Children playing 'In the Dardanelles'. From February 19 to March 18, 1915, a Franco-British fleet tried to force its way through the Dardanelles to Constantinople. The Strait was defended by forts, some with modern German artillery. After a failure to break through on March 18, the Allies decided to invade, and in April, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. Illustrated postcard by Pauli Ebner.
In den DardanellenP. Ebner.Reverse:Nr. 992M. Munk WienGeschützt
"The Turkish Government has closed the Straits on the pretext of the presence of an Anglo-French squadron off the entrance to the Dardanelles. This action does incalculable harm to Russia, which is left without maritime communications except by Vladivostok and Archangel. Now it must be remembered that Vladivostok is 10,500 kilometres from Petrograd and that the port of Archangel may be closed by ice any time now until the end of May."
Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Thursday, October 1, 1914. French and British ships had pursued the German battleships Goeben and Breslau across the Mediterranean to the Dardanelles leading to Constantinople and Russia's warm-water ports on the Black Sea. Germany turned the two ships over to Turkey, which was still neutral. Paléologue well describes the limitations of Russia's other major ports other than those of the Baltic Sea where the German fleet threatened.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 151, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
Maurice Paléologue, Paléologue, October, 1914, 1914-10-01, Dardanelles, Vladivostok, Archangel
