Let us suppose that the Allies had returned, say, on the morning of the 19th, what would have happened? The one overwhelming fact is that the fortifications were very short of ammunition. They had almost reached the limit of their resisting powers when the British fleet passed out on the afternoon of the 18th. I had secured permission for Mr. George A. Schreiner, the well-known American correspondent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles on this occasion. On the night of the 18th this correspondent discussed the situation with General Mertens, who was the chief technical officer at the Straits. General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very discouraging for the defence. “We expect that the British will come back early to-morrow morning,” he said, “and if they do we may be able to hold out for a few hours.” General Mertens did not declare in so many words that the ammunition was practically exhausted, but Mr. Schreiner discovered that such was the case. The fact was that Fort Hamidié, the most powerful defence on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen armour-piercing shells left, while at Kilid-ul-Bahr, which was the main defence on the European side, there were precisely ten. “I should advise you to get up at six o’clock to-morrow morning,” said General Mertens, “and take to the Anatolian Hills. That’s what we are going to do.” The troops at all the fortifications had their orders to man the guns until the last shell had been fired and then to abandon the forts. Once these defences became helpless, the problem of the Allied fleet would have been a simple one. The only bar to their progress would have been the minefield, which stretched from a point about two miles north of Erenkeui to Kilid-ul-Bahr. But the Allied fleet had plenty of mine-sweepers, which could have made a channel in a few hours. North of Tchanak, as I have already explained, there were a few guns, but they were of the 1878 model, and could not discharge projectiles that could pierce modern armour-plate. North of Point Nagara there were only two batteries, and both dated from 1835! Thus, once having silenced the outer straits, there was nothing to bar the passage to Constantinople except the German and Turkish warships. The _Goeben_ was the only first-class fighting ship in either fleet, and would not have lasted long against the _Queen Elizabeth_. The disproportion in the strength of the opposing fleets, indeed, was so enormous that it is doubtful whether there would ever have been an engagement.