Supported by land and 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 into the fight, but the 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 sand hill to see what was doing, till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to convince them that it was safer to watch from cover.
At about eleven in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. They 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, at 9,000 yards. The warship sent in a salvo of more six-inch shells than had been fired that day.
Late in the afternoon of the 3d there was sniping from the east bank between Tussum and Serapeum, and a man was killed on 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 fight 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. A 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 the rounding up of prisoners, and 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.
Two more incidents in the Turkish campaign remain to be noticed. Report having come that the town of Akaba on the Red Sea was being used as a mine-laying station, H. M. S. Minerva visited the place, and found it occupied by soldiers under a German officer. The Minerva destroyed the fort and the barracks and the government buildings. Another British cruiser, with a detachment of Indian troops, captured the Turkish fort at Sheik Said, at the southern end of the Red Sea. And so for the time ended all Turkish movements against Great Britain. That such movements should have been possible seems hard to believe. For a century the British had been the friends and allies of the Turkish Government. In the Crimean War their armies had fought side by side with the Turkish troops against Russia. In the Russo-Turkish War Lord Beaconsfield, in the negotiations which preceded the treaty of Berlin, had saved for Turkey much of its territory. It was only the British influence and the fear of the British power which had prevented Russia from taking possession of Constantinople a half a century before. The English had always been popular in Turkey and there was every reason at the beginning of the war to believe that their popularity had not waned. There is reason to believe that the average Turk had little sympathy with the course of his government, and if a free expression of the popular will had been possible the Turkish army would never have been sent against either the Englishmen or the Frenchmen. But long years of German propaganda had done their work. The power of Enver Pasha was greater than that of the weakling Sultan and the war was forced upon the Turkish people by German tools and German bribes.
CHAPTER III
Rescue of the Starving
THE sufferings of Belgium during the German occupation were terrible, and attracted the attention and the sympathy of the whole world. To understand conditions it is necessary to know something of the economic situation. Since it had come under the protection of the Great Powers, Belgium had developed into one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the world. Nearly two million of her citizens were employed in the great industries, and one million two hundred thousand on the farms. She was peaceful, industrious and happy. But on account of the fact that more than one-half of her citizenship earned their living by daily labor she found it impossible to produce foodstuff enough for her own needs. Seventy-eight per cent of her breadstuffs had to be imported. From her own fields she could hardly supply her population for more than four months.
The war, and the German occupation, almost destroyed business. Mines, workshops, factories and mills were closed. Labor found itself without employment and consequently without wages. The banks would extend no credit. But even if there had been money enough it soon became apparent that the food supply was rapidly going. The German invasion had come when the crops were standing ripe upon the field. Those crops had not been reaped, but had been trampled under foot by the hated German.
One feature of Belgian industrial life should be understood. Hundreds of thousands of her workmen were employed each day in workshops at considerable distances from their own homes. In times of peace the morning and evening trains were always crowded with laborers going to and returning from their daily toil. One of the first things seized upon by the German officials was the railroads, and it was with great difficulty that anyone, not belonging to the German army, could obtain an opportunity to travel at all, and it was with still greater difficulty that supplies of food of any kind could be transported from place to place. Every village was cut off from its neighbor, every town from the next town. People were unable even to obtain news of the great political events which were occurring from day to day, and the food supply was automatically cut off.
But this was not the worst. One of the first moves of the German occupation was to quarter hundreds of thousands of troops upon their Belgian victims, and these troops must be fed even though the Belgian and his family were near starvation. Then followed the German seizure of what they called materials for war. General von Beseler in a despatch to the Kaiser, after the fall of Antwerp, speaks very plainly: