EVACUATION OF GALLIPOLI.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 May 1916, Page 2

EVACUATION OF GALLIPOLI.

A GERM AX STORY. (From Our Own Correspondent), Wellington, April 23. The Minister lor Defence has received from Egypt a translation of ail article that appeared in the German newspaper, Vossische Zeitung, on January 21 last relating to' the evacuation or Gallipoli Peninsula. The article contained the following paragraphs:— The ground of the peninsula can, when the attackers are, as was on this occasion the case, obliged almost entirely to depend upon infantry fighting, only to '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 Ohe conquest of the beaches and the first line of the hills, for so far the attackers had got, the English had gained nothing. He would then, under the infantry (ire 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 tlie struggle, and about the middle of December had prepared their r»treat in—this praise must bo accorded them—an absolutely admirable manner. As long as wars exist, their evacuation of the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts will stand before the eyes of all strategists of retreat as an hitherto quite unattained masterpiece. A repetition of this tour do force, however, according to the s'hort 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.