The Turkish and German officers, indeed, seemed to vie with each other in expressing their readiness for the fray. Probably a good deal of this was bravado, intended for my consumption--indeed, I had private information that their real estimate of the situation was much less reassuring. Now, however, they declared that the war had presented no real opportunity for the German and English Navies to measure swords, and for this reason the Germans at the Dardanelles welcomed this chance to try the issue. Having visited all the important places on the Anatolian side, we took a launch and sailed over to the Gallipoli Peninsula. We almost had a disastrous experience on this trip. As we approached the Gallipoli shore, our helmsman was asked if he knew the location of the minefield and if he could steer through the channel. He said “yes,” and then steered directly for the mines! Fortunately the other men noticed the mistake in time, and so we arrived safely at Kilid-ul-Bahr. The batteries here were of about the same character as those on the other side; they formed one of the main defences of the straits. Here everything, so far as a layman could judge, was in excellent condition, barring the fact that the artillery pieces were of old design and the ammunition not at all plentiful. The batteries showed signs of a heavy bombardment. None had been destroyed, but shell-holes surrounded the fortification. My Turkish and German friends looked at these evidences of destruction rather seriously, and they were outspoken in their admiration for the accuracy of the Allied fire. “How do they ever get the range?” This was the question they were asking each other. What made the shooting so remarkable was the fact that it came, not from Allied ships in the straits, but from ships stationed in the Ægean Sea, on the other side of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The gunners had never seen their target, but had had to fire at a distance of nearly ten miles, over high hills, and yet many of their shells had barely missed the batteries at Kilid-ul-Bahr.