THE END AT GALLIPOLI

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2757, 28 April 1916, Page 6

THE END AT GALLIPOLI

PRAISE FROM THE ENEMY. The Minister of' Defence has received from Egypt a translation of an reticle that appeared in the German newspaper "Vossische Zeitung" on Januarys 21 last, relating to the evacuation of Gallipoli Peninsula. The article contained the following paragraphs:— "The ground of the Peninsula can, when the attackere are, as was on this occasion fcho case, obliged most entirely to depend upon infantry fighting,. only be called .murderous.' At the back of a saudy strip of beach, rises almost perpendicularly the. cliffs, 200 metres nigh, of tho chalk mountains which extend over the whole of the Peninsula, intersected in every direction by gullies devoid of all vegetation, and therefore cover.

"With the conquest of the beaches, and the first line of the hills, for so far the attacker had got, the English had gained nothing. He would then, under tho infantry fire of the defenders holding the next ridge, descend from the crest of the hill into the valley, then storm tho next _ hill, aud thus endlessly on. The English had therefore probably already since the last weoks of November realised the hopelessness of the struggle- and about the middle of December had prepared their retreat in—this praise must be accorded to them—an absolutely admirable manner. As long as wars exist, their ovacuation of the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts will stand before the eyes of all strategists of retreat as an hitherto quite uuattained masterpiece. A repetition of this tour de force, however, according to the short Turkish reports as yet to hand, did not succeed on tho south

■front, as their embarkation seems to have been accompanied by violent rearguard engagements."

Doubtless tho writer of the article has learned by this tinio that the Turkish reports were inaccurate, and that the British evacuation was conducted as successfully in the south as in the west.'