magine this condition of affairs getting steadily worse. At the
beginning of the war, there seems to be good evidence, large
quantities of all kinds of munitions and war supplies were rushed from
Germany to Constantinople by way of Rumania and Bulgaria, but it was
not long before the Rumanian Government, either of its own volition or
in the face of threats by the allied powers, refused to permit these
supplies to pass through her territory.

It became evident to the Allies that sooner or later the Germans would
have to make an attempt to link up with the Turks. Thus, from one
point of view, the operations at the Dardanelles became a race against
Germany, with a common objective, Constantinople. Those who laid their
money on the allied horse were confident of winning, figuring that
long before the Germans were free of the French menace on the west and
south and the Russian menace on the east, and so in a position to
undertake an offensive against Serbia, the allied troops would have
forced the Dardanelles, vanquished the Ottoman troops before the gates
of Constantinople, and opened the Strait of the Dardanelles and the
Bosporus.

So it was that when events did not transpire as expected, and the
allied troops were still hanging desperately to their bases on
Gallipoli Peninsula, when the Germans had subdued Serbia, and arrived
in triumph in the capital of the Ottoman Empire via the Berlin to
Constantinople Express, there was no longer any hope of starving the
Turkish guns nor, having even forced the Dardanelles, any certainty of
the capture of Constantinople. In other words, conditions had
radically changed, and, even with better chances of success than were
believed to exist, the game was no longer worth the candle.

The second reason was that, with a neutral Bulgaria, the benefits to
the Allies of a successful offensive in the Dardanelles were obvious.
The forcing of the Strait, a combined naval and land attack upon
Constantinople, the driving of the Turk from Europe, and the insertion
of a firm defensive wedge between the empire of the Sultan and any
possible German offensive from the north, were objectives important
enough to justify almost any expenditure of money, men, and effort the
Allies might have made.

But with the Turkish army linked up with a friendly Bulgaria, and
backed by a strong Austro-German force led by General Mackensen, the
conditions were changed to a state of hopelessness. An allied army
opera