October 3, 1918 
LAND &? WATER 
The Gallipoli Campaign 
By HENRY MORGENTHAU 
The Turkish Threat to Allied Citizens 
A TTEMPTING to justify the placing of British and French subjects in positions of danger at 
^/^ Gallipoli by alleging that the British and French fleets were firing on non-combatants, the 
Turks really intended this measure as an expression of anger at the Gallipoli landing. Mr. Mor- 
genthau relates his efforts to thwart the barbarous scheme, which originated with Enver Pasha. 
ON May 2nd, 1915, Enver sent his aide to the 
American Embassy, bringing a message which 
he requested me to transmit to the Frencli and 
Britisli Governments. About a week before the 
Allies had made their landing oj^ the Gallipoli 
peninsula. They had evidently concluded that a naval 
attack by itself could not destroy the defences and open 
the road to Constantinople, and they had now adopted 
the alternative plan of dispatching large bodies of troops, 
to be supported by the guns of their warships. Already 
many thousands of AustraHans and New Zealanders had 
entrenched themselves at the tip of the peninsula, and the 
excitement that prevailed in Constantinople was almost as 
great as that which had been caused by the appearance of 
the fleet two months before. 
Enver now informed me that tne Allied ships were bom- 
barding 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-com- 
batants. 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 tfie 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 Tufkey, and in many cases their families had been domi- 
ciled 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 citize»6hip in the nation of his 
origin was now apparently making him a fitting object for 
Turkish vengeance. Besides these Levantihes, a large 
number of English and French were then living in Con- 
stantinople, 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 tftrgets for the Allied fleet. 
Naturally my first quq,stion, when I received the s+artling 
information, was whetlier the warships werp really bom- 
barding defenceless towns If they were m.urdering non- 
combatpnt men, women, and children in this reckless fashion, 
such an act of reprisal as Enver now proposed would probably 
have had some justificstion. 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 assistint 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 tb.at the building 
had been but slightly damaged, and only one man killed. 
I now naturallv susnected that this latest tale of Allied 
barbaritv 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 ^gean Sea, on the western side of the 
peninsula, and fiom this vantage point they were throwing 
shells into the city of GaUipoli. 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 civilised warfare, for Gallipoh 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. 1 certainly knew of no rule of warfare which pro- 
hibited 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 tliC .situation for some time with Mr. 
Ernest Weyl, who was generally recognised as the leading 
French citizen in Constantinople, and with Mr. Hoffman 
Philip the Counseiller of the Embassy, and then decided 
that I would go immediately to the Sublime Porte and pro-^ 
test to Enver. 
Enver's Anger 
The Council of Ministers was sitting at thetime, but Enver 
came out. His mood was more demonstrative than usiial. 
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 rAch 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 
do not 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 
be 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 con- 
vinced that he had not decided on this step as a reprisal, 
to protect his own countrymen, but that he and his associates 
were really looking for revenge. 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 1 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 pei'fectly 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 childreH from the order, 
\ 
