led over, her funnels gone,
Were fearlessly, doggedly fighting on.

Out-speeded, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot
By heavier guns, they were not out-fought.
Those men--with the age-old British phlegm,
That has conquered and held the seas for them,
And the courage that causes the death-struck man
To rise on his mangled stumps and try,
With one last shot from his heated gun,
To score a hit ere his spirit fly,
Then sink in the welter of red, and die
With the sighting squint fixed on his dead, glazed eye--
Accepted death as part of the plan.

So the guns belched flame till the fight had run
Into night; and now, in the distance dim,
We could see, by the flashes, the dull, dark loom
Of their hull, as it bore toward the Port of Doom,
Away on the water's misty rim--
Cradock and his few hundred men,
Never, in time, to be seen again.

While into the darkness their great shells streamed,
Little the valiant Germans dreamed
That Cradock was teaching them how to go
When the fate their daring, itself, had sealed,
Waiting, as yet, o'er the ocean's verge,
To their eyes undaunted would stand revealed;
And, snared by a swifter, stronger foe,
Out-classed, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot
By heavier guns, but not out-fought,
They, too, would sink in the sheltering surge.

Battle of the Suez Canal

A First-Hand Account of the Unsuccessful Turkish Invasion

[From The London Times, Feb. 19, 1915.]

ISMAILIA, Feb. 10.

Though skirmishing had taken place between the enemy's reconnoitring
parties and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main
attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move
toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian
troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a
violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after
nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats,
seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts
across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water, with one or two
rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame. All was ready for the
attack.

The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a
mountain battery, who heard, to him, an unknown