had from the first been regarded in London as of secondary importance, and secondary provision had been made for an estimate of secondary loss. * * * * * [Sidenote: AUTHORITIES] My main authorities for this chapter, as for the last, have been the Dispatches of Sir Ian Hamilton and Admiral de Robeck, Mr. Ashmead Bartlett’s _Dispatches from the Dardanelles_, the late Phillip Schuler’s _Australia in Arms_, the Rev. D. Creighton’s _With the Twenty-ninth Division in Gallipoli_, _The Immortal Gamble_, by Commander A. T. Stewart, R.N., and the Rev. C. J. E. Peshall, _With Machine-guns in Gallipoli_, by Lieutenant-Commander Josiah Wedgwood, M.P., and my own observation of the ground and conversations with eye-witnesses on the spot. CHAPTER VII THE BATTLES OF MAY In Constantinople the naval attacks of February had created the dismay natural to a crowded population threatened with destruction. Preparations were hurriedly made for removing the Government to Eski Chehir in Asia, or even to Konia. In spite of Enver’s dominance, the Committee was charged with bringing ruin on the land, and the German Ambassador, Baron von Wangenheim, feared a separate peace. Ahmed Riza, the honourable visionary, aging survivor of the Parisian Young Turks whose revolution seven years before inspired all Europeans but the Governments with enthusiasm, now stole about the streets honoured but shunned. In his palace on the Bosphorus, the Sultan, Mehmed V., for some inscrutable reason called El Ghazi (the Hero), maundered with imbecility. Removed in March from his palace-prison of Beyler-bey on the Bosphorus to the ancient city of Magnesia, near Smyrna, the “Red Sultan,” Abdul Hamid, surrounded by ministering daughters, beguiled an abstemious and peaceful old age by watching the progress of Christianity with sardonic appreciation.[105] [Sidenote: CONSTANTINOPLE AND SUBMARINES] The failure of the naval attempt to force the Narrows in March restored the city’s confidence. People felt that, since the British Navy failed, the Dardanelles indeed formed an impregnable pass. Enver and Liman von Sanders regained power, if not popularity. The German bureaucracy, organising every department with efficient despotism, justified the satiric compliment which cried, “Deutschland, Deutschland über Allah!” During the subsequent five weeks of our silence it was believed that the British Government admitted failure and had abandoned the campaign. The distant sound of Russian ships bombarding the Black Sea forts at the entrance to the Bosphorus was listened to periodically with the indifference of custom. When news of the landings began to filter through, decisive Turkish victories over France and England were proclaimed. In Asia and on the Peninsula the enemy, it was said, had been repulsed with incredible loss. If any still clung to the shores of Islam, in a day or two they would be driven into the water. The anxious citizens had Enver’s word for that.