MR. MASEFIELD'S SAGA OF GALLIPOLL*
Mn. MASEFIELD has written much in prose and verse of high quality, but he has never written anything worthier of unreserved admiration than this little book on Gallipoli. That he was there himself and had ample opportunities of observing what happened is made abundantly clear by internal evidence, but the narrative is in the main singularly impersonal It grew, as he tells us, out of the questions and demands for explanations addressed to him in a recent tour in America—questions and demands inspired sometimes by friendly curiosity, sometimes by ignorance, sometimes by hostility. With the repetition of these ques- tions the fire gradually kindled in him, and with a full heart, not unmoved by righteous indignation and fortified by first-hand knowledge, ho set himself to compose what we may call the true Saga of the Dardanelles Campaign, in no spirit of complaint or fault-finding, but regarding it, " not as a tragedy, nor as a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came, more than once, very near to triumph, achieved the impossible many times, and failed, in the end, as many great deeds of arms have failed, from something which had nothing to do with arms nor with the men who bore them. That the effort failed is not against it ; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed. To myself, this failure is the mond grand event of the war ; the first was Belgium's answer to the German ultimatum." From this view of the campaign he never deviates, and in this high spirit he begins and ends his recital, which is dedicated, " with the deepest admiration and respect, to Sir Ian Hamilton and the officers and mon under his command, March to October, 1915." We have spoken of the book as a Saga, for it deals with heroic deeds in heroic style ; the divisions of the narrative are prefaced with passages from the Bong of Roland, which fit the sequel with curious felicity ; and many passages could only have been written by a true poet. But the diction is simple and clear of all rhetoric, sentimentality, or journalistic padding. The note • Gallipoli. By John Idascileld. London: W. Heinemann. (es. as.1
is never forced. And it is only right to add that in ono important respost the story differs from Sagas in that it is not concerned with the exploits of " paladins and peers," but with the heroism of all ranks con- corned. The names of many regiments are given, but only twice or thrice are individual acts of heroism mentioned. In describing the beaching of the River Clyde' and its sequel Mr. Masefield tells us how, though it was almost certain death to try to leave the ship, " all through the day mon leaped from her (with leave or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats or the beach. A hundred brave men gave their lives thus ; every man there earned the Cross that day." Though the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and the Royal Naval Division, who together made up more than half of the army, wore almost all men who had enlisted since the declaration of war, and had not had more than six months' active training, " they wore t'io finest body of young men over brought together in modern times. For physical beauty and nobility of bearing they surpassed any men I have ever seen ; they walked and looked like the kings in old poems, and reminded me of the line in Shakespeare : Baited like eagles having lately &Owl' "
Opening with what is the best brief description of the peninsula of Gallipoli that we have read, Mr. Masefield states without much com- ment the motives which dictated the attempt to secure the control of the Dardanelles, " the most important channel of water in the world." He is content to say that it became necessary to secure this passage for various reasons, mainly for the relief and assistance of Russia. and to prevent by a successful deed of arms any now alliance against us among the Balkan peoples. He describes the natural strength of the Dardanelles and the means taken to reinforce it, expl lint the reason for the choice of Mudros as our advanced naval base, and gives a brief amount of the naval coup de main attempted in February and March, 1915, without pausing to show how the process of securing each stop against reconquest by the Turks, so as to give free passage to the Allies from the Aegean to the Black Sea, could be effected without the co-operation of a land force. He does not minimize the immense difficulties of the enterprise, but he indulges in no criticism of the initial policy, and acquiesces in its modi- fication. As for the landing-places ultimately chosen, Mr. Masefiold replies to objectors who ask why the attack was not made at Bulair, or along the Asiatic coast, that Bulair was practically impregnable ; that the Asiatic coast was commanded from the Gallipoli coast ; that a force advancing from Kum Kato would have had its communications cut with ease at any point by the Turks in Asia Minor ; and that, in short, the task was impracticable. The beaches chosen were, he asserts, the only landing-places at which troops could be got ashore with any prospect of success, however slight. " Our army had its task to do, there was no other means of doing it, and our mon had to do what they could. . . . No army in history has made a more heroic attack ; no army in history has been set such a task. . . . Our mon achieved a feat without parallel in war, and no other troops in the world (not oven Japanese or Ghazis in the hope of heaven) would have made good those beaches on the 25th of April." The delay at Mudros before the start is defended by Mr. Masefield as doubly necessary in ordor to secure favourable weather and to complete the minute preparations essential for so hazardous an undertaking, and the start on Friday, April 23rd, is described in a memorable passage :-
" In fine weather in Mudros a haze of beauty comes upon the hills and water till their loveliness is unearthly, it is so rare. Then the bay is like a blue jewel, and the hills lose their savagery, and glow, and are gentle, and the sun comes up from Troy, and the peaks of Samothrace change colour, and all the marvellous ships in the harbour are trans- figured. The land of Lemnos was beautiful with flowers at that season. in the brief /Egean spring, and to seawards always, in the bay, were the ships, more ships, perhaps, than any port of modern times has known ; thoy seemed like half the ships of the world. In this crowd of shipping strange beautiful Greek vessels passed, under rigs of old time, with sheep and goats and fish for sale, and the tugs of the Thames and Mersey met again the ships they had towed of old, bearing a now freight. of human courage. The transports (all painted black) lay in tiers, well within the harbour, the men-of-war nearer Mudros and the entrance. Now in all that city of ships, no busy with passing picket-boats, anti noisy with the labour of men, the getting of the anchors began. Ship after ship, crammed with soldiers, moved slowly out of harbour in the lovely day, and felt again the heave of the sea. No such gathering of fine ships has ever been soon upon this earth, and the beauty and the exultation of the youth upon thorn made them liko sacred things as they moved away. All the thousands of men aboard them gathered on deck
to see, till each rail was thronged. These men had come from all parts
of the British world, from Africa, Australia, Canada, India, the Mother Country, Now Zealand, and remote islands in the sea. They had said good-bye to home that they might offer their lives in the cause wo stand for. In a few hours at most, as they well knew, perhaps a tenth of them would have looked their last on the sun, and bo a part of foreign earth or dumb things that the tides push. Many of them would have disappeared for ever from the knowledge of man, blotted from the book of life none would know how—by a fall or chance shot in the darkness, in the blast of a shell, or alone, like a hurt beast, in some scrub or gully, far from comrades and the English speech and the English singing. And perhaps a third of them would be mangled, blinded or broken, lamed, made imbecile or disfigured, with the colour and the taste of life taken from them, so that they would never more move with comrades nor exult in the sun. And those not taken thus would be under the ground, sweating in the trench, carrying sandbags up the sap, dodging death and danger, without root or food or drink, in the blazing sun or the frost of the Gallipoli night, till death seemed relaxation and a wound a luxury. But as they moved out these things were but the end they asked, the reward they had come
for, the unseen cross upon the breast, All that they felt was a gladness of exultation that their young courage was to be used. They went like kings in a pageant to the imminent death. As they passed from moor- ings to the man-of-war anchorage on their way to the sea, their feeling that they had done with life and were going out to something new welled up in those battalions • they cheered and cheered till the harbour . rang with cheering. As each ship crammed with soldiers drew near the battleships, the men swung their caps and cheered again, and the sailors answered, and the noise of cheering swelled, and the men in the ships not yet moving joined in, and the men ashore, till all the life in the harbour was giving thanks that it could go to death rejoicing. All was beautiful in that gladness of men about to die, but the most moving thing was the greatness of their generous hearts. As they passed the French ships, the memory of old quarrels healed, and the sense of what sacred France has done and endured in this great war, and the pride of having such men as the French for comrades, rose up in their warm souls, and they cheered the French ships more, even, than their own. They left the harbour very, very slowly ; this tumult of cheering lasted a long time ; no one who heard it will ever forget it, or think of it unshaken. It broke the hearts of all there with pity and pride : it went beyond the guard of the English heart. Presently all were out, and the fleet stood across for Tenedos, and the sun went down with marvellous colour, lighting island after island and the Asian peaks, and those left behind in Madras trimmed their lamps knowing that they had been for a little brought near to the heart of things."
For the story of the landings, the sufferings, and the achievements of our troops, and the slow advance won by desperate and superhuman .efforts, culminating in the battles in the early days of August, we must . refer our readers to Mr. Masefield's pages. The story has been told before, but never with such a concentration on the essentials, with so vivid a realization of the horrors and splendours of the struggle. Mr. Masc- . field never assumes the role of the amateur strategist. He does not merely abstain from criticizing the local direction of the cam- . paign ; he maintains that it was conducted with admirable forethought and judgment. Wo failed, in his view, mainly because we had not sufficient reserves to relieve our troops in the final stages of each advance. The moral of the men was never shattered, but the human machine was exhausted. Our supply of shells, again, he declares to have been insufficient. The Turks, on the other hand—whose courage and tenacity he readily acknowledges—were always our superiors in numbers, . had no lack of reserves, and commanded all the wells in the peninsula. He gives a wonderful picture of the good comradeship that prevailed . in the various camps, in spite of the terrible hardships, discomforts, and deadly perils by which the troops were uninterruptedly beset. And as , for the evacuation, " no man of all that force passed down those trenches, tho sconce of so much misery and pain and joy and valour and devoted brotherhood, without a deep feeling of sadness." But our men had lost no honour :-
"They were not to blame, that they were creeping off in the dark, like thieves in the night. Had others (not of their profession), many hundreds of miles away, but been as they, as generous, as wise, as fore- seeing, as full of sacrifice, those thinned companies with the looks of pain in their faces, and the mud of the hills thick upon their bodies, would have given thanks in Santa Sophia three months before. They had failed to take Gallipoli, and the mine-fields still barred the Hellespont, but they had fought a battle such as has never been seen upon this earth. What they had done will become a glory for ever, wherever the deeds of heroic unhelped men are honoured and pitied and under- . stood. They went up at the call of duty, with a bright banner of a battle-cry, against an impregnable fort. Without guns, without muni- tions, without help, and without drink, they climbed the scarp, and held it by their own glorious manhood, quickened by a word from their chief. Now they were giving back the scarp, and going out into new adventures, wherever the war might turn."
But if tho campaign was in one sense a failure, it had achieved much. Mr. Masefield reckons that the losses of the Turks were nearly double ours. Politically it had a profound effect upon Italy and, in the begin- ning, on the Balkan States. " Bulgaria made no move against us until five months after our landing. Had we not gone to Gallipoli, she would have joined our enemies in the late spring instead of in the middle autumn." As for our ships, Mr. Masefield holds that our losses were not serious for eleven months of a campaign which " depended utterly and solely upon the power of the Navy. . . . Every moment of those eleven months was an illustration of the silent and unceasing victory of our Navy's power. As Sir Ian Hamilton has put it, the Navy was our father and our mother."' Finally, Mr. Masefield sums up the campaign by assuming the position of a candid foe :—
" ' Still,' our enemies say, you did not win the Peninsula.' We did not ; and some day, when truth will walk clear-eyed, it will be known why we did not. Until then, let our enemies say this ` They did not win, but they came across three thousand miles of sea, a little . army without reserves and short of munitions, a band of brothers, not half of them half-trained, and nearly all of them new to war. They came to what we said was an impregnable fort, on which our veterans of war and massacre had laboured for two months, and by sheer naked manhood they beat us, and drove us out of it. Then rallying, but with- out reserves, they beat us again, and drove us farther. Then rallying once more, but still without reserves, they beat us again, this time to our knees. Then, had they had reserves, they would have conquered, but by God's pity they had none. Then, after a lapse of time, when , we were men again, they had reserves, and they hit us a staggering blow, which needed but a push to end us, but God again had pity. After that our God was indeed pitiful, for England made no further thrust, and they went away.'
' Even so was wisdom proven blind, So courage failed, so strength was chained ; Even so the gods, whose seeing mind
Is not as, ours, ordained.":
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