ADMONITION: 

    Save the food and guard and hoard! 
    Bread is a sword.

    PRAYER: 

    The peasants have sown the seed again. 
    Now gather and pray the prayer of the grain: 
    Earth of our land,
    With arms they cannot overpower us,
    With hunger they would fain devour us,
    Arise thou in thy harvest wrath! 
    Thick grow thy grass, rich the reaper’s path! 
    Dearest soil of earth
    Our prayer hear: 
    Show them of little worth,
    Shame them with blade and ear.

[Illustration:  [map of the Dardanelles]]

THE DARDANELLES

ALLIES’ SECOND CAMPAIGN WITH FLEETS AND LAND FORCES.

The first campaign to force the passage of the Dardanelles by fleet operations alone was suddenly halted on March 19, 1915, when floating mines carried by the swift currents destroyed and sank three battleships.  An appraisal of the real difficulties attendant upon reducing the forts and batteries lining the European and Asiatic shores, which determined the Allies upon their present joint operations by land and sea, is found in the subjoined dispatch, presented in part from E. Ashmead-Bartlett, appearing in The London Daily Telegraph of April 26.  It is followed by full press reports from the Dardanelles describing the difficult landing and establishment of the Allied troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Eastern Mediterranean, April 12.

The days of the Turk in Europe are numbered, but no one will deny that he is dying hard and game.  It came as a disagreeable shock to many to read on the morning of March 19 that two British battleships and one French had been sunk in the Dardanelles, while several others had been hit and damaged.

We were told that the outer forts had been completely destroyed and that the work of mine sweeping had made excellent progress.  This news was given in perfect good faith and was also quite true, but we built up on it too great a structure of hope, but few realizing the immense difficulties the fleet has had to face—­obstacles which do not really commence until the Narrows are approached.  The combined advance of the allied fleet up the Dardanelles on March 18 was not an attempt to pass the Narrows.  It was merely intended as a great demonstration against the forts, in order that the destroyers and sweepers might clear the minefield under cover of the guns of the ships.

This work was carried out in the most gallant manner and was perfectly successful, but unfortunately the further advance had to be abandoned, owing to the sudden and unexpected disasters to three vessels inflicted by drifting mines.  But the price paid cannot be considered too high when one remembers the issues at stake and the vast bearing they may have on the future of the war.  The Turks have always believed the Dardanelles to be impregnable, and this belief has been accepted as the truth by most lay minds until the navy started to put the issue to the test.  Then, for some unknown reason, here came a quite unjustifiable wave of optimism, which swept over the country until the eyes of the public were opened by the events of March 18.