The country reminded one of parts of our own West—­brown hills, with sparse pines and scrub-oaks, meadows ablaze with scarlet poppies, and over all blue sky, sunshine, and the breeze from the near-by sea.  We passed camel trains, mule trains, horses, and tents masked with brush.  Here evidently were the men we had seen marching day after day through the Constantinople streets—­marching away to war in the silent Eastern fashion, without a waving handkerchief, a girl to say good-by to, or a cheer.  Here they were and yet here they weren’t, for the brush and tangled hills swallowed them up as thoroughly as armies are swallowed up in the villages of Belgium and France.

We passed even these signs of war and came into pines and open meadows—­ we might have been driving to somebody’s trout preserve.  The wagon stopped near a sign tacked to a tree, and we walked down a winding path into a thicket of pines.  There were tents set in the bank and covered with boughs, and out of one came a tall, square-jawed German officer, buttoning his coat.  He waved aside our passports with the air of one not concerned with such details, asked if we spoke German—­or perhaps we would prefer French?—­and, motioning down the path to a sort of summer-house with a table and chairs, told an orderly to bring tea.

This was the headquarters of the Fifth Army, and this the commander-in-chief.  A bird-man might have flown over the neighborhood a dozen times without guessing that they were there.  We were hidden in the pines, and only an occasional far-off Br-r-rum-m! from the cannons in the south broke the stillness.  Some one had brought up a cask of native claret from Chanak, and the field-marshal’s staff were helping to put it into the bank in front of the arbor.  A professor of chemistry—­until the war called him back to the colors—­was shovelling and showing the Turkish soldiers how the cask should be slanted; another of the superintendents had lived for ten years in America, and was enthusiastic over the charms and future of Davenport, Iowa.  Presently tea came, and thin little sandwiches and cigars, and over these the commander-in-chief spoke with complete cheerfulness of the general situation.

The English and French could not force the Dardanelles; no more could they advance on land, and now that the submarines had arrived, the fleet, which had been bothersome, would be taken care of.  He spoke with becoming sorrow of the behavior of Italy, and did not mar this charming little fete champetre with any remarks about American shipments of arms.  The ex-banker from Davenport also spoke of the Italians, and with a rather disconcerting vigor, considering that they were recent allies.  The young aide-de-camp whom we had seen at the wharf declared that the Turkish soldier was the best in the world.  It was a very different army from that which had been defeated in the Balkan War, and the endurance and tenacity of the individual soldier were beyond anything he had ever seen.  A man would see a dozen of his comrades killed alongside him by a high-explosive shell and only shrug his shoulders and say that now, at any rate, they were all in paradise.