The principal elements of warfare are per sonnel and geography—the men who do the fighting, and the place they have to fight in; everythtng depends upon these two factors. The British commander, whose biography ap pears elsewhere in these volumes, had served with distinction for nearly 40 years in every British war and had been a spectator in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The French conamander, General d'Amade, had had a dis tinguished military career in North Africa, Madagascar and Tonlrin, and on the Western Front in 1914. The Turkish commander was the German Gen. Liman von Sanders, for merly chief of the Military Mission at Con stantinople. He was appointed to the Darda force. General Hamilton had under him as chief of staff Maj.-Gen. W. P. Braithwaite; Lieut.-Gen. Sir W. R. Birdwood who com manded the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the famous ((Anzacs ;I' and Maj.-Gen.-A. G. Hunter-Weston, in command of the nucleus of the force, 29th division, composed almost wholly of regulars. This latter comprised the 86th brigade of infantry-2d Royal Fusiliers, 1st Lancashire Fusiliers, 1st Royal Munster tidies forces or 5th Army on 29 March. The Allied expedition, in the words of General Ham ilton, was ((drawn from all parts of the French Republic and of the British Empire.* The bulk of the force was provided by Great Britain, for the French military authorities decided not to detach even a single division from the main the atre of war in order to take part in subsidiary operations. They had none too many men to guard the long Western Front, but they could draw upon forces not belonging to the regular army— the Fusiliers Marins, the Armee Colo niale and the Foreign Legion; these three bodies furnished the French ex-peditionary Fusiliers and 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers; the 87th brigade— the 2d South Wales Borderers, 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers, 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and 1st Border Regi ment; the :-:th brigade-2d Hampshires, 4th Worcesters, 1st Essex and a territorial bat tzlion, the '5th Royal Scots. The cavalry con sisted of a squadron of the Surrey Yeomanry; the artillery included two batteries of the 4th (Highland) Mountain brigade. There were also two naval brigades and a brigade of Royal Marines. Within easy call, stationed in Egypt, there was a large number of experienced Indian troops and a Territorial division in training. Altogether, the expeditionary force consisted of about 120,000 men.
The geographical difficulties to be over come by an army attempting the conquest of the Gallipoli Peninsula are tremendous. Con stantinople, “the queen city of the earth,10 has been endowed by nature not only vrith the most magnificent panorama of scenery in the world, but also vrith an impregnable bulwark against aggression from the west in the shape of the peninsula which mrards the historic waterway known as the Dardanelles, the Hellespont of the ancients. From the sea the peninsula appears to rise abruptly out of the blue waters of the /Egean Sea. The Gallipoli shores are steep — though not high— bluffs, only broken here and there by ravines marking the beds of water courses. The peninsula is a tableland 52 miles long, varying in breadth from three miles to 12, and presents a sinuous shore line of over 150 miles. A limited number of small coves af ford facilities for landing, but each of these coves is conunanded from adjacent bhiffs, other words, controlled by gunfire. The only exception of any consequence ts Suvla Bay, on the western side, where the shore is flat, but also overlooked by hills from both sides and from inland. The element of surprise was wholly eliminated, as any landing would have to he made in full view of the enemy and within reach of his guns. The country is a mass of rocky ridges rising to a height of over 700 feet from the sea; the hills are so steep and sharply cut that to reach their tops in many places is a matter of sheer climbing. There is
little cultivation, only a few villages, and no properly constructed roads, while most of the land is covered with dense scrub from three to six feet high, with stunted forests in the hollows. Methods of communication are so primitive that the usual way from one village to another is not by land, but by boat along the inner or outer coast. There are two groups of forts. The first is at the entrance— on the north side, Cape Helles and Sedd-el-Bahr, with a few adjacent batteries; on the opposite shore, Kum Kale and Orkanieh. These forts were not heavily armed, for in any case they would be at a disadvantage against a long range attack • from heavy battleships at sea. As a matter of fact, these forts were but the outposts of the real defense, and that was situated some 14 miles up the straits to where the width is less than a mile, and no great battleship could get so far as this without running considerable risk. Here, within a distance of a few miles there is a sharp double 'bend, from where guns com .
mand the whole water area and can also direct their fire end-on against vessels attempting to make the passage. This constricted part of the Dardanelles is called the Narrows, and around here lie the forts of Chanak or Sultan .
ieh Kalessi, on the Asiatic side, and Kilid Bahr on the European shore, above which the slopes bristled with batteries commanding every angle of approach. Batteries tined both sides of the low ground from Chanak up to Nagara, both on the Asiatic side. In addition to the im possibility of a number of ships manceuvring in so small a compass, even if they got so far, there was the invisible danger of submarine mines, phis a number of torpedo tubes motmted in concealed positions, and a land torpedo is a more powerful missile than that discharged from a ship, while its aim can be Furthermore, the descending cui employed to carry drifting mine advancmg fleet Altogether, the insnk and the hill country on tl presented two tremendous fortres powerful armies, estimated at t 200,000 men. The forts in the Nal 14-inth Krupp guns, a number of and lighter ordnance from six while the outer forts had some lery, besides field howitzers. Dui Krupp shells had been accumu stantinople in preparation for tit the Turks expected. It would pe correct to say the Gertnans expt were the directors of the Gallipc was small wonder, then, that th found it a hopleless task to fa through the straits without the land force, which must first interior forts and silence the h vessels could penetrate even hal Dardanelles. Mr. Henry Morgent ican Ambassador in Constantino' has recorded the wikl fear tha that city during January 1915 tt navy might force the Dardanel fore the naval campaign of tl begun. Both Turkish and Gem confessed their belief to the An the straits could be forced if th red to lose a few ships. rail:at Bey, the Turkish expedi which ended so ignominiously i undertaken merely to divert 1 making an attacic on the Darda middle of March, just before th Anglo-French naval bombardmen poi* forts, all arrangements had Constantinople to move the gove archives, women and children Minor; moreover, cans of petrol placed to fire the city as soon should appear in the Sea of At special point had been made oi dynamite the famous moscrue of prevent its falling back into the Christians. On 18 March the la, bombardment had occurred; the General Mertens, the German officer in the Dardanelles, told correspondent that he expected tt next morning early, and if they pected to be able to hokl out fo only. But the Allied fleet did n, it was too late. From a military there should have been a renewa attack on effective lines, or the 1 project should have been given liminary naval success alone coul tary co-operation advisable.