This water of the Hellespont is the most important channel of water in the world. It is the one entrance and exit to the Black Sea, the mouths of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don and the great ports of Constantinople, Odessa and Sebastopol. He who controls the channel controls those ports, with their wealth and their power to affect great conflicts. The most famous war of all times was fought not for any human Helen but to control that channel. Our Dardanelles campaign was undertaken to win through it a free passage for the ships of the Allied Powers. While the war was still young it became necessary to attempt this passage for five reasons: 1. To break the link by which Turkey keeps her hold as a European Power. 2. To divert a large part of the Turkish army from operations against our Russian Allies in the Caucasus and elsewhere. 3. To pass into Russia, at a time when her northern ports were closed by ice, the rifles and munitions of war of which her armies were in need. 4. To bring out of Southern Russia the great stores of wheat lying there waiting shipment. 5. If possible, to prevent, by a successful deed of arms in the Near East, any new alliance against us among the Balkan peoples. In its simplest form the problem was to force a passage through the defended channel of the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmora, to attack the capital of Turkey in Europe, to win through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, securing each step in the advance against reconquest by the Turks, so that ships might pass from the Ægean to the Russian ports in the Black Sea, bringing to the Russians arms for their unequipped troops and taking from them the corn of the harvests of Southern Russia. The main problem was to force a passage through the defended channel of the Hellespont. This passage had been forced in the past by a British naval squadron. In February, 1807, Sir John Duckworth sailed through with seven ships of the line and some smaller vessels, silenced the forts at Sestos and Abydos and destroyed some Turkish ships; and then, fearing that the Turks, helped by French engineers, would so improve the fortifications that he would never be able to get back, he returned. On his return, one of his ships, the _Endymion_ frigate, 40 guns, received in her hull two stone shot each 26 inches in diameter. The permanent fortifications guarding the Channel were added to and improved during the nineteenth century. At the outbreak of the war with Italy, four years ago, they were equipped (perhaps by German officers) with modern weapons. An attempt made by Italian torpedo boats to rush the Straits by night was discovered by searchlights and checked by a heavy fire from quick-firing and other guns. All the torpedo boats engaged in the operations were hit and compelled to return.