GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6407, 27 October 1923, Page 7

GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN

WHERE THE WILL TO FIGHT GAVE OUT General Sir lan Hamilton, opening a British Legion hut at Carluke (South Lanarkshire, Scotland) on 11th August, alluded to the Dardanelles campaign, states the Manchester Guardian, during which he said: — “It was just about this very hour on 11th August, 1915, that I received a communication from the Peninsular. I was told in writing of some newlylanded troops that they ‘showed no attacking spirit at all,’ and that ‘they were not fit to be put into the field without the help of Regulars.’ Until that melancholy moment we had managed to fight hard enough without any Regulars excepting the 29th Division and the Indian Brigade. “We had been checked time after time and our 1 gains had seemed infinitesimal. But there was never a sign of falling off in the attacking spirit. We knew we were killing three Turks for every one the Turks killed of us, as Has been confirmed since by the enemy chiefs, and we knew there could be only one end in a straight tussle on a narrow front between the British and the Turkish Empires. “I did not myself believe that any of our troops lacked the attacking spirit, but the man who had written that letter did believe it, and the infection of want of faith in high places spreads like a blight from top to bottom of the military edifice. No one can know what the result would have been had the will to fight held good in high places, as it did amongst ,the rank and file, but I believe myself that had we stuck by Russia and saved her the world would have been a better and a happier place to-day.”