In time of war, a diplomatic duel is like a game of cards in which victories are trumps; no amount of diplomatic skill can convert defeat into success. During the spring and summer of 1915, our Diplomats in the Balkans fought an unequal fight. The conviction that a stalemate existed on the front in France and Flanders was daily gaining ground, public attention was concentrated on the Dardanelles, and here the operations were followed with an interest as critical as it was intelligent. During the war against Turkey, the topographical features in this theatre had been closely studied by the Bulgarian General Staff, when a portion of the Bulgarian Army had penetrated into Turkish Thrace as far as the lines of Bulair. To these men our tactics became daily more incomprehensible. At first, the assaults on the Western extremity of the Gallipoli Peninsula were taken to be feints, intended to cover a landing in the neighbourhood of Enos, but, when it was realized that these were the major operations, when thousands of lives were sacrificed for the capture of a few bare and waterless cliffs, their bewilderment became intensified, and into all their minds there crept a doubt. General Fitcheff, the Chief of Staff and a man whose English sympathies were widely known, ran considerable risks by giving his expert advice in regard to a landing on the coast near Enos; he was no arm-chair critic but a practical soldier with recent and personal experience of battlefields in Thrace. His views were identical with those of the King of Greece and, indeed, of the vast majority of soldiers in the Balkans. They were rejected or ignored; a pseudo-omniscient optimism pervaded Allied counsels and acted like a blight.
Our friends in Bulgaria contemplated the useless slaughter at Gallipoli with horror and dismay, waverers turned to German agents, who took full advantage of every change of mood. An influx of German officers and officials began about this time; they had access to all Government departments, and assumed control of part of the Bulgarian railway system; as one result of their activities Constantinople received supplies of ammunition, whose Bulgarian origin was suspected if not known.