ope on land
with the Central Powers, particularly now that the weight of Turkey
was thrown in the balance.

With her casualties three times the number of her original
expeditionary force, with more than the original number of her army
engaged in Flanders, she undertook an offensive against
Constantinople itself. Second-class men-of-war which were not
required with the grand fleet and a single first-class dreadnought
of the latest type, the _Queen Elizabeth_, in conjunction with a
French squadron, bombarded and reduced the ancient forts at the
entrance to the Dardanelles and then attacked those in the narrows.
British bluejackets even smoked their pipes and cracked jokes as
they sat on the crest of Achi Baba, which became an impregnable
Turkish position after the British Mediterranean force was landed.
Had the _Queen Elizabeth_ been able to fire an army corps ashore,
the corps could have marched on into Constantinople.

The success or failure of the Gallipoli expedition depended upon
surprise. Superficially it seems a colossal blunder. There are
inside facts about it which have never been disclosed. Greece, it is
supposed, agreed to send troops, but at the last moment changed her
mind. Undoubtedly the expedition was an important influence in
bringing Italy in. There was a fatal delay in its departure from
Alexandria. Too much time elapsed between the preparatory
bombardment and the landing. The Turks had been forewarned what to
expect. They had leisure for concentration and preparation. On a
narrow front of difficult shore where the landing was to be made,
they had stretched their barbed-wire entanglements into the sea
itself, while along the beach were carefully concealed machine guns
and back of them ample forces of men and artillery.

No effort in history was ever more gallant than that of the British
force, including the Australians, which threw itself ashore in the
face of simply insurmountable obstacles and fire, under the cover of
the guns of the men-of-war. As a surprise, the affair was a complete
failure. Its only chance of success being as a surprise, most
competent military leaders and experts agree that this was
sufficient reason, in a military sense, for an immediate withdrawal;
yet British stubbornness would not yield.

Indeed, the Gallipoli expedition was a political move, a violation
of the true military principle--that you should always go against
the main body of your enemy, which was at this time