Free Gallipoli by Peter Fitzsimons

old men, including one seasoned veteran, were seen with tears trickling down their cheeks, whilst several women had handkerchiefs applied to their weeping eyes.’ 46
    Down at the Wairoa, as The Nelson Evening Mail would report, ‘natives assembled at the Land Court called on Judge Jones to explain the European crisis. They thereupon passed a resolution offering their services to the Government for the defence of the Empire.’ 47
    And then something more. After hearing the explanation, this fine body of Maori men conducted a haka , a war cry from the ages, for the ages.
    If there is to be a world battle, then New Zealand will be there with the best of them.
    New Zealand’s offer is contingent on its soldiers serving in a combined force with the Australians – something that has been under discussion in case of war since 1912 – but that is no problem, as both Australia and Great Britain quickly agree to it.
    6 AUGUST 1914, LONDON, FISHER FIZZES
    When the news breaks of Goeben ’s escape from the clutches of Admiral Milne’s British Mediterranean Fleet, no one is more outraged than the irascible Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord. A curmudgeonly 73-year-old, around so long that the first Royal Navy ship he’d joined had been wooden and powered by sail – now brought back from retirement to help young Winston Churchill with the Admiralty – he floats the idea that Admiral Milne should be shot. (Shades of Voltaire’s famous observation of the English: ‘ Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres . – In this country, it is good, from time to time, to kill one admiral in order to encourage the others.’) 48
    Milne, and the Commander of the Fleet’s Mediterranean Cruiser Squadron, Rear-Admiral Troubridge, have made a right cock up of things. This is the Admiral who had once infamously declared, ‘They pay me to be an Admiral; they don’t pay me to think,’ 49 and he has now proved the point. Goeben and its little sister ship Breslau had been heading back east, having completed token sorties against the Algerian coastal towns of Philippeville and Bona, when vessels under Troubridge’s command encountered them. War having yet to be declared between Britain and Germany, all Milne could do was to order the tracking of these soon-to-be enemy ships, which somehow managed to give their pursuers the slip before re-coaling in the Strait of Messina.
    In the interim, now on a war footing, one First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, would have thought it a simple matter of tightly patrolling either end of the Strait and trapping Goeben and Breslau like ships in a bottle. For reasons best left for Troubridge to explain at his court martial, as a result of a series of miscommunications, poor decisions and pea-heartedness, Goeben and Breslau had made good their escape, last seen heading east …
    7 AUGUST 1914, THE WAR CLOUDS DARKEN OVER CONSTANTINOPLE
    Over the past week, the people of the Ottoman Empire have greeted each new morning with prayers, followed by the latest news of the war from Europe. For readers of the popular Ikdam newspaper, their first intimation of war had been on 29 July, with the headline:
    Declaration of War
    The Austrian Government declares war on Serbia. 50
    On 3 August, even more unsettling news:
    Germany declares war on Russia. France declares war on Germany. 51
    And so each day brings more news of escalating conflict. Chatter outside the mosques, in the barber shops, the bookshops and cafes, on fishing boats, rooftops and street corners is dominated by the rising tensions in Europe … as they all speculate on the real question: what is to be the Ottoman Empire’s place in all of this?
    As news of war slowly trickles east, from the Empire’s ancient cosmopolitan centres along rickety, rocky roads leading to the villages of Anatolia and beyond, the tales grow twisted and