Free A Peace to End all Peace by David Fromkin

themselves and their equipment from Syria to Suez. Kress von Kressenstein, a German engineering officer, dug wells along the route, which enabled them to survive the march through the desert. The time of year, for once, was well chosen: January is the best month in Egypt for avoiding the terrible heat.
    But when the Fourth Army reached the banks of the Suez Canal, Djemal discovered that most of his troops could not use the bridging pontoons that were meant to transport them to the other side. The German engineers had brought the pontoons from Germany, but the troops had not been trained in their use. Djemal ordered the attack to commence nonetheless. Early in the morning of 3 February, while the sky was still half-dark, it began. The British, from behind their fortifications, awoke to discover an Ottoman army on the opposite bank of the enormous ditch; and with their superior weaponry they opened fire upon it. In the battle and the subsequent rout, 2,000 Ottoman troops—about 10 percent of Djemal’s forces—were killed. Djemal ordered a retreat; and kept on going all the way back to Syria. 5
    Turkish generalship became a joke. Aubrey Herbert wrote from Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo to his friend Mark Sykes that the latest Ottoman plan was “that the Turks are to bring thousands of camels down to the Canal and then set a light to their hair. The camel, using its well known reasoning powers, will dash to the Canal to put the fire out. When they have done this in sufficient quantities the Turks will march over them.” 6
    In London the Prime Minister lightly dismissed the Ottoman invasion by saying that “The Turks have been trying to throw a bridge across the Suez Canal & in that ingenious fashion to find a way into Egypt. The poor things & their would-be bridge were blown into smithereens, and they have retired into the desert.” 7
    II
    Enver had assumed that the war would be short, and that it would be decided in a few lightning campaigns. He had neither a plan for a war of attrition nor an understanding of what such a war might entail. He had no gift for organization, no head for logistics, and no patience for administration. As War Minister he thoughtlessly led his country into chaos. 8
    He began by ordering all eligible men throughout the imperial domains to report for induction into the army immediately, bringing with them enough food for three days. When they reported as ordered—which is to say, all at the same time—their numbers dwarfed the conscription offices, which could not deal with so many at once. Having flooded in from the countryside, the draftees ate up their three days’ supply of food and then had nothing to eat. Soon they began to drift away, labeled as deserters, afraid to return either to the conscription offices or to their homes.
    Bringing in the manpower from the countryside ruined what would have been the bountiful harvest of 1914. It set a terrible pattern: throughout the war, the draft of men and pack animals brought famine in good years as well as bad. During the war years, the supply of draft animals fell, horses to 40 percent and oxen and buffaloes to 15 percent of what they had been. The shrinkage in agricultural activity was equally dramatic: cereal acreage was cut in half, and cotton fell to 8 percent of its prewar production level. Control of the scarce supplies of food and other goods became the key to wealth and power. In the sprawling metropolis of Constantinople, a Chicago-style political boss with gangland connections fought against Enver’s General Director of the Commissariat for effective control of the economy.
    The transportation system of the empire was also shattered by the war. In the absence of railroads and usable roads, in the past goods had been mostly shipped by sea. Now the empire’s 5,000 miles of coastline were under the guns of the Allied navies. In the north the Germans and Turks pulled back the Goeben and Breslau for the defense of the Dardanelles,