for battle, quietly steaming along like a man walking on patrol duty.
"That," said General Djevad, "is the Agamemnon"!
"Shall I fire a shot at her?" he asked me.
"Yes, if you'll promise me not to hit her," I answered.
We lunched at headquarters, where we were joined by Admiral Usedom, General Mertens, and General Pomiankowsky, the Austrian Military Attaché at Constantinople. The chief note in the conversation was one of absolute confidence in the future. Whatever the diplomats and politicians in Constantinople may have thought, these men, Turks and Germans, had no expectation—at least their conversation betrayed none—that the Allied fleets would pass their defenses. What they seemed to hope for above everything was that their enemies would make another attack.
"If we could only get a chance at the Queen Elizabeth! " said one eager German, referring to the greatest ship in the British navy, then lying off the entrance.
As the Rhein wine began to disappear, their eagerness for the combat increased.
"If the damn fools would only make a landing!" exclaimed one—I quote his exact words.
The Turkish and German officers, indeed, seemed to vie with each other in expressing their readiness for the fray. Probably a good deal of this was bravado, intended for my consumption—indeed, I had private information that their exact estimate of the situation was much less reassuring. Now, however, they declared that the war had presented no real opportunity for the German and English navies to measure swords, and for this reason the Germans at the Dardanelles welcomed this chance to try the issue.
