By this he must have meant that Germany had sent the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ through the Dardanelles and so controlled the situation in Constantinople. The old Byzantine capital, said Wangenheim, was the prize which a victorious Russia would demand, and her lack of an all-the-year-round port in warm waters was Russia’s tender spot--her “corn.” At this time Wangenheim boasted that Germany had 174 German gunners at the Dardanelles, that the Strait could be closed in less than thirty minutes, and that Souchon, the German admiral, had informed him that the Straits were impregnable. “We shall not close the Dardanelles, however,” he said, “unless England attacks them.” At that time England, although she had declared war on Germany, had played no conspicuous part in the military operations; her “contemptible little army” was making its heroic retreat from Mons. Wangenheim entirely discounted England as an enemy. It was the German intention, he said, to place their big guns at Calais, and throw their shells across the English Channel to the English coast towns; that Germany would not have Calais within the next ten days did not occur to him as a possibility. In this and other conversations at about the same time Wangenheim laughed at the idea that England could create a large independent army. “The idea is preposterous,” he said. “It takes generations of militarism to produce any thing like the German army. We have been building it up for two hundred years. It takes thirty years of constant training to produce such generals as we have. Our army will always maintain its organisation. We have 500,000 recruits reaching military age every year, and we cannot possibly lose that number, so that our army will be kept intact.” A few weeks later civilisation was outraged by the German bombardment of English coast towns, such as Scarborough and Hartlepool. This was no sudden German inspiration, but part of their carefully-considered plans. Wangenheim told me, on September 6th, 1914, that Germany intended to bombard all English harbours, so as to stop the food supply. It is also apparent that German ruthlessness against American sea trade was no sudden decision of von Tirpitz, for on this same date the German Ambassador to Constantinople warned me that it would be very dangerous for the United States to send ships to England! CHAPTER VIII A CLASSIC INSTANCE OF GERMAN PROPAGANDA