THE END AT GALLIPOLI.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLII, Issue 90, 19 May 1916, Page 1

THE END AT GALLIPOLI.

PitAI.SE I-ItOM THE ENEMY. The Minister for Defence has received from Egypt a translation of an article that appeared in the Gentian newswiper 'Vossisehe Zeitung' on .January 21 last, relating to the evacuation of G.illipoli Peninsula. The article contained the following paragraph.-: "The ground ol the Peninsula can, when the attai kers are, as was on this occasion the ease, obliged almost entirely to depend upon infantry fighting, only be called murderous. At the back of a narrow, sandy strip of beach rise almost perpendicularly the cliffs, 200 metres high, of the chalk mountains which extend over the whole of the Peninsula, intersected in every direction by gullies devoid of all vegetation, and therefore cover. "With the conquest of the beaches and the first line of the hills, so far as the attacker had got, the English had gained nothing. He would then, under the infantry fire of the defenders holding the next ridge, descend from the crest of the hill into the valley, then storm the next hill, and thus endlessly on. The English had therefore probably already since the last weeks of November realised the hopelessness of the strugggle and about the middle of December had prepared their retreat in—this praise must be accorded to them—an absolutely admirable manner. As long as war lasts their evacuation of the Ari Uurnu and Anafarta fronts will stand before the eyes of all strategists of retreat as an hitherto quite nnattained masterpiece. A repetition of this tour de force, however, according to the Turkish reports as yet to hand, did not succeed on the south front, as their embarkation seems to have been accompanied by violent rearguard engagements." Doubtless the writer of the article has learned by this time that the Turkish reports were inaccurate and that the British evacuation was conducted as successfully in the south as in the west.