Sir Christopher Cradock.
By JOHN E. DOLSON.
Through the fog of the fight we could dimly see,
As ever the flame from the big guns flashed,
That Cradock was doomed, yet his men and he,
With their plates shot to junk, and their turrets smashed,
Their ship heeled over, her funnels gone,
Were fearlessly, doggedly fighting on.
Out-speeded, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot
By heavier guns, they were not out-fought.
Those men—with the age-old British phlegm,
That has conquered and held the seas for them,
And the courage that causes the death-struck man
To rise on his mangled stumps and try,
With one last shot from his heated gun,
To score a hit ere his spirit fly,
Then sink in the welter of red, and die
With the sighting squint fixed on his dead, glazed eye—
Accepted death as part of the plan.
So the guns belched flame till the fight had run
Into night; and now, in the distance dim,
We could see, by the flashes, the dull, dark loom
Of their hull, as it bore toward the Port of Doom,
Away on the water's misty rim—
Cradock and his few hundred men,
Never, in time, to be seen again.
While into the darkness their great shells streamed,
Little the valiant Germans dreamed
That Cradock was teaching them how to go
When the fate their daring, itself, had sealed,
Waiting, as yet, o'er the ocean's verge,
To their eyes undaunted would stand revealed;
And, snared by a swifter, stronger foe,
Out-classed, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot
By heavier guns, but not out-fought,
They, too, would sink in the sheltering surge.
Battle of the Suez Canal
A First-Hand Account of the Unsuccessful Turkish Invasion
[From The London Times, Feb. 19, 1915.]
ISMAILIA, Feb. 10.
Though skirmishing had taken place between the enemy's reconnoitring parties and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water, with one or two rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame. All was ready for the attack.
The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a mountain battery, who heard, to him, an unknown tongue across the water. The noise soon increased. It would seem that Mudjah Ideen ("Holy Warriors")—said to be mostly old Tripoli fighters—accompanied the pontoon section and regulars of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, for loud exhortations often in Arabic of "Brothers die for the faith; we can die but once," betrayed the enthusiastic irregular.
The Egyptians waited till the Turks were pushing their boats into the water; then the Maxims attached to the battery suddenly spoke and the guns opened with case at point-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the steep bank opposite them.
Immediately, a violent fire broke out on both sides of the canal, the enemy replying to the rifles and machine gun fire and the battery on our bank. Around the guns it was impossible to stand up, but the gunners stuck to the work, inflicting terrible punishment.
A little torpedo boat with a crew of thirteen patrolling the canal dashed up and landed a party of four officers and men to the south of Tussum, who climbed up the eastern bank and found themselves in a Turkish trench, and escaped by a miracle with the news. Promptly the midget dashed in between the fires and enfiladed the eastern bank amid a hail of bullets, and destroyed several pontoon boats lying unlaunched on the bank. It continued to harass the enemy, though two officers and two men were wounded.
As the dark, cloudy night lightened toward dawn fresh forces came into action. The Turks, who occupied the outer, or day, line of the Tussum post, advanced, covered by artillery, against the Indian troops holding the inner, or night, position, while an Arab regiment advanced against the Indian troops at the Serapeum post.
The warships on the canal and lake joined in the fray. The enemy brought some six batteries of field guns into action from the slopes west of Kataib-el-Kheil. Shells admirably fused made fine practice at all the visible targets, but failed to find the battery above mentioned, which, with some help from a detachment of infantry, beat down the fire of the riflemen on the opposite bank and inflicted heavy losses on the hostile supports advancing toward the canal. A chance salvo wounded four men of the battery, but it ran more risk from a party of about twenty of the enemy who had crossed the canal in the dark and sniped the gunners from the rear till they were finally rounded up by the Indian cavalry and compelled to surrender.
Supported by land naval artillery the Indian troops took the offensive. The Serapeum garrison, which had stopped the enemy three-quarters of a mile from the position, cleared its front, and the Tussum garrison by a brilliant counter-attack drove the enemy back. Two battalions of Anatolians of the Twenty-eighth Regiment were thrown vainly into the fight. Our artillery gave them no chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel.
Meanwhile the warships on the lake had been in action. A salvo from a battleship woke up Ismailia early, and crowds of soldiers and some civilians climbed every available sandhill to see what was doing till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to convince them that it was safer to watch from cover. A husband and wife took a carriage and drove along the lake front, much peppered by shells, till near the old French hospital, when they realized the danger and suddenly whisked around and drove back full gallop to Ismailia.
But the enemy's fire did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below when the firing opened and lost a leg. Nine others were wounded. One or two merchantmen were hit, but no lives were lost. A British gunboat was struck.
Then came a dramatic duel between the Turkish big gun or guns and a warship. The Turks fired just over and then just short of 9,000 yards. The warship sent in a salvo of more six-inch shells than had been fired that day.
During the morning the enemy moved toward Ismailia Ferry. The infantry used the ground well, digging shelter pits as they advanced, and were covered by a well-served battery. An officer, apparently a German, exposed himself with the greatest daring, and watchers were interested to see a yellow "pie dog," which also escaped, running about the advancing line. Our artillery shot admirably and kept the enemy from coming within 1,000 yards of the Indian outposts. In the afternoon the demonstration—for it was no more—ceased but for a few shells fired as "a nightcap." During the dark night that followed some of the enemy approached the outpost line of the ferry position with a dog, but nothing happened, and day found them gone.
At the same time as the fighting ceased at the ferry it died down at El Kantara. There the Turks, after a plucky night attack, came to grief on our wire entanglements. Another attempt to advance from the southeast was forced back by an advance of the Indian troops. The attack, during which it was necessary to advance on a narrow front over ground often marshy with recent inundations against our strong position, never had a chance. Indeed, the enemy was only engaged with our outpost line.
Late in the afternoon of the 3d there was sniping from the east bank between Tussum and Serapeum and a man was killed in the tops of a British battleship. Next morning the sniping was renewed, and the Indian troops, moving out to search the ground, found several hundred of the enemy in the hollow previously mentioned. During the fighting some of the enemy, either by accident or design, held up their hands, while others fired on the Punjabis, who were advancing to take the surrender, and killed a British officer. A sharp fight with the cold steel followed, and a British officer killed a Turkish officer with a sword thrust in single combat. The body of a German officer with a white flag was afterward found here, but there is no proof that the white flag was used. Finally all the enemy were killed, captured, or put to flight.
With this the fighting ended, and the subsequent operations were confined to "rounding up" prisoners and to the capture of a considerable amount of military material left behind. The Turks who departed with their guns and baggage during the night of the 3d still seemed to be moving eastward.
So ended the battle of the Suez Canal. Our losses have been amazingly small, totaling about 111 killed and wounded.
Showing the Turkish points of concentration in Palestine and the principal routes leading thence to the Suez Canal. The intervening desert Peninsula of Sinai constitutes a formidable obstacle to an invading force. Inset is a map of the Ottoman Empire showing in the northeast the Caucasus, where the Turks were routed by the Russians, who later advanced on Erzerum and Tabriz. The British expedition in the Persian Gulf region occupied Basra and was on Feb. 1, 1915, at Kurna, the point of confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Our opponents have probably lost nearly 3,000 men. The Indian troops bore the brunt of the fighting and were well supported by the British and French warships and by the Egyptian troops. The Turks fought bravely and their artillery shot well if unluckily, but the intentions of the higher command are still a puzzle to British officers.
Did Djemal Pasha intend to try to break through our position under cover of demonstrations along a front over ninety miles in length with a total force, perhaps, of 25,000 men, or was he attempting a reconnoissance in force? If the former is the case, he must have had a low idea of British leadership or an amazing belief in the readiness and ability of sympathizers in Egypt to support the Turk. Certainly he was misinformed as to our positions, and on the 4th we buried on the eastern bank the bodies of two men, apparently Syrians or Egyptians, who were found with their hands tied and their eyes bandaged. Probably they were guides who had been summarily killed, having unwittingly led the enemy astray. If, on the other hand, Djemal Pasha was attempting a reconnoissance, it was a costly business and gave General Wilson a very handsome victory.
Till the last week of January there had been some doubt as to the road by which the Ottoman Commander in Chief in Syria intended to advance on the canal. Before the end of the month it was quite clear that what was then believed to be the Turkish advanced guard, having marched with admirable rapidity from Beersheba via El Auja, Djebel Libni, and Djifjaffa, was concentrating in the valleys just east of Kataib-el-Kheil, a group of hills lying about ten miles east of the canal, where it enters Lake Timsah. A smaller column detached from this force was sighted in the hills east of Ismailia Ferry. Smaller bodies had appeared in the neighborhood of El Kantara and between Suez and the Bitter Lakes.
The attacks on our advanced posts at El Kantara on the night of Jan. 26 and 27, and at Kubri, near Suez, on the following night, were beaten off. Hostile guns fired occasional shells, while our warships returned the compliment at any hostile column that seemed to offer a good target, and our aeroplanes dropped bombs when they had the chance; but in general the enemy kept a long distance off and was tantalizing. Our launches and boats, which were constantly patrolling the canal, could see him methodically intrenching just out of range of the naval guns.
By the night of Feb. 1 the enemy had prepared his plan of attack. To judge both from his movements during the next two days and the documents found on prisoners and slain, it was proposed to attack El Kantara while making a demonstration at El Ferdan, further south, and prevent reinforcements at the first-named post. The demonstration at Ismailia Ferry by the right wing of the Kataib-el-Kheil force which had been partly refused till then in order to prevent a counter-attack from the ferry, was designed to occupy the attention of the Ismailia garrison, while the main attack was delivered between the Tussum post, eight miles south of Ismailia, and the Serapeum post, some three miles further south. Eshref Bey's highly irregular force in the meantime was to demonstrate near Suez.
The selection of the Tussum and Serapeum section as the principal objective was dictated both by the consideration that success here would bring the Turks a few miles from Ismailia, and by the information received from patrols that the west bank of the canal between the posts, both of which may be described as bridgeheads, were unoccupied by our troops. The west bank between the posts is steep and marked by a long, narrow belt of trees. The east bank also falls steeply to the canal, but behind it are numerous hollows, full of brushwood, which give good cover. Here the enemy's advanced parties established themselves and intrenched before the main attack was delivered.
A Full-Fledged Socialist State
While Germany's Trade and Credit Are Holding Their Breath
By J. Laurence Laughlin
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 9, 1915.]
Professor Laughlin, who makes the following remarkable study of the German financial emergency, was lecturer on political economy in Berlin on the invitation of the Prussian Cultur Ministerium in 1906, and since 1892 has been head of the Department of Political Economy in the University of Chicago. He is acknowledged to be one of the foremost American economists and the views here expressed are based on wide information.
In a great financial emergency conditions are immediately registered in the monetary and credit mechanism. Although the German Government and the Reichsbank had obviously been preparing for war long before, as soon as mobilization was ordered there was a currency panic. The private banks stopped payment in gold. Crowds then besieged the Reichsbank in order to get its notes converted into gold. Then the Banking act was suspended, so that the Reichsbank and private banks were freed from the obligation to give out gold for notes. At once all notes went to a discount in the shops as compared with gold. Thereupon, in summary fashion, the Military Governor of Berlin declared the notes to be a full legal tender and announced that any shop refusing to take them at par would be punished by confiscation of goods.
In Germany, as is well known, the main currency is supplied by the Reichsbank, covered by at least 33-1/3 per cent. in gold or silver, and the remaining two-thirds by commercial paper. Immediately after the outbreak of war there was a prodigious increase of loans at the Reichsbank, in consequence of which borrowers received notes or deposit accounts. Usually transactions are carried through by use of notes, and not by checks, as with us. On July 23, 1914, the notes stood at $472,500,000; deposits at $236,000,000; discounted bills and advances at $200,000,000. On Aug. 31 notes had increased to $1,058,500,000; deposits to $610,000,000; discounts and advances to $1,113,500,000, (by October this amount was lowered to about $750,000,000.) On the latter date the specie reserve stood at $409,500,000, or more than the legal one-third. Loans had been increased 556 per cent.; notes 223 per cent., and deposits 258 per cent. In short, $586,000,000 of notes had been issued beyond the amount required in normal times, (July 23.) Clearly this additional amount was not required by an increased exchange of goods, but by those persons whose resources were tied up and who needed a means of payment. The same was true of the large increase of deposits which resulted from the larger loans. A liberal policy of discounting was followed by which loans were given on the basis of securities or stocks of goods on hand. That is, non-negotiable assets were converted into a means of payment either in the form of notes or deposit credits.
At this juncture there was created a currency something after the fashion of the Aldrich-Vreeland emergency notes in this country. War credit banks were established by law to issue notes (Darlehnskassenscheine) in denominations of 10, 15, 20, and 50 marks as loans on stocks in trade and securities of all kinds, and were charged 6-1/2 per cent. interest. The goods on which these notes could be issued were not removed, but stamped with a Government seal. While not a legal tender, the notes were receivable at all imperial agencies. On securities classed at the Reichsbank as Class I. loans could be made up to 60 per cent. of their value as of July 31; as Class II., 40 per cent.; on the other German securities bearing a fixed rate of return, 50 per cent.; on other German securities bearing a varying rate of return, 40 per cent.; on Russian securities, a lower percentage. These institutions, therefore, took up some of the burden that would otherwise have fallen on the loan item of the Reichsbank. Hence the Reichsbank account does not show the whole situation.
To this point the methods followed were much the same as in London. Then came unusual happenings. In London for a few days the banks had wavered as to maintaining gold payments, but only temporarily. In Berlin drastic measures were undertaken to accumulate gold in the Reichsbank. Vienna reports it to be well known that Germany had been for eighteen months before straining every nerve to obtain gold. Whatever sums of gold were included in the so-called "war chest" in Spandau (said to be $30,000,000) were also deposited with the Reichsbank. Gold was even smuggled across the borders of Holland on the persons of spies. Urgent demands were made upon the people to turn in gold from patriotic motives. In this way over $400,000,000 of gold was gathered by July, 1914; and by the end of the year, after five months of war, it had risen to $523,000,000. Was Germany to maintain gold payments as well as Great Britain?
Evidently not. Gold was not given for notes on presentation. For purposes of exchanging goods the notes were in excess. Inconvertible, they must go to a discount with gold or with the money of outside countries using gold. But in order to get imports from other nations, like Holland, Scandinavia, and Denmark, Germany must either send goods, or gold, or securities. German industries, except those making war supplies, were not producing over 25 per cent. of capacity, and many were closed. The Siemens-Schuckert Works, even before the Landsturm was called out, lost 40 per cent. of their men on mobilization. The Humboldt Steel Works, near Cologne, employing 4,000 men, were closed early in August, as were nearly all the great iron works in the district between Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Probably 50 to 75 per cent. of the workers were called to the colors. The skilled artisans were in the army or in munition factories; the railways were in the hands of the military; and the merchant marine was shut up in home or foreign ports. There were said to be 1,500 idle ships in Hamburg alone. Few goods could be exported. Gold was refused for export, of course. A serious liquidation in foreign securities had been going on long before the war. Some foreign securities must have still remained. However that may be, a claim to funds in Germany (i.e., a bill drawn on Germany) was not redeemable in gold, and it fell in price. In normal times a bill could not fall below the shipping point in gold, (par with us for 4 marks is 95-1/4 cents in gold;) but, since gold could not be sent, exchange on Germany could fall to any figure, set only by a declining demand. Already bills on Germany have been quoted in New York at 82, showing a depreciation of German money in the international field of about 13 per cent. Likewise, as early as the first week of September, the Reichsbank notes were reported at a discount of 20 per cent., and as practically non-negotiable in a neighboring country like Holland.
The inevitable consequence of a depreciated currency must be a rise of prices, usually greater than the actual percentage of depreciation. To meet this situation there came a device possible in no other commercial country. The Government fixed prices at which goods could be sold. This mediaeval device could be enforced only in a land where such State interference had been habitual, and, of course, could give to the notes the fictitious purchasing power only inside the country. After the Christian Science fashion, one had only to believe the notes were of value to make them so; but in the cold world outside German jurisdiction their value would be gauged by the chances of getting gold for them. Here, then, we find Germany in all the mazes of our ancient "greenbackism," but still in possession of a large stock of gold. As soon as the war ends she may be able to return to gold payments at an early date—very much as did France after the ordeal of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871.
In the present war conditions, however, largely cut off from other countries, (except some small trade with Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and the like,) all ordinary relations which would influence German credit and industry must be counted out. There is no comparison of her prices and money with those of other countries in a free market, or with even a limited transportation of exports and imports. All commercial measurements are suspended for the time. Trade and credit are holding their breath. How long can they do it? Germany may have food enough; but how long can the stoppage of industry go on?
Moreover, attention must be called to one momentous thing. We are seeing today, under military law, the greatest experiment in socialism ever witnessed. All wealth, income, industry, capital, and labor are in the direct control and use of a military State. Food, everything, may be taken and distributed in common. I think never before in history have we had such a gigantic, full-fledged illustration of socialism in actual operation.
In the meanwhile, even though food may be provided, the reduction of industry in general has cut incomes right and left. That is, fewer goods are produced and exchanged. But goods are the basis of all credit. The less the goods exchanged, the less the credit operations. Nevertheless, the extraordinary issues of banknotes, the increase of deposits, as a result of quintupling the loans, means that former commitments in goods and securities cannot be liquidated. That is, the enormous increase of bank liabilities, to a considerable and unknown percentage, is not supported by liquid assets. These assets are "canned." Will they keep sweet? There is no new business, no foreign trade, sufficient to take up old obligations and renew those which are unpayable. Lessened incomes mean lessened consumption and lessened demand for goods. Hence the credit system is based on an uncertain and insecure foundation, dependent wholly upon contingencies far in the future which may, or may not, take the non-liquid assets out of cold storage and give them their original value.
Moreover, apart from definite destruction of wealth and capital in the war—which must be enormous, as represented by the national loans—the losses from not doing business in all main industries during the whole period of the war (except in making war supplies) must be very great. As it affects the income and expenditure of the working classes, it may be roughly measured by the great numbers of unemployed. If they are used on public works, their income is made up from taxes on the wealth of others. Luxuries will disappear, and not be produced or imported. Incomes expressed in goods, or material satisfactions, have been diminished—which is of no serious consequence, if they cover the minimum of actual subsistence. The prolongation of the war will, then, depend on the ability to provide the supplies for war.
The need for a medium of exchange is oversupplied. The lack is in the goods to be exchanged. The enormous extension of German note issues does not, and can not, diminish. In this country the expansion of credit and money immediately after the war (manifested by the issue of Clearing House certificates and emergency banknotes) has been cleared away by liquidation. In Germany the "canned" assets behind the depreciated currency cannot be liquidated until the end of the war. And their worth at that time will depend much on the future course of the war and the terms of peace. If German territory should be overrun and the tangible forms of capital in factories and fixed capital be destroyed, much of the liquidation might be indefinitely prolonged. Whatever of foreign trade is permanently lost would also increase the difficulties.
In a great financial emergency nearly every country has, at one time or another, been tempted to confuse the monetary with the fiscal functions of the Treasury. To borrow by the issue of money seems to have a seductive charm hard to resist. Lloyd George established a new precedent for Great Britain by issuing nearly $200,000,000 of Government currency notes, but this was done to provide notes for the public instead of coin (£1 and 10s.) and made unnecessary any emergency issues by the Bank of England, and a large gold fund has been accumulated behind them so that they are convertible. In Germany it does not seem likely that the Treasury notes will be largely used (having increased from $16,500,000 to about $200,000,000) as a means of borrowing, since the new loans are being issued in terms of longer maturities.
J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN.