o become historical than any two that she will ever build. Both were modern vessels, the Goeben, a first-class battle-cruiser, carry

nce must be made for the responsibilities entailed in preventing a sortie of the Austrian Navy, in convoying troops from Algeria to France, an

Their movements and whereabouts had, of course, been known throughout to Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne in command of the British Mediterranean Fleet; and now, being free to attack them, he was awaiting their departure, together with a subsidiary squadron under Rear-Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge. The German admiral and his officers had no illusions as to the destiny that awaited them when they put to sea; made their wills; and steamed out of harbour on the evening of August 6th. Their design, it was believed, was to rush the Straits of Otr

r French officer, Admiral Boué de Lapeyrère, taking his place as Commander of the combined British and French forces, on August 30th; and, on September 20th, Rear-Admiral Troubridge also returned home. At his own request, he was court-martialled on No

might have acted; and the effect on the situation that they had created of a prompter and more drastic action on our own part-these matters can never probably be accurately determined. On the other hand, it is clear that, both in material and moral effect, their presence was an enormous asset to German diplomacy; and that, indirectly at any rate, our campaign in Gallipoli, with all its consequences, derived from them. On September 2

viewed. Here, after all, were the two or three brains upon which, as a whole, our strategy depended; and it is interesting to note how the mechanism through which they acted had become moulded and modified by the stress of war. For it must be remembered that, after those admirable

-it was little wonder that, in the various higher executives, changes and experiments in change should have been found necessary. Many, perhaps most of these, were proved to be inadequate, and replaced by others as the war went on. Others were doomed from the first an

, consisting of the First Lord, the four Sea Lords, the two Civil Lords, the Parliamentary and Permanent Secretaries, there had come into being a War Staff Group, including the First Lord and the First Sea Lordd (but none of the other Sea Lords), the Chief of Staff, the Permanent Secretary, a Naval Secretary, a

ary for War, Lord Kitchener, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill. Of these, however, the main responsibility rested upon Mr. Asquith, Mr. Churchill, and Lord Kitchener. This was in practice the triumvirate then conducting the war, as far as the British Empire was concerned, and each of the three was a man of strong and outstanding personality. In Mr. Asquith the country was being served by a statesman of very typical English qualities, imperturbable, perhaps a little slow-moving, magnanimous, shrewd, and of great intellectual capacity. In Mr. Churchill the Admiralty had at its head a man of brilliant and impulsive mentality, complete ph

lbow of this inner triumvirate in the person of Lord Fisher. The maker of the modern navy, and, in an even more vital sphere, as authoritative an influence as Lord Kitchener, at the age of seventy he had

mind being evidently that of a combined naval and military movement on a big scale. That some such attack on the Turkish lines of communication might eventually become desirable Lord Kitchener agreed. He did not consider, however, that the time had arrived for it; and when, a few days later, Mr. Churchill suggested to the War Office the advisability of collecting enough transp

en progressing. On November 10th, the Russians had sunk four Turkish transports; and, on November 18th, the Goeben, had been materially damaged in an engagement off Sebastopol. Two days later, the Turkish Hamidieh had bombarded Tuapse. On December 10th, the Goeben having been repaired, with the Berk-i-Satvet, shelled Batum; and, on December 12th, the Hamidieh was damaged by a mine in the Bosphorus. The first notable Turkish loss, however, was in the torpedoing of the battleship Messudiyeh in the Dardanelles, on December

ration to be made against Turkey elsewhere. On this same day, Lord Kitchener wrote to Mr. Churchill that he did not think we could do anything that would seriously help the Russians in the Caucasus; that we had no troops to land anywhere; that the only place where a demonstration might check the sending eastward of Turkey's reinforcements was the Dardanelles; but that we should not be ready for anything big for some months. A telegram was, however, sent t

nt known as the Narrows, about fourteen miles from the ?gean entrance, there was a kink in it, lying north and south, a little over four miles long. In no part of its course between the ?gean Sea and the town of Gallipoli, where it began to broaden, was it more than 7,000 yards wide, and at the Narrows it was little more than three-quarters of a mile across

lipoli was a narrow tongue of land, not more than three miles wide where it sprouted from the mainland, swelling to twelve just above the Narrows, but only five miles across at the Narrows themselves. It was almost wholly arid or brush-covered, with a central and

oy. Every yard of these shores, indeed, as of the waters between them, was instinct with real or legendary history. Across the Dardanelles, Leander had swum to Hero. Over the Narrows, Xerxes had built his bridge of boats. By the same road, a hundred and fifty years later, Alexander of Macedon had marched to the con

r side of the Narrows; and it had not been till two hundred years later that the two New Castles had been built lower down, at the ?gean entrance. From that time onward, till 1864, the fortifications of the Dardanelles may be said to have remained medi?val; but, upo

times, when the British admiral Duckworth in 1807 had made a plucky but not very long-lived demonstration befor

on the Asiatic coast, was Fort Dardanos, mounting five 6-inch guns in rectangular turrets, at a height of about 350 feet. Opposite this, on the European side, was Fort Soghandere. The mouth of the Narrows themselves was very strongly guarded both at Chanak in Asia and Kilid Bahr on the Peninsula; and a fleet approaching the Narrows would find itself confronted-apart from an unknown number of field-guns and howitzers-with ten 14-inch, eighteen 10.2-inch, eight 9.2-inch, and thirty-seven 6-inch guns,

, that was to say, could force itself unaided into the Sea of Marmora and shell Constantinople, troops that would be very valuable elsewhere need not be diverted to a new theatre of war; a great deal of tonnage

immediate and far-reaching results-that a revolution in Constantinople against the pro-German Young Turk Party would almost certainly ensue; and that Bulgaria, then neutral and undecided, might definitely ally herself with th

s as those, for example, as Port Arthur, had not been encouraging, it was realized that in the present war-as regarded the land, at any rate-the value of fortresses had fallen very considerably. Hammered by modern artillery, the world had seen such strongholds as those of Liège, Namur, and Antwerp, c

Admiral Carden replied that he did not think the Dardanelles could be rushed, but that they might be forced by extended operations with a large number of ships. On January 6th, Mr. Churchill invited Admiral Carden to forward detailed particulars as to the force required, the manner of its employment, and the results to be expected from it. Five days afterward, Admiral Carden replied that five operations were possible, namely, the destruction of the defenses at the entrance to the Dardanelles; actio

Sir Henry Jackson-not a regular member of the War Group, but frequently consulted-and the then Chief of the Staff, Admiral Henry Oliver. Sir Arthur Wilson seems on the whole to have taken up much the same attitude as that of Lord Fisher. Admiral Oliver believed in its possibilities, though these would largely depend, of course, upon factors, whose importance could only be determined by experiment. At the same time, he would apparently have preferred to wait until the army could co?perate on a big scale. Commodore Bartolomé, while agreeing in the preferability o

he bombarding ships coming into range of their guns, the inner would be attacked both from the Straits and by indirect fire across the Gallipoli Peninsula. Three modern vessels and about a dozen old battleships would, it was thought, suffice for the operat

rd Kitchener, in such a matter as this, whose opinion would carry the greatest weight; but Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson were also present, though not as executive members. Lord Kitchener, after consideration, pronounced himself in favour of the plan, pointing out that, if it were to prove unsuccessful, the attack could be discontinued. Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson remained silent, and their silence was accepted as giving technical consent. Nor would it have been true to have inte

He put himself into touch with the French Minister of Marine, who visited London and approved of the plans, and, with the consent of his Government, promised the co?peration of French naval

ould almost inevitably assume dimensions that would seriously endanger the larger scheme, upon which he and Admiral Wilson were hard at work. He accordingly wrote direct to Mr. Asquith on January 28t

lf an hour. The drama of Gallipoli, with its throne-shaking prize time after time on the brink of capture, with its pitiless slaughters, its amazing achievements, its epic presentment of human courage-the drama

d now been a brilliant First Lord for more than three years; and the silver-haired, ruddy-cheeked Yorkshireman, to whom this was but one of a thousand issues, for which, as for his country's entrance into the war, he must take the ultimate responsibility. In that half-hour, his was chiefly to listen while the two unfolded the

the spot believed that it would succeed; the attack could be stopped if unsuccessful; and the necessary ships were already on the way. Further, the French were confident that the Austrian submarines could not get as far as the Dardanelles, while the Turks, as f

ning; and both Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Grey dwelt on its political effect upon the Balkans. There then followed a dramatic incident. Lord Fisher, pushing his chair back, rose from the table as though about to leave the room. Lord Kitchener at once followed him, and asked him what he meant to do. He said that he would not return to the Council Table and meant to resign his position

nt to do so. At the afternoon meeting of the War Council, Mr. Churchill then announced that the Admiralty was willing to proceed, and, from that time onward, he never looked back. The matter, in his

hat, once the ships had completed their passage, the garrison of the Peninsula would evacuate it, and it would cease to have any military importance. He was also quite definite in his statement that there were no more British troops available for the purpose, an opinion which Mr. Churchill did not share, though he was, of course, overborne by Lord Kitchener's authority

xty miles from the Gallipoli Peninsula-the Division sailing, it was hoped, within ten days. At the same time arrangements were to be made for a further force to be sent if necessary from Egypt; horse-boats were to accompany the 29th Division; arrangements were to be made to assemble a large number of lighters and tugs in the Levant; and t

himself, then fifty-eight, had had a varied and adventurous career; had taken part in the Egyptian campaign of 1882; receiving the medal and the Khedive's Bronze Star; had been present, two years later, at the Eastern Sudan campaign; and, as a command

Depot Ship at Hong Kong. With these were the Agememnon, a more modern battleship, though about to have been passed into the Second Fleet; and the Inflexible, which we have last heard of helping to sink the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau near the Antarctic Circle. In addition there were under his command the Suffren, Gaulois, and Bouvet, three old French b

d justifiably be risked-drew in to shore and opened fire with their secondary armament of smaller guns. It then became clear that, in spite of the previous five hours' bombardment, the forts had not been silenced, for they imm

sistible, the Agamemnon, and the French battleship Gaulois, she began a long-range bombardment early in the morning, and this was followed as before by an attack at close quarters-the Vengeance, Cornwallis, and Suffren again taking the

be imagined than those undertaken by these little detachments; and, both in the courage with which they were faced and the coolness with which they were completed, the records of the navy and the Royal Marines were more than fully sustained. Particularly prominent was the act of Lieutenant-Commander E. G. Robinson, who on February 26th went alone, under heavy fire, into a hostile gun-position, that might w

to become unpromising, it would be broken off and its losses cut. That had also been Lord Kitchener's view, but, on February 24th, he stated, at a meeting of the War Council, that if the Fleet could not get through without help, the army would have to come to its aid. By Mr. Churchill that had evidently long been accepted, and preparations, as we have se

red in Turkey owing to the insufficiency of troops. Lord Kitchener for his part asserted that the forces in Egypt, on the spot, and on the way there were at prese

red to Sir John Maxwell, then commanding the forces in Egypt, and General Birdwood, who was to command the Australian and New Zealand contingent on the Peninsula, that it w

xtremely hazardous; and that the Peninsula was very strongly organized for defence. Nevertheless Lord Kitchener retained his opinion and telegraphed the same evening to General Birdwood, that as far as could be seen, till the passage was actu

t that he proposed to leave the matter open till March 10th, when he hoped to have heard from General Birdwood. By this time, the entrance had been cleared, and for several days the ships had been o

was afterward discovered, any appreciable results. The attack was renewed the next day, and it was believed that Fort Chanak had been silenced, several of our vessels having been hit but none of them placed out of action. In these operations, the Ocean, Majestic, Albion, Prince George, Lord Nelson, and Vengeance also participated, together with the French Suffren, Bouvet, Charlemagne, and Gaulois. So we come to March 10th, on which date Lord Kitchener finally released the 29th Division, the transports sailing on March 16th, three weeks later than had been intended, and three days after Sir Ian Hamilton, who had been given command of the Expeditionary Army, left England. The time was now approaching when, if it were to be made at all, the navy must a

ns on a large scale should at once be commenced. On March 15th, Mr. Churchill replied that Sir Ian Hamilton would arrive on the 16th, and that Admiral Carden should consult with him as to the concerted step

ck made it clear that the suggested plan of campaign received his full concurrence; that the success of the undertaking would depend on his ability to clear the minefields before forcing the Narrows; and that to do this successfull

in which these trawler mine-sweepers, under Commander W. Mellor, had persisted with unfailing gallantry. With the current always, and the wind frequently, opposed to them; with every minefield accurately ranged, and hotly contested by the enemy's guns, they had suffered the

and throughout the critical discussions in London, they had sentinelled the ?gean, the Syrian coast, and the mouth of the Dardanelles. With their decks never dry, with their galley-fires out, with all on board drenched to the skin, they had ridden out st

a half miles range. These four battleships took for their targets the forts at Kilid Bahr and Chanak; while the Triumph and Prince George, at closer range, engaged the forts at Soghandere, Kephez, and Dard

he Vengeance, Irresistible, Albion, Majestic, Swiftsure, and Ocean taking their places. These vessels began their attack at half-past two, advancing in line and meeting a hot fire; and it was just as the French vessels were passing out that the first disaster of the day occurred in the sinking

or instance, within a space not more than three hundred feet deep, there fell no less than eighty-six shells, the battery itself remaining undamaged, while none of the 6-inch guns of the much-hammered Fort Dardanos suffered any injury from our

an hour after the Irresistible sank, the Ocean was struck, but most of her crew were also rescued. The damage to the Inflexible was sufficiently serious to make it very uncertain that she would reach port; her forward control position being badly smashed up, her shell room and magazine injured by a mine; and many of her compartments rendered untenable by poisonous f

cessary to reconsider the plan of attack and to find a solution of the drifting-mine problem. Both Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson, on the morning of the 19th, as well as Mr. Churchill himself, shared this view; and Lord Fisher at once ordered two more battleships to reinforce Admiral de Robeck, the Queen and the Impl

f the secondary nature hitherto suggested. To this Lord Kitchener replied that the Dardanelles must be forced, and that, if large military operations were necessary, they must be undertaken. Meanwhile Admiral de Robeck was beginning to agree with Sir Ian Hamilton, and on March 23d wired to the

phed to Sir Ian Hamilton, pointing this out to him, and asking him how soon he could act on shore-a difficult question to answer in view of the facts that, only ten days before, Sir Ian had been in England; that he had been assisted by no previous staff preparation

ho still believed that the navy, with local military help, might win its way through, this decision was a great disappointment; and he was unwilling to accept it. He was anxious to order Admiral de Robeck to renew the naval attack according to his previous intention. But neither Lord Fisher, Sir Arthur Wilson,

th the then available forces; and, in view of later knowledge, this, with a further naval effort, might very possibly have achieved the desired end. For it was not until Apr

y aware, of course, of the military concentration on the islands of Lemnos, Tenedos, and Imbros. Thus, a week after the naval attack had failed, General Liman von Sanders took command of the Peninsula; began to build roads in post haste, bodies of Greek and Armenian workmen being brought up for the purpose; const

apid re-arrangement of the troops and material. While this was in process, the general plan of attack was being considered by the naval and military staffs, but could not be

innumerable errands, and, by the end of the third week in April, all had been organized for the proposed landing. In view of the long delay, the magnitude of the operations, and the neighbourhood of the assembling-places to their objectives, it had been wholly impossible, of course

t a dozen miles from the tip of the Peninsula-the next was Y beach, some ten miles away. South of this was X beach, three miles farther along and just north of Cape Tekeh; next came W beach round

were conveyed in battleships, from which they were to be landed in boats towed by naval pinnaces, the main body of the troops being afterward brought, up, when the landing-places had been secured, in allotted liners. In view of all the circumstances, it was an attempt without precede

uisers Bacchante and eight destroyers, some of the latter also carrying troops, the seaplane ship Ark Royal, a balloon ship, and fifteen trawlers. All through the morning of the 24th, the transports had been getting into position, and the exodus from the harbour began in the

setting half-moon. Since the fall of dusk the night before, the squadron had been steaming with lights out, and the crowded troops had been doing their best to snatch a little sleep before they woul

out. There was to be no preliminary bombardment, since it was hoped-though none too confidently-to surprise the enemy; and, from this point, therefore, the pinnaces with the landing-parties crept toward the shore in absolute stillness. They had almost reached it, racing against the dawn, when the destroyers, with their additional troops, slid between th

ng had taken place a little to the east of the chosen spot; and the troops, having rushed the beach, found themselves in consequence faced by a steep and shrub-covered line of cliffs. But there was more cover here, although the enemy was firing down on t

any hours the battleships failed to locate them, and, all that time, under a hail of shrapnel, beach-masters, midshipmen, and seamen had to carry out their duties. For the actual troops it was less of an ordeal, since they could bolt across to the cover of the cliffs, but for the navy, marshalling the boats and moving them to and fro, there was no such respite. Owing to the heavy fire, too, both from the howitzers inland and warships in the Narrows on the other side, the loaded transports h

tsure, Albion, and Vengeance; of the four cruisers, Euryalus, Talbot, Minerva, and Dublin; of six sweepers and fourteen trawlers. Allotted to Y beach as the first covering troops were the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and they sailed from Mudros in the cruisers Amethyst and Sapphire. It had not been possible to

n them there were strong hostile forces. They themselves were heavily and ceaselessly attacked; and, after twenty-four hours' fighting, it was decided to withdraw them-or rather what was left of them-under the fire of the battleships, the Ame

one, about two hundred yards long, but the cliffs beyond it were not high, and their ultimate objective was a hill that lay to the rear of the landing-places, round the corner, at W and V. Covered by the Implacable, who came close inshore, the troops landed with scarcely any casualties; and, though they did not succeed, owing

ries of low sand-hills to the ridge that lay beyond. It had been an obvious landing-place, however, and had, in consequence, been fortified with the utmost care. Not only had the water in front of it been mined but also the shore itself. Submerged entanglements co

rked, at four o'clock in the morning, into the small boats. An hour later, and while these were approaching the shore-there had been eight picket-boats, each towing four cutters-the Euryalus followed them up and poured a heavy f

e, and, with great skill, put out of action some enfilading maxims. Thus supported, their comrades made a little headway; and, once having gained a footing, never stopped. By ten o'clock, three of the enemy's trenches had been taken; and, by half-past eleven, they were in touch with the X landing-party. The actual beach was now secured, although the general position was still hazardous, and r

an that of beach W could well be imagined; but that of beach V presented a problem that, in certain respects, was even more difficult. Of about the same size and much the same formation, it was more strongly flanked on either side-by sheer cl

the other cases, the first landing-parties were to be towed ashore in small open boats, but the remainder of the covering troops, about 2,000 strong, was to be landed from a larger vessel designed for the purpose. This was the converted collier, the River Clyde, in charge of Commander Edward Unwin, and large doorways had been cut in her s

tleships in the rear maintained a tremendous bombardment, but here, too, the effect on the defences was so slight as to be negligible. Till the boats actually touched shore, the Turks reserved their fire and then opened simultaneously with devastating results. In several of the boats there was not a single man who escaped eith

dead and wounded men lying about them, themselves with but a moment or two to live, they plied their oars or gave their orders under that withering storm of lead and shrapnel. Such was Able Seaman Le

This was chiefly due to the strong current and the almost instant slaughter of those at work on them. Time was the essence of the contract, however; every second counted; and already the first of the Munsters were pouring out of the ship. While willing hands fought with the lighters, they leapt, swam, and waded to the shore, some being drowned by the weight of their equ

he lighter against the thrust of the current. With him was Midshipman G. L. Drewry, who, after being wounded in the head, twice attempted to swim from lighter to lighter with a line. Failing to do so owing to exhaustion, Midshipman W. St. A. Malleson then took up the task, succeeded, and, when the line broke again, made two further, but this time unsuccessful, efforts to repair it. No less gallant were A. B. Williams and Seaman G. M'K. Samson, the latter working o

ll as the ships at sea, kept up an incessant fusillade, both to protect the survivors under the sandbank, and to prevent a counter-attack by the enemy. Earlier in the day, the Albion, seeing the River Clyde's predicament, had called for volunteers to go to her help, and a pinnace and launch had

end by the tired troops. On the morning of the 26th, however, thanks to the heavy fire of the Albion inshore and other vessels farther out, a determined onslaught, heroica

d Nelson, the 2nd South Wales Borderers and a detachment of the 2nd London Field Company of the Royal Engineers about 750 men in all-were successfully landed, largely due to the ability of Lieutenant-Commander Ralph B. Janvrin, who was in charge of the trawlers that brought them ashore. They suffered but few casualties, consolidated themselves in their assigned positions, and held these till April 27th, when they were joined by the genera

second great landing at Suvla Bay, four miles north of Anzac Cove, on August 7th, all that can be said here is that, before breakfast-time, two divisions were firmly established, and that

hatsoever. Wharves and breakwaters, piers and storehouses, all were totally lacking. On the Peninsula itself, as we have seen, each of the landing-places was an open beach. Each was exposed, throughout the whole occupation, to registered and observed artillery fire. At two of the most important of them-Suvla and Anzac-only lighters a

ember; the sick and wounded were punctually removed; and letters and mails were regularly delivered. So also in the final act, in the amazing evacu

tally involved with issues as large all the world over. But of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, of the human instruments of their policy, there