Our men could not "press on" at once. They had not enough unwounded men to do more than hold the hordes of fresh Turks continually brought up against them. They had no guns ashore to prepare an advance, nor enough rifle ammunition to stand a siege. They had the rations in their packs and the water in their bottles, and no other supplies but the seven days' food, water and rifle ammunition put into each boat at the landing. To get men, stores, water and guns ashore, under fire, on beaches without wharves, cranes or derricks of any kind, takes time, and until men and goods were landed no advance was possible. Until then, our task was not to press on, but to hang on, like grim death. It was for the enemy to press on, to beat our tired troops before their supports could be landed, and this the Turks very well understood, as their captured orders show, and as their behaviour showed only too clearly. During the days which followed the landing, the Turks, far from being at their last cartridge, and eager to surrender, prevented our pressing on, by pressing on themselves, in immense force and with a great artillery, till our men were dying of fatigue in driving back their attacks. One point more may be discussed, before resuming the story. The legend, "that the Turks were at their last cartridge and would have surrendered had we advanced," is very widely spread abroad by German emissaries. It appears in many forms, in print, in the lecture and in conversation. Sometimes place and date are given, sometimes the authority, all confidently, but always differently. It is well to state here the truth so that the lie may be known. The Turks were never at the end of their supplies. They were always better and more certainly supplied with shells and cartridges than we were. If they were ever (as perhaps they sometimes were) rather short of big gun ammunition, so were we. If they were sometimes rather short of rifles and rifle ammunition, so were we. If they were often short of food and all-precious water, so were we, and more so, and doubly more so. For all our supplies came over hundreds of miles of stormy water infested by submarines and were landed on open beaches under shell fire, and their supplies came along the Asiatic coast and by ferry across the Hellespont, and thence, in comparative safety, by road to the trenches. The Turkish army was well supplied, well equipped, more numerous and in better positions than our own. There was neither talk nor thought among them at any time of surrender, nor could there have been, in an army so placed and so valiant. There was some little disaffection among them. They hated their German officers and the German methods of discipline so much that many prisoners when taken expressed pleasure at being taken, spat at the name of German, and said "English good, German bad." Some of this, however, may have been Levantine tact.