but consented to be member of a new Cabinet the next year. It seems probable, too, that Talaat for rather a long time favoured an attitude of neutrality in order to obtain for Turkey, among other political and economic advantages, the suppression of the Capitulations, and that only later on he finally, like Jemal, Minister of Marine, sided with Enver Pasha and the Germans. On September 6 Talaat Bey told Sir L. du Pan Mallet that there was no question of Turkey entering the war,[12] and on September 9 he declared to the same ambassador, with regard to the Capitulations, that the time had come to free Turkey from foreign trammels.[13] Ghalib Kemaly Bey, Turkish Minister at Athens, in a telegram addressed to Said Halim Pasha on June 15, 1914, had informed him he had just learnt that “Greece, by raising a conflict, expected a general conflagration would ensue which might bring on the opening of the question of Turkey-in-Asia.” On August 7, 1914, he stated in another dispatch sent from Athens to the Sublime Porte: “In the present war England, according to all probabilities, will have the last word. So if we are not absolutely certain to triumph finally, it would be a highly venturesome thing for us to rush into an adventure, the consequences of which might be—which God forbid—fatal to our country.” In a long report dated September 9, 1914, he added: “The present circumstances are so critical and so fraught with danger that I take the liberty humbly to advise the Imperial Government to keep a strict neutrality in the present conflicts, and to endeavour to soothe Russia.... “The compact lately signed in London by the Allies shows that the war is expected to last long.... A State like the Ottoman Empire, which has enormous unprotected sea-coasts and remote provinces open to foreign intrigues, should certainly beware of the enmity of a malignant and vindictive country like England....” So it appears that the decision of Turkey was not taken unanimously and only after much hesitation. Henceforth the operations engaged in by both sides followed their due course. In Europe the Franco-British squadrons under the command of Admiral Carden began on November 3 to bombard the forts which guarded the entrance of the Dardanelles. On February 25, 1915, a combined attack of the Allied fleets took place, and on March 18 a general attack was made by the Franco-British squadrons, in which three of their ironclads were sunk, four were severely damaged, and other ships were disabled. On April 25 to 27 the English and French troops landed in Gallipoli, and after driving back the Turks advanced on May 6 to 8. But when the expeditionary corps had failed to reach Krithia and the Kareves-Dere, then, after a violent offensive of the Turks, which was repulsed on June 21, and the failure of a diversion against the Sari-Bair Mountains, it was withdrawn on January 8, 1916.