GALLIPOLI STRUGGLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

GALLIPOLI STRUGGLE.

PRIME REASONS OP FAILURE. (NEWS DENIED AUSTRALIANS. The folowing story of the position in Gallipoli, written nearly seven weeks ago by the Sydney Sun'a special representative in I.ondon, is now, according to the cables, finding its way into the London newspapers:—

London, 10th September. , The latest news from Gallipoli is good news. It needs to be. The position there is extremely precarious. It may become perilous. The most optimistic of armchair military experts is becoming uneasy. Two months ago it was prophesied by men on the spot that they would break down the Turkish defences "within a few days." Up to da'te, though, they have lost thousands upon thousands of men, the Allies have not even penetrated the jnain defences of the Ottoman armies. In no other theatre of war have so many, lives been sacrificed and in no other theatre of war have less tangible results been achieved. When Mr. Winston Churchill declared that our British troops were "within a few miles of a victory which would stagger the Central European Empires," he was talking hot air. The ferment of his own imagination betrayed him into gross and inexcusable exaggeration. Gradually the people, from , whom the full bulletins have been withheld, are beginning to learn the true situation,

It is impossible for any censorship to I withhold all information from all the people all the time. Some faithful account of what is happening in the Dardanelles had to reach some of the people some of the time. Public opinion has been informed and educated by the thousands of wounded soldiers who have been brought back to England from Gallipoli. No individual soldier sees a great deal of what is going forward, but when a number of soldiers drawn from the different sectors in the Dardanelles each give their impressions of what has been occurring, it is possible for the most obtuse to arrive at a reasonable understanding of the impasse. Besides which, officers in high places, and even Cabinet Ministers, have a knack of talking unguardedly at intervals, and their hints and downright assertions get into currency and spread throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. It is therefore useless for the censor to savagely use his blue pencil upon the messages which are written by authorised correspondents who watch "the actual fighting and the ebb and flow of battle. Truth will out, even though a hundred censors work with a million pencils.

KEY TO THE SITUATION. Australia has not been very well'treated by the censor la'tel.v. Here in England there is pretty general knowledge that the fate of the Mediterranean expedition hinges very considerably upon the decision of Bulgaria to aid the Allies or to fight with the Germans. All 'the Chancelleries of Europe are contending for the support of King Fc-rdinand and his Bulgars. From the< outset, diplomats and instructed observers recognised that Bulgaria held the key to the situation. Gonnoski Komai, late correspondent for The Times in Manchuria, wrote long ago: ''The real centre of gravity in the European conflict, as seen by a Japanese, is the Dandanelles. If Kiaochau is worth ten Warsaw's, the Dardanelles -are worth ten Kiaochaus, for the Power tha't holds them controls the key to the world's commerce. For this'reason we think Germany made her great mistake when she thrust east and west instead of due south. For by so doing she has allowed the Balkan States to hesitate on which side they will light, whereas had t'hey been solid for Germany, even though compulsorilv, the armies of barbarism would have been able to overrun Asia and Africa, the frontiers being easily defended by the home reserve, and there would have been an end of the British commeriial Empire. In fact, Germany would have been able to strike at the Empire in just the one spot the fleet could not cover."

These musings have been demonstrated to be remarkably accurate. The position has not been greatly altered by the landing of the Mediterranean expedition. Bulgaria is still wavering and wobbling. Her decision will vitally alfect the fortunes of our Australian Imperial force. The German papers, practically without exception, stated last week that Bulgaria has completed a tyeaty with Turkey which would make her a fourth member of the Alliance. The Quadruple Entente would be confronted by the Quadruple Alliance. German papers are not renowned for truthfulness. Independent reports cast doubt upon Bulgaria having finally sealed any compact with Turkey. But they are inclined to credit the story that the negotiations for territorial concessions by Turkey have readied the penultimate stage. The fate of the Near East is therefore balanced upon a razor's edge. A thorough grasp of the complex intrigues which are afoot in the Balkans is absolutely necessary if Australians are to appraise the prospects successfully. Yet the Press Bureau, though the statements of the German papers were published broadcast in Great Britain without reprimand being administered to anybody," denied this news transmission to Australia. The English public may know, the Australian public may not.

THREE REASONS. There are many other things which it would be well for all Australians to comprehend, so that they may the better feel the immense burden which this war must lay upon their shoulders. The disastrous attempt to take Hill 70 in the third week of August failed for three reasons, which have not been printed, but which are nevertheless gospel truth. The first is that some thousands of Kitchener's new army were not adapted to the methods of warfare required in the Dardanelles. They have been 'trained in the old text-book maxims and on the traditional line 3 of British Infantry. Salisbury Plain is the great manoeuvring ground of Great Britain. They gave most excellent accounts of themselves under conditions resembling those of Salisbury Plain. But when it came to open order, in which every soldier had to act on his own initiative and without the mothering of officers, these new levies were all at sea. They cannot be held to j blame for the shortcomings of their [training. They would have done magnificently if the Anafarta region had been :the gentle, sloping meadowland of England. Compelled to advance and fight along ridges and in treacherous gullies jand ravines, these troops were practic[ally helpless. Their apologists, wishing k to let them down light, say that only PvCgulars could have accomplished what they were sent to do. But there are the feats of the Australians and the in- : spiring gallantry of the Yeomanry Territorials, who s'tormed up HiH 70, to controvert this dictum. The Australians are not Regulars, nor had they had any prolonged period of training.

HIGH EXPLOSIVES NEEDED. The second feature of the fightitg was that the Turkish trenches and forts survived 'the tremendous cannonade from the warships and from the British batteries on shore. To those who have not followed the course of events very closely, this may seem surprising. But to those who have read the narratives of similar attacks in other places it is not at all astonishing that the big guns and the little guns did not utterly destroy the Turkish defences. The marksmanship of the gunners of British war,ships is one of the marvels of the universe. French artillerymen are splendid shots, but even they pay homage to the master gunners in the British turrets. It was not, therefore, because of any wildness in the warships' firing or inaccuracy of aim that the Turks were not blown out of their trenches. Xor was it because the men working the British guns on land were not up to their job that the Gorman trendies on the Oat were not converted into dust-heaps. The regrettable failure of our guns, both against the hills and the valley, was due to their not having sufficient high-explos-ive shells. The experiences of Flanders are being repeated in Galipoli. Without preparation by cannonade, by high-ex-plosives, it must be well-night impossible for our brave fellows to burst through the Turks' defences. The Turks have covered in their trenches: shrapnel ami other shells can do little mischief against these overhead protections. It is only with high-explosives that our armies can clear the way properly for storming parties. Literally, we will have to blast our way through the Dardanelles.

TURKS FIXE FIGHTERS. The third factor is the fanatical courage of the Turkish soldiers. For years and years England has been fed with the idea that the Turk is n baggy-trousered, harem-loving, dissolute decadent, who long ago lost his traditional love for fighting. During the Balkans War it was the fashion for correspondents to depict the soldiery as ruffians who •would only give battle when they could not escape. The Ottoman army has shown that its valour is as great as that of almost any other army in the world. The Australians, like the British and the French, have found the Turk a fair fighter, a terribly stubborn fighter in his trenches, and one who will not blanch before anything except the frigid glint of a bayonet. After the bombardment at Anafarta the Turks cooly stood on the parapet of their trenches to receive the attacking English troops with murderous vollevs.

They were not daunted by the biggest shells which the biggest guns oh the biggest British warships could hurl upon them. Nor did they flinch from the hurricane of machine-gun and rifle fire which accompanied the storming of the crest by our men. It was only the bayonet that cowed them. For" some strange reason the Turk seems to fear death by bayonet thrust. Death in any other form, death itself, does not appal him; but the cold steel appears to paralyse him whenever lie sees it. Psychologists may find material for most interesting speculation in this curious phenomenon. We may leave them to ascertain the cause of the Turks' one weak point. Apart from it, he is a brave man. British correspondents have wished to stress this fact. Their praise has been blue-pencilled. Stupid officialdom requires that the character of the Turk shall conform to preconceived ideas, based upon erroneous, impressions.

TWICE-TOLD YARNS. But officialdom does not forbid the daily publication of unveracious yarns about epidemics and panics and incipient revolutions in Constantinople, about munition factories closed for want of coal, obout famine and misery inflaming the minds of the populace against the Young Turks, about the Turks' communications being dominated and cut, or about the impending isolation of the Turkish armies. We are living anew all the lies that were manufactured in the early stages of our struggle with Germany. The same old stories are being trotted out again and applied to Turkey. For a country that is starving and lacking in munitions and men, the Ottoman Empire must be unique. Its soldiers are holding the Allies at bay in, Gallipoli, and the massive resistance of the Turkish armies is making Bulgarian friendship of greater moment to the Allies.

I he Ottoman Empire may be siek unto death, but it is as lively a death as that of the stage villain who jumps up immediately the curtain is down. Belittling the lurks will not win the war, "while the distortion of facts may very gravely mislead Australians. 1 hough there are faint-hearted people who fear that the campaign in Gallipoli will not be blessed by the gods, I am still firmly convinced that we can get through to 'Constantinople if we only go the right way about it. The first step towards that consummation is to know what is the right wav.