ting on the European side against Constantinople would be
dangerously flanked by the Bulgarian and Austro-Germans and hopelessly
outnumbered if limited to the force the Allies had been able to send
to the southeastern war area.

Just how many men it was possible for Bulgaria and Turkey to put in
the field it is not possible to state definitely. It would be
reasonable to figure that they could by a great effort, after many
months of war, put at least twice their reputed war strength into the
ranks. The larger countries far exceeded such figures. Enver Pasha, at
the end of October, 1915, stated that Turkey had raised a total of
2,000,000 soldiers. Bulgaria, in a case of necessity, might possibly
have added another million, while Germany and Austria, at the time of
the operations against Serbia, demonstrated their ability to supply,
in action and in reserve, another 500,000 for this front.

These are huge figures. There were many reasons why all these troops
could not be used against an allied offensive. It is not meant to
imply, for instance, that an allied offensive on a large scale, based
on Saloniki, is doomed to failure. The figures are quoted simply to
show the military conditions that made an offensive from the
Dardanelles hopeless in the circumstances that obtained at the end of
1915 and that weighed with the military authorities in London and
Paris in deciding upon a withdrawal from the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Probably it will be a long time before the world has any accurate,
adequate idea of the terrible disaster that overtook British prestige
and allied troops in their year's attempt to force the Strait.
Official figures announced by Premier Asquith speak of more than
100,000 troops killed, wounded, or missing, but these total figures
took account of the sick, who reached an extraordinary high total.
Lack of drinking water, the difficulty of keeping the troops supplied
with food, the intense heat, and the fact that the men engaged were
unused to the climatic conditions, combined to lay low thousands upon
thousands of men not mentioned in the restricted casualty lists. An
estimate of another hundred thousand put out of action, temporarily
or permanently, by sickness is not unreasonable.

Thus 200,000 men, six battleships and smaller war vessels, enormous
stores and millions of dollars' worth of ammunitions were the price
Britain paid to discover that the Dardanelles were impregnable even to
British battleships