peninsula to the mainland, but never launched the attack.

When in 1914 the British and French determined to press a purely naval
attack upon the Dardanelles, they appear to have been influenced by
two major considerations. At the time there was not ready a sufficient
number of troops to make a land campaign successful and, at the last
moment, King Constantine of Greece repudiated a personal agreement
made by Venizelos, the Greek Premier, with the Allies by which Greece
was to provide at least 20,000 troops to assist the France-British
fleet. Even after the fall of Venizelos it was still determined to
push the naval attack because of the second consideration. In the
opinion of the British admiralty the full power of modern naval guns
of 11-and 12-inch had never been tested and in their opinion they
would suffice to reduce the Dardanelles defenses in a comparatively
short time. Furthermore, the British authorities appear to have relied
largely upon the new 15-inch guns of the _Queen Elizabeth_ and her
sister vessels, then nearing completion in British yards. So
tremendous was the power of these new guns and so great their range
that it was believed the _Queen Elizabeth_ and her sister ships could
stand miles out of range of the heaviest of the Dardanelles guns and
quickly smash them to an unrecognizable mass of ruins.

It was evident that the British naval command held these views even in
spite of the experience of British warships off the coast of Belgium
earlier in the war. For a while in 1914 British monitors and
battleships bombarded almost at will the German troops posted along
the coast running from the Dutch frontier line almost to Nieuport.
Finally, however, the Germans brought up heavy army and naval guns
and, mounting them in concealed spots among the sand dunes, soon drove
off the British naval force.

But Turkish guns were not German guns, Turkish gunners were not German
gunners, and above all, the munition supply of the Turkish army was
not fed by factories able to turn out a quarter of a million shells a
day. Some such considerations as these appear to have convinced the
British higher command that there was a difference in the two tasks.

The command of the Dardanelles forts at the entrance to Constantinople
and the Black Sea is similar, except that it is perhaps more sure as
to the command of the entrance to the Baltic by Copenhagen, the
Mediterranean by Gibraltar, and, in a lesser degree, of the Nor