Gallipoli (4 page)

By mid-1914, Enver's control over what is left of the Ottoman Empire is complete, as he is the most powerful man in the Ottoman Government and armed forces.

And yet, even now, in Australia, there is not the slightest apprehension that the Dardanelles and the Ottoman Empire will become the focus of the entire nation's attention, before 12 months have passed.

How did it all change so quickly?

I told you. Therein lies a tale …

10.15 AM, 28 JUNE 1914, SARAJEVO, BOSNIA, A SHOT IS HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

On this bright, shining morning, the heir to the Emperor of Austria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, are in an open-topped limousine, magisterially gliding down a street in Sarajevo. They are here on an official visit to this far-flung outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all too aware that there is tension in the air, that many Bosnian Serbs wish the Serbian regions of Bosnia to follow the Kingdom of Serbia and break away from the Empire.

It is the 14th wedding anniversary of their wonderfully happy marriage and both are thrilled to be able to simply sit beside each other, for once, in public. As Sophie was not born a royal, this is not allowed back in Vienna, but here the two can hold hands and there is no one to complain. Their motorcade glides on; the crowds press forward and cheer.

And then it happens …

Seemingly from out of nowhere, a young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, trained in assassination by members of the Black Hand movement, charges towards them with a pistol in his hand. Though dying of tuberculosis, Princip is intent on doing his bit for Bosnia before he bows out and … he fires two shots.

On the vehicle's running board, bodyguard Franz von Harrach hears the shots and, the next thing he knows, a thin stream of blood has spurted from the Archduke's mouth and splattered his own right cheek. The Duchess rises and cries out to her beloved husband, ‘
Was ist mit dir passiert?
– What has happened to you?'
³

And yet, no sooner has she said that than she too reels, bleeding from a terrible wound in her abdomen. Now she collapses onto the floor of the car, with her face between the Archduke's knees.

The Archduke gurgles to his beloved, stricken wife, ‘
Sopherl, Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder!
– Sophie dear! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!'
⁴

The bodyguard gathers himself, seizes the Archduke by the collar of his uniform to stop his head dropping forward and asks him whether he is in great pain. Franz Ferdinand answers quietly but quite distinctly, ‘
Es ist nichts
. – It's nothing.' A pause, and then he repeats the phrase six more times – ‘
Es ist nichts … It's nothing … It's nothing … It's nothing … It's … nothing … It's … … nothing …
' – ever more weakly, as his face begins to contort. It is almost as if he is really trying to convince himself that repeating it would make it so, but it is not to be …

Because only a few moments after he stops saying it, there is a violent choking sound caused by the bleeding. Both he and his wife die shortly afterwards.

Things soon take on a momentum all their own. For it is the strong view of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand cannot go unavenged, and at 6 pm on 23 July it gives Serbia a list of ten severe demands that must be agreed to within 48 hours, or else war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is well aware that Serbian Army officers formed the Black Hand. Together with the National Defence Society, formed by Serbian Government members, it aims to bite off the Serbian pieces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Sachertorte. The assassination provides the Empire with the opportunity to stop them once and for all.

Afraid of the consequences of invasion by a much superior force, the Serbian Government agrees to almost all of the Empire's ultimatums. However, Serbia insists that it cannot agree to the demands regarding the limitation of freedom of speech or freedom of the press, nor can it allow Austro-Hungarian agents to participate in the investigation of the assassination. ‘Part of your demands we have accepted,' Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić explains in a note to the Austrian Ambassador Baron Vladimir von Giesl. ‘For the rest, we place our hopes on your loyalty and chivalry as an Austrian general.'
⁵

Austria's reply is not long in coming.

At 11 am on 28 July 1914, Austria declares war on Serbia. That very evening, three of her warships sail down the Danube and fire salvo after salvo of shells into Serbian fortifications at the Zemun-Belgrade railway bridge, just three miles north of Belgrade. So the Serbs wish to fire bullets at an Austrian Archduke? Then Austria will fire
shells
onto the capital of the Serbs!

It is, of course, a catalyst for cataclysm, the one move that makes Europe's two armed camps of complex alliances take up their arms, put on their marching boots and start to move against each other. For with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, can Russia stand by and see the Serbs, blood of its Slavic blood – its military and spiritual ally – under such outrageous attack?

It cannot.

On 30 July, Tsar Nicholas II orders mobilisation of troops on the Russo-Austrian front, deploying four armies against the Austro-Hungarian frontier, with a total of 700,000 Russian soldiers now on the move …

Can Germany stand by and see Russia march on the flesh of its flesh, its greatest ally to beat them all, Austria-Hungary?

It cannot. And it, too, now mobilises.

Britain, of course, watches such events closely, and none more so than the First Lord of the Admiralty – the politician in charge of the British Navy – Winston Churchill.

Yes, yes, yes, the prospect of war is nominally appalling, and Churchill pays lip service to that notion in a note to his wife, Clementine, but, still, he cannot help himself. ‘I am interested, geared up and happy,' he writes to her in a letter from the Admiralty. ‘Is it not horrible to be built like that? The preparations have a hideous fascination for me. I pray to God to forgive me for such fearful moods of levity …

‘Kiss those kittens & be loved for ever only by me

‘Your own

‘W.'
⁶

A war! A real
war
! And he, as First Lord of the Admiralty, able to move the fleet around nearly at will!

The next day, the Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm II, appears on the balcony of his Berlin palace. ‘A momentous hour has struck for Germany,' he tells the great crowd. ‘Envious rivals everywhere force us to legitimate defence … Go to church. Kneel down before God, and ask him for help for our brave army!'
⁷

Der Kaiser! Der Kaiser!

30 JULY 1914, SYDNEY, BLACK CLOUDS ON A SUNNY DAY

On this Thursday morning, a young delivery boy cycles his way up the long carriageway, through minutely manicured gardens, rose arbours and orchards, right to the front door of Yaralla, the stunning Victorian-Italianate mansion that lies on the banks of Sydney's Parramatta River.

The honour of his task quite takes his breath away.

For it is here that His Majesty's representative in Australia, His Excellency Sir Ronald Craufurd Munro Ferguson, 1st Viscount Novar, the Scottish laird who is now Governor-General of Australia, has been staying with his wife, Lady Helen, since earlier in the month. The cable the delivery boy is carefully carrying is addressed to him.

The lad's tentative, respectful knock – for it does not demand an answer so much as ever so gently signalling that he is at the door if someone would be so kind as to answer it – is all but instantly answered, and he hands his coded cable-gram over.

The preliminary steps laid down in 1907 by the Committee of Imperial Defence are to be effected immediately …
⁸

It is the first of three such cables that the Governor-General receives over the next two days. The tall, grey-haired and distinguished representative of the King, later described by his private secretary Bede Clifford as ‘essentially kind' but ‘choleric',
⁹
finds that the cables are all from the same source and bear the same theme, once decoded from diplomatic niceties. In London, His Majesty's Government is concerned that it appears as if Europe is sliding towards war, and it is viewed as wise if Australia could begin to mobilise its armed forces, prepare to close its ports to all but authorised shipping and make ready for war. It is the Governor-General's task to communicate this to the Australian Government and gauge just what level of support it might be able to give to the Mother Country.

But therein lies another problem. For the matter is slightly complicated by the fact that, this very day, there has been a double dissolution of Federal Parliament, and Prime Minister Cook has just begun a bitterly fought election campaign, where the wily Labor Opposition Leader Andrew Fisher – twice a former Prime Minister himself – is making more than a little headway against him. This means Cabinet ministers are scattered to their own electorates and so cannot quickly gather. And yet neither the Prime Minister nor the Opposition Leader leave any doubt as to whom their loyalties are owed.

In Adelaide, Andrew Fisher stands before a large and outspoken delegation organised by the Freedom League, who are opposed to the compulsory sections in the
Defence Act 1909
that include the training of young boys and fining those, such as Quakers, who do not participate in the scheme on religious grounds. In what is to be the first cast of his history-making statement over the course of the election campaign, Fisher makes his feelings crystal clear: ‘I am in favour of defending this country with the last man and the last shilling against anyone who would try and take it.'
¹⁰

‘But not with boys and youths!' a lady calls out.

‘I agree,' Mr Fisher replies tightly in his thick Scottish brogue. His great moustache bristles, perhaps in the manner of a man stopping himself from saying that
he
had worked in the coal pits from the age of ten, and doing a man's work had never hurt
him
. ‘I am with you,' the master politician continues. ‘I want to train the boys at the best time so that they will be
ready
to fight.'

A shudder moves through the room, together with many, mostly feminine, cries of protest. The horror. The
horror
of preparing young Australian boys to take lives and risk their own in the process. And these women will not be quietened by their menfolk.

Rising to the occasion, Mr Fisher assures the men that it is all right, that he understands. ‘We must hear the ladies,' he says graciously.

‘Do you see straight-up boys returning from drill?' an elderly lady cries excitedly, as she stands up. Before the Opposition Leader has time to respond, she answers her own question. ‘No,' she says, now stooping down, as if under a great weight on her shoulders. ‘They are all bundled up like this. Don't take the little boys. Take boys of 21, and I am with you …'

Mr Fisher is not fussed. ‘I have seen about 15 different military systems,' he replies, ‘and taking the soldiers man for man, and boy for boy, I have not seen boys better fitted for military service than the Australians … If the burden is too great for the youngsters, it is a matter for the surgeon or the medical man to adjust. Surely they can trust the surgeon!'

‘Would
you
trust the surgeon?' a voice cries out, amid much other rumbling and jeering.

Mr Fisher moves to quell the dissent, still trying to be reasonable. ‘Then whom would you trust?'

A determined-looking, elderly gentleman rises to his feet, and the meeting falls quiet to hear his words. ‘Whom would I trust? Their
mothers
!'

The answer brings great applause and laughter before the meeting descends into accusations against Mr Fisher and recriminations against his party and
all
who would send young men to fight useless wars.

It is so bad that a shaken Mr Fisher tells the reporter of Adelaide's
Daily Herald
after the meeting, ‘I have never in my life met a deputation which made such imputations and suggestions of the vilest kind regarding certain men and myself in my life [
sic
].'
¹¹

The Freedom League is not entirely alone, however, as there is rising disquiet, most particularly among the Irish Catholic working class, with their view put most eloquently by the newspaper of the Political Labor Council of Victoria,
The Labor Call
, which publishes a strong editorial with a pungent point:

But these are only the naysayers, while the broad mass of the community remains firmly behind the British Empire, whatever the cost.

And, not to be outdone in what has clearly become a burning election issue (all's fair in love and war), at his own meeting in Horsham the night after Fisher has declared for the Empire, Prime Minister Cook – a former coalminer just like Fisher and every bit as passionate for the Old Country – makes the level of his own loyalty to that Empire clear. ‘Remember,' he thunders with outrage on behalf of Britain, ‘that when the Empire is at war, so is Australia at war. I want to make it quite clear that all our resources in Australia are in the Empire, and for the Empire, and for the preservation and the security of the Empire.'
¹³