gain possession of the heights to the E. of Suvla, which dominated
the landing-places and the whole of the area in their immediate
vicinity that had been occupied on the 7th. The very few Otto-
man guns which had been causing the freshly disembarked
troops a good deal of annoyance during the 7th had been with-
drawn for fear of capture, the defenders fully expecting a forward
move by the Allies. But no move forward took place. The
opportunity was allowed to slip by. The Turks remained in
possession of the high ground, and that night reinforcements
began to join them from the N.E., the troops as they came up
being rushed into position in view of impending attack.
That attack was at last delivered early next morning. It failed completely. Enjoying the benefits of occupying a com- manding line, the defenders were also being reinforced during the progress of the combat. Although sustained by a fair number of guns and with the moral support of the 53rd Division, which had disembarked during the night, the roth and nth Divisions could make no headway. The deliberation of the Allies on the 7th and 8th, when the forces opposed to them were insignificant, had been fatal. The great numerical superiority which they had at first possessed was gone by the gth, and their task had come to be the ejection of an almost equal enemy from a naturally formidable position. That day was also the last on which any hope remained of the Sari Bair offensive accomplishing its purpose, and on which help from Suvla might conceivably even at the eleventh hour have turned the scale. The defeat suffered by the Suvla troops on the pth was in reality decisive in so far as the new area was con- cerned; but, even so, the invaders who had set foot there tried yet again on the loth to wrest the heights in front of them out of Osmanli keeping. The effort, however, failed, and further offensives in this quarter were abandoned for the moment.
The situation on the nth offered little encouragement to the invaders. The carefully devised scheme of operations from which they had expected so much had come to naught in its most im- portant features. A footing had no doubt been gained at Suvla, giving the Allies control of a fairly well-sheltered inlet on the outer coast of the peninsula; but as the high ground within easy artillery range of the landing-places, and which overlooked the whole occupied area, remained in the hands of the Turks, much of the benefit hoped for from the acquisition was in reality neutralized. As had been the case at Helles and at Anzac ever since the first opening of land operations in April, only a restricted patch of Ottoman territory had been obtained by the new undertaking, and although the position at Anzac had been extended and im- proved it remained an extremely bad one. The Allies now occu- pied many miles of front in the peninsula, but there was hardly a spot where the enemy had not the upper hand in respect to ground what they required was not breadth but depth, and depth they had failed to secure. They had moreover incurred very heavy losses in the combats of, and since, Aug. 6. There were yawning gaps in their ranks. Except a division from Egypt, coming to fight on foot, no reinforcements were on the way, and the last of the five divisions from England, the 54th, had been swallowed up at Suvla. The defending side had also, no doubt, suffered heavily in casualties, especially on Sari Bair; but the Turkish commander-in-chief could fairly claim that, if some ground had been lost, he had held his own in a contest in which his adversary had enjoyed some notable advantages at the start.
An effort was made on the isth by the troops on the extreme left of the Allies' position at Suvla to gain ground along the ridge N. of the plain ; but nothing came of it. Sir I. Hamilton, however, still entertained hopes of effecting some improvement in his position in this area. The mounted division, and also a division from Helles, were quietly concentrated there, and on the 2ist a determined attempt was made to capture some of the high ground which had baffled the essays of the invaders on the gth and loth. Large forces were engaged on either side in this battle, and the attack was prepared for by a comparatively speaking heavy bom- bardment of the Ottoman trenches; in this battleships and cruisers moored in Suvla Bay, in security from submarines, participated. But after a sanguinary contest the assailants met with repulse, and from that date onwards no serious offensive
operation was attempted by the Allies in the Dardanelles campaign. Those conditions of virtual stalemate which had prevailed before the arrival of the five new divisions from England set in afresh, and they continued to the end.
Even before this final reverse, Sir I. Hamilton had cabled home asking for reinforcements and for very large drafts that were needed to bring the depleted units under his command up to their war establishment. The total figure he asked for amounted to 95,000 men, his calculation being based upon the strength of the opposing army, as this was fairly accurately known. He had, however, been informed that no large bodies of fresh troops could be spared for the Dardanelles theatre of war. A temporary change of plan did occur a few days later, owing to the French Government proposing to despatch four divisions to the Aegean with the idea of their operating on the Asiatic side of the Straits; under the circumstances the British Government was also pre- pared to send fresh divisions to Sir I. Hamilton. But early in Sept. these projects were finally dropped both in Paris and in London, owing very largely to the threatening aspect of affairs that was arising in the Balkans.
The campaign by which the Central Powers and Bulgaria crushed Serbia for the time being, and by their triumph opened communications through Bulgaria with the Ottoman Empire, profoundly influenced the situation in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Not only was all idea of reinforcing the Allied army that was planted down in this region abandoned by the western Govern- ments, but even some of the troops under Sir I. Hamilton's orders were transferred to Salonika. Moreover, the linking up of Turkey with the Central Powers by railway ensured that Liman von Sanders would in due course be furnished with ample muni- tions of all kinds, and this must make the prospect of Entente forces gaining possession of the Straits remoter than ever.
As early as the middle of Sept. the French Government had come to the conclusion that there was now no hope of victory in the Dardanelles theatre of war. The British Government, on the other hand, influenced to a great extent by anxiety as regards prestige in the East, could not arrive at a decision as to giving up the project. After two or three weeks Sir I. Hamilton was, however, invited to give his views concerning the question of evacuating the peninsula and abandoning the enterprise against the Straits. On the commander-in-chief pronouncing himself as emphatically opposed to such a step, Sir C. Monro was sent out from England to take his place. Impressed by the unsatisfactory positions in which the Allied troops found themselves on the peninsula, by the impossibility of their making any progress at their existing strength, and by the risks that the army ran in remaining on such shores without any safe harbour to depend upon for base in stormy weather, Monro, after examining the situation on the spot in the closing days of Oct., declared un- hesitatingly for a complete withdrawal. The British Cabinet thereupon despatched Lord Kitchener to the Aegean to in- vestigate and to report. He had viewed proposals to abandon the campaign with alarm; but after visiting the peninsula he realized that evacuation was the only justifiable course, and he reported to that effect. All this time winter was drawing nearer and nearer and the need for a prompt decision was becoming more urgent, but the authorities in London lost another fortnight before, on Dec. 8, they at last sent instructions to Monro to evacuate Suvla and Anzac while retaining a grip on Helles.
Sept., Oct. and Nov. had been months of stagnation for the armies that confronted each other on the peninsula, as was, indeed, almost inevitable under the strategical conditions which had come about. The Ottoman higher command was well content that the troops under its charge should maintain an attitude of passive defence; they were keeping Allied divisions in idleness which, were they to be transferred to some other one of the theatres of war, might prove invaluable assets to the cause of the Entente. Well concealed in skilfully constructed entrench- ments that were excavated on terrain overlooking the invader's lines, the Turkish contingents holding the different fronts could fairly calculate upon beating off any hostile attack unless their adversaries should be heavily reinforced. The defenders could in
