THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16011, 1 September 1915, Page 6

THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN.

The importance »of the Gallipoli campaign is gradually becoming realised by the world. For New Zealand and Australia it has had since April the supreme interest of being the fighting ground upon which our brigades have won their laurels and where so many have given in heroic duty-doing their gallant lives. For the world at large, however, it was rather the scene of amazing gallantry and reckless holding of hard-1 won footing than of a combat upon 1 which the fortunes of continental war might turn. The battle-dust of conflicting millions in the East and the West obscured to all but the strategists the vital meaning of the fight for the Dardanelles- The release of the locked-up wheat and oil of Kussia. the passage of shut-out I munitions and supplies to the armies of the Tsar, was sufficient original reason for an attack of which our Australasian troops bore the first brunt and in which they are still the trusted keystone of the military arch. Only later was it realised that the whole strength of Turkey was being drawn to Gallipoli and that- the Allied forces were fighting under the guns of their ships a localised campaign which might determine the fate of the Ottoman Empire. Now it is gradually being seen that the seizure of the Dardanelles by the Allies# may deal a death-blow to Germany's last hopes of world-power and shut the Kaiser and his vassal within a ring they cannot break. The doubtful equilibrium of Balkan neutrality may be turned in favour of the Great Alliance by the first great naval gun that- opens against the fortifications' of Constantinople; in any case, German influence in Turkey, already waning, cannot survive such conclusive proof of the Kaiser's inability to protect that misguided state. Our New Zealanders at Gallipoli, so ready to do their duty in any arena of war, major or minor, have the satisfaction of knowing that they are in the forefront of a campaign from which results of the greatest magnitude are to be anticipated.