ry
train from the north brought others. This situation of tension between
Turkey and the Entente Powers continued all through September and
October. The outside world momentarily expected an open rupture.

CHAPTER LXXXIII

THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST THE ALLIES

On October 29, 1914, came news of a Bedouin invasion of the Sinai
peninsula and an occupation of the important Wells of Magdala on the
road to the Suez Canal. England became alarmed, and her composure was
not restored by the news that came a few hours later. Claiming that
Russia had taken aggressive action in the Black Sea, three Turkish
torpedo boats sailed into Odessa Harbor, shelled the town, sank a
Russian guardship, and did other considerable damage.

On the following day, October 30, 1914, the Russian Ambassador at
Constantinople asked for his passports and the British and French
representatives with evident reluctance soon followed suit. On November
1 Turkey was definitely and irretrievably at war with the Entente Powers
and an ally of Germany and Austria.

The war from the point of view of the Turkish people was a matter of
four frontiers. There was the Dardanelles to guard; there was Egypt and
the Suez Canal to be threatened and perhaps captured; there was the
Caucasus, where across towering mountains and deep gorges the Ottoman
faced the Russian, his hereditary and most feared enemy; and finally
there was Mesopotamia. All of these theatres of possible warfare
presented military problems, and one of them naval problems among the
most intricate and interesting of those facing the nations involved in
this unprecedented war. In the Caucasus the mountains and the scarcity
of broad passes and good roads, the almost entire lack of railway
facilities and the whole nature of the country rendered offensive
operations as difficult as on the northeast frontier of Italy or in the
Carpathians. In Syria and on the road to the Suez Canal, the waterless
desert, the entire absence of railways, the paucity and inadequacy of
roads and the nature of the obstacles to be crossed before an invasion
of Egypt was possible made the task one of terrible difficulty. In the
Dardanelles the peninsula of Gallipoli, strong as it was in natural
advantages, was open to naval attack from two and perhaps three sides
and its defense must prove not only a costly affair but one the issue of
which must be constantly open to doubt. Lastly in Mesopotamia the task
for the Turks was a co