lO 
Land & Water 
June 27, 1 91 8 
Embassy, was outside waiting to come in. Djavid suggested 
that I have this vessel unload her cargo at Smyrna and that 
the Turkish Government would pay the cost of transporting 
it overland to Constantinople. This proposal, of course, was 
a ridiculous evasion of the issue and I brushed it aside. 
Djavid then said that the Cabinet proposed to investigate 
the matter ; in fact they were discussing the situation at 
that moment. He told me how it had happened. A Turkish 
torpedo boat had passed through the Dardanelles and at- 
tempted to enter the .-Egean. The British warships sta- 
tioned outside hailed the ship, examined it and found that 
thefe were German sailors on board. The English Admiral 
at once ordered the vessel to go back ; this, under the cir- 
cumstances, he had a right to do. Weber Pasha, the German 
General who was then 
in charge of the fortifi- 
cations, did not consult 
the Turks ; he imme- 
diately gave orders to 
close the Straits. 
VVangenheim had al- 
ready boasted to me, 
as I have said, that 
the Dardanelles could 
be closed in thirty 
minutes and the Ger- 
mans now made good 
his words. Down went 
the mines and the 
nets ; the lights in 
the lighthouses were 
extinguished ; signals 
were put up, notifying 
all ships that there 
was " no thorough- 
fare" and the deed, 
the most high-handed 
which the Germans 
had yet committed, 
was done. And here I 
found these Turkish 
statesmen, who alone 
had authority over this 
indispensable strip of 
water, trembling and 
stammering with fear, 
running hither and 
yon like a lot of 
frightened rabbits, ap- 
palled at the enormity 
of the German act, yet 
apparently powerless 
to take any decisive 
action. I certainly had a graphic picture of the extremities 
to which Teutonic bullying had reduced the proud descen- 
dants of Osman. And at the same moment before my 
mind rose the figure of the Sultan, whose signature was 
essential to close legally these waters, quietly dozing at 
his palace, entirely oblivious of the whole transaction. 
Though Djavid informed me that the Cabinet might 
decide to re-open the Dardanelles, it never did so. This 
great passage way has remained closed from S»ptember 27th, 
1914, to the present time. I saw, of course, precisely what 
this action signified. That month of September had been 
a disillusioning one for the Germans. The French had beaten 
back the invasion and driven the German armies to entrench- 
ments along the Aisne. The Russians were sweeping trium- 
phantly through Galicia ; they had capti^red Lemberg, and 
it seemed not improbable that they would soon cross the 
Carpathians into Austria-Hungary. In those days, Palla- 
vicini, the Austrian Ambassador, was a discouraged, lament- 
able figure ; he confided to me his fears for the future. The 
German programme of a short, decisive war had clearly 
failed ; it was now quite evident that Germany could only 
win, said Pallavicini, after a protracted struggle. 
I have described how Wangenheim, while preparing the 
Turkish forces for any eventualities, was simply holding 
Turkey in hand, intending actively to use her only in 
case Germanv failed to crush France and Russia in the first 
campaigjn. The time had now come to transform Turkey 
from a passive into an active ally, and the closing of the 
Dardanelles was the first step "in this direction. Few 
people realise, even to-day, what an overwhelming influence 
this act had upon future mihtary operations. I may almost 
say that the effect was decisive. The map discloses that 
enormous Russia has just four ways of reaching the seas. 
One is by way of the Baltic, and this the German Fleet had 
already closed. Another is Archangel, on the Arctic Ocean, 
Talaat Pasha 
a port that is frozen over several months in the year, and 
which connects with the heart of Russia only by a long, 
single-track railroad. Another is the Pacific port of Vladi- 
vostok, also ice-bound for three months, and reaching Russia 
only by the thin line of the Siberian Railway, 5,000 miles 
long. The fourth passage was that of the Dardanelle ; in 
fact, this was the only practicable one. This was the narrow 
gate through which the surplus products of 175,000,000 
people reached Europe, and nine-tenths of all Russian exports 
and imports had gone this way for years. By suddenly 
closing it, Germany destroyed Russia both as an economic 
and a military Power. By shutting off the exports of Russian 
grain, she deprived Russia of the financial power essential 
to successful warfare. What was perhaps even more fatal, 
she prevented Eng- 
land and France Irom 
getting munitions to 
the Russian battle- 
front in sufficient 
quantity to stem the 
German onslaught. As 
soon as theDardanelles 
was closed, Russia had 
to fall back on Arch- 
angel and Vladivos- 
tok for such supplies 
as she could get from 
these ports. The cause 
of the military collapse 
of. Russia in 1915 is 
now well known ; the 
soldiers simply had no 
ammunition with 
which to fight. In the 
list few months Ger- 
many has attempted 
desperately to drive a 
"wedge" between the 
English and French 
armies — an enterprise 
which, up to the pre- 
sent writing, has failed. 
When Germany, how- 
ever, closed the Dar- 
danelles in late Sep- 
tember, 1914, she 
drove such a "wedge" 
between Russia and 
her allies. 
In the days follow- 
ing this bottling up of ■ 
Russia, the Bosphorus 
began to look like a 
harbour suddenly striken ^ with the plague. Hundreds 
of ships from Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, loaded 
with grain, lumber, and other products, arrived, only 
to discover that they could go no further. There were 
not docks enough to berth them, and they had to swing 
out into the stream, drop anchor, and await developments 
with what patience they could. 
The waters were a cluster of masts and smoke-stacks ; the 
crowded vessels became so dense that a motor boat had 
difficulty in picking its way through the tangled forest. The 
Turks held out hopes that they might re-open the waterway, 
and for this reason these vessels, constantly increasing in 
number, waited patiently for a month or so.- Then one by 
one they turned around, pointed their noses toward the 
Black Sea, and lugubriously started for their home ports. 
In a few weeks the Bosphorus and adjoining waters had 
become a desolate waste. What for years had been one of 
the most animated shipping points in the world had its 
waters now ruffled only by an .occasional launch or a tiny 
Turkish caique or saili g vessel. For an accurate idea of 
what this meant, from a mihtary standpoint, we need only 
call to mind the Russian battlefront in the next year. 
There the peasants were fighting German artillery with their 
unprotected bodies, having no rifles and no heavy guns, while 
mountains of useless ammunition were piling up in their 
distant Arctic and Pacific ports, with no railroads to send 
them to the field of action. 
How the capitulations came to be abrogated is 
told by Mr. Morgcnlhau next week. 
Owing to unavoidable delay at the last moment, the publica- 
tion of "Gentlemen at Arms," the collection of Centurion's 
stories in Land & Water, ivill not be published by Mr. 
Heinemann until Tuesday, July gih. 
