easy, but the whole thing is an illusion.”

I do not understand completely the optics of the situation; but it seems that the skyline creates a kind of mirage, so that it is practically impossible to hit anything at that point, except by accident. The gunner might get what was apparently a perfect sight, yet his shell would go wild. The record of Dardanos had been little short of marvellous. Up to March 18th, the ships had fired at it about 4,000 shells. One turret had been hit by a splinter, which had also scratched the paint, another had been hit and slightly bent in, and another had been hit near the base and a piece about the size of a man’s hand had been knocked out. But not a single gun had been even slightly damaged. Eight men had been killed, including Lieutenant Hassan, and about forty had been wounded. That was the extent of the destruction.

“It was the optical illusion that saved Dardanos,” one of the Germans remarked.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ALLIED ARMADA SAILS AWAY, THOUGH ON THE BRINK OF VICTORY

South of Erenkeui, on the hills bordering the road the Germans had introduced an innovation. They had found several Krupp howitzers left over from the Bulgarian war and had installed them on concrete foundations. Each battery had four or five of these emplacements so that, as I approached them, I found several substantial bases that apparently had no guns. I was mystified further at the sight of a herd of buffaloes—I think I counted sixteen engaged in the operation—hauling one of these howitzers from one emplacement to another. This, it seems, was part of the plan of defense. As soon as the dropping shells indicated that the fleet had obtained the range, the howitzer would be moved, with the aid of buffalo teams, to another concrete emplacement.

“We have even a better trick than that,” remarked one of the officers. They called out a sergeant, and recounted his achievement. This soldier was the custodian of a contraption which, at a distance, looked like a real gun, but which, when I examined it near at hand, was apparently an elongated section of sewer pipe. Back of a hill, entirely hidden from the fleet, was placed the gun with which this sergeant had coöperated. The two were connected by telephone. When the command came to fire, the gunner in charge of the howitzer would discharge his shell, while the man in charge of the sewer pipe would burn several pounds of black powder and send forth a conspicuous cloud of inky smoke. Not unnaturally the Englishmen and Frenchmen on the ships would assume that the shells speeding in their direction came from the visible smoke cloud and would proceed to centre all their attention upon that spot. The space around this burlesque gun was pock-marked with shell holes; the sergeant in charge, I was told, had attracted more than 500 shots, while the real artillery piece still remained intact and undetected.

From Erenkeui we motored back to General Djevad’s headquarters, where we had lunch. Djevad took me up to an observation post, and there before my eyes I had the beautiful blue expanse of the Ægean. I could see the entrances to the Dardanelles, Sedd-ul-Bahr and Kum Kalé standing like the guardians of a gateway, with the rippling sunny waters stretching between. Far out I saw the majestic ships of England and France sailing across the entrance, and still farther away, I caught a glimpse of the island of Tenedos, behind which we knew that a still larger fleet lay concealed. Naturally this prospect brought to mind a thousand historic and legendary associations, for there is probably no single spot in the world more crowded with poetry and romance. Evidently my Turkish escort, General Djevad, felt the spell, for he took a telescope and pointed at a bleak expanse, perhaps six miles away.

“Look at that spot,” he said, handing me the glass. “Do you know what that is?”

I looked but could not identify this sandy beach.

“Those are the Plains of Troy,” he said. “And the river that you see winding in and out,” he added, “we Turks call it the Mendere, but Homer knew it as the Scamander. Back of us, only a few miles distant, is Mount Ida.”

Then he turned his glass out to sea, swept the field where the British ships lay, and again asked me to look at an indicated spot. I immediately brought within view a magnificent English warship, all stripped for battle, quietly steaming along like a man walking on patrol duty.

“That,” said General Djevad, “is the Agamemnon”!

“Shall I fire a shot at her?” he asked me.

“Yes, if you’ll promise me not to hit her,” I answered.

We lunched at headquarters, where we were joined by Admiral Usedom, General Mertens, and General Pomiankowsky, the Austrian Military Attaché at Constantinople. The chief note in the conversation was one of absolute confidence in the future. Whatever the diplomats and politicians in Constantinople may have thought, these men, Turks and Germans, had no expectation—at least their conversation betrayed none—that the Allied fleets would pass their defenses. What they seemed to hope for above everything was that their enemies would make another attack.

“If we could only get a chance at the Queen Elizabeth!” said one eager German, referring to the greatest ship in the British navy, then lying off the entrance.

As the Rhein wine began to disappear, their eagerness for the combat increased.

“If the damn fools would only make a landing!” exclaimed one—I quote his exact words.

The Turkish and German officers, indeed, seemed to vie with each other in expressing their readiness for the fray. Probably a good deal of this was bravado, intended for my consumption—indeed, I had private information that their exact estimate of the situation was much less reassuring. Now, however, they declared that the war had presented no real opportunity for the German and English navies to measure swords, and for this reason the Germans at the Dardanelles welcomed this chance to try the issue.

Having visited all the important places on the Anatolian side, we took a launch and sailed over to the Gallipoli peninsula. We almost had a disastrous experience on this trip. As we approached the Gallipoli shore, our helmsman was asked if he knew the location of the minefield, and if he could steer through the channel. He said “yes” and then steered directly for the mines! Fortunately the other men noticed the mistake in time, and so we arrived safely at Kilid-ul-Bahr. The batteries here were of about the same character as those on the other side; they formed one of the main defenses of the straits. Here everything, so far as a layman could judge, was in excellent condition, barring the fact that the artillery pieces were of old design and the ammunition not at all plentiful.

The batteries showed signs of a heavy bombardment. None had been destroyed, but shell holes surrounded the fortifications. My Turkish and German escorts looked at these evidences of destruction rather seriously and they were outspoken in their admiration for the accuracy of the allied fire.

“How do they ever get the range?” This was the question they were asking each other. What made the shooting so remarkable was the fact that it came, not from Allied ships in the straits, but from ships stationed in the Ægean Sea, on the other side of the Gallipoli peninsula. The gunners had never seen their target, but had had to fire at a distance of nearly ten miles, over high hills, and yet many of their shells had barely missed the batteries at Kilid-ul-Bahr.

When I was there, however, the place was quiet, for no fighting was going on that day. For my particular benefit the officers put one of their gun crews through a drill, so that I could obtain a perfect picture of the behaviour of the Turks in action. In their mind’s eye these artillerists now saw the English ships advancing within range, all their guns pointed to destroy the followers of the Prophet. The bugleman blew his horn, and the whole company rushed to their appointed places. Some were bringing shells, others were opening the breeches, others were taking the ranges, others were straining at pulleys, and others were putting the charges into place. Everything was eagerness and activity; evidently the Germans had been excellent instructors, but there was more to it than German military precision, for the men’s faces lighted up with all that fanaticism which supplies the morale of Turkish soldiers. These gunners momentarily imagined that they were shooting once more at the infidel English, and the exercise was a congenial one. Above the shouts of all I could hear the singsong chant of the leader, intoning the prayer with which the Moslem has rushed to battle for thirteen centuries.

“Allah is great, there is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet!”

When I looked upon these frenzied men, and saw so plainly written in their faces their uncontrollable hatred of the unbeliever, I called to mind what the Germans had said in the morning about the wisdom of not putting Turkish and German soldiers together. I am quite sure that, had this been done, here at least the “Holy War” would have proved a success, and that the Turks would have vented their hatred of Christians on those who happened to be nearest at hand, for the moment overlooking the fact that they were allies.

I returned to Constantinople that evening, and two days afterward, on March 18th, the Allied fleet made its greatest attack. As all the world knows, that attack proved disastrous to the Allies. The outcome was the sinking of the Bouvet, the Ocean, and the Irresistible and the serious crippling of four other vessels. Of the sixteen ships engaged in this battle of the 18th, seven were thus put temporarily or permanently out of action. Naturally the Germans and Turks rejoiced over this victory. The police went around, and ordered each householder to display a prescribed number of flags in honour of the event. The Turkish people have so little spontaneous patriotism or enthusiasm of any kind that they would never decorate their establishments without such definite orders. As a matter of fact, neither Germans nor Turks regarded this celebration too seriously, for they were not yet persuaded that they had really won a victory. Most still believed that the Allied fleets would succeed in forcing their way through. The only question, they said, was whether the Entente was ready to sacrifice the necessary number of ships. Neither Wangenheim nor Pallavicini believed that the disastrous experience of the 18th would end the naval attack, and for days they anxiously waited for the fleet to return. The high tension lasted for days and weeks after the repulse of the 18th. We were still momentarily expecting the renewal of the attack. But the great armada never returned.

Should it have come back? Could the Allied ships really have captured Constantinople? I am constantly asked this question. As a layman my own opinion can have little value, but I have quoted the opinions of the German generals and admirals, and of the Turks—practically all of whom, except Enver, believed that the enterprise would succeed, and I am half inclined to believe that Enver’s attitude was merely a case of graveyard whistling. In what I now have to say on this point, therefore, I wish it understood that I am giving not my own views, but merely those of the officials then in Turkey who were best qualified to judge.

Enver had told me, in our talk on the deck of the Yuruk, that he had “plenty of guns—plenty of ammunition.” But this statement was not true. A glimpse at the map will show why Turkey was not receiving munitions from Germany or Austria at that time. The fact was that Turkey was just as completely isolated from her allies then as was Russia. There were two railroad lines leading from Constantinople to Germany. One went by way of Bulgaria and Serbia. Bulgaria was then not an ally; even though she had winked at the passage of guns and shells, this line could not have been used, since Serbia, which controlled the vital link extending from Nish to Belgrade, was still intact. The other railroad line went through Rumania, by way of Bucharest. This route was independent of Serbia, and, had the Rumanian Government consented, it would have formed a clear route from the Krupps to the Dardanelles. The fact that munitions could be sent with the connivance of the Rumanian Government perhaps accounts for the suspicion that guns and shells were going by that route. Day after day the French and British ministers protested at Bucharest against this alleged violation of neutrality, only to be met with angry denials that the Germans were using this line. There is no doubt now that the Rumanian Government was perfectly honourable in making these denials. It is not unlikely that the Germans themselves started all these stories, merely to fool the Allied fleet into the belief that their supplies were inexhaustible.

Let us suppose that the Allies had returned, say on the morning of the nineteenth, what would have happened? The one overwhelming fact is that the fortifications were very short of ammunition. They had almost reached the limit of their resisting power when the British fleet passed out on the afternoon of the 18th. I had secured permission for Mr. George A. Schreiner, the well-known American correspondent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles on this occasion. On the night of the 18th, this correspondent discussed the situation with General Mertens, who was the chief technical officer at the straits. General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very discouraging for the defense.

“We expect that the British will come back early to-morrow morning,” he said, “and if they do, we may be able to hold out for a few hours.”

General Mertens did not declare in so many words that the ammunition was practically exhausted, but Mr. Schreiner discovered that such was the case. The fact was that Fort Hamidié, the most powerful defense on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen armour-piercing shells left, while at Kilid-ul-Bahr, which was the main defense on the European side, there were precisely ten.

“I should advise you to get up at six o’clock to-morrow morning,” said General Mertens, “and take to the Anatolian hills. That’s what we are going to do.”

The troops at all the fortifications had their orders to man the guns until the last shell had been fired and then to abandon the forts.

Once these defenses became helpless, the problem of the Allied fleet would have been a simple one. The only bar to their progress would have been the minefield, which stretched from a point about two miles north of Erenkeui to Kilid-ul-Bahr. But the Allied fleet had plenty of mine-sweepers, which could have made a channel in a few hours. North of Tchanak, as I have already explained, there were a few guns, but they were of the 1878 model, and could not discharge projectiles that could pierce modern armour plate. North of Point Nagara there were only two batteries, and both dated from 1835! Thus, once having silenced the outer straits, there was nothing to bar the passage to Constantinople except the German and Turkish warships. The Goeben was the only first-class fighting ship in either fleet, and it would not have lasted long against the Queen Elizabeth. The disproportion in the strength of the opposing fleets, indeed, was so enormous that it is doubtful whether there would ever have been an engagement.

Thus the Allied fleet would have appeared before Constantinople on the morning of the twentieth. What would have happened then? We have heard much discussion as to whether this purely naval attack was justified. Enver, in his conversation with me, had laid much stress on the absurdity of sending a fleet to Constantinople, supported by no adequate landing force, and much of the criticism since passed upon the Dardanelles expedition has centred on that point. Yet it is my opinion that this exclusively naval attack was justified. I base this judgment purely upon the political situation which then existed in Turkey. Under ordinary circumstances such an enterprise would probably have been a foolish one, but the political conditions in Constantinople then were not ordinary. There was no solidly established government in Turkey at that time. A political committee, not exceeding forty members, headed by Talaat, Enver, and Djemal, controlled the Central Government, but their authority throughout the empire was exceedingly tenuous. As a matter of fact, the whole Ottoman state, on that eighteenth day of March, 1915, when the Allied fleet abandoned the attack, was on the brink of dissolution. All over Turkey ambitious chieftains had arisen, who were momentarily expecting its fall, and who were looking for the opportunity to seize their parts of the inheritance. As previously described, Djemal had already organized practically an independent government in Syria. In Smyrna Rahmi Bey, the Governor-General, had often disregarded the authorities at the capital. In Adrianople Hadji Adil, one of the most courageous Turks of the time, was believed to be plotting to set up his own government. Arabia had already become practically an independent nation. Among the subject races the spirit of revolt was rapidly spreading. The Greeks and the Armenians would also have welcomed an opportunity to strengthen the hands of the Allies. The existing financial and industrial conditions seemed to make revolution inevitable. Many farmers went on strike; they had no seeds and would not accept them as a free gift from the Government because, they said, as soon as their crops should be garnered the armies would immediately requisition them. As for Constantinople, the populace there and the best elements among the Turks, far from opposing the arrival of the Allied fleet, would have welcomed it with joy. The Turks themselves were praying that the British and French would take their city, for this would relieve them of the controlling gang, emancipate them from the hated Germans, bring about peace, and end their miseries.

No one understood this better than Talaat. He was taking no chances on making an expeditious retreat, in case the Allied fleet appeared before the city. For several months the Turkish leaders had been casting envious glances at a Minerva automobile that had been reposing in the Belgian legation ever since Turkey’s declaration of war. Talaat finally obtained possession of the coveted prize. He had obtained somewhere another automobile, which he had loaded with extra tires, gasolene, and all the other essentials of a protracted journey. This was evidently intended to accompany the more pretentious machine as a kind of “mother ship.” Talaat stationed these automobiles on the Asiatic side of the city with chauffeurs constantly at hand. Everything was prepared to leave for the interior of Asia Minor at a moment’s notice.

But the great Allied armada never returned to the attack.

About a week after this momentous defeat, I happened to drop in at the German Embassy. Wangenheim had a distinguished visitor whom he asked me to meet. I went into his private office and there was Von der Goltz Pasha, recently returned from Belgium, where he had served as governor. I must admit that, meeting Goltz thus informally, I had difficulty in reconciling his personality with all the stories that were then coming out of Belgium. That morning this mild-mannered, spectacled gentleman seemed sufficiently quiet and harmless. Nor did he look his age—he was then about seventy-four; his hair was only streaked with gray, and his face was almost unwrinkled; I should not have taken him for more than sixty-five. The austerity and brusqueness and ponderous dignity which are assumed by most highly-placed Germans were not apparent. His voice was deep, musical, and pleasing, and his manners were altogether friendly and ingratiating. The only evidence of pomp in his bearing was his uniform; he was dressed as a field marshal, his chest blazing with decorations and gold braid. Von der Goltz explained and half apologized for his regalia by saying that he had just returned from an audience with the Sultan. He had come to Constantinople to present his majesty a medal from the Kaiser, and was taking back to Berlin a similar mark of consideration from the Sultan to the Kaiser, besides an imperial present of 10,000 cigarettes.

The three of us sat there for some time, drinking coffee, eating German cakes, and smoking German cigars. I did not do much of the talking, but the conversation of Von der Goltz and Wangenheim seemed to me to shed much light upon the German mind, and especially on the trustworthiness of German military reports. The aspect of the Dardanelles fight that interested them most at that time was England’s complete frankness in publishing her losses. That the British Government should issue an official statement, saying that three ships had been sunk and that four others had been badly damaged, struck them as most remarkable. In this announcement I merely saw a manifestation of the usual British desire to make public the worst—the policy which we Americans also believe to be the best in war times. But no such obvious explanation could satisfy these wise and solemn Teutons. No, England had some deep purpose in telling the truth so unblushingly; what could it be?

“Es ist ausserordentlich!” (It is extraordinary) said Von der Goltz, referring to England’s public acknowledgment of defeat.

“Es ist unerhört!” (It is unheard of) declared the equally astonished Wangenheim.

These master diplomatists canvassed one explanation after another, and finally reached a conclusion that satisfied the higher strategy. England, they agreed, really had had no enthusiasm for this attack, because, in the event of success, she would have had to hand Constantinople over to Russia—something which England really did not intend to do. By publishing the losses, England showed Russia the enormous difficulties of the task; she had demonstrated, indeed, that the enterprise was impossible. After such losses, England intended Russia to understand that she had made a sincere attempt to gain this great prize of war and expected her not to insist on further sacrifices.

The sequel to this great episode in the war came in the winter of 1915-16. By this time Bulgaria had joined the Central Powers, Serbia had been overwhelmed, and the Germans had obtained a complete, unobstructed railroad line from Constantinople to Austria and Germany. Huge Krupp guns now began to come over this line—all destined for the Dardanelles. Sixteen great batteries, of the latest model, were emplaced near the entrance, completely controlling Seddul-Bahr. The Germans lent the Turks 500,000,000 marks, much of which was spent defending this indispensable highway. The thinly fortified straits through which I passed in March, 1915, is now as impregnably fortified as Heligoland. It is doubtful if all the fleets in the world could force the Dardanelles to-day.

CHAPTER XIX

A FIGHT FOR THREE THOUSAND CIVILIANS

Enver now informed me that the Allied ships were bombarding in reckless fashion, and ignoring the well-established international rule that such bombardments should be directed only against fortified places; British and French shells, he said, were falling everywhere, destroying unprotected Moslem villages and killing hundreds of innocent non-combatants. Enver asked me to inform the Allied governments that such activities must immediately cease. He had decided to collect all the British and French citizens who were then living in Constantinople, take them down to the Gallipoli peninsula and scatter them in Moslem villages and towns. The Allied fleets would then be throwing their projectiles not only against peaceful and unprotected Moslems, but against their own countrymen. It was Enver’s idea that this threat, communicated by the American Ambassador to the British and French governments, would soon put an end to “atrocities” of this kind. I was given a few days’ respite to get the information to London and Paris.

At that time about 3,000 British and French citizens were living in Constantinople. The great majority belonged to the class known as Levantines; nearly all had been born in Turkey and in many cases their families had been domiciled in that country for two or more generations. The retention of their European citizenship is almost their only contact with the nation from which they have sprung. Not uncommonly we meet in the larger cities of Turkey men and women who are English by race and nationality, but who speak no English, French being the usual language of the Levantine. The great majority have never set foot in England, or any other European country; they have only one home, and that is Turkey. The fact that the Levantine usually retains citizenship in the nation of his origin was now apparently making him a fitting object for Turkish vengeance. Besides these Levantines, a large number of English and French were then living in Constantinople, as teachers in the schools, as missionaries, and as important business men and merchants. The Ottoman Government now proposed to assemble all these residents, both those who were immediately and those who were remotely connected with Great Britain and France, and to place them in exposed positions on the Gallipoli peninsula as targets for the Allied fleet.

Naturally my first question when I received this startling information was whether the warships were really bombarding defenseless towns. If they were murdering non-combatant men, women, and children in this reckless fashion, such an act of reprisal as Enver now proposed would probably have had some justification. It seemed to me incredible, however, that the English and French could commit such barbarities. I had already received many complaints of this kind from Turkish officials which, on investigation, had turned out to be untrue. Only a little while before Dr. Meyer, the first assistant to Suleyman Nouman, the Chief of the Medical Staff, had notified me that the British fleet had bombarded a Turkish hospital and killed 1,000 invalids. When I looked into the matter, I found that the building had been but slightly damaged, and only one man killed. I now naturally suspected that this latest tale of Allied barbarity rested on a similarly flimsy foundation. I soon discovered, indeed, that this was the case. The Allied fleet was not bombarding Moslem villages at all. A number of British warships had been stationed in the Gulf of Saros, an indentation of the Ægean Sea, on the western side of the peninsula, and from this vantage point they were throwing shells into the city of Gallipoli. All the “bombarding” of towns in which they were now engaging was limited to this one city. In doing this the British navy was not violating the rules of civilized warfare, for Gallipoli had long since been evacuated of its civilian population, and the Turks had established military headquarters in several of the houses, which had properly become the object of the Allied attack. I certainly knew of no rule of warfare which prohibited an attack upon a military headquarters. As to the stories of murdered civilians, men, women, and children, these proved to be gross exaggerations; as almost the entire civilian population had long since left, any casualties resulting from the bombardment must have been confined to the armed forces of the empire.

I now discussed the situation for some time with Mr. Ernest Weyl, who was generally recognized as the leading French citizen in Constantinople, and with Mr. Hoffman Philip, the Conseiller of the Embassy, and then decided that I would go immediately to the Sublime Porte and protest to Enver.

The Council of Ministers was sitting at the time, but Enver came out. His manner was more demonstrative than usual. As he described the attack of the British fleet, he became extremely angry; it was not the imperturbable Enver with whom I had become so familiar.

“These cowardly English!” he exclaimed. “They tried for a long time to get through the Dardanelles, and we were too much for them! And see what kind of a revenge they are taking. Their ships sneak up into the outer bay, where our guns cannot reach them, and shoot over the hills at our little villages, killing harmless old men, women, and children, and bombarding our hospitals. Do you think we are going to let them do that? And what can we do? Our guns don’t reach over the hills, so that we cannot meet them in battle. If we could, we would drive them off, just as we did at the straits a month ago. We have no fleet to send to England to bombard their unfortified towns as they are bombarding ours. So we have decided to move all the English and French we can find to Gallipoli. Let them kill their own people as well as ours.”

I told him that, granted that the circumstances were as he had stated them, he had grounds for indignation. But I called his attention to the fact that he was wrong; that he was accusing the Allies of crimes which they were not committing.

“This is about the most barbarous thing that you have ever contemplated,” I said. “The British have a perfect right to attack a military headquarters like Gallipoli.”

But my argument did not move Enver. I became convinced that he had not decided on this step as a reprisal to protect his own countrymen, but that he and his associates were blindly venting their rage. The fact that the Australians and New Zealanders had successfully effected a landing had aroused their most barbarous instincts. Enver referred to this landing in our talk; though he professed to regard it lightly, and said that he would soon push the French and English into the sea, I saw that it was causing him much concern. The Turk, as I have said before, is psychologically primitive; to answer the British landing at Gallipoli by murdering hundreds of helpless British who were in his power would strike him as perfectly logical. As a result of this talk I gained only a few concessions. Enver agreed to postpone the deportation until Thursday—it was then Sunday; to exclude women and children from the order, and to take none of the British and French who were then connected with American institutions.

“All the rest will have to go,” was his final word. “Moreover,” he added, “we don’t purpose to have the enemy submarines in the Marmora torpedo the transports we are sending to the Dardanelles. In the future we shall put a few Englishmen and Frenchmen on every ship we send down there as a protection to our own soldiers.”

When I returned to our embassy I found that the news of the proposed deportation had been published. The amazement and despair that immediately resulted were unparalleled, even in that city of constant sensations. Europeans, by living for many years in the Levant, seem to acquire its emotions, particularly its susceptibility to fear and horror, and now, no longer having the protection of their embassies, these fears were intensified. A stream of frenzied people began to pour into the Embassy. From their tears and cries one would have thought that they were immediately to be taken out and shot, and that there was any possibility of being saved seemed hardly to occur to them. Yet all the time they insisted that I should get individual exemptions. One could not go because he had a dependent family; another had a sick child; another was ill himself. My ante-room was full of frantic mothers, asking me to secure exemption for their sons, and of wives, who sought special treatment for their husbands. They made all kinds of impossible suggestions: I should resign my ambassadorship as a protest; I should even threaten Turkey with war by the United States! They constantly besieged my wife, who spent hours listening to their stories and comforting them. In all this exciting mass there were many who faced the situation with more courage.

The day after my talk with Enver, Bedri, the Prefect of Police, began to arrest some of the victims.

The next morning one of my callers made what would ordinarily have seemed to be an obvious suggestion. This visitor was a German. He told me that Germany would suffer greatly in reputation if the Turks carried out their plan; the world would not possibly be convinced that Germans had not devised the whole scheme. He said that I should call upon the German and Austrian ambassadors; he was sure that they would support me in my pleas for decent treatment. As I had made appeals to Wangenheim several times before in behalf of foreigners, without success, I had hardly thought it worth while to ask his coöperation in this instance. Moreover, the plan of using non-combatants as a protective screen in warfare was such a familiar German device that I was not at all sure that the German Staff had not instigated the Turks. I decided, however, to adopt the advice of my German visitor and seek Wangenheim’s assistance. I must admit that I did this as a forlorn hope, but at least I thought it only fair to Wangenheim to give him a chance to help.

I called upon him in the evening at ten o’clock and stayed with him until eleven. I spent the larger part of this hour in a fruitless attempt to interest him in the plight of these non-combatants. Wangenheim said point blank that he would not assist me. “It is perfectly proper,” he maintained, “for the Turks to establish a concentration camp at Gallipoli. It is also proper for them to put non-combatant English and French on their transports and thus insure them against attack. As I made repeated attempts to argue the matter, Wangenheim would deftly shift the conversation to other topics. According to my record of this talk, written out at the time, the German Ambassador discussed almost every subject except the one upon which I had called.

“This act of the Turks will greatly injure Germany——” I would begin.

“Do you know that the English soldiers at Gaba Tepe are without food and drink?” he would reply. “They made an attack to capture a well and were repulsed. The English have taken their ships away so as to prevent their soldiers from retreating——”

“But about this Gallipoli business,” I interrupted. “Germans themselves here in Constantinople have said that Germany should stop it——”

“The Allies landed 45,000 men on the peninsula,” Wangenheim answered, “and of these 10,000 were killed. In a few days we shall attack the rest and destroy them.”

When I attempted to approach the subject from another angle, this master diplomatist would begin discussing Rumania and the possibility of obtaining ammunition by way of that country.

“Your Secretary Bryan,” he said, “has just issued a statement showing that it would be unneutral for the United States to refuse to sell ammunition to the Allies. So we have used this same argument with the Rumanians; if it is unneutral not to sell ammunition, it is certainly unneutral to refuse to transport it!”

The humorous aspects of this argument appealed to Wangenheim, but I reminded him that I was there to discuss the lives of between 2,000 and 3,000 non-combatants. As I touched upon this subject again, Wangenheim replied that the United States would not be acceptable to Germany as a peacemaker now, because we were so friendly to the Entente. He insisted on giving me all the details of recent German successes in the Carpathians and the latest news on the Italian situation.

“We would rather fight Italy than have her for our ally,” he said.

At another time all this would have greatly entertained me, but not then. It was quite apparent that Wangenheim would not discuss the proposed deportation, further than to say that the Turks were justified. His statement that it was planned to establish a “concentration camp” at Gallipoli unfolded his whole attitude. Up to this time the Turks had not established concentration camps for enemy aliens anywhere. I had earnestly advised them not to establish such camps, thus far with success. On the other hand, the Germans were protesting that Turkey was “too lenient” and urging the establishment of such camps in the interior. Wangenheim’s use of the words “concentration camps in Gallipoli” showed that the German view was at last prevailing and that I was losing my battle for the foreigners. An internment camp is a distressing place under the most favourable circumstances, but who, except a German or a Turk, ever conceived of establishing one right in the field of battle? Let us suppose that the English and the French should assemble all their enemy aliens, march them to the front, and place them in a camp in No Man’s Land, directly in the fire of both armies. That was precisely the kind of a “concentration camp” which the Turks and Germans now intended to establish for the resident aliens of Constantinople—for my talk with Wangenheim left no doubt in my mind that the Germans were parties to the plot.