Untitled

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16436, 1 February 1919, Page 8

We published in our cablc news some time ago a brief account of an interview Mr G. Ward Price had with General Liman von Sanders, who commanded the German and Turkish forces against'" the British at the, Dardanelles, but tho cable correspondent omitted to furnish us with Sir lan Hamilton's very apt rejoinder. The German general, it may be remembered, said: If I had been the attacker instead of the defender of the Dardanelles, I should not have landed at Cape Helles and Anzac. I should have made the principal landing on the coast of Asia Minor off Tenedos. There you have first of all a convenient base close at hand, while by only two days' march you would be in the rear of the Dardanelles forts which can fire only seaward. Ac the same time I should have landed on the neck of the Gallipoli Peninsula, close to the Bulair lines. So strongly did I expect the British would choose these places that when I took command a month before the landing I posted two of my six divisions" opposite Tenedos, two_ on the Peninsula, and two at Bulair." With regard to the Suvla landing General Liman von Sanders said he would have preferred to make it between Anzaq and Cape Helles, but the landing at Suvla might have succeeded if hard pressed. To oppose it during tho first 24 hours there were only two battalions of Turkish gendarmes, two squadrons of cavalry, and two batteries of old guns. Ho hurried up a division from Bulair by double forced march. If the British had pushed on inland in several columns, some of them would have made good a position on the heights: » Sir lan Hamilton,, on the day tho interview appeared in "The Times," wrote the following neat and telling reply in the form of a letter to the Editor of that journal: "I do not yet feel myself free to comment upon General von Sanders's views which have appeared in your issne of to-day under the heading of 'How I Should Havo Attacked,' but I think I may say that the •statement of the enemy Commander-in-Chief as to the number of his troops in the Suvla Bay area at the time of our landing is a complete and exact corroboration of the estimate of the Intelligence Branch of my own General Staff. Also, I think I may add that although my landings were not made where General Liman von Sanders would have made them, it was fortunate that the British did not do what the v enemy commander expected them to do by endeavouring to land precisely where the main forceß of the Turks were awaiting them." The delicate irony of this reply oould hardly bo surpassed. Directly the Germans left Ostend a survey was made of the harbour by the British, and within six days the Admiralty Salvage Department, acting in conjunction with the Engineer-in-Chief, got on the job of clearing the harbour of the obstacles which had been left there by the Germans to complete the work of blocking begun by tho British. The paddle steamer La Flandre lay right across the entrance, and between this ship and the Vindictive a German [ trawler had been wedged. Further inI side the channel two bucket-dredgers were sunk, one on top of tho othe<r. Damage was done to the lock gates, and to complete their work the enemy had upset all the cranes into the basin or the docks, and to most of them mines had been tied. I . . The British salvage officers proceeded literally to cut np the sunken vessels, and carry them away. As an example of their methods, it may be mentioned that they cut off the stern of the upper one of the dredges with oxy-ace-tvlene burning plant. This exposed the boiler, which was promptly plugged up and floated out. When asked what could be done with the Vindictive, Commodore Young said

that, of course, she was just where she was in the hope that she could not be lifted, and the conicnt put into her after it had been wetted through the explosion, presented a serious problem. He hoped, however, that it would bo possible to remove a large portion of the concrete, and then to lift the ship by means of compressed air. "I think," he said, '"that sho can bo floated and brought to England." If the salvage officers succced in this difficult task it may bo taken for granted that the Vindictive —even more glorious in hor death than she was in her life—will bo preserved as a memorial of the heroic landing on the'Zeebrugge mole, and the daring enterprises by which tho lairs of tho German submarines were stopped.