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Show oo BLUNDERS OF THE WAR. One of the great blunders of the allies al-lies during tho war was the allowing of Turkey to be drawn into the struggle strug-gle on the side of the central powers and then making a failure of the attempt at-tempt to force the Dardanelles. Now that tho war Is over, Henry Morgenthau, who was American ambassador am-bassador at Constantinople during the early part of the conflict, has made public some of the confidential disclosures dis-closures made to him by the Turks. In the first place, Ambassador Mor-gonlhau Mor-gonlhau snys, the Turks were brought into the war by tho allied navies allowing al-lowing the Breslau and Goeben to escape es-cape from the Adriatic and enter the Bosporus. .The presence of tha Ger man warships had an overawing effect on tho Turks. When tho British and French warships war-ships made their attack on the Dardanelles, Darda-nelles, every one of tho Turkish officers, offi-cers, except, one, freely admitted Constantinople Con-stantinople would not be captured, but to their great joy the Turks held out and even administered severe damage to the fleets off the straits. Morgenthau confirms the report that had tho warships again attacked after their first failure, the Turks would have taken to flight as the bnttcries were without shells. The ambassador says: "Let us suppose that th allies had returned, say on the morning of the 19th, what would have happened. The one overwhelming fact is that the fortifications for-tifications were very short of ammunition. ammu-nition. They had almost reached tho limit of their resisting power when the British fleet passed out on the afternoon aft-ernoon of tho ISth. I had secured permission per-mission for George A. Schreiner, tho well known American correspondent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles on this occasion. On the night of the ISth this correspondent discussed the situation with General Mortens, who was the chief technical officer at the straits.. General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very discouiaging for the defense. ".'We expect that the British will come back early tomorrow morning, he said, "and if they do we may be able to hold out for a few hours.' "General Mertens did not declare in so many words that the ammunition wa-5 practically exhausted, but Mr. Sr-hreiner discovered that such was I the case. The fact was that Fort Ha-midle, Ha-midle, the most powerful defense on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen armor pierching chclls left, while at Kilid-Bahr, which was the main defense de-fense on the European side, there were precisely ten. " 'I should advise you to get up at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning,' said General Gen-eral Mortens, 'and fake to the Anatolian Anato-lian hills. That's what we arc going lo do.'" So great was the consternation of the Turks at this time that tliey had made nil arrangements to burn Constantinople. Con-stantinople. On this resolve to de-ctroy, de-ctroy, Ambassador Morgenthau says: "I was told that cans of petroleum had beer already stored In all tho police po-lice stations and other places, ready to fire the town at a moment's notice. As Constantinople is largely built of wood, this would have been no very difficult task. But they were determined deter-mined lo destroy more than these temporary tem-porary structures; the plans aimed at the beautiful architectural monuments built by the Christians long before the Turkish occupation. The Turks had particularly marked for dynamiting the Mosque of Saint Sophia. This building, which had been a Christian church centuries before it became a Mohammedan mosque, is one of the most magnificent structures of the vanished Bryzantino empire." |