The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1918. THE ANZACS AND THE DARDANELLES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 39, 9 November 1918, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1918. THE ANZACS AND THE DARDANELLES

The decision of the Imperial authorities to include.New Zealand and Australian- troops in the forco that will occupy the Dardanelles is entirely in accordance with the fitness of- things. It will certainly give, satisfaction to the people of New Zealand, and the news is sure to bo .received with pleasure by. our soldiers who fought wi,th such splendid courage and endurance on the historic Peninsula :of Gallipoli. Thcro is joy in the thought that representatives of the Anzacs will sec Gallipoli orice morc;.possess : theßtr.ongr. 'holds they formerly , failed to enter, and gaze on the narrow sea (as rich in historic associations as any sea in the world). Doing so they will in the fullest sense reap what'they have' sown,'for. their' as-: saults had a great place in the weakening of Turkey that led to.her. .downfall. ;In the downfall.. of a Stronghold of iniquity the first blows are as valuable as.the last. I When the equation of the alleged failure at Gallipoli is thoroughly worked out'it will be seen to "be no failure, but a glorious success, for Turkey,. wlien her striking power was at its best, was forced to defend her capital, and could not stab-Britain in Egypt, and so tho Anzacs in Gallipoli: ; played their part in saving oui , ' oversea Empire and :in guarding tho world's freedom. Sacrifices made in a goodcauso never mean failure, and no Vain sacrifice was made on Gallipoli. The story of the skill and heroismoosf s the evacuation is the wonder of the .enemy to-day. As recently as January-of this year the Vossisclte Zeilung paid tho following tribute to the Anzacs:/"As long as war exists the" evacuation

. •'■ .. will . stand before all strategists as an hitherto unattainecJ masterpiece." There is no braver story in our annals of war, and an Australian poet very fitly said regarding our fallen'sons:' Sound the last post for +he dead,' Drop « tear 'mid the falling- tears, The bays on each hero's head- ' '... • Shall be green for a thousand year 6. This call, of : the " Imperial Government to occupy. the strongholds of the Dardanelles suggests more than one thing. There is pathos in the call.' The graves of our dead are there. 'Rupert Brooke, the sol-dier-poet, looking forward to his dying on the field of battle and his burial there, finely said that "one spot of foreign soil shall be for ever England." The graves of our sons in Gallipoli are for ever ft'ow Zealand, and tho returning Anucs will see that those graves are held sacred. This call also speaks of victory and the reward of sacrifice: it tells us that the rill of New Zealand life is flowing into the great stream of the life of tho world, and we may fitly recall some of the historic associations of the< narrow sea our Anzacs will guard for commerce, civilisation, and freedom. The Dardanelles was the, storm centre of the'ancient world, and the Power that commanded those 1 watcrs'iniled/the' world of. that time. It was then, as it is to-day,.the door to the Black Sea, round whose shores grain was grown that would sustain half a world. The spade of the explorer has driven back the mythical ' age of / the history of the Dardanelles. When Grotb, who died in 1871, wrote his History 0,/ Greece he suggested that actual history went back only to 776 B.C. Tho latest fin cyclopaedia Brit ami ica says that archaeological research has sent bank actual history to 3000 or. 4000 B.C. Dardanelles history that at one time w.as mythical is now taken as actual. The story of the siege of Troy was looked upon up to recent years as mythical history, and now that"story is part of actual history. The Quarterly Btvie.w, in a profound study of the subject, said in July, 1915: .

Some 3000 years ago there lay at tho mouth of- the Hellespont [the Dardanelles] a great army convoyed by a fit-eat navy fighting for the possession of the land. Near, the shore stood a strong castle fortified by all the arts of the twelfth century, 8.C.; the'remain's of the -trail still surprise the most thoughtless fisitor to 'J'roy by their size and construction. But the castlo was taken in the'end': its parapets wei:e overthrown, though the stone 'substructures by their very massiveness were spared for us lo see; its houses were razed and little has 'been left of them but the rare fragments of'pottery which enable archaeologists to say with confidence that (he fall of.tho castle took place about 1200 B.C.

History strangely repeats itself. The Ring-" of Troy, the brutal Kaiser of' 3000 years ago,- commanded tho Dardanelles at its mouth, and ho made the world buy the produce of the Black Sea countries there, so ho had a "corner" in a large part of the grain of the world. To the Greeks this blockade was intolerable, and so they smashed the King of Troy's Dardanelles forts and opened the narrow sea to commerce and freedom. Our Anzac6 are the latest successors of the Greeks, whose courage in the Dardanelles 3000 years ago was glorified by Homer and Virqil.

Strange scenes have been witnessed in those Dardanelles regions that will soon be commanded by our Anzacs. Two thousand four hundred years ago Xerxes, the Persian Kaiser, burning'with revenge because a small band of Greeks had defeated a mighty Persian army at Mirathon, reached Nagara point at the head of 1,000,000 men. The sea smashed his first bridge of boats, and the despot in his impotent rago ordered his engineers to give the waters 300 lashes! On other boats his. army .crossed, .reached Greece, where his fiqhtirig machine broke to pieces, and his return to Persia was little better than a rout. A hundred years and more after Xerxes flogged the Dardanelles Alexander the Great climbed , the Gallipoli heights to cross the straits to havo his revenge on Persia. One thousand seven hundred years pass away, and in 1355 A.D. a small band of Asiatics cross the Dardanelles and land on tho soil of'Europc. Thesn were the Ottoman Turks. The small band became a mighty conquering host, and Eastern Europe almost up to the walls of Vienna fell before them, and for five hundred years and more those Asiatic invaders have cursed the soil on which they camped. But their day is over, and the presence of Anzac guards on the Gallipoli heights is the promise and the prophecy yf the downfall of all despotisms, and the dawn .of"'a day .of .peace .whose sun ,it is hoped will never go down." ■ ■":■•