THE MORAL EFFECT OF FORCING 
THE STRAITS. 
By COLONEL F. 
THE incidents that have occurred in the Dardanelles 
furnish a useful illustration of the methods 
adopted by the Allied Governments for prose- 
cuting the war, as compared with those used by 
the Germans. While the Government of Germany 
endeavours by acta of terrorism, submarine blockade, 
bombardment of exposed localities, and so forth, to stir up 
discontent amongst the electorate, and thus bring pressure 
to bear ufwn the directing organs of the fighting forces, we 
have systematically refrained from directly molesting the 
people, but have concentrated our efforts on operations 
intended to impress and dishearten the enemy's Government 
and General Staff, leaving them to break gently to their 
Buffering dependents what has happened. 
The threat of a submarine blockade had no effect what- 
ever in disconcerting our responsible Heads of Administra- 
tion, but the threat against the Dardanelles, in spite of the 
many delays that have attended its execution, will be shown 
(when accurate documentary evidence is forthcoming) to have 
spread consternation throughout the countries of the Dual 
Alliance, and to have modified the whole situation far more 
than the direct introduction of many Army Corps and the 
expenditure of many millions of shells. 
If there is one operation of war that the German General 
Staff has of late years studied more thoroughly than any 
other, it ia the question of disembarkations on an enemy's 
shore, and, like everyone else who has really gone into the 
matter, they had arrived at the general conclusion that, given 
adequate artillery support from the fleet — ^i.e., the facility of 
fairly close approach to the coast — and efficient numbers dis- 
tributed over a wide enough front, success in such movements 
could be more certainly guaranteed than it could be in any 
other operation. It was even more certain than the passage 
of a river. 
They more than probably experienced a temporary feel- 
ing of relief when our first attempt to rush the Straits broke 
down, but the Headquarters Staff knew that we possessed 
both the means and the determination to concentrate the 
forces required to effect a successful landing, and also that, in 
the uncertainty of the spot against which a first effort would 
be made and the well-known condition to which the Turkish 
Army had been reduced, it was impossible to guarantee suffi- 
cient opposing numbers at each and all of the many points we 
might select. 
The still neutral nations of the East grasped the situa- 
tion at once, and their intervention, previously very doubtful, 
N. M A U D E , C. B. 
became so inimical that reinforcement, not hitherto dreamed 
of, had to be sent from Germany to meet the threatened 
danger that was clearly gathering momentum. The longer 
the delay accorded, the greater the forces we were concen- 
trating, and correspondingly greater the growing anxiety ak 
the enemy Headquarters, which ia clearly to be traced in the 
increasing mendacity of the official commnniques, in which 
no intelligent Staff officer in any army could be found to be- 
lieve any more than would those of the Allies or even their own. 
Our education has been conducted on such uniform lines 
ever since 1870 that there is no room in us for misapprehension 
on that point. All this effect was gained by the mere threat 
of forcing the Straits. Now, what will follow as a consequence 
of our having actually landed i 
The Turks cannot hope to get together more than 300,000 
men for the defence of the areas immediately threatened, 
and of these some 60,000 are now securely locked up in the 
Peninsula of GaUipoU itself, where they can neither be rein- 
forced nor withdrawn, as already the Isthmus of Bulair ii 
completely covered by our fire. 
One hundred thousand Turks, at Uie least, are held up 
by the threat of a Russian descent from the North, of which 
we may expect to hear almost at any time. This leaves about 
140,000 available for distribution between the French on the 
Asiatio side of the Straits and along the coast from Bulair 
towards the Greek frontier. 
There is also the garrison of Constantinople itself to be 
provided, and the city is certainly not in a condition safe 
enough to allow it to be left to its civil population alone. 
As regards the details of the landings effected, they 
remind one of those employed in the disembarkation of Aber- 
crombie's troops at Aboukir in 1801, except that in the latter 
case, owing to the short range of ships' guns, a hundred anal 
odd years ago, there was no artillery support for the assailants. 
Abercrombie's boats had to row in for five miles, and the 
enemy opposed them with heavy guns and most vigorous 
charges of both foot and cavalry, delivered as onr men were 
forming up on the beach. One battali(« was. In fact, charged 
by horsemen while still knee-deep in water. 
There seems to have been a similar absence of surprise 
in the present instance, and all the resources of field engineer- 
ing and wire entanglement had been liberally provided for our 
reception, but so terrific ia the power of modem ships' arma^* 
ments that all those obstacles which could be reached by them 
were shot to pieces on a front sufficiently wide to allow oui; 
men to attack under favourable conditions. 
TALES OF THE UNTAMED. 
III.— RANA. 
Adapted from the French of Louis Pergaud by Douglas English. 
JUNE'S noonday sun weighed heavy on the pool. 
Across it stretched a gossamer haze, soft, filmy, 
evanescent, its edges tacked to stiff upstanding reeds. 
The massing of the sUmy growth of thread- 
weed, the twisted green of water-thyme and star- 
wort, the overspread of lUy leaves, had each been toll paid 
gladly to the season — toll from a silver treasury, toll paid to 
the alow course of days, to ardent sun, or dreamy moon, as 
each compelled the exchange. 
The willows drooped green tresses to the water, as though 
to shield their dainty feet from sunshine's wanton kisses. 
Slow, fretful, gurgling bubbles sighed from under, 
creeping the length of lily stalks, which, by the curling of 
their leaves, seemed treacherously to abet the mirrored blue. 
And then came heaviness once more, and torpor of the 
heated air, without a threading breath of wind, without a 
petulant bird-note — its lullaby a cricket's churr, borne from 
the sun-burnt slope. 
The concert of the frogs had ceased at dawn. Yet, 
hour by hour, some soloist had voiced his futile passion. 
Twin bubbling spheres swelled from his throat, and shrunk, 
and swelled again, and so made music. 
Now even these mad minstrels ceased lamenting. Each 
sat immobile on his leaf (as the sun's heat had ordered)' 
staring with steadfast gold-rimmed eyes, breathing full- 
lunged the infinite air, disdaining wind-flung grasshopperst 
and lazy, amber-tinted flies, which melted in the haze. 
The pool lay lifeless, spell-bound. 
It was the drowsy witching-time, which turns frog-foIK 
to stone — the hour when frog-folk, come what may, must 
bask. A few had left their element, and lay flat-beUied in 
the grass. These too paid homage to the sun. To dream ol 
life contented them. No footfall shook the ground; no 
danger threatened. 
Head high, hump-backed, sat Rana on her leaf — Rana, 
the portliest matron in the pool, High Priestess of her tribe. 
Her legs were doubled under her; her speckled paunch 
drooped flaccid either side. Her colouring, emerald slashed 
with gold, commingled with the colouring of her throne. 
Six times had Rana known the heat of the summer — the 
lethargy that came with it, the weariness, the numbing of 
the veins. 
Six times had Rana known the heat of autumn — the 
gathering of the water frogs, the palsying of tiieir slackened 
nerves and sinews, the struggling through the gloomy mid'* 
depth weeds, the plunge into the ooze of the abyss. 
15* 
