THE DARDANELLES

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1915, Page 6

THE DARDANELLES

AND NEW ZEALAND'S SACRIFICES THERE. THE PLACE OF THE STRAIT IN THE MIGHTY CONTESTS OF THE PAST. THE SACRIFICES HAVE NOT BEEN IN VAIN. (By the Rev. Robert Wood.) In the Seep of the darkling night, By the storied Trojan sea, The boats slide out to 'the fight On the crag-crowned Cheronese. Sound the last post for the dead! Drop a tear 'mid the falling tears. The bays on each hero's head Shall be green for a thousand years. —Professor Rentoul. New "Zealand in blood and treasure has already made a great sacrifice in the Dardanelles, and the end of the further sacrifices in the Near East is not in sight. John Bright, the great Christian statesman, a good many years ago, when Britain was spending blood and treasure in the dark Crimean War, delivered a speech in Parliament that made a profound impression on its members. He referred to the baptism of sorrow that had descended on the nation through bereavements in the war. He singled out the case of a soldier they all knew well who had died, and the news of his death had just reached them. He said regarding him: "The stormy Euxine is his grave, his wife is a widow, his children are fatherless"; and then, in a tone quivering with tender emotion, he said: ''The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout our loud; you may almost hear the beating of his wings." Disraeli, who heard the speech, was much moved, and told Bright that he was moved, and that his '•Angel of Death" reference could not have been finer. The sentiments of Bright might be used in our Parliament with regard to New Zealand's husbands and sons who have died in the Dardanelles. Wives are widows, children are fatherless, parents have lost the light of their eyes. "The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout our land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings." New Zealand, for the first time in her short history to any real extent, is beginning to know what the stern, awful discipline of war means.

THE FASCINATION OF THE DARDANELLES. The Dardanelles will have a strange fascination and a pathetic interest to many thousands in New Zealand for long years to come. A grave has ever a pathetic interest, and Gallipoli will have such an interest. There art thousands of graves there, and over each grave it might be inscribed: "He died for others, for his Empire, for his loved New Zealand." In the north nf France there is a grave with no name, but with a pathetic inscription. A British soldier was captured by the Germans, and was imprisoned in a house in a seemingly deserted village. The Britisli were marching on this village, thinking it was without a defender. But the deadly machine-guns were turned on the advancing companies from the house in which the British soldier was held prisoner by the Germans. He saw that the only way to save the advancing company was for him to give the alarm, which must cost him his life. At the

right time he was able to rush from the house and warn his advancing fellowsoldiers. The Germans, mad with rage, turned the machine-guns on him, and he fell dead, riddled with bullets. The advancing British were warned in time, and the artillery was turned on the place and it was captured. The body of the dead hero was found. There was no identification disc, and so he was laid in a grave without a name; but over it they inscribed the words: "He saved others; himself he Would not save." There are many nameless graves in the Dardanelles, and the same words might be inscribed on them. The sad message "Missing and probably killed"-in many rases will cover a story of suffering and heroism such as only the Great Day will disclose. The courage and sacrifice of New Zealand and Australia's sons will ever be part of the story of the StTait. The official despatch said about them: "Antiquity has no more glorious story and our annals nothing braver." Professor Rentoul, of Melbourne, laid a wreath of song on their grave when he wrote regarding them: Sound the last post for the dead, Drop a tear 'mid the falling tears. The bays on each hero's head Shali be green for a thousand years.

THE HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS OF THE DARDANELLES. The Dardanelles and its adjoining shores lflive been a theatre of conflict for thousands oi years. The Strait is the door of entrance to one of the great granaries of the world, and the demand in our day and in other days has been for this d'ooi-'to be open and free. The siege of Troy was a battle for the open door of the 'Dardanelles, so Mr. Walter Leaf says in his translation into English of Homer's "Iliad." Mr. Leaf lias told us that the King of Troy wished to hold the key of the Black Sea in his hands, and the products of the land surrounding the Black Sea must be bartered for at his great castle at the mouth of the Strait. The Greek's objected to this blockade, and attacked the despot of Troy. Mr. Leaf says the spade of the explorer has brought the so-called mythical age within the region of history. This story, told by Virgil in his verse, is one of successful forcing of the Strait: And now from Tenedos set free The Greeks are sailing on the sea, Bound for the shore where erst they lay Beneath the still moon's friendly ray, Where in a moment leaps to sight On the King's ship the signal light. .They seize the city buried deep In floods of revelry and sleep, Cut down the warders of the gates, And introduce their banded mates. In the Quarterly Review for July there is an article regarding this old conflict, and it reads like the story of to-day: "Some 3000 j'cars ago there lay at the mouth, of the Hellespont a great army convoyed by a great navy lighting for possession of the land. Near the shore stood a strong castle, fortified by • all the arts of the 12th century, B.C. The remains of the walls still surprise [- the most thoughtless visitor to Troy by a their size and construction. But tin if castle was taken in the end; its para- >- pets were, overthrown, though the atom g superstructures, by their very massive e ness, were spared for us to see; it: houses were razed,, and little lias beei

left of them but the rare fragments of pottery which enable archaeologists to say with confidence that the fall of the castle took place about 1200 8.C." The curtain of history next rises in 480 8.C., and discloses at the Dardanelles the Persian potentate Xevxes, with his dream of world-wide empire. He was bent oil the invasion of Greece, and had reached Abydos (the Nagara Point of to-day). From the marble throne he surveyed his mighty army of over 1,000,000, and gave orders to cross into Europe. Two bridges of boats had been constructed, but a storm arose and swept the bridges away, and a great number perished in the sea. He ordered the engineers, in his anger, to lash the waters. When he cooled down he got other bridges constructed, which his army crossed, only to be defeated, and his broken army used the bridges to effect an escape from Europe and bpgin

their weary march back to Persia. This greedy conqueror reaped what he sowed, and more than he sowed. He sowed sorrow and suffering, and reaped what he sowed. Again the curtain d history rises, and the Dardanelles and its shores bear a great army. In 3.14 B.C. Alexander of Macedon is x at the Narrows with a small army of 30,000 men and 4000 cavalry. His aim was the destruction of the Per-, sian Empire that had played havoc with the Greek States and ruthlessly crushed little kingdoms. His army crossed the waters in war vessels and trading boats. Alexander crossed further west, and landed at the Plain of Troy. From there he started on his twelve years of triumphant march, and then passed away and his empire tumbled to pieces. Once more the curtain of history rises after a lapse of seventeen hundred years. In 1355 A.D. a small band of Asiatic invaders crossed the strait and ! landed in Europe. That small band became a great army. The invaders were the Ottoman Turks. The first band consisted of only eighty men, and fney crossed the Narrows on rafts. They surprised the garrison in the castle, and they gradually subdued Europe until they reached near to the walls of Vienna. In these 500 years these Turks have existed in Europe as a military camp, and have been the blight of Europe always and everywhere. Is the end of this political scourge now near? And now in our time the Dardanelles is the scene of a world contest, and New Zealand's sons from the uttermost part of the earth have taken their place in the ranks and have shed their blood in the best of causes—the preservation of our Empire and the safeguarding of our civilisation. The victory has been delayed, *but a sacrifice made in a good cause never means failure.

HAVE NEW ZEALAND'S SONS SUFFERED IN VAIN? Is the word "failure" to be written on tiie result of the sacrifice made by New Zealand, by Australia, by Canada, by the Homeland, and by our Allies in the Dardanelles? Have precious Jives and endless treasure been spent there in vain. In certain quarters the answer "yea" is given to these questions. But such a pessimistic answer is given as the consequence of a narrow view of the situation. When the whole situation raised by this question is surveyed the conviction comes home to one that the sacrifice has not been in vain. The attempt to force the Dardanelles has been fruitful of good in several ways. In the first place it has gathered to the Callipoli Peninsula and to Constantinople nearly the whole fighting strength of Turkey. Turkey has been thrown on the defensive, and this forcing of Turkey to fight for her life was, as will be noted below, a frustration of Germany's scheme in forcing Turkey into the war. Nearly the whole strengtn ot Turkey has been devoted to saving herself, and she has not been able to carry on an aggressive war anywhere, and the impotence of Turkey in this respect must have been gall and wormwood to the Kniser and his war lords. But, in the second place, by making the seat of war in the Gallipoli Peninsula our Empire' 3 great waterway of commerce has been kept as free and open as in time 3 of peace. The merchant fleets of Britain from India, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere carry products of all kinds without hindrance through the Suez Canal. Had the seat of conflict been Egypt, and the Suez Canal only partially open for traffic the Homeland without our wool, cheese, butter, and mutton would have meant suspended industries and an army suffering for lack of food. These things were worth making a sacrifice for, but there is another and more important point to he noted that shows that this conflict in the Dardanelles hag not been in vain. the' DADANELLES FIGHT HAS FRUSTRATED GERMANY IN HER FOUL SCHEME TO USE TURKEY TO 1 STAB BRITAIN IN HER OVERSEAS EMPIRE.

German writers in the past have not hesitated to denounce Turkey as a barbaric Power of such a nature that socalled Christian nations could have no proper dealings with her. Even the notorious Treitschke, whose jealousy of Britain almost assumed the proportions of madness, said: "Turkey has trampled on all the solemn promises which granted her entrance into our State confederation. Christian Europe must not have the right wrested from her to at least gag this barbaric Power if as yet it cannot be destroyed, so that it may no more endanger the human rights of Christian subjects" (page 96, 'Germany, France, and London,' 1905). So spoke a representative German some years ago, but his words have only recently been published in England. The judgment is a true one. Turkey is a degraded Power, and the European Powers have been trying in vain to keep her from murdering the best races that live on her soil, and yet this degraded Power to-day and in recent years has been Germany's one hope in the event of war with Britain to vanquish Britain. Diis foul scheme shows the degradation to which Kaiserism in its lust for conquest has sunk. To-day, Germany is making a Belgium of Serbia in order to save doomed and degraded Turkey so that she may, even at the end of the day, be her arm to stab Britain to, the heart in her overseas empire. A Tower that Treitschke declared was so bad that it should be at least gagged, if not destroyed, is Germany's hope to-day. This Power, witn a mouth so foul that it should be gagged, at the request of Germany, lias . used its mouth to proclaim a "Holy I War" against Britain and her Allies—a ; proclamation that has only evoked scorn r and indignation from the Moslems in t Egypt. India, and elsewhere. This r Power, according to Treitschke, that de- > serves destruction must be preserved by ,' the. Kaiser in order that British power !. and Christian civilisation in Africa e should be ovcrthrovn and Turkish govy ernment by inassa«re be set up! Now, e the Dardanelles fght has so far frus- .- trated the carrying out of this scheme, e Turkey, instead flf stabbing Britain In !- her heart as a) overseas empire, has s been and is in-deadly peril of being n driven lr bag andbaggage" out of Europe.