The first fortification I visited was that of Anadolu Hamidié (that is, Asiatic Hamidié) located on the water’s edge just outside of Tchanak. My first impression was that I was in Germany. The officers were practically all Germans and everywhere Germans were building buttresses with sacks of sand and in other ways strengthening the emplacements. Here German, not Turkish, was the language heard on every side. Colonel Wehrle, who conducted me over these batteries, took the greatest delight in showing them. He had the simple pride of the artist in his work, and told me of the happiness that had come into his days when Germany had at last found herself at war. All his life, he said, he had spent in military practices, and, like most Germans, he had become tired of manœuvres, sham battles, and other forms of mimic hostilities. Yet he was approaching fifty, he had become a colonel, and he was fearful that his career would close without actual military experience--and then the splendid thing had happened and here he was, fighting a real English enemy, firing real guns and shells! There was nothing brutal about Wehrle’s manners; he was a “_gemütlich_” gentleman from Baden, and thoroughly likable; yet he was all aglow with the spirit of “_Der Tag_.” His attitude was simply that of a man who had spent his lifetime learning a trade and who now rejoiced at the chance of exercising it. But he furnished an illuminating light on the German military character and the forces that had really caused the war. [Illustration: PLAN _of_ ANADOLÜ HAMIDIEM BATTERY, March 1915.] Feeling myself so completely in German country, I asked Colonel Wehrle why there were so few Turks on this side of the strait. “You won’t ask me that question this afternoon,” he said, smiling, “when you go over to the other side.”