CHAPTER XIX
A FIGHT FOR THREE THOUSAND CIVILIANS
ON THE second of May, 1915, Enver sent his aide to the American Embassy, bringing a message which he requested me to transmit to the French and British governments. About a week before this visit the Allies had landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. They had evidently concluded that a naval attack by itself could not destroy the defenses and open the road to Constantinople, and they had now adopted the alternative plan of despatching large bodies of troops, to be supported by the guns of their warships. Already many thousands of Australians and New Zealanders had entrenched themselves at the tip of the peninsula, and the excitement that prevailed in Constantinople was almost as great as that which had been caused by the appearance of the fleet two months before.
Enver now informed me that the Allied ships were bombarding in reckless fashion, and ignoring the well-established international rule that such bombardments should be directed only against fortified places; British and French shells, he said, were falling everywhere, destroying unprotected Moslem villages and killing hundreds of innocent non-combatants. Enver asked me to inform the Allied governments that such activities must immediately cease. He had decided to collect all the British and French citizens who were then
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