With Bulgaria joining the Central Powers in October 1915 assuring the defeat of Serbia by the end of November, the Balkanzug — the Balkan Railway, shown in red — connected Berlin and Constantinople. By the second week of November, Turkey received ammunition and weapons from its allies.
Vierbund-TreubundQuadruple Alliance-True AllianceReverse:Message dated February 28, 1916, and postmarked the next day.Logo: ErikaNr. 5448
"Sazonov has shown me a letter he has just received from a student at Kazan. It runs as follows:'Your Excellency,'I have not the honour of knowing you. I am about to join the army. If this war is to bring us Constantinople, I will die twenty times, and gladly. But if we are not to have Constantinople, I will die but once, with death in my heart! I beg your Excellency to reply with a simple 'yes' or 'no' on the enclosed postcard, on which I have given my name and address.'"
Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Sunday, October 25, 1914. Sergei Sazonov was the Russian Foreign Minister. As the historical center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Constantinople held cultural and religious significance for Russia. As the gateway to the Straits leading from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the city was critical to Russia's commerce and war effort. In his memoirs, Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, writes of a February 24, 1915 encounter with the monk Rasputin in which the latter laments the enormous human suffering the war was visiting on the Russian people. After Paléologue confirms that Russia will be rewarded with Constantinople after victory, Raputin responds: ''Then the Russian people won't regret having suffered so much, and will be willing to suffer more.'
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 172, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
1914-10-25, 1914, October, Paléologue, Constantinople
