To the Colonel everything that he was enthusiastic about was epic and dramatic and “on top.”  Just as he told us that our day was the day and our generation the generation, so now he set out to assure us that Gallipoli was the front.

“If you’ll only get at the IDEAS behind what’s going on at the Helles beaches,” he declared, with a rap on the table, “you’ll be thrilled, boys.”

Then he reminded us that the Dardanelles Straits were the Hellespont of the Ancient world, and the neighbouring AEgean Sea the most mystic of the “wine-dark seas of Greece”:  he retold stories of Jason and the Argonauts; of “Burning Sappho” in Lesbos; of Achilles in Scyros; of Poseidon sitting upon Samothrace to watch the fight at Troy; and of St. John the Divine at Patmos gazing up into the Heavenly Jerusalem.

As he spoke, we were schoolboys again and listened with wide-open, wistful eyes.  From the fender and the hearth-rug, we saw Leander swimming to Hero across the Dardanelles; we saw Darius, the Persian, throwing his bridge over the same narrow passage, only to be defeated at Marathon; and Xerxes, too, bridging the famous straits to carry victory into Greece, till at last his navy went under at Salamis.  We saw the pathetic figure of Byron swimming where Leander swam; and, in all, such an array of visions that the lure of the Eternal Waterway gripped us, and we were a-fidget to be there.

“Have eyes to see this idea also,” said the Colonel, who was a Tory of Tories.  “England dominates Gibraltar and Suez, the doors of the Mediterranean; let her complete her constellation by winning from the Turk the lost star of the Dardanelles, the only other entrance to the Great Sea.”

This roused the jingo devil in us, and we burst into applause.

Knowing thereby that he had won his audience, the Colonel beamed with inspiration.  He rose, as though so enthralling a subject could only be dealt with standing, and cried: 

“See this greater idea.  For 500 years the Turk, by occupying Constantinople, has blocked the old Royal Road to India and the East.  He is astride the very centre of the highways that should link up the continents.  He oppresses and destroys the Arab world, which should be the natural junction of the great trunk railways that, to-morrow, shall join Asia, Africa, and Europe in one splendid spider’s web.  You are going to move the block from the line, and to join the hands of the continents.  Understand, and be enthusiastic.  I tell you, this joining of the continents is an unborn babe of history that leapt in the womb the moment the British battleships appeared off Cape Helles.”

“By Jove, the Colonel’s great!” thought I, as my heart jumped at his magnificent words.  “Where are his scoffers to-day?  He’s come into his own.”  Lord, how small my little vanities seemed now!  A fig for them all!  I was going out to build history.  The Colonel had one at least who was with him to the death.