This was a momentous proposal, and had it been put forward before the war it must have been decisive. But now an entirely new factor entered the scene: on September 5, 1914, the Battle of the Marne had been fought in France, and with every succeeding week it became more and more apparent that the first German onrush across France had been stopped. In the east as well the Russians were making headway against the Austrian forces. It was no longer so evident that this was to be a short war ending in a German victory; Germany was beginning to need allies. She now wanted Turkey in the war.

One of the earliest indications of this changed attitude was in the treatment of the British Naval Mission. This Mission, under the command of Admiral Limpus, had for some years past undertaken the training of the Turkish Navy. With the arrival of the Goeben its position had become at first embarrassing and then insupportable. Early in September it was clearly impossible for Admiral Limpus to go on. On the 9th the Mission was withdrawn, and the Germans now controlled the Turkish Navy as well as the Army. Then on September 26 something much more serious happened. A Turkish torpedo-boat was stopped at the mouth of the Dardanelles by the British squadron lurking there, and when it was found that there were German soldiers on board the vessel was ordered to go back to Turkey. On hearing this news a certain Weber Pasha, the German soldier commanding the fortifications, took it on himself to close the Dardanelles. New mines were laid across the channel, lighthouses were extinguished, and notices were put up on the cliffs warning all vessels that the passage was blocked. This was by some way the boldest thing that the Germans had attempted yet, for the free passage of the Dardanelles was governed by an international convention which affected both belligerents and neutrals alike, and any interference with international shipping there was an act of war.

The Turks themselves received no warning that this step was to be taken by the Germans, and there was an agitated meeting of the cabinet in Constantinople on September 27. But by now Enver and Talaat had delivered the country into German hands. The other members of the government might protest and threaten to resign, but there was nothing they could do to alter the situation. Russia’s lifeline was cut. For some weeks merchantmen from the Black Sea ports filled with Russian grain and other exports piled up in the Golden Horn until there were hundreds of them there, and a motor boat crossing the harbour could hardly find a way between them. When at last it was evident that the blockage was permanent the ships one by one sailed back to the Black Sea, never to return.

One can judge the importance of this day from the fact that the great maritime trade of the Dardanelles has never again been revived. When the straits were re-opened in 1918 the revolution had already taken place in Russia, and in the years since then the Soviet Empire has effectively cut itself off from the seaborne trade of the West. The consulates of all the great powers which used to line the foreshore at Chanak with their fluttering flags have been closed, and nothing now passes except the local caiques, a thin stream of ocean traffic on the Constantinople run, and, just occasionally, some solitary communist vessel that goes by with a silent and rather fated air, as though it were a visitor from some other planet.

The last few weeks of peace in Turkey ran out very quickly. More and more German technicians arrived, and all night long a constant clanging sounded from the naval yards where the old Turkish ships were being fitted out for war. Most of the German naval officers were quartered in the General, a depot ship tied up near the Galata Bridge in the Golden Horn, and it was common knowledge that in the nightly drinking parties there these officers boasted that if Turkey did not soon move then the German themselves would take a hand. Admiral Souchon was constantly sending the Goeben into the Black Sea on manœuvres. Once, being moved by a sense of humour which is a little difficult to gauge at this distance, he brought his ship to a standstill before the Russian Embassy on the Bosphorus. The sailors appeared on deck in their German uniforms and treated the enemy ambassador to a concert of German national songs. Then, putting on their fezzes, they sailed away again.

The end came in the last days of October. On the 29th the Goeben, the Breslau and a Turkish squadron which was manned in part by German sailors steamed through the Black Sea, and on this and the following day they opened fire without warning on Odessa harbour, on the Russian fortress at Sevastopol and on Novorossik, sinking all shipping they could reach and setting the oil tanks on fire. Djemal, the Turkish Minister for Marine, was playing cards at his club in Constantinople at the time, and when the news was brought to him he declared that he had not ordered the raid and that he knew nothing about it. Whether this be true or not, it seems hardly likely that Enver and Talaat were not informed. Moreover, at that same moment a Turkish column at Gaza, in the Palestinian desert, was about to set out on a major raid on the Suez Canal.

On October 30 the Russian, British and French ambassadors at Constantinople delivered a twelve-hour ultimatum to the Turkish government, and when it was unanswered, asked for their passports. Hostilities began on the following day.

Mustafa Kemal had no part in these events. He had, in the previous year, chosen to send a strong letter to Enver inveighing against Liman von Sanders and the German Mission. Turkey, Kemal argued, needed no help from foreigners of any kind; only the Turks themselves could find their own salvation.

Enver could afford to be lenient, for it was inconceivable that Kemal could ever become a rival. He posted him off as military attaché to the Turkish Embassy at Sofia.

There is a lurid legend of how Kemal employed his time in this semi-banishment. He is said to have made a gauche attempt to learn dancing, and to enter the social life of the Bulgarian capital; then, when he failed dismally in this enterprise, he is reputed to have reverted to debauchery. There may be some truth in the story. Yet he acted very promptly when he heard that his country had gone to war: he wired from Sofia for permission to return to active service. He had no answer for a time — an anti-German man was not wanted in the new Turkish Army — and was on the point of deserting his post and of making his way back to Turkey when orders came through for him from Constantinople. He was posted to Rodosto, at the head of the Gallipoli peninsula. It was an event which, passing quite unnoticed at the time, was to change the whole course of the campaign that lay ahead.

BY their daring — perhaps even because they had to dare in order to keep in office — the Young Turks had got their country into a war which was much too big for them. They were small gamblers in a game of very high stakes, and, as it usually happens in such cases, their presence was hardly noticed by the other players for a while. They watched, they waited, they made their anxious little bids, they tried desperately to understand which way the luck was going, and they put on an air of being quite at ease which was very far from being the case.

October, November and December went by and their small army had still not been risked, nor had they cared to expose their borrowed warships in any way. Two expeditions had set out: one to the east headed by Enver himself, and the other to the south commanded by Djemal, the Minister of Marine; and their objectives were nothing less than the conquest of the Caucasus from the Russians and the ejection of the British from Egypt. But as yet nothing had been heard of either of these two enterprises, and a certain cynicism was beginning to develop in the other Balkan states which had not dared to risk their fortunes in the war. Nothing would have given greater pleasure in Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania than the humiliation of the Turks in some major battle, and they waited hopefully for the Allies to move.