LATER, when there was leisure, I began to consider the Dardanelles Campaign, not as a tragedy, nor as a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came, more than once, very near to triumph, achieved the impossible many times, and failed, in the end, as many great deeds of arms have failed, from something which had nothing to do with arms nor with the men who bore them.* That the effort failed is not against it; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed. To myself, this failure is the second grand event of the war; the first was Belgium’s answer to the German ultimatum.*
Masefield believed that the original plan had been a two-pronged attack, with the British Empire and France approaching Constantinople from the west simultaneously with Russia from over the Black Sea. Problems with Russia’s Polish front led to her withdrawal, and a late readjustment that left Sir Ian Hamilton and his Allied forces with a nigh impossible task, especially after Bulgaria decided to join the Central Powers.
On August 2nd, 1914, the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II demanded swift passage through Belgium to attack France and achieve European dominion in six weeks, before Tsar Nicholas II’s Russian Empire could mobilise. The Belgians refused, and the following day the German army marched into Belgium.