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+Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
+have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
+this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Two War Years in Constantinople
+       Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics
+
+Author: Harry Stuermer
+
+Translator: E. Allen
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2019 [EBook #60638]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Graeme Mackreth and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
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+
+
+ TWO WAR YEARS IN
+ CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+
+
+ TWO WAR YEARS
+ IN
+ CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+ _Sketches of German and Young Turkish
+ Ethics and Politics_
+
+
+ BY
+ DR. HARRY STUERMER
+ LATE CORRESPONDENT OF THE KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG
+ IN CONSTANTINOPLE (1915-16)
+
+
+ TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
+ E. ALLEN
+ AND THE AUTHOR
+
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ NEW YORK
+ GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
+ GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DECLARATION
+
+
+The undersigned hereby declares on his sworn word of honour that
+in writing this volume he has been in no way inspired by outside
+influence, and that he has never had any dealings whatsoever, material
+or otherwise, either before or during the war, with any Government,
+organisation, propaganda, or personality hostile to Germany or Turkey
+or even of a neutral character. His conscience alone has urged him to
+write and publish his impressions, and he hopes that by so doing he may
+perform a service towards the cause of truth and civilisation.
+
+Moreover, he can give formal assurance that he has expressly avoided
+making the acquaintance of any person resident in Switzerland until his
+manuscript should have been sent to press.
+
+Furthermore, he has been actuated by no personal motives in thus
+giving public expression to his experiences and opinions, for he has
+no personal grievance, either material or moral, against any person
+whatsoever.
+
+
+[Illustration: _Dr. H. Stuermer_]
+
+ Geneva,
+ _June 1917_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+While the author of this work was waiting on the frontier of
+Switzerland for final permission from the German authorities to enter
+that country, Germany committed her second great crime, her first
+having completely missed its mark. She had begun to realise that she
+was beaten in the great conflict which she had so wantonly provoked
+with that characteristic over confidence in the power of her own
+militarism and disdainful undervaluation of the _morale_ and general
+capacities of her enemies. In final renunciation of any last remnants
+of humanity in her methods, she was now making a dying effort to help
+her already lost cause by a ruthless extension of her policy of piracy
+at sea and a gratification of all her brutal instincts in complete
+violation of the rights of neutral countries.
+
+It is therefore with all the more inward conviction, with all the
+more urgent moral persuasion, that the author makes use of the rare
+opportunity offered him by residence in Switzerland to range himself
+boldly on the side of truth and show that there are still Germans who
+find it impossible to condone even tacitly the moral transgression and
+political stupidity of their own and an allied Government. _That is the
+sole purpose of this publication._
+
+Regardless of the consequences, he holds it to be his duty and his
+privilege, just because he is a German, to make a frank statement,
+from the point of view of human civilisation, of what have become his
+convictions from personal observations made in the course of six months
+of actual warfare and practically two years of subsequent journalistic
+activity. He spent the time from Spring 1915 to Christmas 1916 in
+Turkey, and will of course only deal with what he knows from personal
+observation. The following essays are of the nature merely of sketches
+and make no claim whatever to completeness.
+
+With regard to purely German politics and ethics, therefore, the author
+will confine himself to a few indications and impressions of a personal
+kind, but he cannot forget the rôle Germany has played in Turkey as
+an ally of the present Young Turkish Government, nor can he ignore
+Germany's responsibility for the atrocities committed by them. The
+author publishes his impressions with a perfectly clear conscience,
+secure in the conviction that as the representative of a German paper
+he never once wrote a single word in favour of this criminal war, and
+that during his stay of more than twenty months in Turkey he never
+concealed his true opinions as soon as he had definitely made up his
+mind what these were.
+
+On the contrary, he was rather dangerously candid and frank in speaking
+to anyone who wanted to listen to him--so much so, that it is almost a
+miracle that he ever reached a neutral country. After the war he will
+be in a position to appeal to the testimony of dozens of people of high
+standing in all walks of life that in both thought and action a deep
+cleft has always divided him from his colleagues, and that he has ever
+ardently longed for the moment when he might, freely and without fear
+of consequences, do his bit towards the enlightenment of the civilised
+world.
+
+May these lines, written in all sincerity and hereby submitted to the
+tribunal of public opinion, free the author at last from the burden
+of silent reproach heaped on him by a mutilated, outraged, languishing
+humanity, of being a German among thousands of Germans who desired this
+war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Several months have passed since the original text of the German and
+French editions of this little book was written. Baghdad was taken by
+British troops before the last chapter of the German manuscript had
+been completed, and since then military operations have been more and
+more in favour of the Entente. A number of important political events
+have occurred, such as the Russian Revolution and the entry of the
+United States of America into the war.
+
+Further developments of Russian politics may yet have a direct effect
+on the final solution of the problems surrounding the defeated Ottoman
+Empire. But the author has preferred to maintain the original text of
+his book, written early in March this year, and to make no changes
+whatever in the conclusions he had then arrived at as a result of the
+fresh impressions he carried away from Turkey.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+                                                                       PAGE
+
+  At the outbreak of war in Germany--The German "world-politicians"
+  (_Weltpolitiker_)--German and English mentality--The
+  "place in the sun"--England's declaration
+  of war--German methods in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine--Prussian
+  arrogance--Militaristic journalism                                     17
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  To Constantinople--Pro-Turkish considerations--The dilemma
+  of a Gallipoli correspondent--Under German military
+  control                                                                35
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  The great Armenian persecutions--The system of Talaat and
+  Enver--A denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and
+  conscienceless accomplice                                              42
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  The tide of war--Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+  Caucasus"--The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+  twice hangs in the balance--Nervous tension
+  in international Pera--Bulgaria's attitude--Turkish rancour
+  against her former enemy--German illusions of a
+  separate peace with Russia--King Ferdinand's time-serving--Lack
+  of munitions in the Dardanelles--A mysterious
+  death: a political murder?--The evacuation of
+  Gallipoli--The Turkish version of victory--Constantinople
+  unreleased--Kut-el-Amara--Propaganda for the "Holy
+  War"--A prisoner of repute--Loyalty of Anglo-Indian
+  officers--Turkish communiqués and their worth--The fall
+  of Erzerum--Official lies--The treatment of prisoners--Political
+  speculation with prisoners of war--Treatment
+  of enemy subjects--Stagnation and lassitude in the summer
+  of 1916--The Greeks in Turkey--Dread of Greek
+  massacres--Rumania's entry--Terrible disappointment--The
+  three phases of the war for Turkey                                     75
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  The economic situation--Exaggerated Entente hopes--Hunger
+  and suffering among the civil population--The system of
+  requisitioning and the semi-official monopolists--Profiteering
+  on the part of the Government clique--Frivolity and
+  cynicism--The "Djemiet"--The delegates of the German
+  _Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_ (Central Purchases Commission)--A
+  hard battle between German and Turkish intrigue--Reform
+  of the coinage--Paper money and its depreciation--The
+  hoarding of bullion--The Russian rouble
+  the best investment                                                   107
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  German propaganda and ethics--The unsuccessful "Holy
+  War" and the German Government--"The Holy War"
+  a crime against civilisation, a chimera, a farce--Underhand
+  dealings--The German Embassy the dupe of adventurers--The
+  morality of German Press representatives--A
+  trusty servant of the German Embassy--Fine official
+  distinctions of morality--The German conception of the
+  rights of individuals                                                 126
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  Young Turkish nationalism--One-sided abolition of capitulations
+  --Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation--Abolition of
+  foreign languages--German simplicity--The Turkification
+  of commercial life--Unmistakable intellectual improvement
+  as a result of the war--Trade policy and customs
+  tariff--National production--The founding of new businesses
+  in Turkey--Germany supplanted--German starvation--Capitulations
+  or full European control?--The
+  colonisation and forcible Turkification of Anatolia--"The
+  properties of people who have been dispatched elsewhere"--The
+  "Mohadjirs"--Greek persecutions just before the
+  Great War--The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus of
+  the Ottoman Empire--Turkey finds herself at last--Anatolian
+  dirt and decay--The "Greater Turkey" and the
+  purely Turkish Turkey--Cleavage or concentration?                     151
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Religion and race--The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of
+  the Young Turks--Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political
+  principles--Turanism and the Quadruple Alliance--Greed
+  and race-fanaticism--Religious traditions and
+  modern reforms--Reform in the law--A modern Sheikh-ul-Islam--Reform
+  and nationalization--The Armenian
+  and Greek Patriarchates--The failure of Pan-Islamism--The
+  alienation of the Arabs--Djemal Pasha's "hangman's
+  policy" in Syria--Djemal as a "Pro-French"--Djemal
+  and Enver--Djemal and Germany--His true character--The
+  attempts against the Suez Canal--Djemal's murderous
+  work nears completion--The great Arabian and
+  Syrian Separatist movement--The defection of the Emir
+  of Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe                            176
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks--Turkish
+  pessimism about the war--How would Abdul-Hamid have
+  acted?--A war of prevention against Russia--Russia and
+  a neutral Turkey--The agreement about the Dardanelles--A
+  peaceful solution scorned--Alleged criminal intentions
+  on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece
+  and Salonika--To be or not to be?--German influence--Turkey
+  stakes on the wrong card--The results                                 209
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting
+  Germany--The Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The
+  social necessity for this deliverance--Anatolia, the
+  new Turkey after the war; forecasts about the Turkish
+  race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia
+  and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany,
+  at peace, benefits too--Farewell to the German "World
+  Politicians"--German interests in a victorious and in a
+  defeated Turkey--The German-Turkish treaty--A paradise
+  on earth--The Russian commercial impulse--The
+  new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+  civilisation--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation
+  of Germany                                                            258
+
+  Appendix                                                              283
+
+
+
+
+TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  At the outbreak of war in Germany--The German "world-politicians"
+  (_Weltpolitiker_)--German and English mentality--The "place in the
+  sun"--England's declaration of war--German methods in Belgium and
+  Alsace-Lorraine--Prussian arrogance--Militaristic journalism.
+
+
+Anyone who, like myself, set foot on German soil for the first time
+after years of sojourn in foreign lands, and more particularly in
+the colonies, just at the moment that Germany was mobilising for the
+great European war, must surely have been filled, as I was, with a
+certain feeling of melancholy, a slight uneasiness with regard to
+the state of mind of his fellow-countrymen as it showed itself in
+these dramatic days of August in conversations in the street, in
+cafés and restaurants, and in the articles appearing in the Press.
+We Germans have never learnt to think soundly on political subjects.
+Bismarck's political heritage, although set forth in most popular
+form in his _Thoughts and Recollections_, a book that anyone opposing
+this war from the point of view rather of prudence than of ethics
+might utilise as an unending source of propaganda, has not descended
+to our rulers in any sort of living form. But an unbounded political
+_naïveté_, an incredible lack of judgment and of understanding of
+the point of view of other peoples, who have their _raison d'être_
+just as much as we have, their vital interests, their standpoint of
+honour--have not prevented us from trying to carry on a grand system of
+_Weltpolitik_ (world politics). The average everyday German has never
+really understood the English--either before or during the war; in the
+latter's colonial policy, which, according to pan-German ideas, has
+no other aim than to snatch from us our "place in the sun"; in their
+conception of liberty and civilisation, which has entailed such mighty
+sacrifices for them on behalf of their Allies; when we trod Belgian
+neutrality underfoot and thought England would stand and look on;
+at the time of the debates about universal service, when practically
+every German, even in the highest political circles, was ready to wager
+that there would be a revolution in England sooner than any general
+acceptance of Conscription; and coming down to more recent events,
+when the latest huge British war loan provided the only fit and proper
+answer to German frightfulness at sea.
+
+Let me here say a word on the subject of colonial policy, on which I
+may perhaps be allowed to speak with a certain amount of authority
+after extended travel in the farthest corners of Africa, and from
+an intimate, personal knowledge of German as well as English and
+French colonies. Germany has less colonial territory than the older
+colonists, it is true. It is also true that the German struggle for
+the most widespread, the most intensive and lucrative employment of
+the energies and capabilities of our highly developed commercial land
+is justified. But at the risk of being dubbed as absolutely lacking
+in patriotism, I should like to point out that in the first place the
+resources we had at our disposal in our own colonial territory in
+tropical and sub-tropical Africa, little exploited as they then were,
+would have amply sufficed for our commercial needs and colonising
+capacities--though possibly not for our aspirations after world power!
+And secondly, the very liberal character of England's trade and
+colonial policy did not hinder us in any way from reaching the top of
+the commercial tree even in foreign colonies.
+
+Anyone who knows English colonies knows that the British Government,
+wherever it has been possible to do so politically, that is, in all her
+colonies which are already properly organised and firmly established
+as British, has always met in a most generous and sympathetic way
+German, and indeed any foreign, trade or other enterprises. New firms,
+with German capital, were received with open arms, their excellence
+and value for the young country heartily recognised and ungrudgingly
+encouraged; not the slightest shadow of any jealousy of foreign
+undertakings could ever exist in a British colony, and every German
+could be as sure as an Englishman himself of being justly treated in
+every way and encouraged in the most generous fashion in his work.
+
+Thousands of Germans otherwise thoroughly embued with the national
+spirit make no secret of the fact that they would far rather live in
+a British than a German colony. Too often in the latter the newcomer
+was met at every point by an exaggerated bureaucracy and made to feel
+by some official that he was not a reserve officer, and consequently a
+social inferior. Hints were dropped to discourage him, and inquiries
+were even made as to whether he had enough money to book his passage
+back to where he came from!
+
+Far be it from me to wish to depreciate by these words the value of
+our own colonial efforts. As pioneers in Africa we were working on
+the very best possible lines, but we should have been content to go
+on learning from the much superior British colonial methods, and
+should have finished and perfected our own domain instead of always
+shouting jealously about other people's. I am quite convinced that
+another ten years of undisturbed peaceful competition and Germany,
+with her own very considerable colonial possessions on the one hand,
+and the possibility on the other of pushing commercial enterprise on
+the highest scale not only in independent overseas states but under
+the beneficent protection of English rule with its true freedom and
+real furtherance of trade "uplift," would have reached her goal much
+better than by means of all the sword-rattling _Weltpolitik_ of the
+Pan-Germans.
+
+It is true that in territory not yet properly organised or guaranteed,
+politically still doubtful, and in quite new protectorates, especially
+along the routes to India, where vital English interests are at stake,
+and on the much-talked-of Persian Gulf, England could not, until her
+main object was firmly secured, meet in the same fair way German
+desires with regard to commercial activity. And there she has more than
+once learnt to her cost the true character of the German _Weltpolitik_.
+
+That is the real meaning, at any rate so far as colonial politics are
+concerned, of the German-English contest for a "place in the sun." No
+one who understands it aright could ever condone the outgrowths of our
+_Weltpolitik_, however much he might desire to assist German ability to
+find practical outlet in all suitable overseas territory, nor could he
+ever forget the wealth of wonderful deeds, wrought in the service of
+human civilisation and freedom, Englishmen can place to their credit
+years before we ever began. With such considerations of justice in
+view, we should have recognised that there was a limit to our efforts
+after expansion, and as a matter of fact we should have gone further
+and fared better--in a decade we should have probably been really
+wealthy--for the English in their open-handed way certainly left us
+a surprising amount of room for the free exercise of our commercial
+talents.
+
+I have intentionally given an illustration only of the colonial side
+of the problem affecting German-English relations, so that I may avoid
+dealing with any subject I do not know from personal observation.
+
+It was this English people, that, in spite of all their egoism, have
+really done something for civilisation, that the German of August 1914
+accused of being nothing but a nation of shopkeepers with a cowardly,
+narrow-minded policy that was unprepared to make any sacrifice for
+others. It was this people that the German of August 1914--and his
+spokesman von Bethmann-Hollweg, who later thought it necessary to
+defend himself against the charge of "having brought too much ethics
+into politics"--expected to stand by and see Belgium overridden. It
+was this same England that we believed would hold back even when the
+Chancellor found it impossible to apply to French colonial possessions
+the guarantee he had given not to aim at any territorial conquests in
+the war with France!
+
+And so it was with all the more grimness, with all the more gravity,
+that on that memorable night of August 4th the terrible blow fell. The
+English declaration of war entered into the very soul of the German
+people, who stood as a sacrifice to a political miscalculation that had
+its roots less in a lack of thought and experience than in a boundless
+arrogance.
+
+About the same time I was a witness of those laughable scenes which
+took place on the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, where, in complete
+misjudgment of the whole political situation _Japanese_ were carried
+shoulder high by the enthusiastic and worthy citizens of Berlin under
+the erroneous impression that these obvious arch-enemies of Russia
+would naturally be allies of Germany. Every German that was not blind
+to the trend of true "world-politics" must surely have shaken his head
+over this lamentable spectacle. A few days afterwards Japan sent its
+ultimatum against Kiao-Tchao!
+
+It was the same incapability of thinking in terms of true
+world-politics that led us lately to believe that we might find
+supporters in Mexico and Japan of the piracy we indulged in as a
+result of America's intervention in the war, the same incapability
+that blinded us to the effect our methods must have on other neutrals
+such as China and the South American States. And although one admits
+the possibility of a miscalculation being made, yet a miscalculation
+with regard to England's attitude was not only the height of political
+stupidity, but showed an absence of moral sense. _The moment England
+entered the war, Germany lost the war._
+
+And while the world-politicians of Berlin, having recovered from their
+first dismay, were making jokes about the "nation of shopkeepers" and
+its little army which they would just "have arrested"; while a little
+later the military events up to St. Quentin and the Battle of the Marne
+seemed to justify the idle mockers who knew nothing of England and had
+never even ventured their noses out of Germany,--those who had lived
+in the colonies were uttering warnings against any kind of optimism,
+and some already felt the war would end badly for us.
+
+I belonged to the latter group. I expressed my conviction in this
+direction as early as August 6th, 1914, in a letter which I wrote from
+Berlin for my father's birthday. In it I maintained that in spite of
+all our brilliant military successes, which would certainly not last,
+this war was a mistake and would assuredly end in failure for Germany.
+_Littera scripta manet._ Never from that moment have I believed in
+final victory for Germany. Slowly but surely then I veered round to the
+position that I could no longer even _desire_ victory for Germany.
+
+Naturally I did my military duty. I saw the fearful crime Germany was
+committing, yet I hurried to the front with the millions who believed
+that Germany was innocent and had been attacked without cause. There
+was nothing else to be done, and it must of course be remembered that
+my final rupture with Germany did not take place all of a sudden. After
+a few months of war in Masuria I was released as unfit for active
+service as the result of a severe illness.
+
+Of all the many episodes of my life at the front, none is so deeply
+impressed on my memory as the silent war of mutual hatred I waged with
+my immediately superior officer, a true prototype of his race, a true
+Prussian. I can still see him, a man of fifty-five or so, who, in spite
+of former active service, had only reached the rank of lieutenant, and
+who, as he told me himself right at the beginning, in very misplaced
+confidence, rushed into active service again because in this way he
+could get really good pay and would even have a prospect of further
+promotion.
+
+This Lieutenant Stein told me too of the first weeks in Belgium, when
+he had been in command of a company, and I can still hear him boasting
+about his warlike propensities, and how his teacher had said about
+him when he was a boy "he was capable of stealing an altar-cloth and
+cutting it up to make breeches for himself."
+
+"When we wanted to do any commandeering or to plunder a house," so he
+told me, "there was a very simple means. A man belonging to my company
+would be ordered to throw a Belgian rifle through an open cellar
+window, the house would then be searched for weapons, and even if we
+found only one rifle we had orders to seize everything without mercy
+and to drive out the occupiers." I can still see the creature standing
+in front of me and relating this and many a similar tale in these first
+days before he knew me. I have never forgotten it; and I think I owe
+much to Lieutenant Stein. He helped me on the way I was predestined to
+go, for had I not just returned from the colonies and foreign lands,
+imbued with liberal ideas, and from the first torn by grave doubts?
+
+The Lieutenant may be an exception--granted; but he is an exception
+unfortunately but too often represented in that army of millions
+on its invading march into unhappy Belgium, among officers and
+non-commissioned officers, whom, at any rate so far as active service
+is concerned, everyone who has served in the German Army will agree
+with me in calling on the average thoroughly brutal. Lieutenant
+Stein gave me my first real deep disgust of war. He is a type that I
+have not invented, and he will easily be identified by the German
+military authorities from his signature on my military pass as one
+of those arch-Prussians who suddenly readopt a martial air, suddenly
+revive and come into their element again, although they may be sickly
+old valetudinarians--the kind of men who in civil life are probably
+enthusiastic members of the "German Colonial Society," the "Naval
+Union," and the "Pan-German Association," and ardent world-politicians
+of the ale-bench type.
+
+I found his stories afterwards confirmed to the letter by one of the
+most famous German war-correspondents, Paul Schweder, the author of the
+four-volume work entitled _At Imperial Headquarters_. With a _naïveté_
+equal to Lieutenant Stein's, and trusting no doubt to my then official
+position as correspondent of a German paper, he gave me descriptions
+of Belgian atrocities committed by our soldiers and the results of
+our system of occupation that, in all their horrible nakedness, put
+everything that ever appeared in the Entente newspapers absolutely in
+the shade.
+
+As early as the beginning of 1916 he told me the plain truth that we
+were practically starving Belgium and that the country was really only
+kept alive by the Relief Commission, and that we were attempting to
+ruin any Belgian industry which might compete with ours by a systematic
+removal of machinery to Germany. And that was before the time of the
+Deportations!
+
+Schweder's descriptions dealt for the most part with the sexual
+morality of our soldiers in the trenches. In spite of severe
+punishments, so he assured me, thousands and thousands of cases
+occurred of women and young girls out of decent Belgian and French
+families being outraged. The soldier on short leave from the front,
+with the prospect of a speedy return to the first-line trenches and
+death staring him in the face, did not care what happened; the unhappy
+victims were for the most part silent about their shame, so that the
+cases of punishment were very few and far between.
+
+While I was at the front I heard extraordinary things, for which I
+had again detailed confirmation from Schweder, who knew the whole of
+the Western Front well, about the German policy of persecution in
+Alsace-Lorraine. There the system was to punish with imprisonment
+not only actions but opinions. The authorities did not even scruple
+to imprison girls out of highly-respected houses who had perhaps made
+some harmless remark in youthful ignorance, and shut them up with
+common criminals and prostitutes to work out their long sentence.
+Such scandalous acts, which are a disgrace to humanity, Paul Schweder
+confirmed by the dozen or related at first-hand.
+
+He was intelligent enough, too, as was evident from the many statements
+made by him in confidential circles, to see through the utter lack
+of foundation, the mendacity, the immorality of what he wrote in his
+books merely for the sake of filthy lucre; but when I tried one day to
+take on a bet with him that Verdun would not fall, he took his revenge
+by spreading the report in Constantinople that I was an Pro-Entente,
+and doing his utmost to intrigue against me. That is the German
+war-correspondent's idea of morality!
+
+When I was released from the army in the beginning of 1915, I joined
+the editorial staff of the _Kölnische Zeitung_ and remained for some
+weeks in Cologne. I have not retained any very special impressions
+of this period of my activity, except perhaps the recollection of
+the spirit of jingoistic Prussianism that I--being a Badener--had
+scarcely ever come across before in its full glory, and, from the
+many confidential communications and discussions among the editorial
+staff, the feeling that even then there was a certain nervousness and
+insecurity among those who, in their leading articles, informed the
+public daily of their absolute confidence in victory.
+
+One curious thing at this time, perhaps worthy of mention, was the
+disdainful contempt with which these Prussians--even before the fall of
+Przemysl--regarded Austria. But the scornful and biting commentaries
+made behind the scenes in the editorial sanctum at the fall of this
+stronghold stood in most striking contrast to what the papers wrote
+about it.
+
+Later, when I had already been a long time in Turkey, a humorous
+incident gave me renewed opportunity of seeing this Prussian spirit of
+unbounded exaggeration of self and depreciation of others. The incident
+is at the same time characteristic of the spirit of militarism with
+which the representatives of the German Press are thoroughly imbued, in
+spite of the opportunities most of them have had through long visits to
+other countries of gaining a little more _savoir faire_.
+
+One beautiful summer afternoon at a promenade concert in the "Petit
+Champs" at Pera I introduced an Austrian Lieutenant of Dragoons I knew,
+belonging to one of the best regiments, to our Balkan correspondent who
+happened to be staying in Constantinople: "Lieutenant N.; Herr von M."
+The correspondent sat down at the table and repeated very distinctly:
+"_Lieutenant-Colonel von M._" It turned out that he had been a
+second lieutenant in the Prussian Army, and had pushed himself up to
+this wonderful rank in the Bulgarian Army, instinctively combining
+journalism and militarism. My companion, however, with true Austrian
+calm, took not the slightest notice of the correction, did not spring
+up and greet him with an enthusiastic "Ah! my dear fellow-officer,
+etc.," but began an ordinary social conversation.
+
+Would anyone believe that next day old Herr von M. took me roundly
+to task for sitting at the same table as an Austrian officer and
+appearing in public with him, and informed me quasi-officially that as
+a representative of the _Kölnische Zeitung_ I should associate only
+with the German colony in Constantinople.
+
+I wonder which is the most irritating characteristic of this type of
+mind--its overbearing attitude towards our Allies, its jingoistic
+"Imperial German" cant, or its wounded dignity as a militarist who
+forgets that he is a journalist and no longer an officer?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  In Constantinople--Pro-Turkish considerations--The dilemma of a
+  Gallipoli correspondent--Under German military control.
+
+
+A few days after the fall of Przemysl I set out for Constantinople. I
+left Germany with a good deal of friendly feeling towards the Turk. I
+was even quite well disposed towards the Young Turks, although I knew
+and appreciated the harm caused by their régime and the reproaches
+levelled against it since 1909. At any rate, when I landed on Turkish
+soil I was certainly not lacking in goodwill towards the Government
+of Enver and Talaat, and nothing was further from my thoughts than to
+prejudice myself against my new sphere of work by any preconceived
+criticism.
+
+In comparison with Abdul-Hamid I regarded the régime of the Young
+Turks, in spite of all, as a big step in advance and a necessary
+one, and the parting words of one of our old editors, a thorough
+connoisseur of Turkey, lingered in my ears without very much effect.
+He said: "You are going to Constantinople. You will soon be able to
+see for yourself the moral bankruptcy of the Young Turks, and you will
+find that Turkey is nothing but a dead body galvanised into action,
+that will only last as long as the war lasts and we Germans supply the
+galvanising power." I would not believe it, and went to Turkey with an
+absolutely open mind to form my own opinion.
+
+It must also be remembered that all the pro-Turkish utterances of
+Eastern experts of all shades and nationalities who emphasised the
+fact that the Turks were the most respectable nation of the East, were
+not without their effect upon me; also I had read Pierre Loti. I was
+determined to extend to the Turkish Government the strong sympathy I
+already felt for the Turkish people--and, let me here emphasise it,
+still feel. To undermine that sympathy, to make me lose my confidence
+in this race, things would have to go badly indeed. They went worse
+than I ever thought was possible.
+
+I went first of all to the new Turkish front in the Dardanelles and
+the Gallipoli Peninsula, where everything was ruled by militarism and
+there was but little opportunity to worry about politics. The combined
+attack by sea and land had just begun, and I passed the next few weeks
+on the Ariburnu front. I found myself in the entirely new position of
+war-correspondent. I had now to write professionally about this war,
+which I detested with all my heart and soul.
+
+Well, I simply had to make the back fit the burden. Whatever I did or
+did not do, I have certainly the clear satisfaction of knowing that I
+never wrote a single word in praise of war. One will understand that,
+in spite of my inward conviction that Germany by unloosing the war on
+Europe had committed a terrible crime against humanity, in spite of my
+consciousness of acting in a wrong cause, in spite of my deep disgust
+of much that I had already seen, I was still interested in Turkey's
+fight for existence, but from quite another standpoint.
+
+As an objective onlooker I did not have to be an absolute hypocrite to
+do justice to my journalistic duties to my paper. I got to know the
+Turkish soldier with his stoical heroism in defence, and the brilliant
+attacking powers and courage of the Anatolians with their blind belief
+in their Padishah, as they were rushed to the defence of Stamboul and
+hurled themselves in a bayonet charge against the British machine-guns
+under a hail of shells from the sea. I gained a high opinion of Turkish
+valour and powers of resistance. I had no reason to stint my praise or
+withhold my judgment. In mess-tents and at various observation-posts I
+made the personal acquaintance of crowds of thoroughly sympathetic and
+likeable Turkish officers. Let me mention but one--Essad Pasha, the
+defender of Jannina.
+
+I found quite enough material on my two visits to Gallipoli during
+various phases of the fighting to write a series of feuilletons without
+any glorification of militarism and political aims. I confined myself
+to what was of general human interest, to what was picturesque, what
+was dramatic in the struggle going on in this unique theatre of war.
+
+But even then I was beginning to have my own opinion about much that I
+saw; I was already torn by conflicting doubts. Already I was beginning
+to ask myself whether my sympathies would not gradually turn more and
+more definitely to those who were vainly storming these strong Turkish
+forts from the sea, under a deadly machine-gun fire, for the cause of
+true civilisation, the cause of liberty, was manifestly on their side.
+
+I had opportunity, too, of making comparisons from the dead and
+wounded and the few prisoners there were between the value of the
+human material sacrificed on either side--on the one, brave but stupid
+Anatolians, accustomed to dirt and misery; on the other cultured and
+highly civilised men, sportsmen from the colonies who had hurried from
+the farthest corners of the earth to fight not only for the British
+cause, but for the cause of civilisation.
+
+But at that time I was not yet ripe for the decision forced upon me
+later by other things that I saw with my own eyes; I had not yet
+reached that deep inward conviction that I should have to make a break
+with Germany. The only thing I could do and felt compelled to do
+then was to pay my homage not only to Turkish patriotism and Turkish
+bravery, but to the wonderful courage and fearlessness of death shown
+by those whom at that time I had, as a German, to regard as my enemies;
+this I did over and over again in my articles.
+
+I saw, too, the first indications of other things. Traces of the most
+outspoken jingoism among Turkish officers became gradually apparent,
+and more than one Turkish commander pointed out to me with ironical
+emphasis that things went just as smoothly and promptly in his sector,
+where there was no German officer in charge, as anywhere else.
+
+On my second visit to the Dardanelles, in summer, I heard of
+considerable quarrels over questions of rank, and there was more than
+one outbreak of jingoistic arrogance on the part of both Turkish and
+German subalterns, leading in some cases even to blows and consequent
+severe punishment for insubordination. The climax was reached in the
+scandal of supplanting General Weber, commanding the "Southern Group"
+(Sedd-ul-Bahr) by Vehib Pasha, a grim and fanatical Turk. In this case
+the Turkish point of view prevailed, for General Liman von Sanders,
+Commander-in-Chief of the Gallipoli Army, was determined not to lose
+his post, and agreed slavishly with all that Enver Pasha ordained.
+
+From other fronts, such as the Irak and the "Caucasus" (which was
+becoming more and more a purely Armenian theatre of war, without losing
+that chimerical designation in the official reports!), there came
+even more significant tales; there German and Turkish officers seemed
+to live still more of a cat-and-dog life than in the Dardanelles. Of
+course under the iron discipline of both Turks and Germans, these
+unpleasant occurrences were never allowed to come to such a pass that
+they would interfere in any way with military operations, but they were
+of significance as symptoms of a deep distrust of the Germans even in
+Turkish military circles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  The great Armenian persecutions--The system of Talaat and Enver--A
+  denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and conscienceless accomplice.
+
+
+In spite of all, I returned to Constantinople from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles with very little diminution of friendly feeling towards
+the Turks. My first experience when I returned to the capital was the
+beginning of the Armenian persecutions. And here I may as well say at
+once that my love for present-day Turkey perished absolutely with this
+unique example in the history of modern human civilisation of the most
+appalling bestiality and misguided jingoism. This, more than everything
+else I saw on the German-Turkish side throughout the war, persuaded me
+to take up arms against my own people and to adopt the position I now
+hold. I say "German-Turkish," for I must hold the German Government as
+equally responsible with the Turks for the atrocities they allowed
+them to commit.
+
+Here in neutral Switzerland, where so many of these unfortunate
+Armenians have taken refuge and such abundance of information is
+available, so much material has been collected that it is unnecessary
+for me to go into details in this book. Suffice it to say that the
+narration of all the heart-rending occurrences that came to my personal
+knowledge during my stay in Turkey, without my even trying to collect
+systematic information on the subject, would fill a book. To my deep
+sorrow I have to admit that, from everything I have heard from reliable
+sources--from German Red Cross doctors, officials and employees of
+the Baghdad Railway, members of the American Embassy, and Turks
+themselves--although they are but individual cases--I cannot regard
+as exaggerated such appalling facts and reports as are contained for
+example in Arnold Toynbee's _Armenian Atrocities_.[1]
+
+In this little book, however, which partakes more of the nature of an
+essay than an exhaustive treatise, my task will be rather to determine
+the system, the underlying political thought and the responsibility
+of Germany in all these horrors--massacres, the seduction of women,
+children left to die or thrown into the sea, pretty young girls
+carried off into houses of ill repute, the compulsory conversion to
+Islam and incorporation in Turkish harems of young women, the ejection
+from their homes of eminent and distinguished families by brutal
+gendarmes, attacks while on the march by paid bands of robbers and
+criminals, "emigration" to notorious malaria swamps and barren desert
+and mountain lands, victims handed over to the wild lusts of roaming
+Bedouins and Kurds--in a word, the triumph of the basest brutality and
+most cold-blooded refinement of cruelty in a war of extermination in
+which half a million men, and according to some estimates many more,
+have perished, while the remaining one and a half million of this
+most intelligent and cultured race, one of the principal pioneers of
+progress in the Ottoman Empire, see nothing but complete extinction
+staring them in the face through the rupture of family ties, the
+deprivation of their rights, and economic ruin.
+
+The Armenian persecutions began in all their cruelty, practically
+unannounced, in April 1915. Certain events on the Caucasus front, which
+no number of lies could explain away, gave the Turkish Government
+the welcome pretext for falling like wild animals on the Armenians
+of the eastern vilajets--the so-called Armenia Proper--and getting
+to work there without deference to man, woman, or child. This was
+called "the restoration of order in the war zone by military measures,
+rendered necessary by the connivance of the inhabitants with the enemy,
+treachery and armed support." The first two or three hundred thousand
+Armenians fell in the first rounding up.
+
+That in those outlying districts situated directly on the Russian
+frontier a number of Armenians threw in their lot with the advancing
+Russians, no one will seek to deny, and not a single Armenian I
+have spoken to denies it. But the "Armenian Volunteer Corps" that
+fought on the side of Russia was composed for the most part--that at
+least has been proved beyond doubt--of Russian Armenians settled in
+Transcaucasian territory.
+
+So far as the Turkish Armenians taking part are concerned, no
+reasonable being would think of denying Turkey as Sovereign State the
+formal right of taking stringent measure against these traitors and
+deserters. But if I expressly recognise this right, I do so with the
+big reservation that the frightful sufferings undergone for centuries
+by a people left by their rulers to the mercy of marauding Kurds and
+oppressed by a government of shameless extortioners, absolutely absolve
+these deserters in the eyes of the whole civilised world from any moral
+crime.
+
+And yet I would willingly have gone so far for the benefit of the
+Turks, in spite of their terrible guilt towards this people, as perhaps
+to keep my own counsel on the subject, if it had merely been a case of
+the execution of some hundreds under martial law or the carrying out
+of other measures--such as deportation--against a couple of thousand
+Armenians and these strictly confined to men. It is even possible that
+Europe and America would have pardoned Turkey for taking even stronger
+steps in the nature of reprisals or measures of precaution against the
+male inhabitants of that part of Armenia Proper which was gradually
+becoming a war zone. But from the very beginning the persecutions were
+carried on against women and children as well as men, were extended
+to the hundred thousand inhabitants of the six eastern vilajets, and
+were characterised by such savage brutality that the methods of the
+slave-drivers of the African interior and the persecution of Christians
+under Nero are the only thing that can be compared with them.
+
+Every shred of justification for the Turkish Government in their
+attempt to establish this as an "evacuation necessary for military
+purposes and for the prevention of unrest" entirely vanishes in face
+of such methods, and I do not believe that there is a single decent
+German, cognisant of the facts of the case, who is not filled with real
+disgust of the Young Turkish Government by such cold-blooded butchery
+of the inhabitants of whole districts and the deportation of others
+with the express purpose of letting them die _en route_. Anyone with
+human feelings, however pro-Turkish he may be politically, cannot think
+otherwise.
+
+This "evacuation necessary for military purposes" emptied Armenia
+Proper of men. How often have Turks themselves told me--I could mention
+names, but I will not expose my informants, who were on the whole
+decent exceptions to the rule, to the wrath of Enver or Talaat--how
+often have they assured me that practically not a single Armenian
+is to be found in Armenia! And it is equally certain that scarcely
+one can be left alive of all that horde of deported men who escaped
+the first massacres and were hunted up hill and down dale in a state
+of starvation, exposed to attacks by Kurds, decimated by spotted
+typhus, and finally abandoned to their fate in the scorching deserts
+of Northern Mesopotamia and Northern Syria. One has only to read the
+statistics of the population of the six vilajets of Armenia Proper to
+discover the hundreds of thousands of victims of this wholesale murder.
+
+But unfortunately that was not all. The Turkish Government went
+farther, much farther. They aimed at the whole Armenian people, not
+only in Armenia itself, but also in the "Diaspora," in Anatolia Proper
+and in the capital. They were at that time some hundred thousand. In
+this case they could scarcely go on the principle of "evacuation of the
+war zone," for the inhabitants were hundreds of miles both from the
+Eastern front and from the Dardanelles, so they had to resort to other
+measures.
+
+They suddenly and miraculously discovered a universal conspiracy among
+the Armenians of the Empire. It was only by a trick of this kind that
+they could succeed in carrying out their system of exterminating the
+entire Armenian race. The Turkish Government skilfully influenced
+public opinion throughout the whole world, and then discovered, nay,
+arranged for, local conspiracies. They then falsified all the details
+so that they might go on for months in peace and quiet with their
+campaign of extermination.
+
+In a series of semi-official articles in the newspapers of the
+Committee of Young Turks it was made quite clear that _all_ Armenians
+were dangerous conspirators who, in order to shake off the Ottoman
+yoke, had collected firearms and bombs and had arranged, with the help
+of English and Russian money, for a terrible slaughter of Turks on the
+day that the English fleet overcame the armies on the Dardanelles.
+
+I must here emphasise the fact that all the arguments the Turkish
+Government brought against the Armenians did not escape my notice. They
+were indeed evident enough in official and semi-official publications
+and in the writings of German "experts on Turkey." I investigated
+everything, even right at the beginning of my stay in Turkey, and
+always from a thoroughly pro-Turkish point of view. That did not
+prevent me however, from coming to my present point of view.
+
+Herr Zimmermann, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has only
+got to refer to the date of his letter to the editorial staff of my
+paper, in which he speaks of my confidential report to the paper on
+this subject which went through his hands and aroused his interest, and
+he will find what opinions I held as early as the summer of 1916 on the
+subject of the Armenian persecutions--and this without my having any
+particular sympathy for the Armenians, for it was not till much later
+that I got to know them and their high intellectual qualities through
+personal intercourse.
+
+Here I can only give my final judgment on all these pros and cons, and
+say to the best of my knowledge and opinion, that after the first act
+in this drama of massacre and death--the brutal "evacuation of the war
+zone" in Armenia Proper--the meanest, the lowest, the most cynical,
+most criminal act of race-fanaticism that the history of mankind has to
+show was the extension of the system of deportation, with its wilful
+neglect and starvation of the victims, to further hundreds of thousands
+of Armenians in the Capital and Interior. And these were people who,
+through their place of residence, their surroundings, their social
+status, their preoccupation in work and wage-earning, were quite
+incapable of taking any active part in politics.
+
+Others of them, again, belonged to families of high social standing and
+culture, bound to the land by a thousand ties, coming of a well-to-do,
+old-established stock, and from traditional training and ordinary
+prudence holding themselves scrupulously apart from all revolutionary
+doings. All were surrounded by a far superior number of inhabitants
+belonging to other races.
+
+This diabolical crime was committed solely and only because of the
+Turkish feeling of economic and intellectual inferiority to that
+non-Turkish element, for the set purpose of obtaining handsome
+compensation for themselves, and was undertaken with the cowardly
+acquiescence of the German Government in full knowledge of the facts.
+
+Of this long chain of crime I saw at least the beginning thousands of
+times with my own eyes. Hardly had I returned from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles when these persecutions began in the whole of Anatolia
+and even in Constantinople, and continued with but slight intermissions
+of a week or two at different times till shortly before I left
+Constantinople in December 1916.
+
+That was the time when in the flourishing western vilajets of Anatolia,
+beginning with Brussa and Adabazar, where the well-stocked farms
+in Armenian hands must have been an eyesore to a Government that
+had written "forcible nationalisation" on their standard, the whole
+household goods of respectable families were thrown into the street
+and sold for a mere nothing, because their owners often had only an
+hour till they were routed out by the waiting gendarme and hustled off
+into the Interior. The fittings of the houses, naturally unsaleable
+in the hurry, usually fell to the lot of marauding "_mohadjis_"
+(Mohammedan immigrants), who, often enough armed to the teeth by
+the "Committee," began the disturbances which were then exposed as
+"Armenian conspiracies."
+
+That was the time when mothers, apparently in absolute despair, sold
+their own children, because they had been robbed of their last penny
+and could not let their children perish on that terrible march into the
+distant Interior.
+
+How many countless times did I have to look on at that typical
+spectacle of little bands of Armenians belonging to the capital being
+escorted through the streets of Pera by two gendarmes in their ragged
+murky grey uniforms with their typical brutal Anatolian faces, while a
+policeman who could read and write marched behind with a notebook in
+his hand, beckoning people at random out of the crowd with an imperious
+gesture, and if their papers showed them to be Armenians, simply
+herding them in with the rest and marching them off to the "Karakol" of
+Galata-Seraï, the chief police-station in Pera, where he delivered up
+his daily bag of Armenians!
+
+The way these imprisonments and deportations were carried on is a most
+striking confutation of the claims of the Turkish Government that they
+were acting only in righteous indignation over the discovery of a great
+conspiracy. This is entirely untrue.
+
+With the most cold-blooded calculation and method, the number of
+Armenians to be deported were divided out over a period of many months,
+indeed one may say over nearly a year and a half. The deportations
+only began to abate when the downfall of the Armenian Patriarchate in
+summer 1916 dealt the final blow to the social life of the Armenians.
+They more or less ceased in December 1916 with the gathering-in of all
+those who had formerly paid the military exemption tax--among them many
+eminent Armenian business men.
+
+What can be said of the "righteous, spontaneous indignation" of the
+Armenian Government when, for example, of two Armenian porters
+belonging to the same house--brothers--one is deported to-day and the
+other not till a fortnight later; or when the number of Armenians to
+be delivered up daily from a certain quarter of the town is fixed at
+a definite figure, say two hundred or a thousand, as I have been told
+was the case by reliable Turks who were in full touch with the police
+organisation and knew the system of these deportations?
+
+Of the ebb and flow of these persecutions, all that can be said is that
+the daily number of deportations increased when the Turks were annoyed
+over some Russian victory, and that the banishments miraculously abated
+when the military catastrophes of Erzerum, Trebizond, and Erzindjan
+gave the Government food for thought and led them to wonder if perhaps
+Nemesis was going to overtake them after all.
+
+And then the method of transport! Every day towards evening, when
+these unfortunate creatures had been collected in the police-stations,
+the women and children were packed into electric-trams while the men
+and boys were compelled to go off on foot to Galata with a couple of
+blankets and only the barest necessities for their terrible journey
+packed in a small bag. Of course they were not all poor people by any
+means.
+
+This dire fate might befall anyone any day or any hour, from the
+caretaker and the tradesman to members of the best families. I
+know cases where men of high education, belonging to aristocratic
+families--engineers, doctors, lawyers--were banished from Pera in
+this disgusting way under cover of darkness to spend the night on
+the platforms of the Haidar-Pasha station, and then be packed off in
+the morning on the Anatolian Railway--of course they paid for their
+tickets and all travelling expenses!--to the Interior, where they died
+of spotted typhus, or, in rare cases after their recovery from this
+terrible malady, were permitted, after endless pleading, to return
+broken in body and soul to their homes as "harmless." Among these
+bands herded about from pillar to post like cattle there were hundreds
+and thousands of gentle, refined women of good family and of perfect
+European culture and manners.
+
+For the most part it was the sad fate of those deported to be sent
+off on an endless journey by foot, to the far-off Arabian frontier,
+where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in
+the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic
+to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountain-side, without
+money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means
+of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery.
+
+The women and children were always separated from the men. That was the
+characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike
+at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the
+tearing asunder of all family ties.
+
+That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared.
+They were the "persons transported elsewhere," as the elegant title
+of the "Provisional Han" ran, which gave full stewardship over their
+well-stocked farms to the "Committee" with its zeal for "internal
+colonisation" with purely Turkish elements. In this way the great goal
+was reached--the forcible nationalisation of a land of mixed races.
+
+While Anatolia was gradually emptied of all the forces that had
+hitherto made for progress, while the deserted towns and villages and
+flourishing fields of those who had been banished fell into the hands
+of the lowest "_Mohadjr_"--hordes of the most dissipated Mohammedan
+emigrants--that stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever more slowly
+to its distant goal, leaving the dead bodies of women and children, old
+men and boys, as milestones to mark the way. The few that did reach
+the "settlement" alive--that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-stricken
+concentration camps--continually molested by raiding Bedouins and
+Kurds, gradually sickened and died a slower and even more terrible
+death.
+
+Sometimes even this was not speedy enough for the Government, and a
+case occurred in Autumn 1916--absolutely verified by statements made
+by German employees on the Baghdad Railway--where some thousands of
+Armenians, brought as workers to this stretch of railway, simply
+vanished one day without leaving a trace. Apparently they were simply
+shipped off into the desert without more ado and there massacred.
+
+This terrible catalogue of crime on the part of the Government of
+Talaat is, however, in spite of all censorship and obstruction, being
+dealt with _officially_ in all quarters of the globe--by the American
+Embassy at Constantinople and in neutral and Entente countries--and at
+the conclusion of peace it will be brought as an accusation against the
+criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by a merciless court of all the
+civilised nations of the world.
+
+I have spoken to Armenians who have said to me, "In former times the
+old Sultan Abdul-Hamid used to have us massacred by thousands. We
+were delivered over by well-organised pogroms to the Kurds at stated
+times, and certainly we suffered cruelly enough. Then the Young Turks,
+as Adana 1909 shows, started on a bloodshed of thousands. But after
+what we have just gone through we long with all our hearts for the
+days of the old massacres. Now it is no longer a case of a certain
+number of massacred; now _our whole people_ is being slowly but surely
+exterminated by the national hatred of an apparently civilised,
+apparently modern, and therefore infinitely more dangerous Government.
+
+"Now they get hold of our women and children and send them long
+journeys on foot to concentration camps in barren districts where they
+die. The pitiful remains of our population in the villages and towns of
+the Interior, where the local authorities have carried out the commands
+of the central Government most zealously, are forcibly converted to
+Islam, and our young girls are confined in Turkish harems and places of
+low repute.
+
+"The race is to vanish to the very last man, and why? Because the
+Turks have recognised their intellectual bankruptcy, their economic
+incompetence, and their social inferiority to the progressive Armenian
+element, to which Abdul-Hamid, in spite of occasional massacres, knew
+well enough how to adapt himself, and which he even utilised in all its
+power in high offices of state. Because now that they themselves are
+being decimated by a weary and unsuccessful war of terrible bloodshed
+that was lost before it was begun, they hope in this way to retain the
+sympathy of their peoples and preserve the superiority of their element
+in the State.
+
+"These are not sporadic outbursts of wrath, as they were in the case
+of Hamid, but a definitely thought-out political measure against our
+people, and for this very reason they can hope for no mercy. Germany,
+as we have seen, tolerates the annihilation of our people through
+weakness and lack of conscience, and if the war lasts much longer the
+Armenian people will have ceased to exist. That is why we long for the
+old régime of Abdul-Hamid, terrible as it was for us."
+
+Has there ever been a greater tragedy in the history of a people--and
+of a people that have never held any illusions as to political
+independence, wedged in as they are between two Great Powers, and who
+had no real irredentistic feelings towards Russia, and, up to the
+moment when the Young Turks betrayed them shamefully and broke the ties
+of comradeship that had bound them together as revolutionaries against
+the old despotic system of Abdul-Hamid, were as thoroughly loyal
+citizens of the Ottoman Empire as any of the other peoples of this
+land, excepting perhaps the Turks themselves.
+
+I hope that these few words may have given sufficient indication of the
+spirit and outcome of this system of extermination. I should like to
+mention just one more episode which affected me personally more than
+anything I experienced in Turkey.
+
+One day in the summer of 1916 my wife went out alone about midday to
+buy something in the "Grand Rue de Péra." We lived a few steps from
+Galata-Seraï and had plenty of opportunity from our balcony of seeing
+the bands of Armenian deportees arriving at the police-station under
+the escort of gendarmes. Familiarity with such sights finally dulled
+our sympathies, and we began to think of them not as episodes affecting
+human individuals, but rather as political events.
+
+On this particular day, however, my wife came back to the house
+trembling all over. She had not been able to go on her errand. As she
+passed the "karakol," she had heard through the open hall door the
+agonising groans of a tortured being, a dull wailing like the sound of
+an animal being tormented to death. "An Armenian," she was informed
+by the people standing at the door. The crowd was then dispersed by a
+policeman.
+
+"If such scenes occur in broad daylight in the busiest part of the
+European town of Pera, I should like to know what is done to Armenians
+in the uncivilised Interior," my wife asked me. "If the Turks act like
+wild beasts here in the capital, so that a woman going through the main
+streets gets a shock like that to her nerves, then I can't live in this
+frightful country." And then she burst into a fit of sobbing and let
+loose all her pent-up passion against what she and I had had to witness
+for more than a year every time we set a foot out of doors.
+
+"You are brutes, you Germans, miserable brutes, that you tolerate this
+from the Turks when you still have the country absolutely in your
+hands. You are cowardly brutes, and I will never set foot in your
+horrible country again. God, how I hate Germany!"
+
+It was then, when my own wife, trembling and sobbing, in grief, rage,
+and disgust at such cowardliness, flung this denunciation of my
+country in my teeth that I finally and absolutely broke with Germany.
+Unfortunately I had known only too long that it had to come.
+
+I thought of the conversations I had had about the Armenian question
+with members of the German Embassy in Constantinople and, of a very
+different kind, with Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador.
+
+I had never felt fully convinced by the protestations of the German
+Embassy that they had done their utmost to put a check on the murderous
+attacks on harmless Armenians far from the theatre of war, who from
+their whole surroundings and their social class could not be in a
+position to take an active part in politics, and on the cold-blooded
+neglect and starvation of women and children apparently deported for no
+other reason than to die. The attitude of the German Government towards
+the Armenian question had impressed me as a mixture of cowardice and
+lack of conscience on the one hand and the most short-sighted stupidity
+on the other.
+
+The American Ambassador, who took the most generous interest in the
+Armenians, and has done so much for the cause of humanity in Turkey,
+was naturally much too reserved on this most burning question to give
+a German journalist like myself his true opinion about the attitude of
+his German colleagues. But from the many conversations and discussions
+I had with him, I gathered nothing that would turn me from the opinion
+I had already formed of the German Embassy, and I had given him several
+hints of what that opinion was.
+
+The attitude of Germany was, in the first place, as I have said, one of
+boundless _cowardice_. For we had the Turkish Government firmly enough
+in hand, from the military as well as the financial and political point
+of view, to insist upon the observance of the simplest principles
+of humanity if we wanted to. Enver, and still more Talaat, who as
+Minister of the Interior and really Dictator of Turkey was principally
+responsible for the Armenian persecutions, had no other choice than to
+follow Germany's lead unconditionally, and they would have accepted
+without any hesitation, if perhaps with a little grumbling, any
+definite ruling of Germany's even on this Armenian question that lay so
+near their hearts.
+
+From hundreds of examples it has been proved that the Germany Embassy
+never showed any undue delicacy for even perfectly legitimate Turkish
+interests and feelings in matters affecting German interests, and that
+they always got their own way where it was a question, for example, of
+Germans being oppressed, or superseded by Turks in the Government and
+ruling bodies. And yet I had to stand and look on when our Embassy was
+not even capable of granting her due and proper rights to a perfectly
+innocent German lady married to an Armenian who had been deported with
+many other Armenians. She appealed for redress to the German Embassy,
+but her only reward was to wait day after day in the vestibule of the
+Embassy for her case to be heard.
+
+Turks themselves have found cynical enjoyment in this measureless
+cowardice of ours and compared it with the attitude of the Russian
+Government, who, if they had found themselves in a similar position
+to Germany, would have been prepared, in spite of the Capitulations
+being abolished, to make a political case, if necessary, out of the
+protection due to one poor Russian Jew. Turks have, very politely but
+none the less definitely, made it quite clear to me that at bottom they
+felt nothing but contempt for our policy of letting things slide.
+
+Our attitude was characterised, secondly, by _lack of conscience_.
+To look on while life and property, the well-being and culture of
+thousands, are sacrificed, and to content oneself with weak formal
+protests when one is in a position to take most energetic command of
+the situation, is nothing but the most criminal lack of conscience,
+and I cannot get rid of the suspicion that, in spite of the fine
+official phrases one was so often treated to in the German Embassy on
+the subject of the "Armenian problem," our diplomats were very little
+concerned with the preservation of this people.
+
+What leads me to bring this terrible charge against them? The fact that
+I never saw anything in all this pother on the part of our diplomats
+when the venerable old Armenian Patriarch appeared at the Embassy with
+his suite after some particularly frightful sufferings of the Armenian
+population, and begged with tears in his eyes for help from the
+Embassy, however late--and I assisted more than once at such scenes in
+the Embassy and listened to the conversations of the officials--I never
+saw anything but concern about German prestige and offended vanity. As
+far as I saw, there was never any concern for the fate of the Armenian
+people. The fact that time and again I heard from the mouths of Germans
+of all grades, from the highest to the lowest, so far as they did not
+have to keep strictly to the official German versions, expressions of
+hatred against the Armenians which were based on the most short-sighted
+judgment, had no relation to the facts of the case, and were merely
+thoughtless echoes of the official Turkish statements.
+
+And cases have actually been proved to have occurred, from the
+testimony of German doctors and Red Cross nurses returned from the
+Interior, of German officers light-heartedly taking the initiative in
+exterminating and scattering the Armenians when the less-zealous local
+authorities who still retained some remnants of human feeling, scrupled
+to obey the instructions of "Nur-el-Osmanieh" (the headquarters of the
+Committee at Stamboul).
+
+The case is well known and has been absolutely verified of the
+scandalous conduct of two German officers passing through a village in
+far Asia Minor, where the Armenians had taken refuge in their houses
+and barricaded them to prevent being herded off like cattle. The order
+had been given that guns were to be turned on them, but not a single
+Turk had the courage to carry out this order and fire on women and
+children. Without any authority whatsoever, the two German officers
+then turned to and gave an exhibition of their shooting capacities!
+
+Such shameful acts are of course isolated cases, but they are on a par
+with the opinions expressed about the Armenian people by dozens of
+educated Germans of high position--not to speak of military men at all.
+
+A case of this kind where German soldiers were guilty of an attack on
+Armenians in the interior of Anatolia, was the subject of frequent
+official discussion at the German Embassy, and was finally brought to
+the notice of the authorities in Germany by Graf Wolff-Metternich, a
+really high-principled and humane man. The material result of this was
+that through the unheard-of cowardice of our Government, this man--who
+in spite of his age and in contrast to the weak-minded Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, and criminally optimistic had made many an attempt to get
+a firmer grip of the Turkish Government--was simply hounded out of
+office by the Turks and weakly sacrificed without a struggle by Berlin.
+
+What, finally, is one to think of the spirit of our German officials
+in regard to the Armenian question, when one hears such well-verified
+tales as were told me shortly before I left Constantinople by an
+eminent Hungarian banker (whose name I will not reveal)? He related,
+for example, that "a German officer, with the title of Baron, and
+closely connected with the military attaché," went one day to the
+bazaar in Stamboul and chose a valuable carpet from an Armenian, which
+he had put down to his account and sent to his house in Pera. Then when
+it came to paying for it, he promptly set the price twenty pounds lower
+than had been stipulated, and indicated to the Armenian dealer that
+in view of the good understanding between himself (the officer) and
+the Turkish President of police, he would do well not to trouble him
+further in the matter! I only cite this case because I am unfortunately
+compelled to believe in its absolute authenticity.
+
+Shortsighted stupidity, finally, is how I characterised the inactive
+toleration on the part of our Imperial representatives of this policy
+of extermination of the Armenian race. Our Government could not have
+been blind to the breaking flood of Turkish jingoism, and no one with
+any glimmer of foresight could have doubted for a moment since the
+summer of 1915 that Turkey would only go with us so long as she needed
+our military and financial aid, and that we should have no place, not
+even a purely commercial one, in a fully turkified Turkey.
+
+In spite of the lamentations one heard often enough from the mouths
+of officials over this well-recognised and unpalatable fact, we
+tolerated the extermination of a race of over one and a half million
+of people of progressive culture, with the European point of view,
+intellectually adaptable, absolutely free from jingoism and fanaticism,
+and eminently cosmopolitan in feeling; we permitted the disappearance
+of the only conceivable counterbalance to the hopelessly nationalistic,
+anti-foreign Young Turkish element, and through our cowardice and lack
+of conscience have made deadly enemies of the few that will rise from
+the ruins of a race that used to be in thorough sympathy with Germany.
+
+An intelligent German Government would, in face of the increasingly
+evident Young Turkish spirit, have used every means in their power
+to retain the sympathies of the Armenians, and indeed to win them in
+greater numbers. The Armenians waited for us, trembled with impatience
+for us, to give a definite ruling. Their disappointment, their hatred
+of us is unbounded now--and rightly so--and if a German ever again
+wants to take up business in the East he will have to reckon with this
+afflicted people so long as one of them exists.
+
+To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does
+not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy
+for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at
+least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.)
+One only requires to have a feeling for humanity to abhor the way in
+which hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate people were disposed
+of; one only requires to understand the commercial and social needs
+of a vast country like Turkey, so undeveloped and yet so capable of
+development, to place the highest value on the preservation of this
+restless, active, and eminently useful element; one only requires to
+open one's eyes and look at the facts dispassionately to deny utterly
+and absolutely what the Turks have tried to make the world believe
+about the Armenians, in order that they might go on with their work of
+extermination in peace and quiet; one only requires to have a slight
+feeling of one's dignity as a German to refuse to condone the pitiful
+cowardice of our Government over the Armenian question.
+
+The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight
+of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite
+enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking
+man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German
+cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of Pera
+the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation,
+with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social
+development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous
+with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.
+
+In long confidential reports to my paper I made perfectly clear to
+them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions and
+the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them. The
+Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no trace
+of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.
+
+The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that
+paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled her
+denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal debt of
+gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for it is to
+them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This and other works on the subject came to my notice
+for the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in
+Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  The tide of war--Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+  Caucasus"--The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+  twice hangs in the balance--Nervous tension in international
+  Pera--Bulgaria's attitude--Turkish rancour against her former
+  enemy--German illusions of a separate peace with Russia--King
+  Ferdinand's time-serving--Lack of munitions in the Dardanelles--A
+  mysterious death: a political murder?--The evacuation of
+  Gallipoli--The Turkish version of victory--Constantinople
+  unreleased--Kut-el-Amara--Propaganda for the "Holy War"--A prisoner
+  of repute--Loyalty of Anglo-Indian officers--Turkish communiqués and
+  their worth--The fall of Erzerum--Official lies--The treatment of
+  prisoners--Political speculation with prisoners of war--Treatment of
+  enemy subjects--Stagnation and lassitude in the summer of 1916--The
+  Greeks in Turkey--Dread of Greek massacres--Rumania's entry--Terrible
+  disappointment--The three phases of the war for Turkey.
+
+
+It will be necessary to devote a few lines to a review of the principal
+features of the war, so far as it affected the life of the Turkish
+capital, in order to have a military and political background for what
+I saw among the Turks during my twenty months' stay in their country.
+To that I will add a short description of the economic situation.
+
+When I arrived in Constantinople, Turkey had already completed her
+first winter campaign in the Caucasus, and had repelled the attack of
+the Entente fleet on the Dardanelles, culminating in the events of
+March 18th, 1915. But Enver Pasha had completely misjudged the relation
+between the means at his disposal and the task before him when, out of
+pure vanity and a mad desire for expansion, he undertook a personally
+conducted offensive for "the liberation of the Caucasus." The terrible
+defeats inflicted on the Turkish army on this occasion were kept
+from the knowledge of the people by a rigorous censorship and the
+falsification of the communiqués. This was particularly the case in the
+enormous Turkish losses sustained at Sarykamish.
+
+Enver had put this great Caucasus offensive in hand out of pure wanton
+folly, thinking by so doing to win laurels for himself and to have
+something tangible to show those Turkish ultra-Nationalists who always
+had an eye on Turkestan and Turan and thought that now was the time
+to carry out their programme of a "Greater Turkey." It was this mad
+undertaking, bound as it was to come to grief, that first showed Enver
+Pasha in his true colours. I shall have something to say about his
+character in another connection, which will show how gravely he has
+been over-estimated in Europe.
+
+From the beginning of March 1915 to the beginning of January 1916 the
+situation was practically entirely commanded by the battles in the
+Dardanelles and Gallipoli. It has now been accepted as a recognised
+fact even in the countries belonging to the Entente that the sacrifice
+of a few more ships on March 18th would have decided the fate of the
+Dardanelles. To their great astonishment the gallant defenders of the
+coast forts found that the attack had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the
+German naval gunners who were manning the batteries of Chanakkalé on
+that memorable day told me later that they had quite made up their
+minds the fleet would ultimately win, and that they themselves could
+not have held out much longer. Such an outcome was expected hourly
+in Constantinople, and I was told by influential people that all the
+archives, stores of money, etc., had already been removed to Konia.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that for a second time, in the first days
+of September, the fate of Constantinople was again hanging in the
+balance--a fact which is no longer a secret in England and France.
+The British had extended their line northwards from Ariburnu to
+Anaforta, and a heroic dash by the Anzacs had captured the summit
+of the Koja-Jemen-Dagh, and so given them direct command of the
+whole peninsula of Gallipoli and the insufficiently protected
+Dardanelles forts behind them. It is still a mystery to the people of
+Constantinople why the British troops did not follow up this victory.
+The fact is that this time again the money and archives were hurried
+off from Constantinople to Asia, and a German officer in Constantinople
+gave me the entertaining information that he had really seriously
+thought of hiring a window in the Grand' Rue de Péra, so that he and
+his family might watch the triumphal entry of the Entente troops! It
+would be easier to enjoy the joke of this if it were not overshadowed
+by such fearful tragedy.
+
+I have already indicated the dilemma in which I was placed on my first
+and second visits to the Gallipoli front. I was torn by conflicting
+doubts as to whom my sympathies ought ultimately to turn to--to the
+heroic Turkish defender, who was indeed fighting for the existence of
+his country, although in an unsuccessful and unjust cause, for German
+militarism and the exaggerated jingoism of the Young Turks, or to those
+who were officially my enemies but whom, knowing as I did who was
+responsible for the great crime of the war, I could not regard as such.
+
+In those September days I had already had some experience of Turkish
+politics and their defiance of the laws of humanity, and my sympathies
+were all for those thousands of fine colonial troops--such men as one
+seldom sees--sacrificing their lives in one last colossal attack,
+which if it had been prolonged even for another hour might have sealed
+the fate of the Straits and would have meant the first decisive step
+towards the overthrow of our forces; for the capture of Constantinople
+would have been the beginning of the end. I am not ashamed to confess
+that, German as I am, that was the only feeling I had when I heard of
+the British victory and the subsequent British defeat at Anaforta.
+The Battle of Anaforta was the last desperate attempt to break the
+resistance in the Dardanelles.
+
+While the men of Stamboul and Anatolia--the nucleus of the Ottoman
+Empire--were defending the City of the Caliph at the gate of the
+Dardanelles, with reinforcements from Arab regiments when they were
+utterly exhausted in the autumn, the other half of the metropolis,
+the cosmopolitan Galata-Pera, was trembling for the safety of the
+attacking Entente troops, and lived through the long months in a state
+of continual tension, longing always for the moment of release.
+
+There was a great deal of nervous calculation about the probable
+attitude of Bulgaria among both the Turks and the thousands of
+thoroughly illoyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire composing the
+population of the capital. From lack of information and also as a
+result of Bulgaria's long delay in declaring her attitude, an undue
+optimism ruled right up to the last moment among those who desired the
+overthrow of the Turks.
+
+The Bulgarian question was closely bound up with the question of the
+munitions supply. The Turkish resistance on Gallipoli threatened to
+collapse through lack of munitions, and general interest centred--with
+very varied desires with regard to the outcome--on the rare ammunition
+trains that were brought through Rumania only after an enormous
+expenditure of Turkish powers of persuasion and the application of any
+amount of "palm-oil."
+
+I was present at Sedd-ul-Bahr at the beginning of July, when, owing to
+lack of ammunition, the German-Turkish artillery could only reply with
+one shot to every ten British ones, while the insufficiently equipped
+factories of Top-hané and Zeitun-burnu, under the control of General
+Pieper, Director of Munitions, were turning out as many shells as was
+possible with the inferior material at their disposal, and the Turkish
+fortresses in the Interior had to send their supply of often very
+antiquated ammunition to the Dardanelles. The whole dramatic import of
+the situation, which might any day give rise to epoch-making events,
+was only too evident in Constantinople. It is not to be wondered at
+that everyone looked forward with feverish impatience to Bulgaria's
+entry either on one side or the other.
+
+But, in spite of all this, the Turks could scarcely bear the sight
+of the first Bulgarian soldiers who appeared in autumn 1915 in full
+uniform in the streets of "Carihrad." The necessary surrender of the
+land along the Maritza right to the gates of the holy city of "Edirne"
+(Adrianople) was but little to the liking of the Turkish patriots,
+and even the successful issue of the Dardanelles campaign, only made
+possible by Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers, was not sufficient
+to win the real sympathies of the Turks for their new allies.
+
+It was not until much later that the position was altered as a result
+of the combined fighting in Dobrudja. Practically right up to the end
+of 1916, the real, short-sighted, jingoistic Turk looked askance at
+his new ally and viewed with irritation and distrust the desecration
+of his sacred "Edirne," the symbol of his national renaissance, while
+the ambition of all politicians was to bring Bulgaria one day to a
+surrender of the lost territory and more.
+
+Even in 1916 I found Young Turks, belonging to the Committee, who still
+regarded the Bulgarians as their erstwhile cunning foe and as a set
+of unscrupulous, unsympathetic opportunists who might again become a
+menace to them. They even admitted that the Serbs were "infinitely
+nicer enemies in the Balkan war," and appealed to them very much more
+than the Bulgarians. The late Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, of whose
+tragic death I shall speak later, was always a declared opponent of the
+cession of the Maritza territory.
+
+The possibility of Bulgaria's voluntarily surrendering this territory
+and possibly much more through extending her own possessions westward
+if Greece joined the Entente, had a great deal to do with Turkey's
+attitude during the whole of 1916, and goes far to explain why she
+dallied so long over the idea of alienating Greece, and used all sorts
+of chicanery against the Ottoman and Hellenic Greeks in Turkey. Another
+and much more important factor was, as we shall see, fundamental
+race-hatred and avarice.
+
+As the question as to which side Bulgaria was to join was of decisive
+moment for Turkish politics, I may perhaps be permitted to add a few
+details from personal information. I had an interesting sidelight on
+the German attempts to win over Bulgaria from a well-informed source in
+Sofia. Everyone was much puzzled over the apparent clumsiness of the
+German Ambassador in Sofia, Dr. Michahelles, in his diplomatic mission
+to gain help from Bulgaria. King Ferdinand, of course, made great
+difficulties, and at a very early stage of the proceedings he turned to
+the Prime Minister, Radoslavoff, and said: "Away with your German Jews!
+Why don't you take the good French gold?" (referring, of course, to the
+offered French loan).
+
+The king was cunning enough in his own way, but he was a poor
+politician and utterly vacillating, for he had no sort of ideals to
+live up to and was prompted by a spirit of unworthy opportunism, and
+it needed Radoslavoff's threat of instant resignation to bring him
+to a definite decision. The transference shortly afterwards of the
+German Ambassador to a northern post strengthened the impression in
+confidential circles in Sofia that he had been lacking in diplomacy.
+
+The truth was that he had received most contradictory instructions from
+Berlin, which did not allow him to do his utmost to win Bulgaria for
+the German cause. The Imperial Chancellor seems even then--it was after
+the great German summer offensive against Russia--to have given serious
+consideration to the possibility of a separate peace with Russia, and
+was quite convinced that Russia would never lay down arms without
+having humiliated Bulgaria, should the latter prove a traitor to the
+Slavic cause and turn against Serbia.
+
+In diplomatic circles in Berlin this knowledge and the decision--so
+naïve in view of all their boasted _Weltpolitik_--to pursue the quite
+illusory dream of a separate peace with Russia, seemed to outweigh, at
+any rate for some time, anxiety with regard to the state of affairs in
+Gallipoli and the complete lack of munitions shortly to be expected,
+and lamed their initiative in their dealings with Bulgaria.
+
+It is probably not generally known that here again the military party
+assumed the lead in politics, and took the Bulgarian matter in hand
+themselves. In the space of no time at all, Bulgaria's entry on the
+German side was an accomplished fact. It was Colonel von Leipzig, the
+German military attaché at the Constantinople Embassy, that clinched
+the matter at the critical moment by a journey to Sofia, and the whole
+thing was arranged in less than a fortnight. But that journey cost him
+his life. On the way back to the Turkish capital Herr von Leipzig--one
+of the nicest and most gentlemanly men that ever wore a field-grey
+uniform--visited the Dardanelles front, and on the little Thracian
+railway-station of Uzunköprü he met his death mysteriously. He was
+found shot through the head in the bare little waiting-room of this
+miserable wayside station.
+
+It so happened that on my way to the Dardanelles on that day at the end
+of June 1915, I passed through this little station, and was the sole
+European witness of this tragic event, which increased still further
+the excitement already hanging over Constantinople in these weeks of
+lack of ammunition and terrible onslaughts against Gallipoli, and which
+had already risen to fever-heat over the nervous rumours that were
+going the rounds as to Bulgaria's attitude. The occurrence, of course,
+was used by political intriguers for their own ends.
+
+I wrote a warm and truly heartfelt appreciation of this excellent man
+and good friend, which was published in my paper at the time, and it
+was not till long afterwards, weeks, indeed, after my return, that I
+had any idea that the sudden death of Herr von Leipzig on his return
+from a mission of the highest political importance was looked upon
+by the German anti-English party as the work of English spies in the
+service of Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was formerly at the English Embassy in
+Constantinople.
+
+I was an eye-witness of the occurrence, or rather, I was beside the
+Colonel a minute after I heard the shot, and saw the hole in his
+revolver-holster where the bullet had gone through. I heard the
+frank evidence of all the Turks present, from the policeman who had
+arrived first on the scene to the staff doctor who came later, and I
+immediately telegraphed to my paper from the scene of the accident,
+giving them my impression of the affair.
+
+On my return to Constantinople I was invited to give evidence under
+oath before the German Consulate General, and there one may find the
+written evidence of what I had to say: a pure and absolute accident.
+
+I must not omit to mention here that the German authorities themselves
+in Constantinople were so thoroughly convinced that the idea of murder
+was out of the question, that Colonel von Leipzig's widow, who,
+believing this version of the story, hurried to Turkey, to make her
+own investigations, had the greatest difficulty in being officially
+received by the Embassy and Consulate. I had a long interview with her
+in the "Pera Palace," where she complained bitterly of her treatment in
+this respect. I have tarried a little over this tragic episode as it
+shows all the political ramifications that ran together in the Turkish
+capital and the dramatic excitement that prevailed.
+
+The day came, however, when the Entente troops first evacuated
+Anaforta-Ariburnu, and then, after a long and protracted struggle,
+Sedd-ul-Bahr, and so the entire Gallipoli Peninsula. The Dardanelles
+campaign was at an end.
+
+The impossibility of ever breaking down that solid Turkish resistance,
+the sufferings of the soldiers practically starved to death in the
+trenches during the cold winter storms, the difficulties of obtaining
+supplies of provisions, drinking water, ammunition, etc., with a
+frozen sea and harbourless coast, anxiety about the superior heavy
+artillery that the enemy kept bringing up after the overthrow of
+Serbia--everything combined to strengthen the Entente in their decision
+to put an end to the campaign in Gallipoli.
+
+The Turkish soldiers had now free access to the sea, for all the
+British Dreadnoughts and cruisers had disappeared; the warlike activity
+which had raged for months on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula suddenly
+ceased; Austrian heavy and medium howitzers undertook the coast
+defence, and a garrison of a few thousand Turkish soldiers stayed
+behind in the Narrows for precaution's sake, while the whole huge
+Gallipoli army in an endless train was marched off to the Taurus to
+meet the Russian advance threatening in Armenia.
+
+But Constantinople remained "unrelieved." And from that moment a
+dull resignation, a dreary waiting for one scarcely knew what,
+disappointment, and pessimism took the place of the nervous tension
+that had been so apparent in those who had been longing for the fall of
+the Turkish capital.
+
+But the Turks rejoiced. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they
+tried to construe the failure of the Gallipoli affair as a wonderful
+and dazzling victory for Islam over the combined forces of the
+Great Powers. It is only in line of course with Turkish official
+untruthfulness that, in shameless perversion of facts, they talked
+glibly of the irresistible bayonet attacks of their "ghazi" (heroes)
+and of thousands of Englishmen taken prisoner or chased back into the
+sea, whereas it was a well-known fact even in Pera that the retreat had
+been carried out in a most masterly way with practically no loss of
+life, and that the Turks themselves had been caught napping this time;
+but to lie is human, and the Turks owed it to their prestige to have an
+unmistakable and great military victory to form the basis of that "Holy
+War" that was so long in getting under weigh; and when all is said and
+done, their truly heroic defence really _was_ a victory.
+
+The absurd thing about all these lies was the way they were foisted on
+a public who already knew the true state of affairs and had nothing
+whatever to do with the "Holy War."
+
+The Turks made even more of the second piece of good fortune that fell
+to their lot--the fall of Kut-el-Amara. General Townshend became their
+cherished prisoner, and was provided with a villa on the island of
+Halki in the Sea of Marmora, with a staff of Turkish naval officers to
+act as interpreters.
+
+In the neighbouring and more fashionable _Prinkipo_ he was received
+by practically everyone with open arms, and once even a concert was
+arranged in his honour, which was attended by the élite of Turkish and
+Levantine Society--the Turks because of their vanity and pride in their
+important prisoner of war, the Levantines because of their political
+sympathy with General Townshend, who, although there against his will,
+seemed to bring them a breath of that world they had lost all contact
+with for nearly two years and for which they longed with the most
+ardent and passionate desire.
+
+On the occasion of the Bairam Festival--the highest Musulman
+festival--in 1916, the Turkish Government made a point of sending a
+group of about seventy Anglo-Indian Mohammedan officers, who had been
+taken prisoner at the fall of Kut and were now interned in Eski-Shehir,
+to the "Caliph City of Stamboul," where they were entertained for ten
+days in different Turkish hotels and shown everything that would seem
+to be of value for "Holy War" propaganda purposes.
+
+I had the opportunity of conversing with some of these Indian officers
+in the garden of the "Petit Champs," where their appearance one
+evening made a most tremendous sensation. I had of course to be very
+discreet, for we were surrounded by spies, but I came away firmly
+convinced that, in spite of their good treatment, which was of course
+not without its purpose, and most unceasing and determined efforts to
+influence them, the Turkish propaganda so far as these Indian officers
+was concerned had entirely failed and that their loyalty to England
+remained absolutely unshaken. Will anyone blame me, if, angry and
+disgusted as I was at all these Turkish intrigues--it was shortly
+after that dramatic scene of the tortured Armenian which called forth
+that denunciation of Germany from my wife--I said to a group of these
+Indians--just this and nothing more!--that they should not believe all
+that the Turks told them, and that the result of the war would be very
+different from what the Turks thought? One of the officers thanked me
+with glowing eyes on behalf of his comrades and himself, and told me
+what a comfort my assurance was to them. They had nothing to complain
+of, he said, save being cut off from all news except official Turkish
+reports.
+
+The very most that even the wildest fancy could find in events like
+Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara was brought forward for the benefit of
+the "Holy War," but, despite everything, the propaganda was, as we
+have seen, a hopeless failure. Reverses such as the fall of Erzerum,
+Trebizond, and Ersindjan, on the contrary, which took place between the
+two above-mentioned victories, have never to this day been even so much
+as hinted at in the official war communiqués for the Ottoman public.
+For the communiqués for home and foreign consumption were always
+radically different.
+
+It was not until very much later, when the Turkish counter-offensive
+against Bitlis seemed to be bearing fruit, that a few mild indications
+of these defeats were made in Parliament, with a careful suppression
+of all names, and the newspapers were empowered to make some mention
+of a "purely temporary retreat of no strategic importance" which had
+then taken place. The usual stereotyped report of 3,000 or 5,000 dead
+that was officially given out after every battle throughout the whole
+course of operations in the Irak scarcely came off in this case,
+however, and, to tell the truth, Erzerum and these countless English
+dead reported in the Irak did more than anything else to undermine
+completely the people's already sadly shaken confidence in the official
+war communiqués.
+
+If there was a real victory to be celebrated, the most stringent police
+orders were issued that flags were to be flown everywhere--on every
+building. Surely it is only in a land like Turkey that one could
+see the curious sight I witnessed after the fall of Bucharest--the
+victorious flags of the Central Powers, surmounted by the Turkish
+crescent, flying even from the balconies of Rumanian subjects, because
+there had been a definite police warning issued that, in the case
+of non-compliance with the order, the houses would be immediately
+ransacked and the families inhabiting them sent off to the interior
+of Anatolia. Under the circumstances, refusal to carry out police
+orders was impossible. That was the Turkish idea of the respect due to
+individual liberty.
+
+This gives me an opportunity to say something of the treatment of
+prisoners. I may say in one word that it is, on the whole, good.
+Justice compels me to admit that the Turk, when he does take prisoners,
+treats them kindly and chivalrously; but he takes few prisoners, for he
+knows only too well how to wield his bayonet in those murderous charges
+he makes. Indeed, apart from the few hundred that fell into their hands
+in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-Turkish front, together with the
+crews of a few captured submarines, all the Turkish prisoners of war
+come from Kut-el-Amara.
+
+But the primitive Turk is all too sadly lacking in the comforts of
+life himself to be able to provide them for his prisoners. Without the
+help of the Commission that works under the protection of the American
+Embassy for the relief of the Entente prisoners, and sends piles of
+warm clothing, excellent shoes (which rouse the special envy of the
+Turks), chocolate, cakes, etc., to the Anatolian camps, these men,
+accustomed to European ways of life, would be in a sad plight.
+
+The repeated and humiliating marching of prisoners of war through the
+streets of Constantinople to show them off to the childish gaze of a
+people much influenced by externals, might with advantage be dispensed
+with. And it was certainly not exactly kind to make wounded English
+officers process past the Sultan at the Friday's "Selamlik"; it was
+rather too like slave-driving methods and the abuses of the Middle Ages.
+
+I was an unwilling witness of one most regrettable incident that
+took place shortly before I left Constantinople. In this case the
+sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners of war were cruelly exploited
+for political ends. A whole troup of about 2,000 Rumanians, from
+Dobrudja, were hounded up and down the streets of Pera and Stamboul in
+a purposely destitute and exhausted condition, so that the appearance
+of these poor wretches, who hung their heads dejectedly and had lost
+all trace of military bearing, might give the impression that the Turks
+were dealing with a very inferior foe and would soon be at the end of
+the business. This is how the authorities were going to increase the
+confidence of the doubting population!
+
+The Turkish escort had apparently given these prisoners nothing to
+drink on the way--although the Turk, being a great water-drinker
+himself, knows only too well what a man needs on a dusty journey of
+several days on a transport train--for with my own eyes I saw dozens
+of them simply flinging themselves like animals full length on the
+ground when they reached the Taksim Fountain, and trying to slake their
+terrible thirst. It was with pitiable trickery like this--for which
+no doubt Enver Pasha was responsible, for the simple Turkish soldier
+is much too good-natured not to share his bread and water with his
+prisoners--that attempts were made, at the expense of all feelings of
+humanity, to cheer up the uneducated masses.
+
+The Turkish Government, however, apart from a few cases of reprisals,
+where the prisoners were treated in an even more barbaric and primitive
+manner, did not, as a general rule, go the length of interning
+civilians. This was not without its own good grounds. In the first
+place, a very large part of the trade of the country lay in the hands
+of these Europeans, and they were consequently absolutely indispensable
+to the Turks in their everyday commercial life; secondly, a Government
+that had systematically rooted out the Armenians, hanged Arabian
+notables, and brutally mishandled the Greeks, could scarcely dispense,
+in the eyes of Europe, with the very last pretence of being more or
+less civilised; and, lastly, perhaps the fear of being brought to book
+later on may have had a restraining influence on them--we saw how
+growing anxiety about the Russian advance on the Eastern front led, at
+any rate for a time, to a discontinuance of Armenian persecutions.
+
+Besides all this, hundreds and thousands of Turks were resident in
+enemy countries, and of course the desire was to avoid reprisals. So
+the Government contented itself with threats and subterfuges, after a
+first unsuccessful attempt to expose a large number of French subjects
+to fire from the enemy guns in Gallipoli--a plan which failed entirely,
+owing to the energetic opposition of officials of the American Embassy
+who had accompanied these chosen victims to Gallipoli. Every means
+was used, however, even announcements in the newspapers and a Vote of
+Credit "for the removal of enemy subjects to the interior," to keep the
+sword of Damocles for ever hanging over the heads of all subjects of
+Entente countries, even women and children.
+
+From the fall of Kut-el-Amara up to the time of Rumania's entry into
+the war, there were no important episodes of a military or political
+nature from the particular point of view of Turkey. (The Arabian
+catastrophe I will deal with in another connection.) With the ebb
+and flow of war and constant anxiety about Russia's movements, time
+passed slowly enough. It was well known that the Turkish offensive was
+already considerably weakened and the lack of means of transport was
+an open secret. Starvation and spotted fever raged at the Front as
+well as in the interior and the capital. Asiatic cholera even made its
+appearance in European Pera, but was fortunately successfully combated
+by vaccination.
+
+Further decisive Russian victories on the west and the Gulf of
+Alexandretta were expected after the fall of Ersindjian, for the
+ambition and personal hatred against the Turks of the Grand Duke
+Nicolai Nicolajivitch, commanding the armies in Armenia, would probably
+stop short at nothing less than complete overthrow of the enemy.
+Simple-minded souls, whose geography was not their strong point,
+reckoned how long it would take the Russians to get from Anatolia and
+when the conquest of Constantinople would take place.
+
+The less optimistic among those who were panting for final emancipation
+from the Young Turkish military yoke set their hopes on the entry of
+Rumania. In all circles Rumania's probable attitude was fairly clear,
+and no one ever doubted that she would be drawn into the war.
+
+In consequence of the new operations after Rumania's declaration of
+war, the revival of the offensive in Macedonia, and the events in
+Athens, all eyes were turned again to the ever-doubtful Greece. The
+Greek element, Ottoman and Hellenic combined, in Constantinople alone
+may be reckoned at several hundred thousand. Never were sympathies so
+great for Venizelos, never was the spirit of the Irredenta so outspoken
+as among the Greeks in Turkey, who had been the dupes since 1909 of
+every possible kind of Young Turkish intrigue. In contrast to the
+Armenians, the great mass of whom thought and felt as loyal Ottoman
+citizens right up to the very end when Talaat and Enver's policy of
+extermination set in against them--in contrast to these absolutely
+helpless and therefore all the more easy victims to the Turkish
+national lust of persecution, the attitude of the Greek citizens was
+all the more marked.
+
+Since the Græco-Turkish war of 1912-13 and the impetus given to
+Pan-Hellenism by the successful issue of the war, there is not
+one single Greek in either country--no matter what his social
+standing--that has not ardently looked forward to and desired the
+overthrow of Turkey. But the Greek is much too clever to let his
+feelings be seen; and he is not so unprotected as the Armenian. And
+so up to the present time the Turk has confined himself more to
+small intrigues against the Greek population, except in a few remote
+districts--more especially the shores of the Black Sea--where massacres
+like those organised among the Armenians have been carried out, but on
+a very much smaller scale.
+
+Sympathy with Venizelos and the Irredentistic desire for Greece to
+throw in her lot with the Entente are counterbalanced, however, in
+the case of the Greeks living in Turkey, by grave anxiety as to their
+own welfare if it came to a break between the two countries. Turkish
+hatred of the Greeks knows no bounds, and it was no idle fear that made
+the Greeks in Constantinople tremble, in spite of their satisfaction
+politically, when the rumours were afloat in autumn 1916 of King
+Constantine's abdication and Greece's entry on the side of the Entente.
+
+But the ideas as to how the Turks would act towards them in such a
+case were diametrically opposed even among those who had lived in the
+country a long time and knew the Turkish mind exactly. Many expected
+immediate Greek massacres on the largest scale; others, again, expected
+only brutal intrigues and chicanery, economic ruin; still others
+thought that nothing at all would happen, that the Turks were already
+too demoralised, and that at any rate in Pera the far superior Greek
+element would completely command the situation. This last I considered
+mere megalomaniac optimism in view of the fact that Turkey was still
+unbroken so far as things military were concerned, and I believe that
+those people were right who believed that Greece's entry on the side
+of the Entente would be the signal for the carrying out of atrocities
+against all Greeks, at any rate in the commercial world.
+
+It would be interesting to know which idea the German authorities
+favoured. That the event would pass off without damage being done, they
+apparently did not believe, for in those days when Greece's decision
+seemed to be imminent, the former _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_, which had
+been lying at Stenia on the Bosporus, were brought up with all speed
+and anchored just off the coast with their guns turned on Pera, and
+the German garrison, as I knew from different officers, had orders to
+be prepared for an alarm.
+
+Did the Germans think they were going to have to protect Turks or
+Greeks in the case of definite news from Athens? Was it Germany's
+intention to protect the European population, who had nothing to do
+with the impending political decision, although they might sympathise
+with it--was it Germany's intention to protect them, at any rate in
+this instance, from the Turkish lust of extermination? Had these two
+ships, now known as the _Jawuz Sultan Selim_ and the _Midilli_, not
+belonged for a long time to the Imperial Ottoman Navy?
+
+When Rumania flung off her shackles, there was great rejoicing in Pera,
+and even the greatest pessimists believed that relief was near and
+would be accomplished within two months at latest. But another and more
+terrible reverse absolutely destroyed the last shred of anti-Turkish
+hope, and the victories in Rumania, especially the fall of Bucharest,
+combined with the speech of the Russian minister Trepoff, had the
+effect of sending over solid to the side of the Government even the few
+who had hitherto, at least in theory, formed an opposition, although a
+powerless one.
+
+Victories shared with the Bulgarians, too, did away with the last
+remains of unfriendly feelings towards that people and consolidated the
+Turko-Bulgarian Alliance. Indeed, one may say that for Turkey the third
+great phase of the war began with the removal of all danger of the fall
+of Constantinople through the collapse of the Rumanian forces.
+
+The first comprised the time of the powerful attacks directed at the
+very heart of the Empire, its most vulnerable point, and ended with
+the English-French evacuation of Gallipoli. The second was the period
+of alternate successes and reverses, almost a time of stagnation,
+when practically all interest was centred on the Russian menace in
+Asia Minor and the efforts made to withstand it. It ended equally
+successfully with the removal of the Russian menace from the Balkans.
+The third will be the phase of increasing internal weakness, of the
+dissipation of strength through the sending of troops to Europe, of
+the successful renewal of the English offensive in Mesopotamia,
+perhaps even of an English-French offensive against Syria and of the
+final revolt of all the Arabian lands, ushered in by the events in the
+Hedjaz and the founding of a purely Arabian Caliphate. The third phase
+_cannot_ last longer than the year 1917; it will mean the decision of
+the whole European war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  The economic situation--Exaggerated Entente hopes--Hunger and
+  suffering among the civil population--The system of requisitioning
+  and the semi-official monopolists--Profiteering on the part of
+  the Government clique--Frivolity and cynicism--The "Djemiet"--The
+  delegates of the German _Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_ (Central
+  Purchases Commission)--A hard battle between German and
+  Turkish intrigue--Reform of the coinage--Paper money and its
+  depreciation--The hoarding of bullion--The Russian rouble the best
+  investment.
+
+
+During the entire course of the war as I have briefly sketched it
+in the foregoing pages, the economic situation in the whole country
+and particularly in the capital became more and more serious. But,
+let me just say here, in anticipation, that Turkey, being a purely
+agricultural country with a very modest population, can never be
+brought to sue for peace through starvation, nor, with Germany backing
+and financing her, through any general exhaustion of commercial
+resources, until Germany herself is brought to her knees. Any victory
+must be a purely military and political one. The whole crux of the
+food problem in Turkey is that the people suffer, suffer cruelly, but
+not enough for hunger to have any results in the shape of an earlier
+conclusion of peace. This is the case also with the Central Powers, as
+the Entente have unfortunately only too surely convinced themselves now
+after their first illusions to the contrary.
+
+There is another element in the Turkish question too--the large
+majority of the population are a heterogeneous mass of enslaved and
+degenerate beings, outcasts of society, plunged in the lowest social
+and commercial depths, entirely lacking in all initiative, who can
+never become a factor in any political upheaval, for in Turkey this can
+only be looked for from the military or the educated classes. If the
+Entente Powers ever counted on Turkey's chronic state of starvation
+and lack of supplies coming to their aid in this war, they have made
+a sad mistake. Therefore in attempting to sketch in a few pages the
+conditions of life and the economic situation in Turkey, my aim is
+solely to bring to light the underlying Turkish methods, and the ethics
+and spirit of the Young Turkish Government.
+
+During the periods of the very acute bread crises, which occurred
+more than once, but notably in the beginning of 1916, some dozen men
+literally died of hunger daily in Constantinople alone. With my own
+eyes I have repeatedly seen women collapsing from exhaustion in the
+streets. From many parts of the interior, particularly Syria, there
+were reliable reports of a still worse state of affairs. But even in
+more normal times there was always a difficulty in obtaining bread, for
+the means of communication in that vast and primitive land of Turkey
+are precarious at best, and it was no easy matter to get the grain
+transported to the centres of consumption.
+
+Then in Constantinople there was a shortage not only of skilled labour,
+but of coal for milling purposes. The result was that the townspeople
+only received a daily ration of a quarter of a kilogramme (about 8
+oz.--not a quarter of an oka, which would be about 10 oz.) of bread,
+which was mostly of an indigestible and occasionally very doubtful
+quality--utterly uneatable by Europeans--although occasionally it was
+quite good though coarse. If the poor people in Constantinople wanted
+to supplement this very insufficient allowance, they could do so when
+things were in a flourishing condition at the price of about 2-1/2 or
+3 piastres (1 piastre = about 2-1/4_d._) the English pound, and later
+4 or 5 piastres. Even this was for the most part only procurable by
+clandestine means from soldiers who were usually willing to turn part
+of their bread ration into money.
+
+This is about all that can be said about the feeding of the people, for
+bread is by far the most important food of the Oriental, and the prices
+of the other foodstuffs soon reached exorbitant heights. What were the
+poor to feed on when rice, reckoned in English coinage, cost roughly
+from 3_s._ 2_d._ to 4_s._ 4_d._ an oka (about 2-1/2 lb.), beans 2_s._
+4_d._ the oka, meat 3_s._ to 4_s._, and the cheapest sheep's cheese and
+olives, hitherto the most common Turkish condiment to eat with bread,
+rose to 3_s._ and 1_s._ 8_d._ the oka?
+
+Wages, on the other hand, were ludicrously low. We may obtain some
+idea of the standard of living from the fact that the Government, who
+always favoured the soldiers, did not pay more than 5 piastres (about
+1_s._) a day to the families of soldiers on active service. I have
+often wondered what the people really did eat, and I was never able to
+come to any satisfactory conclusion, although I often went to market
+myself to buy and see what other people bought. It is significant
+enough that just shortly before I left Constantinople--that is, a few
+weeks after the Turko-Bulgarian-German victories in Rumania and the
+fall of Bucharest--the price of bread in the Turkish capital, in spite
+of the widely advertised "enormous supplies" taken in Rumania, rose
+still higher.
+
+I cannot speak from personal experience of what happened after
+Christmas 1916 in this connection, but everyone was quite convinced,
+in spite of the official report, that the harvest of 1916, despite the
+tremendous and praiseworthy efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture
+and the military authorities, would show a very marked decrease as a
+result of the mobilisation of agricultural labour, the requisitioning
+of implements, and the shortage of buffaloes, which, instead of
+ploughing fields, were pulling guns over the snow-covered uplands of
+Armenia. There was a very general idea that the harvest of 1917 would
+be a horrible catastrophe. And yet I am fully convinced, and I must
+emphasise it again, that, in spite of agricultural disaster, Turkey
+will still go on as a military power.
+
+And now let us see what the Government did in connection with the
+food problem. At a comparatively early stage they followed Germany's
+example and introduced bread tickets, which were quite successful
+so long as the flour lasted. In the autumn of 1915 they took the
+organisation of the bread supply for large towns out of the hands
+of the municipalities, and gave it over to the War Office. They got
+Parliament to vote a large fund to buy up all available supplies of
+flour, and in view of the immense importance of bread as the chief
+means of nourishment of the masses, they decided to sell it at a very
+considerable loss to themselves, so that the price of the daily ration
+(though not of the supplementary ration) remained very much as it
+had been in peace time. The Government always favoured the purely
+Mohammedan quarters of the town so far as bread supply was concerned,
+and the people living in Fatih and other parts of Stamboul were very
+much better off than the inhabitants of Græco-European Pera.
+
+Then Talaat made speeches in the House on the food question in which
+he did all in his power to throw dust in the eyes of the starving
+population, but he did not really succeed in blinding anyone as to the
+true state of affairs. In February 1916, when there was practically a
+famine in the land, he even went so far as to declare in Parliament
+that the food supplies for the whole of Turkey had been so increased by
+enormous purchases in Rumania, that they were now fully assured for two
+years.
+
+It was no doubt with cynical enjoyment that the "Committee" of
+the Young Turks enlarged on the privations of the people in such
+publications as the semi-official _Tanin_, in which the following
+wonderful sentiment appeared: "One can pass the night in relative
+brightness without oil in one's lamp if one thinks of the bright and
+glorious future that this war is preparing for Turkey!"
+
+One could have forgiven such cheap phrases if they had been a true,
+though possibly misguided, attempt to provide comfort in face of real
+want; but at the same time as such paragraphs were appearing in the
+_Tanin_ and thousands of poor Turkish households had to spend the
+long winter nights without the slightest light, thousands of tons of
+oil were lying in Constantinople alone in the stores of the official
+_accapareurs_.
+
+This brings me to the second series of measures taken by the Turkish
+Government to relieve the economic situation--those of a negative
+nature. Their positive measures are pretty well exhausted when one has
+mentioned their treatment of the bread crisis.
+
+The question of _requisitioning_ is one of the most important in
+Turkish life in war-time, and is not without its ludicrous side.
+In imitation of German war-time methods, either wrongly understood
+or wittingly misapplied by Oriental greed, the Turkish Government
+requisitioned pretty well everything in the food line or in the
+shape of articles of daily use that were sure to be scarce and would
+necessarily rise in price. But while in the civilised countries of
+Central Europe the supplies so requisitioned were sagely applied to
+the general good, the members of the "Committee of Union and Progress"
+looked with fine contempt and the grim cynicism of arch-dictators on
+the privations and sufferings of the people so long as they did not
+actually starve, and used the supplies requisitioned for the personal
+enrichment of their clique.
+
+When I speak of requisitioning, I do not mean the necessary military
+carrying off of grain, cattle, vehicles, buffaloes, and horses, general
+equipment, and so on, in exchange for a scrap of paper to be redeemed
+after the war (of very doubtful value in view of Turkey's position)--I
+do not mean that, even though the way it was accomplished bled the
+country far more than was necessary, falling as it did in the country
+districts into the hands of ignorant, brutal, and fanatical underlings,
+and in the town being carried out with every kind of refinement
+by the central authorities. Too often it was a means of violent
+"nationalisation" and deprivation of property and rights exercised
+especially against Armenians, Greeks, and subjects of other Entente
+countries. If there was a particularly nice villa or handsome estate
+belonging to someone who was not a Turk, soldiers were immediately
+billeted there under some pretext or other, and it was not long before
+these rough Anatolians had reduced everything to rack and ruin.
+
+I do not mean either the terrible damage to commercial life brought
+about by the way the military authorities, in complete disregard of
+agricultural interests, were always seizing railway waggons, and so
+completely laming all initiative on the part of farmers and merchants,
+whose goods were usually simply emptied out on the spot, exposed to
+ruin, or disposed of without any kind of compensation being given.
+
+What I do mean is the huge semi-official cornering of food, which must
+be regarded as typical of the Young Turks' idea of their official
+responsibility towards those for whom they exercised stewardship.
+
+The "Bakal Clique" ("provision merchants," "grocers") was known through
+the whole of Constantinople, and was keenly criticised by the much
+injured public. It was, first of all, under the official patronage of
+the city prefect, Ismet Bey, a creature of the Committee; but later
+on, when they realised that dire necessity made a continuance of this
+system of cornering quite unthinkable, he was made the scapegoat, and
+his dismissal from office was freely commented on in the Committee
+newspapers as "an act of deliverance." The Committee thought that
+they would thus throw dust in the eyes of the sorely-tried people
+of Constantinople. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish pounds were
+turned into cash in the shortest possible time by this semi-official
+syndicate, at the expense of the starving population, and found their
+way into the pockets of the administrators.
+
+That was how the Young Turkish parvenus were able to fulfil their one
+desire and wriggle their way into the best clubs, where they gambled
+away huge sums of money. The method was simple enough: whatever was
+eatable or useable, but could only be obtained by import from abroad,
+was "taken charge of," and starvation rations, which were simply
+ludicrously inadequate and quite insufficient for the needs of even the
+poorest household, were doled out by "_vesikas_" (the ticket system).
+
+The great stock of goods, however, was sold secretly at exorbitant
+prices by the creatures of the "Bakal Clique," who simply cornered the
+market. That is how it happened that in Constantinople, cut off as it
+was from the outer world and without imports, even at the end of 1916,
+with a population of well over a million, there were still unlimited
+stores of everything available for those who could pay fancy prices,
+while by the beginning of 1915 those less well endowed with worldly
+goods had quite forgotten the meaning of comfort and the poor were
+starving with ample stores of everything still available.
+
+In businesses belonging to enemy subjects the system of requisitioning,
+of course, reached a climax, stores of all kinds worth thousands of
+pounds simply disappearing, without any reason being given for carrying
+them off, and nothing offered in exchange, but one of these famous
+"scraps of paper." Cases have been verified and were freely discussed
+in Pera of ladies' shoes and ladies' clothing even being requisitioned
+and turned into large sums of cash by the consequent rise in price.
+
+The profiteering of Ismet and company, who chose the specially
+productive centre of the capital for their system of usury, was not,
+however, by any means an isolated case of administrative corruption,
+for exactly the same system of requisitioning, holding up and then
+reselling under private management at as great a profit as possible,
+underlay and underlies the great semi-official Young Turkish commercial
+organisation, with branches throughout the whole country, known as the
+"Djemiet" and under the distinguished patronage of Talaat himself.
+
+After Ismet Bey's fall, the "Djemiet" took over the supplying of the
+capital as well (with the exception of bread). We will speak elsewhere
+of this great organisation, which is established not only for war
+purposes, but serves towards the nationalisation of economic life. So
+far as the system of requisitioning is concerned, it comes into the
+picture through its firm opposition to German merchants who were trying
+to buy up stores of food and raw materials from their ally Turkey.
+The intrigues and counter-intrigues on both sides sometimes had most
+remarkable results.
+
+One of the really bright sides of life in Constantinople in war-time
+was the amusement one extracted from the silent and desperate war
+continually being waged by the many well-fed gentlemen of the "Z.E.G."
+("_Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_," "Central Purchasing Commission") and
+their minions who tried to rob Turkey of foodstuffs and raw material
+for the benefit of Germany, against the "Djemiet" and more particularly
+the Quartermaster-General, Ismail Hakki Pasha, that wooden-legged,
+enormously wealthy representative of the neo-Turkish spirit--he was the
+most perfect blend of Oriental politeness and narrow-minded decision
+to do exactly the opposite of what he had promised. On the Turkish
+side, the determination to safeguard the interests of the Army, and in
+the case of the "Djemiet" the effort not to let any foodstuffs out of
+Germany--a standpoint that has at last found expression in a formal
+prohibition of all export--then the quest of personal enrichment on the
+part of the great "Clique"; on the German side, the insatiable hunger
+for everything Turkey could provide that had been lacking for a long
+time in Germany: the whole thing was a wonderfully variegated picture
+of mutual intrigue.
+
+The gentlemen of the "Z.E.G.," after months of inactivity spent in
+reviling the Turks and studying Young Turkish and other morals and
+manners by frequenting all the pleasure resorts in the place, managed
+at last to get the exports of raw materials set on the right road, and
+so it came about that the fabulous sums in German money that had to be
+put into circulation in payment of these goods, in spite of Turkey's
+indebtedness to Germany, led to a very considerable depreciation in the
+value of the Mark even in Turkey for some time.
+
+But until the understanding as to exports was finally arrived at, there
+were many dramatic events in Constantinople, culminating in the Turks
+re-requisitioning, with the help of armed detachments, stores already
+paid for by Germany and lying in the warehouses of the "Z.E.G." and the
+German Bank!
+
+On the financial side, apart from Turkey's enormous debt to Germany,
+the wonderful attempt at a reform and standardisation of the coinage in
+the middle of May 1916 is worthy of mention. The reform, which was a
+simplification of huge economic value of the tremendously complicated
+money system and introducing a theoretical gold unit, must be regarded
+chiefly as a war measure to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkish
+paper money.
+
+This last attempt, as was obvious after a few months' trial, was
+entirely unsuccessful, and even hastened the fall of paper money, for
+the population soon discovered at the back of these drastic measures
+the thinly veiled anxiety of the Government lest there should be a
+further deterioration. Dire punishments, such as the closing down of
+money-changers' businesses and arraignment before a military court
+for the slightest offence, were meted out to anyone found guilty of
+changing gold or even silver for paper.
+
+In November 1916, however, it was an open secret that, in spite of all
+these prohibitions, there was no difficulty in the inland provinces
+and in Syria and Palestine in changing a gold pound for two or more
+paper pounds. In still more unfrequented spots no paper money would
+be accepted, so that the whole trade of the country simply came to a
+standstill. Even in Constantinople at the beginning of December 1916,
+paper stood to gold as 100 to 175.
+
+The Anatolian population still went gaily on, burying all the available
+silver _medjidiehs_ and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in the
+ground, because being simple country folk they could not understand,
+as the Government with all its prayers and threats were so anxious
+they should, that throughout Turkey and in the greater and mightier
+and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed paper money was really
+much better than actual coins, and was just as valuable as gold! The
+people, too, could not but remember what had happened with the "Kaimé"
+after the Turko-Russian war, when thousands who had believed in the
+assurances of the Government suddenly found themselves penniless. In
+Constantinople it was a favourite joke to take one of the new pound,
+half-pound, or quarter-pound notes issued under German paper, not gold,
+guarantee and printed only on one side and say, "This [pointing to the
+right side] is the present value, and that [blank side] will be the
+value on the conclusion of peace."
+
+Even those who were better informed, however, and sat at the receipt of
+custom, did exactly the same as these stupid Anatolian country-people;
+no idea of patriotism prevented them from collecting everything metal
+they could lay their hands on, and, in spite of all threats of
+punishment--which could never overtake them!--paying the highest price
+in paper money for every gold piece they could get. Their argument was:
+"One must of course have something to live on in the time directly
+following the conclusion of peace." In ordinary trade and commerce,
+filthy, torn paper notes, down to a paper piastre, came more and more
+to be practically the only exchange.
+
+A discerning Turk said to me once: "It would be a very good plan
+sometime to have the police search these great men for bullion every
+evening on their return from the official exchanges. That would be more
+to the point than any reform in the coinage!"
+
+Those who could not get gold, bought roubles, which were regarded as
+one of the very best speculations going, until one day the Turkish
+Government, in their annoyance at some Russian victory, suddenly
+deported to Anatolia a rich Greek banker of the name of Vlasdari, who
+was accused of having speculated in roubles, which of course gave them
+the double benefit of getting rid of a Greek and seizing his beautiful
+estate in Pera.
+
+Only the greatest optimists were deceived into believing that it was a
+profitable transaction to buy Austrian paper money at the fabulously
+low price the Austrian _Krone_ had reached against the Turkish pound,
+which was really neither politically nor financially in any better a
+state. The members of the "Committee of Union and Progress" had of
+course shipped their gold off to Switzerland long ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  German propaganda and ethics--The unsuccessful "Holy War" and the
+  German Government--"The Holy War" a crime against civilisation, a
+  chimera, a farce--Underhand dealings--The German Embassy the dupe
+  of adventurers--The morality of German Press representatives--A
+  trusty servant of the German Embassy--Fine official distinctions of
+  morality--The German conception of the rights of individuals.
+
+
+Now that we have given a rough sketch of the main events of the war
+as it affected the economic life of the people, and have devoted a
+chapter to that sinister crime, the Armenian persecutions, we shall
+leave the Young Turks for a moment and turn to an examination of German
+propaganda methods.
+
+It is a very painful task for a German who does not profess to
+be a "World Politician," but really thinks in terms of true
+"world-politics," to deal with the many intrigues and machinations of
+our Government in their relation to the so-called "Holy War" (Arab.
+_Djihad_), where in their quest of a vain illusion they stooped to
+the very lowest means. Practically all their hopes in that direction
+have been sadly shattered. Their costly, unscrupulous, thoroughly
+unmoral efforts against European civilisation in Mohammedan countries
+have resulted in the terrific counter-stroke of the defection of the
+Arabs and the foundation of a purely Arabian Chaliphate under English
+protection. Thus England has already won a brilliant victory against
+Germany and Turkey in spite of Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara, although
+it seems probable that even these will be wiped out by greater deeds
+on the part of the Entente before long. One could not have a better
+example of Germany's total inability to succeed in the sphere of
+world-politics.
+
+The so-called "Holy War," if it had succeeded, would have been one
+of the greatest crimes against human civilisation that even Germany
+has on her conscience, remembering as we do her recent ruthless
+"frightfulness" at sea, and her attempt to set Mexico and the Japanese
+against the land of most modern civilisation and of greatest liberty.
+A successful "Djihad" spreading to all the lands of Islam would have
+set back by years all that civilisation so patiently and so painfully
+won; it would not have been at all comparable with the Entente's use
+of coloured troops in Europe which Germany deprecated so loudly, for
+in the Holy War it would have been a case of letting the wildest
+fanaticism loose against the armies of law and order and civilisation;
+in the case of the Entente it was part of a purely military action
+on the part of England and France, who held under their sway all the
+inhabitants, coloured and otherwise, of those Colonial regions from
+which troops were sent to Europe and to which they will return.
+
+But the attempt against colonial civilisation did not succeed. The
+"Djihad," proclaimed as it was by the Turanian pseudo-Chaliph and
+violently anti-Entente, was doomed to failure from the very start
+from its obvious artificiality. It was a miserable farce, or rather a
+tragicomedy, the present ending of which, namely the defection of the
+Arabian Chaliphate, is the direct contrary of what had been aimed at
+with such fanatical urgency and the use of such immoral propaganda.
+
+The attempt to "unloose" the Holy War was due primarily to the most
+absurd illusions. It would seem that in Germany, the land of science,
+the home of so many eminent doctors of research, even the scholars
+have been attacked by that disease of being dazzled by wild political
+illusions, or surely, knowing the countries of Islam outside-in as they
+must, they would long ago have raised their voices against such arrant
+folly. It would seem that all her inherent knowledge, all her studies,
+have been of little or no avail to Germany, so that mistake after
+mistake has been committed in the realm of world politics. It may be
+said that Germany, even if she were doubtful of the issue, should still
+not have left untried this means of crippling her opponents. To that
+I can only reply by pointing to the actual position of affairs, well
+known to Germany, not only in English, but also in French and Russian
+Islamic colonial territory, which should have rendered the "Djihad"
+entirely and absolutely out of the question.
+
+Let us take for example Egypt, French North-West Africa, and Russian
+Turkestan, not to speak of the masterly English colonial rule in
+India, which has now been tested and tried for centuries. Anyone who
+has ever seen Egypt with the area under culture practically doubled
+under modern English rule by the help of every kind of technical
+contrivance for the betterment of existing conditions, and the skilful
+utilisation of all available means at an expense of millions of pounds,
+with its needy population given an opportunity to earn a living wage
+and even wealth through a lucrative cultivation of the land under
+conditions that are a paradise compared with what they were under the
+Turkish rule of extortion and despotism--anyone who has seen that
+must have looked from the very beginning with a very doubtful eye on
+Germany's and Turkey's illusions of stirring up these well-doing people
+against their rulers.
+
+The same thing occurs again in the extended territory of North-West
+Africa from the Atlas lands to the Guinea coast and Lake Chad, where
+France, as I know from personal experience, stands on a high level
+of colonial excellence, developing all the resources of the country
+with consummate skill, shaping her "_empire colonial_" more and more
+into a shining gem in the crown of colonial endeavour, and, as I
+can testify from my own observations in Morocco, Senegal, the Niger,
+and the Interior of the Guinea territories of the "A.O.F." (Afrique
+Occidentale Française), capturing the hearts of the whole population by
+her essential culture, and, last but not least, winning the Mohammedans
+by her clever Islam policy.
+
+That, finally, Russia, at any rate from the psychological standpoint,
+is perhaps the best coloniser of Further Asia, even German textbooks
+on colonial policy admit unreservedly, and the glowing conditions that
+she has brought about especially in the basin of Ferghana in Turkestan
+by the introduction of the flourishing and lucrative business of
+cotton-growing are known to everyone. Only politicians of the most
+wildly fantastic type, who see everywhere what they want to see, could
+believe that in this war the Turkish "Turanistic" bait would ever have
+any effect in Russian Central Asia, or make its inhabitants now living
+in security, peace, and well-being wish back again the conditions
+which prevailed under the Emirs of Samarkand, Khiva, and Bokhara. But
+Germany, who should have been well informed if anyone was, believed
+all these fantastic impossibilities.
+
+One could let it pass with a slight feeling of irritation against
+Germany if it were merely a case of the failure of the "Djihad."
+But unfortunately the propaganda, as stupid as it was unsuccessful,
+exercised in this connection, will be written down for all time as one
+of the blackest and most despicable marks against Germany's account in
+this war. In Turkey alone, the underhand manipulation for the unloosing
+of the "Holy War" and the German Press propaganda so closely allied
+with it, indeed the whole way in which the German cause in the East
+was represented journalistically throughout the war, are subjects full
+of the saddest, most biting irony, to sympathise with which must lower
+every German who has lived in the Turkish capital in the eyes of the
+whole civilised world.
+
+In order to demonstrate the rôle played in this affair by the German
+Embassy at Constantinople I will not make an exhaustive survey but
+simply confine myself to a few episodes and outstanding features. An
+eminent German Red Cross doctor, clear-sighted and reliable, who had
+many tales to tell of what he had seen in the "Caucasus" campaign,
+said to me one evening, as we sat together at a promenade concert:
+"Do you see that man in Prussian major's uniform going past? I met
+him twice in Erzerum last winter. The man was nothing but an employee
+in a merchant's business in Baku, and had learnt Russian there. He
+has never done military service. When war broke out, he hurried to
+the Embassy in Pera and offered his services to stir up the Georgians
+and other peoples of the Caucasus against Russia. Of course he got
+full powers to do what he wanted, and guns and ammunition and piles
+of propaganda pamphlets were placed at his disposal so that he might
+carry on his work from the frontier of the then still neutral Turkey.
+Whole chests full of good gold coins were sent to him to be distributed
+confidentially for propaganda purposes; of course he was his own most
+confidential friend! He went back to Erzerum without having won a
+single soul for the cause of the 'Djihad.' That has not prevented his
+living as a 'grand seigneur,' for the Embassy are not yet daunted,
+and now the fellow struts about in a major's uniform, lent to him,
+although he has never been a soldier, so that the cause may gain still
+more prestige."
+
+Numerous examples of similar measures might be cited, and instances
+without number given, of the German Embassy being made the dupe of
+greedy adventurers who treated them as an inexhaustible source of gold.
+First one would appear on the scene who announced himself as the one
+man to cope with Afghanistan, then another would come along on his way
+to Persia and play the great man "on a special mission" for a time in
+Pera while money belonging to the German Empire would find its way into
+all sorts of low haunts. And so things went on for two years until,
+with the Arabian catastrophe, even the eyes of the great diplomatic
+optimists of Ayas-Pasha might have been opened.
+
+I will only mention here how even a _bona fide_ connoisseur of the East
+like Baron von Oppenheim, who had already made tours of considerable
+value for research purposes right across the Arabian Peninsula, and so
+should have known better than to share these false illusions, doled
+out thousands of marks from his own pocket--and millions from the
+Treasury!--to stir up the tribes to take part in the "Djihad," and how
+he returned to Pera from his propaganda tour with a real Bedouin beard,
+and, still unabashed, took over the control of the German Embassy's
+"News Bureau," which kept up these much-derided war telegraph and
+picture offices known in Pera and elsewhere by the non-German populace
+as _sacs de mensonges_, and which flooded the whole of the East with
+waggon loads of pamphlets in every conceivable tongue--in fact these,
+with guns and ammunition, formed the chief load of the bi-weekly
+"culture-bringing" Balkan train!
+
+I will only cite the one example of the far-famed Mario Passarge--a
+real _Apache_ to look at. With his friend Frobenius, the ethnographer
+and German agent, well known to me personally from French West
+Africa for his liking for absinthe and negro women and his Teutonic
+brusqueness emphasised in comparison with the kindly, helpful French
+officials, as well as by hearsay from many scandalous tales, Passarge
+undertook that disastrous expedition to the Abyssinians which failed
+so lamentably owing to the Italians, and then after its collapse
+came to Turkey as special correspondent of the _Vossische Zeitung_
+and managed to swindle his way through Macedonia with a false Italian
+passport to Greece, where he wrote sensational reports for his
+wonderful newspaper about the atrocities and low morale of Sarrail's
+army--the same newspaper that had made itself the laughing-stock of the
+whole of Europe, and at the same time had managed to get the German
+Government to pursue for two years the shadow of a separate peace with
+Russia, by publishing a marvellous series of "Special Reports via
+Stockholm," on conditions in Russia that were nothing but a tissue of
+lies inspired by blind Jewish hate; if a tithe of them had been true,
+Russia would have gone under long ago.
+
+I need not repeat my own opinion on all the machinations of the German
+Embassy, but I will simply give you word for word what a German Press
+agent in Constantinople (I will mention no names) once said to me:
+"It is unbelievable," he declared, "what a mob of low characters
+frequent the German Embassy now. The scum of the earth, people who
+would never have dared before the war to have been seen on the
+pavements of Ayas-Pasha, have now free entry. Any day you can see
+some doubtful-looking character accosting the porter at the Embassy,
+whispering something in his ear, and then being ushered down the steps
+to where the propaganda department, the news bureau, has its quarters.
+There he gives wonderful assurances of what he can do, and promises to
+stir up some Mohammedan people for the "Djihad." Then he waits a while
+in the ante-room, and is finally received by the authorities; but the
+next time he comes to the Embassy he walks in through the well-carpeted
+main entrance, and requests an audience with the Ambassador or other
+high official, and we soon find him comfortably equipped and setting
+off on a 'special mission' as the confidential servant of the German
+Embassy." But even the recognition of these truths has not prevented
+this journalist from eating from the crib of the German Embassy!
+
+I cannot leave this disagreeable subject without making some mention
+of a type that does more than anything to throw light on the morale of
+this German propaganda. Everyone in Constantinople knows--or rather
+knew, for he has now feathered his nest comfortably and departed to
+Germany with his money--Mehmed Zekki "Bey," the publisher and chief
+editor of the military paper _Die Nationalverteidigung_ and its
+counterpart _La Défense_, published daily in French but representative
+of Young Turkish-German interests. Hundreds of those who know Zekki
+also know that he used to be called "Capitaine Nelken y Waldberg."
+Fewer know that "Nelken" alone would have been more in accordance with
+fact.
+
+I will relate the history of this individual, as I know it from the
+mouths of reliable informants--the members of the Embassy and the
+Consulate. Nelken, a Roumanian Jew, a shopkeeper by trade, had been
+several times in prison for bankruptcy and fraud, and at last fled from
+Roumania. He took refuge in the Turkish capital, where he continued
+his business and married a Greek wife. Here again he became bankrupt,
+as is only too clear from the public notice of restoration in the
+Constantinople newspapers, when his lucrative political activity as the
+champion of Krupp's, of the German cause and "the holy German war,"
+as much a purely pan-Germanic as Islamic affair, provided him with the
+wherewithal to pay off his former disreputable debts.
+
+To go back to his history--with money won by fraud in his pocket, he
+deserted his wife and went off, no doubt having made a thorough and
+most professional study of the subject in the low haunts of Pera,
+as a white-slave trader to the Argentine, and then--I rely for my
+information on an official of the German Consulate in Pera--set up as
+proprietor of a brothel in Buenos Ayres. Then, as often happens, the
+Argentine special police took him into their service, thinking, on the
+principle of "setting a thief to catch a thief," that he would have
+special experience for the post. Grounds enough there for him to add
+on the second name of his falsified passport "Nelken y Waldberg" and
+to call himself in Europe a "Capitaine de la Gendarmerie" from the
+Argentine.
+
+From there he went to Cairo and edited a little private paper called
+_Les Petites Nouvelles Egyptiennes_. For repeated extortion he was
+sentenced to one year's imprisonment, but unfortunately only _in
+contumaciam_, for he had already fled the country, not, however,
+before he had been publicly smacked on the face in the "Flasch"
+beer garden without offering satisfaction as an "Argentine General"
+should--a performance that was later repeated in every detail in
+Toklian's Restaurant in Constantinople.
+
+He told me once that he had been sentenced in this way because, on
+an understanding with the then German Diplomatic Agent in Cairo, von
+Miquel, he had attacked Lord Cromer's policy sharply, and that his
+patron von Miquel had given him the timely hint to leave Egypt. I
+will leave it to one's imagination to discover how much truth there
+was in this former brothel-keeper's connection with official German
+"world-politics" and high diplomacy. From what I have seen personally
+since, I believe that Zekki, alias Nelken, was probably speaking the
+truth in this case, although it is certainly a fact that in German
+circles in Cairo at that time ordinary extortion was recognised as
+being punishable by imprisonment for a considerable length of time.
+
+Nelken then returned to Constantinople and devoted himself with
+unflagging energy to his previous business of agent. He turned to
+the Islamic faith and became a citizen of the Ottoman Empire because
+he found it more profitable so to do, and could thus escape from his
+former liabilities. Then in spite of lack of means, he managed to found
+a military newspaper, which, however, soon petered out. Nelken became
+Mehmed Zekki and a journalist, and of course called himself "Bey."
+
+Up to this point the history of this individual is nothing but a
+characteristic extract from life as it is lived by hundreds of rogues
+in the East. But now we come to something which is almost unbelievable
+and which leads me to give credence to his version of his relations
+with von Miquel, which after all only shows more clearly than ever that
+German "world-politics" are not above making use of the scum of the
+earth for their intrigues. In full knowledge of this man's whole black
+past--as Dr. Weber of the German Embassy himself told me--the German
+Embassy with the sanction of the Imperial Government (this I know from
+letters Zekki showed me in great glee from the Foreign Office and the
+War Office) appointed this fellow, whom all Pera said they would not
+touch with gloves on or with the tongs, to be their confidential agent
+with a large monthly honorarium and to become a pillar of "the German
+cause" in the East. And it could not even be said in extenuation that
+the man had any great desire or any wonderful vocation to represent
+Germany, for--as the Embassy official said to me--"We knew that Zekki
+was a dangerous character and rather inclined to the Entente at the
+outbreak of war, so we decided to win him over by giving him a salary
+rather than drive him into the enemy's camp." So it simply comes to
+this, that Germany buys a bankrupt, a blackmailer, a procurer, a
+brothel-keeper with cash to fight her "Holy War" for her!
+
+As publisher of the _Défense_ Zekki received a large salary from
+Germany, one from Austria, afterwards cut down not from any excess of
+moral sense, but simply from excess of economy, and a very considerable
+sum from Krupp's. As representative of German interests he did all he
+could to propitiate the Young Turks by the most fulsome flattery, and
+more recently he was pushing hard to get on the Committee of Union and
+Progress. But the Turks jibbed at what the German Embassy had brought
+on themselves--seeing Zekki "Bey" moving about their sacred halls with
+the most imposing nonchalance and condescension. Zekki himself once
+complained to me bitterly that in spite of his having presented Enver
+Pasha with a valuable clock worth eighty Turkish pounds which Enver
+had accepted with pleasure, he would not even answer a written request
+from Zekki craving an audience with him. (This, incidentally, is a most
+excellent example of the working of Enver's mind, a megalomaniac as
+greedy as he was proud.)
+
+The military director of the Turkish Press said to me once: "We
+are only waiting for the first 'gaffe' in his paper to get this
+filthy creature hunted out of his lair," and one day when through
+carelessness a small uncensored and really quite harmless military
+notice appeared in print (everything is submitted to the censor),
+the Turkish Government gave it short shrift indeed, and banned _sine
+die_ this "Ottoman" paper which lived by Krupp and the German trade
+advertisements, and had become an advocate of the German Embassy,
+because it was paid in good solid cash for it. The paper was replaced
+by a new one in Turkish hands, called _Le Soir_.
+
+I could go on talking for ages from most intimate personal knowledge
+about this man, superb in his own way. His doings were not without
+a certain comic side which amused while it aggravated one. I could
+mention, for example, his great lawsuit in Germany in 1916, in which he
+brought an accusation of libel against some German who had called him a
+blackmailer and a criminal who had been repeatedly punished. He managed
+to win the lawsuit--that is, the defenders had to pay a fine of twenty
+marks, because the evidence brought against Zekki could not be followed
+up to Egypt on account of England's supremacy on the sea, and also no
+doubt because the interests of Krupp and the German Embassy could not
+have this cherished blossom of German propaganda disturbed! So for him
+at any rate the lack of "freedom of the seas" he had so often raged
+about in his leading articles was a very appreciable advantage.
+
+The last time I remember seeing the man he was engaged in an earnest
+_tête-à-tête_ about the propagation of German political interests by
+means of arms with the Nationalist Reichstag deputy, Dr. Streesemann, a
+representative of the German heavy goods trade and of German jingoism
+who had hastened to Constantinople for the furtherance of German
+culture. Most significantly, no doubt in remembrance of his days in
+Buenos Ayres, Zekki had chosen for this interview the most private room
+of the Hôtel Moderne, a pension with a bar where sect could be had;
+and the worthy representative of the German people, probably nothing
+loth to have a change from his eternal "Pan-German" diet, accepted his
+invitation with alacrity. I followed the two gentlemen to make my own
+investigations, and I certainly got as much amusement, although in a
+different sense, as one usually does in such haunts. It was really
+most entertaining to watch Nelken the ex-Jew and Young Turk, with his
+fez on his head, nodding jovially to all the German officers at the
+neighbouring tables, and settling the affairs of the realm with this
+Pan-German representative of the people.
+
+I trust my readers will forgive me if, in spite of the distaste I
+feel at having to write this unsavoury chapter about German Press
+representatives and those in high diplomatic authority who commission
+them, I relate one more episode of a like character before I close.
+One of these writers employed in the service of the German Embassy had
+done one of his female employees an injury which cannot be repeated
+here. His colleague--out of professional jealousy, the other said--gave
+evidence against him under oath at the German Consulate, and the other
+brought a charge of perjury against him. The German Consulate, in order
+not to lose such a trusty champion of the German cause for a trifle
+like the wounded honour of a mere woman--an Armenian to boot!--simply
+suppressed the whole case, although all Pera was speaking about it.
+
+Against this we have the case later on of a German journalist, most
+jealous of German interests, who had a highly important document
+stolen out of his desk with false keys by one of his clerks in the pay
+of the Young Turkish Committee. The document was the copy of a very
+confidential report addressed to high official quarters in Germany, in
+which there were some rather more uncomplimentary remarks about Enver
+and Talaat than appeared in the version for public consumption. An
+Embassy less notoriously cowardly than the German one would simply have
+shielded their man in consideration of the fact that the report was
+never meant for publication and of the reprehensible way it had been
+stolen and made public. But our chicken-hearted diplomats allowed him
+to be dismissed in disgrace by the Turks, and so practically gave their
+official sanction to the meanest Oriental methods of espionage.
+
+I have, however, now come to the conclusion from information I have
+received that German cowardice in this case probably had a background
+of hypocrisy and malice, for this same journalist had spoken with
+remarkable freedom, not indeed as a pro-Englander, but in contrast
+to German and Turkish narrow-mindedness, of how well he had been
+treated by the English authorities, and particularly General Maxwell
+in the exercise of his profession in Cairo, where he had been allowed
+for fully five weeks, after the outbreak of war, to edit a German
+newspaper. (I have seen the numbers myself and wondered at the almost
+incredible liberality of the English censorship.) Instead of being sent
+to Malta he had been treated most fairly and kindly and given every
+opportunity to get away safely to Syria. Of course the narration of
+events like these were rather out of place in our "God Punish England"
+time, and it was no doubt on account of this, apart from all cowardice,
+that the German Embassy made their fine distinctions between personal
+and political morality in the case of their Press representative.
+
+We have spoken of German propaganda for the "Holy War," as carried
+out by individuals as well as by pamphlets and the Press. The Turkish
+capital saw a very appreciable amount of this in the shape of wandering
+adventurers and printed paper. Several thousand Algerian, Tunisian,
+French West African, Russian Tartar, and Turkestan prisoners of war
+of Mohammedan religion from the German internment camps were kept for
+weeks in Pera and urged by the German Government in defiance of all the
+laws of the peoples to join the "Djihad" against their own rulers.
+
+They were told that they would have the great honour of being
+presented to the Caliph in Stamboul; as devout Mohammedans they could
+of course not find much to object to in that. A wonderfully attractive
+picture was painted for them of the delights of settling in the
+flourishing lands of the East, and living free of expense instead of
+starving in prison under the rod of German non-commissioned officers
+till the far-distant conclusion of peace. One can well imagine how such
+marvellous conjuring tricks would appeal to these poor fellows.
+
+They have repeatedly told me that they had been promised to be allowed
+to settle in Turkey without any mention being made of using them
+again as soldiers. But once on the way to Constantinople there was no
+further question of asking them what their opinion was of what was
+being done to them. They were simply treated as Turkish voluntary
+soldiers and sent off to the Front, to Armenia, and the Irak. How far
+they were used as real front-line soldiers or in service behind the
+lines I do not know; what I do know is that they left Constantinople
+in as great numbers as they came from Germany, armed with rifles and
+fully equipped for service in the field. One can therefore guess how
+many of them became "settlers" as they had been promised. Several days
+running in the early summer of 1916 I saw them being marched off in
+the direction of the Haidar-Pasha station on the Anatolian Railway.
+They were headed by a Turkish band, but on not one single face of all
+these serried ranks did I see the slightest spark of enthusiasm, and
+the German soldiers and officers escorting each separate section were
+not exactly calculated to leave the impression with the public that
+these were zealots fighting voluntarily for their faith who could not
+get fast enough out to the Front to be shot or hanged by their former
+masters!
+
+In her system of recruiting in the newly founded kingdom of Poland,
+Germany demonstrated even more clearly of what she was capable in this
+direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  Young Turkish nationalism--One-sided abolition of
+  capitulations--Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation--Abolition of
+  foreign languages--German simplicity--The Turkification of commercial
+  life--Unmistakable intellectual improvement as a result of the
+  war--Trade policy and customs tariff--National production--The
+  founding of new businesses in Turkey--Germany supplanted--German
+  starvation--Capitulations or full European control?--The colonisation
+  and forcible Turkification of Anatolia--"The properties of people who
+  have been dispatched elsewhere"--The "Mohadjirs"--Greek persecutions
+  just before the Great War--The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus
+  of the Ottoman Empire--Turkey finds herself at last--Anatolian
+  dirt and decay--The "Greater Turkey" and the purely Turkish
+  Turkey--Cleavage or concentration?
+
+
+From the Germans we now turn again to the Turks, to try to fathom
+the exact mentality of the Young Turks during the great war, and
+to discover what were the intellectual sources for their various
+activities.
+
+To give a better idea of the whole position I will just preface my
+remarks by stating a few of the outstanding features of the present
+Young Turkish Government and their dependents. Their first and chief
+characteristic is _hostility to foreigners_, but this does not prevent
+them from making every possible use of their ally Germany, or from
+appropriating in every walk of life anything European, be it a matter
+of technical skill, government, civilisation, that they consider might
+be profitable. Secondly they are possessed of an unbounded store of
+_jingoism_, which has its origin in _Pan-Turkism_ with its ruling idea
+of "Turanism." Pan-Turkism, which seems to be the governing passion of
+all the leading men of the day, finds expression in two directions.
+Outwardly it is a constant striving for a "Greater Turkey," a movement
+that for a large part in its essence, and certainly in its territorial
+aims, runs parallel with the "Holy War"; inwardly it is a fanatical
+desire for a general Turkification which finds outlet in political
+nationalistic measures, some of criminal barbarity, others partaking of
+the nature of modern reforms, beginning with the language regulations
+and "internal colonisation" and ending in the Armenian persecutions.
+
+It is worthy of note that of the two intellectual sources of the "Holy
+War," namely Turanism--which one might reverse and call an extended
+form of Old-Turkism--and Pan-Islamism, the men of the "Committee for
+Unity and Progress" have only made logical though unsuccessful use
+of the former, although theoretically speaking they recognise the
+value of the latter as well. While Turkish race-fanaticism, which
+finds practical outlet in Turanistic ideas, is still the intellectual
+backbone of official Turkey to-day and has to be broken by the present
+war, the Young Turkish Islam policy is already completely bankrupt and
+can therefore be studied here dispassionately in all its aspects. We
+propose to treat the matter in some detail.
+
+All New-Turkish Nationalistic efforts at emancipation had as first
+principle the abolition of Capitulations. The whole Young Turkish
+period we have here under review is therefore to be dated from that
+day, shortly before Turkey's entry into the war, when that injunction
+was flung overboard which Europe had anxiously placed for the
+protection of the interests of Europeans on a State but too little
+civilised. It was Turkey herself that did this after having curtly
+refused the Entente offer to remove the Capitulations as a reward for
+Turkey's remaining neutral. Germany, who was equally interested in
+the existence or non-existence of Capitulations, never mentioned this
+painful subject to her ally for a very long time, and it was 1916
+before she formally recognised the abolition of Capitulations, long
+after she had lost all hold on Turkey in that direction.
+
+As early as summer 1915 there were clear outward indications in the
+streets of Constantinople of a smouldering Nationalism ready to break
+out at any moment. Turkey, under the leadership of Talaat Bey, pursued
+her course along the well-trodden paths, and the first sphere in which
+there was evidence of an attempt at forcible Turkification was the
+language. Somewhere toward the end of 1915 Talaat suddenly ordered the
+removal of all French and English inscriptions, shop signs, etc., even
+in the middle of European Pera. In tramcars and at stopping-places the
+French text was blocked out; boards with public police warnings in
+French were either removed altogether or replaced by unreadable Turkish
+scrawls; the street indications were simply abolished. The authorities
+apparently thought it preferable that the Levantine public should get
+into the wrong tramcar, should break their legs getting out, pick
+flowers in the parks and wander round helplessly in a maze of unnamed
+streets rather than that the spirit of forcible Turkification should
+make even the least sacrifice to comfort.
+
+Of the thousand inhabitants of Pera, not ten can read Turkish; but
+under the pressure of the official order and for fear of brutal assault
+or some kind of underhand treatment in case of non-compliance, the
+inhabitants really surpassed themselves, and before one could turn,
+all the names over the shops had been painted over and replaced by
+wonderful Turkish characters that looked like decorative shields or
+something of the kind painted in the red and white of the national
+colours. If one had not noted the entrance to the shop and the look of
+the window very carefully, one might wander helplessly up and down the
+Grand Rue de Péra if one wanted to buy something in a particular shop.
+
+But the German, as simple-minded as ever where political matters
+were concerned, was highly delighted in spite of the extraordinary
+difficulty of communal life. "Away with French and English," he would
+shout. "God punish England; hurrah, our Turkish brothers are helping us
+and favouring the extension of the German language!"
+
+The answer to these pan-German expansion politicians and language
+fanatics, whose spiritual home was round the beer-tables of the
+"Teutonia," was provided by a second decree of Talaat's some weeks
+later when all German notices had to disappear. A few, who would not
+believe the order, held out obstinately, and the signs remained in
+German till they were either supplemented in 1916, on a very clear
+hint from Stamboul, by the obligatory Turkish language or later
+quite supplanted. It was not till some time after the German had
+disappeared--and this is worthy of note--that the Greek signs ceased to
+exist. Greek had been up to that time the most used tongue and was the
+commercial language of the Armenians.
+
+Then came the famous language regulations, which even went so far--with
+a year of grace granted owing to the extraordinary difficulties of
+the Turkish script--as to decree that in the offices of all trade
+undertakings of any public interest whatsoever, such as banks,
+newspapers, transport agencies, etc., the Turkish language should be
+used exclusively for book-keeping and any written communication with
+customers. One can imagine the "Osmanic Lloyd" and the "German Bank"
+with Turkish book-keeping and Turkish letters written to an exclusively
+European clientèle! Old and trusty employees suddenly found themselves
+faced with the choice of learning the difficult Turkish script or being
+turned out in a year's time. The possibility--indeed, the necessity--of
+employing Turkish hands in European businesses suddenly came within
+the range of practical politics--and that was exactly what the Turkish
+Government wanted.
+
+The arrangement had not yet come into operation when I left
+Constantinople, but it was hanging like the sword of Damocles over
+commercial undertakings that had hitherto been purely German. Optimists
+still hoped it never would come to this pass and would have welcomed
+any political-military blow that would put a damper on Turkey's
+arrogance. Others, believing firmly in a final Turkish victory, began
+to learn Turkish feverishly. Be that as it may, the new arrangements
+were hung up on the walls of all offices in the summer of 1916 and
+created confusion enough.
+
+Many other measures for the systematic Turkification of commercial life
+and public intercourse followed hard on this first bold step, which I
+need scarcely mention here. And in spite of the ever-growing number of
+German officials in the different ministries, partly foisted on the
+Turkish Government by the German authorities, partly gladly accepted
+for the moment because the Turks had still much to learn from German
+organisation and could profit from employing Germans, in spite of the
+appointment of a number of German professors to the Turkish University
+of Stamboul (who, however, as a matter of fact, like the German
+Government officials, had to wear the fez and learn Turkish within a
+year, and besides roused most unfavourable and anti-German comment
+in the newspapers), it was soon perfectly evident to every unbiased
+witness that Germany would find no place in a victorious Turkey after
+the war if the "Committee for Union and Progress" did not need her.
+Some sort of light must surely have broken over the last blind optimism
+of the Germans in the course of the summer of 1916.
+
+Hand in hand with the nationalistic attempt to coerce European
+businesses into using the Turkish language there went more practical
+attempts to turkify all the important branches of commerce by the
+founding of indigenous organisations and the introduction of reforms
+of more material content than those language decrees. These efforts,
+in spite of the enormous absorption of all intellectual capabilities
+and energies in war and the clash of arms, were expressed with a truly
+marvellous directness of aim, and, from the national standpoint, a
+truly commendable magnificence of conception.
+
+This latter has indeed never been lacking as a progressive ethnic
+factor in Turkish politics. The Turks have a wonderful understanding,
+too, of the importance of social problems, or at least, as a sovereign
+people, they feel instinctively what in a social connection will
+further their sovereignty. The war with its enormous intellectual
+activity has certainly brought all the political and economic resources
+of the Turks--including the Young Turkish Government--to the highest
+possible stage of development, and we ought not to be surprised if
+we often find that measures, whether of a beneficent or injurious
+character, are not lacking in modern exactness, clever technicality,
+and thoroughness of conception. Without anticipating, I should just
+like to note here how this change appears to affect the war. No one
+can doubt that it will enormously intensify zeal in the fight for
+the existence of the Turkey of the future, freed from its jingoistic
+outgrowths, once more come to its senses and confined to its own proper
+sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of the Empire. But, on the other
+hand, iron might and determined warfare against this misguided State
+are needed to root out false and harmful ideas.
+
+If, after this slight digression, we glance for a moment at the
+practical measures for a complete Turkification of Turkey, the
+economic efforts at emancipation and the civic reforms carried
+through, we find first of all that the new Turkey, when she had thrown
+the Capitulations overboard, then proceeded to emancipate herself
+completely from European supervision in the realm of trade and commerce.
+
+A very considerable step in advance in the way of Turkish sovereignty
+and Turkish economic patriotism was the organisation and--since
+September 1916--execution of the neo-Turkish autonomic customs tariff,
+which with one blow gives Turkish finances what the Government formerly
+managed to extract painfully from the Great Powers bit by bit, by
+fair means or foul, at intervals of many years, and which with its
+hard-and-fast scale of taxes--which there appears to be no inclination
+in political circles at the moment to modify by trade treaties!--means
+an exceedingly adequate protection of Turkey's national productions,
+without any reference whatever to the export interests of her allies,
+and is a very strong inducement to the renaissance of at any rate the
+most important national industries. The far-flung net of the "Djemiet"
+(whose acquaintance we have already made in another connection),
+that purely Turkish commercial undertaking with Talaat Bey at its
+head, regulating everything as it did, taking everything into its own
+hands, from the realising of the products of the Anatolian farmers
+(and incidentally bringing it about that their ally Germany had to pay
+heavily and always in cash, even although the Government itself owed
+millions, to Germany and got everything on credit from flour out of
+Roumania to paper for their journals) to the most difficult rationing
+of towns, forms a foundation for the nationalising of economic life of
+the very greatest importance.
+
+The establishment of purely Turkish trade and transport companies,
+often with pensioned Ministers as directors and principal shareholders,
+and the new language regulations and other privileges will soon cut the
+ground away from under the feet of European concerns. Able assistance
+is given in this direction by the _Tanin_ and the _Hilal_ (the
+"Crescent"), the newly founded "Committee" paper in the French language
+(when it is a question of the official influencing of public opinion
+in European and Levantine quarters, exceptions can be made even in
+language fanaticism!) in which a series of articles invariably appear
+at the founding of each new company praising the patriotic zeal of the
+founders.
+
+Then again there are the increasingly thinly veiled efforts to
+establish a purely Turkish national banking system. Quite lately there
+has been a movement in favour of founding a Turkish National Bank with
+the object of supplanting the much-hated "Deutsche Bank" in spite of
+the credit it always gives, and that international and preponderatingly
+French institution, the "Banque Impériale Ottomane," which had already
+simply been sequestrated without more ado.
+
+The Turks have decided, too, that the mines are to be nationalised, and
+Turkish companies have already been formed, without capital it is true,
+to work the mines after the war. The same applies to the railways--in
+spite of the fine German plans for the Baghdad Railway.
+
+All these wonderful efforts at emancipation are perfectly justified
+from the patriotic point of view, and are so many blows dealt at
+Germany, who, quite apart from Rohrbach's _Welt_-_politik_, had at
+least hoped to find a lucrative field of privileged commercial activity
+in the country of her close and devoted allies the Turks. It is of
+supreme significance that while the war is still at its height, while
+the Empire of the Sultan is defending its very existence at the gates
+of the capital with German arms and German money, there is manifested
+with the most startling clearness the failure of German policy, the
+endangering of all these German "vital interests" in Turkey which
+according to Pan-German and Imperialistic views were one of the most
+important stakes to be won by wantonly letting loose this criminal war
+on Europe.
+
+No doubt many a German was only too well aware of the fact that in
+this Turkey suddenly roused by the war all the ground had been lost
+that he had built on with such profit before, and many an anxious face
+did one see in German circles in Constantinople. I need not tarry here
+over the drastic comments I heard from so many German merchants on
+this subject. They show a most curious state of mind on the part of
+those who had formerly, in their quest for gain and nothing but gain,
+profited in true parasitical fashion from the financial benefits of
+the Capitulations and had seen nothing but the money side of this
+arrangement which was, after all, entered into for other purposes. It
+was no rare thing and no paradox to find a German company director say,
+as I heard one say: "If things went against Turkey to-day, I would
+willingly shoulder my gun, old man as I am."
+
+No thinking man will expend too much grief over the ruthless abolition
+of the Capitulations, for they were unmoral and gave too much
+opportunity to parasites and rogues, while they were quite inadequate
+to protect the interests of civilisation. They may have sufficed in
+the time of Abdul-Hamid, who was easily frightened off and was always
+sensible and polite in his dealings with Europe. For the Turkey of
+Enver and Talaat quite other measures are needed. One must, according
+to one's political standpoint, either recognise and accept their
+nationalistic programme of emancipation or combat it forcibly by
+introducing full European control. And however willing one may be
+to let foreign nations develop in their own particular way and work
+out their own salvation, one's standpoint with regard to a State so
+behindhand, so fanatical, so misguided as Turkey can be but one: the
+introduction and continuation at all costs of whatever guarantees
+the best protection to European civilisation in this land of such
+importance culturally and historically.
+
+Not only were Europeans, but the natives themselves, affected by the
+series of measures that one might class together under the heading of
+Turkish Internal Colonisation and the Nationalising of Anatolia. The
+programme of the Young Turks was not only a "Greater Turkey," but above
+all a purely Turkish Turkey; and if the former showed signs of failing
+because they had over-estimated their powers and their chances in the
+war or had employed wrong methods, there was nothing at all to hinder
+a sovereign Government from striving all the more ruthlessly to gain
+their second point.
+
+The way this Turkification of Anatolia was carried on was certainly
+not lacking in thoroughness, like all their nationalistic efforts. The
+best means that lay to hand were the frightful Armenian persecutions
+which affected a wonderful clearance among the population. "The
+properties of persons who have been dispatched elsewhere" within the
+meaning of the Provisory Bill were either distributed free or sold
+for a mere song to anyone who applied to the Committee for them and
+proved themselves of the same political persuasion or of pure Turkish
+or preponderatingly Turkish nationality. The rent was often fixed
+as low as 30 piastres a month (about 5_s._ 8_d._) for officials and
+retired military men. In the case of the latter, Enver Pasha thought
+this an excellent opportunity for getting rid, through the medium of a
+kindly invitation to settle in the Interior, of those who worried him
+by their dissatisfaction with his system and who might have prepared
+difficulties for him. This "settling" was carried out with the greatest
+zeal in the exceptionally flourishing and fruitful districts of Brussa,
+Smyrna-Aidin, Eskishehir, Adabazar, Angora, and Adana, where Armenians
+and Greeks had played such a great, and, to the Turks, unpopular part
+as pioneers of civilisation.
+
+The semi-official articles in the _Tanin_ were perfectly right in
+praising the local authorities who in contrast with their former
+indifference and ignorance "had now fully recognised the great national
+importance of internal colonisation and the settling of Mohadjirs
+(emigrants from the lost Turkish territory in Bosnia, Macedonia,
+Thrace, etc.) in the country." There is nothing to be said in favour
+of the stupid, unprogressive character of the Anatolian as contrasted
+with the strength, physical endurance, intelligence, and mobility of
+these emigrants. The latter had also, generally speaking, lived in more
+highly developed districts.
+
+The great drawback of the Mohadjirs, however, is their instability,
+their idleness and love of wandering, their frivolity, and their
+extraordinary fanaticism. As faithful Mohammedans following the
+standard of their Padishah and leaving the parts of the country
+that had fallen under Christian rule, they seemed to think they
+were justified in behaving like spoilt children towards the native
+population. They treated them with ruthless disregard, they were
+bumptious, and, if their new neighbours were Greek or Armenian, they
+inclined to use force, a proceeding which was always possible because
+the Government did not take away _their_ firearms and were even known
+to have doled them out to stir up unrest. It has occurred more than
+once that Mohadjirs have crossed swords even with Turkish Anatolians
+living peacefully in their own villages. One can then easily imagine
+how much more the heretic _giaurs_ ("Christian dogs," "unclean men")
+had to suffer at their hands.
+
+I should like to say a word here about these Greek persecutions in
+Thrace and Western Anatolia that have become notorious throughout the
+whole of Europe. They took place just before the outbreak of war, and
+cost thousands of peaceful Greeks--men, women, and children-their
+lives, and reduced to ashes dozens of flourishing villages and towns.
+At the time of the murder of Sarajevo, I happened to be staying in
+the vilajet of Aidin, in Smyrna and the _Hinterland_, and saw with
+my own eyes such shameful deeds as must infuriate anyone against the
+Turkish Government that aids and abets such barbarity--from old women
+being driven along by a dozen Mohadjirs and dissipated soldiers to the
+smoking ruins of Phocæa.
+
+Everyone at that time, at any rate in Smyrna, expected the immediate
+outbreak of a new Græco-Turkish war, and perhaps the only thing
+that prevented it was the method of procrastination adopted by both
+sides, for both were waiting for the Dreadnoughts they had ordered,
+until finally these smaller clouds were swallowed up in the mighty
+thunder-cloud gathering on the European horizon. Only the extreme speed
+with which one dramatic event followed another, and my own mobilisation
+which precluded my writing anything of a political nature, prevented me
+on that occasion from giving my sinister impressions of Young Turkish
+jingoism and Mohadjir brutality. Even if I had been able to write what
+I thought it is extremely doubtful if it would ever have seen the
+light of day, for the German papers were but little inclined, as I had
+opportunity of discovering personally, to say anything unpleasant about
+the Young Turkish Government, whose help they were already reckoning
+on, and preferred rather to behave in a most un-neutral manner and keep
+absolutely silent about all the ill-treatment and abuse that had been
+meted out to Greece. But I remembered these scenes most opportunely
+later, and that visit of mine to Western Anatolia was certainly most
+useful in increasing my knowledge of Young Turkish methods of "internal
+colonisation."
+
+But all the methods used are by no means forcible. Attempts are now
+being made--and this again is most significant for the spirit of the
+newest Young Turkish era--to gain a footing in the world of science
+as opposed to force, and so to be able to carry out their measures
+more systematically and give them the appearance of beneficent modern
+social reforms. So it comes about that the Turkish idea of penetrating
+and "cleaning-up" Anatolia finds practical expression on the one hand
+in exterminating and robbing the Christian population, while on the
+other it inclines to efforts which in time may work out to be a real
+blessing. The common principle underlying both is Nationalism.
+
+Anatolia was suddenly "discovered." At long length the Young Turkish
+Government, roused intellectually and patriotically by the war and
+brought to their senses by the terrible loss of human life entailed,
+suddenly realised the enormous national importance of Anatolia, that
+hitherto much-neglected nucleus of the Ottoman Empire. Under the
+spiritual inspiration of Mehmed Emin, the national poet of Anatolian
+birth whose poems with their sympathy of outlook and noble simplicity
+of form make such a warm-hearted and successful appeal to the best
+kind of patriotism, men have begun since 1916, even in the circles of
+the arrogant "Stambul Effendi," to take an interest in the _kaba türk_
+(uncouth Turk), the Anatolian peasant, his needs and his standard of
+civilisation. The real, needy, primitive Turk of the Interior has
+suddenly become the general favourite.
+
+A whole series of most remarkable lectures was delivered publicly in
+the _Türk Odjaghi_, under the auspices of the Committee, by doctors,
+social politicians, and political economists, and these were reported
+and discussed at great length in all the Turkish newspapers. Their
+subject was the incredible destitution in Anatolia, the devastation
+wrought by syphilis, malaria, and other terrible dirt diseases,
+abortions as a result of hopeless poverty, the lack of men as a result
+of constant military service in many wars, and they called for
+immediate and drastic reforms.
+
+It is with the greatest pleasure that I acknowledge that this first
+late step on the way of improvement, this self-knowledge, which
+appeals to me more thoroughly than anything else I saw in Turkey, is
+probably really the beginning of a happier era for that beautiful land
+of Anatolia, so capable of development but so cruelly neglected. For
+one can no longer doubt that the Government has the real intention of
+carrying out actual reforms, for they must be only too well aware that
+the strengthening and healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Turkish
+race, is absolutely essential for any Turkish mastery, and is the very
+first necessity for the successful carrying out of more far-reaching
+national exertions. With truly modern realisation of the needs of
+the case, directly after Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey's first compelling
+lecture, different local government officials, especially the Vali
+of the Vilajet of Kastamuni, which was notorious for its syphilis
+epidemics, made unprecedented efforts to improve the terrible hygienic
+conditions then reigning. Let us hope that such efforts will bear
+fruit. But this will probably only be the case to any measurable extent
+later, after the war, when Turkey will find herself really confined to
+Anatolia, and will have time and strength for positive social work.
+
+In the meantime I cannot get rid of the uneasy impression that this
+"discovery" of Anatolia and zealous Turkish social politics are no more
+than a cleverly worked excuse on the part of the Government for further
+measures of Turkification, and the cloven hoof is unfortunately only
+too apparent in all this seemingly noble effort on the part of the
+Committee. One hears and sees daily the methods that go hand in hand
+with this official pushing into the foreground of the great importance
+of the purely Turkish elements in Anatolia--Armenian persecutions,
+trickery, expropriations carried out against Greeks, the yielding up
+of flourishing districts to quarrelsome Mohadjirs. So long as the
+Turkish Government fancy themselves conquerors in the great war, so
+long as they pursue the shadow of a "Greater Turkey," so long as Turkey
+continues to dissipate her forces she will not accomplish much for
+Anatolia, in spite of her awakening and her real desire for reform.
+
+Finally, in this discovery of Anatolia, in this desire to put an end to
+traditional destitution, this recognition of the real import of even
+the poorest, most primitive, dullest peasant peoples in the undeveloped
+Interior, so long as they are of Turkish race, in this sudden flood
+of learned eloquence over the needs and the true inner worth of these
+miserable neglected Turkish peasants, in this pressing demand for
+thorough reforms for the economic and social strengthening of this
+element--measures which with the present ruling spirit of jingoism
+in the Government threaten to be carried through only at the expense
+of the non-Turkish population of Anatolia--we see very clear proof
+that the neo-Turkish movement is a pure race movement, is nothing but
+Pan-Turkism both outwardly and inwardly, and has very little indeed to
+do with religious questions or with Islam. The idea of Islam, or rather
+Pan-Islamism, is a complete failure. This we shall try to show in the
+following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Religion and race--The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of the Young
+  Turks--Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political principles--Turanism
+  and the Quadruple Alliance--Greed and race-fanaticism--Religious
+  traditions and modern reforms--Reform in the law--A modern
+  Sheikh-ul-Islam--Reform and nationalisation--The Armenian and
+  Greek Patriarchates--The failure of Pan-Islamism--The alienation
+  of the Arabs--Djemal Pasha's "hangman's policy" in Syria--Djemal
+  as a "Pro-French"--Djemal and Enver--Djemal and Germany--His true
+  character--The attempt against the Suez Canal--Djemal's murderous
+  work nears completion--The great Arabian and Syrian Separatist
+  movement--The defection of the Emir of Mecca and the great Arabian
+  catastrophe.
+
+
+In little-informed circles in Europe people are still under the
+false impression that the Young Turks of to-day, the intellectual
+and political leaders of Turkey in this war, are authentic, zealous,
+and even fanatical Mohammedans, and superficial observers explain
+all unpleasant occurrences and outbreaks of Young Turkish jingoism
+on Pan-Islamic grounds, especially as Turkey has not been slow in
+proclaiming her "Holy War." But this conception is entirely wrong.
+The artificial character of the "Djihad," which was only set in
+motion against a portion of the "unbelievers," while the others
+became more and more the ruling body in Turkey, is the best proof
+of the untenability of this theory. The truth is that the present
+political régime is the complete denial of the Pan-Islamic idea and the
+substitution of the Pan-Turkish idea of race.
+
+Abdul-Hamid, that much-maligned and dethroned Sultan, who, however,
+towers head and shoulders above all the Young Turks put together in
+practical intelligence and statesmanly skill, and would never have
+committed the unpardonable error of throwing in his lot with Germany
+in the war and so bringing about the certain downfall of Turkey, was
+the last ruler of Turkey that knew how to make use of Pan-Islamism as a
+successful instrument of authority.
+
+Enver and Talaat and all that breed of jingoists on the _Ittahad_
+(Committee for Union and Progress) were upstarts without any schooling
+in political history, and so all the more inclined to the doctrinal
+revolutionism and short-sighted fanaticism of the successful
+adventurer, and were much too limited to recognise the tremendous
+political import of Pan-Islamism. Naturally once they had conceived
+the idea of the "Djihad," they tried to make theoretical use of
+Pan-Islamism; but practically, far from extending Turkey's influence
+to distant Arabian lands, to the Soudan and India, they simply let
+Turkey go to ruin through their Pan-Turkish illusions and their
+race-fanaticism.
+
+Abdul-Hamid with his clever diplomacy managed to maintain, if not the
+real sympathies, at any rate the formal loyalty of the Arabs and their
+solidarity with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. It was he who conceived
+the idea of that undertaking of eminent political importance, the
+Hedjaz Railway, which facilitates pilgrimages to the holy cities of
+Mecca and Medina and links up the Arabian territory with the Turkish,
+and he was always able to quell any disturbances in these outlying
+parts of the Empire with very few troops indeed. Nowadays the Young
+Turkish Government, even if they had the troops to spare, might send
+a whole army to the Hedjaz and they would be like an island of sand
+in the midst of that stormy Arab sea. The Arabs, intellectually far
+superior to the Turks, have at last made up their minds to defy their
+oppressors, and all the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire may
+be taken as already lost, no matter what the final result of the great
+war may be.
+
+The Young Turks had scarcely come into power when they began with
+incredible lack of tact to treat the Arabs in a most supercilious
+manner, although as a matter of fact the Arabs far surpassed them in
+intellect and culture. They inaugurated a most un-modern campaign of
+shameless blood-sucking, cheated them of their rights, treated them
+in a bureaucratic manner, and generally acted in such an unskilful
+way that they finally alienated for ever the Arab element as they
+had already done in the case of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the
+Albanians.
+
+The ever-recurring disturbances in Yemen, finally somewhat
+inadequately quelled by Izzet Pasha, are still in the memory of all.
+And later, directly after the reconquering of Adrianople during the
+Second Balkan war, there was another moment of real national rebirth
+when a reconciliation might have been effected. The visit of a great
+Syrian and Arabian deputation to the Sultan to congratulate him over
+this auspicious event should have provided an excellent opportunity.
+I was staying some months then in Constantinople on my way back from
+Africa, and I certainly thought that the half-broken threads might have
+been knotted together again then if the Young Turks had only approached
+the Arabs in the right way. Even the great Franco-British attack on
+Stamboul might have been calculated to rouse a feeling of solidarity
+among the Mohammedans living under the Ottoman flag, and in the autumn
+and winter of 1915-1916 Arab troops actually did defend the entrance
+to the Dardanelles with great courage and skill. But Arab loyalty
+could not withstand for ever the mighty flood of race-selfishness that
+possessed the Young Turks right from the moment of their entry into the
+war. The enthusiasm of the Arabs soon disappeared when Pan-Turkish
+ideas were proclaimed all too clearly even to the inhabitants of their
+own land, when an era of systematic enmity towards the non-Turkish
+parts of the population was introduced and the heavy fist of the
+Central Committee was laid on the southern parts of the Empire as well.
+
+An attempt was made to bring the ethnic principle of "Turanism" within
+the region of practical politics, but it simply degenerated into
+complete race-partiality and was not calculated to further the ideas
+of Pan-Islamism and the Turko-Arabian alliance which were both of such
+importance in the present war. It is this idea of Turanism that lies
+at the back of the efforts being made towards a purely Turkish Turkey,
+and that of course makes it clear at once that it must to a very large
+extent oppose the idea of Pan-Islamism. It is true that both principles
+may be made use of side by side as sources of propaganda for the idea
+of expansion and the policy of a "Greater Turkey." Turanists peep over
+the crest of the Caucasus down into the Steppes of the Volga, where the
+Russian Tartars live, and to the borders of Western Siberia and Inner
+China where in Russian Turkestan a race of people of very close kinship
+live and where very probably the Ottoman people had their cradle. The
+Pan-Islamists want the alliance of these Russian parts as well, but
+from another point of view, and, above all, they aim at the expansion
+of Ottoman rule to the farthest corners of Africa and South-West Asia,
+to the borders of negro territory, and through Persia, Afghanistan, and
+Baluchistan to the foot of the Himalayas, while on grounds of practical
+politics they strive to abolish the old, seemingly insurmountable
+antithesis between Sonnites and Shiites within the sanctuary of Islam.
+
+The programme of the so-called "Djihad" works on this principle, but
+goes much farther. As well as stirring up against their present rulers
+those parts of Egypt and Tripoli which once owned allegiance to the
+Sultan and the Atlas lands, which are at any rate spiritually dependent
+on the Caliph in Stamboul, the "Djihad" aims at introducing the spirit
+of independence into all English, French, Italian, and Russian Colonial
+territory by rousing the Mohammedans and so doing infinite harm to
+the enemies of Turkey. It is most important, therefore, always to
+differentiate between this "Holy War" "stirring-up" propaganda from
+Senegal to Turkestan and British India, and the more territorial
+Pan-Islamism of the present war, which goes hand in hand with the
+efforts being made towards a "Greater Turkey."
+
+Instead of uniting all these principles skilfully for the realisation
+of a great end, making sure of the Arab element by wisely restraining
+their selfish and exaggeratedly pro-Turkish instincts and their
+despotic lust for power, and so giving their programme of expansion
+southwards some prospect of succeeding, the Turks gave way right from
+the beginning of the war to such a flood of brutal, narrow-minded
+race-fanaticism and desire to enrich the Turkish element at the cost
+of the other inhabitants of the country, that no one can really be
+surprised at the pitiable result of the efforts to secure a Greater
+Turkey.
+
+I should just like to give one small example of the fanatical hatred
+that exists even in high official circles against the non-Turkish
+element in this country of mixed race. The following anecdote will
+give a clear enough idea of the ruling spirit of fanaticism and
+greed. I was house-hunting in Pera once and could not find anything
+suitable. I approached a member of the Committee and he said in solemn
+earnest: "Oh, just wait a few weeks. We are all hoping that Greece
+will declare war on us before long, and then _all_ the Greeks will
+be treated as the Armenians have been. I can let you have the nicest
+villa on the Bosporus. But then," he added with gleaming eyes, "we
+won't be so stupid as merely to turn them out. These Greek dogs (_köpek
+rum_) will have the pleasure of seeing us take everything away from
+them--_everything_--and compelling them to give up their own property
+by formal contract."
+
+I can guarantee that this is practically a word-for-word rendering of
+this extraordinary outburst of fanaticism and greed on the part of
+an otherwise harmless and decent man. I could not help shuddering at
+such opinions. Apparently it was not enough that Turkey was already at
+war with three Great Powers; she must needs seek armed conflict with
+Greece, so that, as was the outspoken, the open, and freely-admitted
+intention of official persons, she might then deal with four and a
+half millions of Ottoman Greeks, practically her own countrymen, as she
+had done with the unfortunate Armenians. In face of such opinions one
+cannot but realise how unsure the existence of the Young Turkish State
+has become by its entry into the war, and cannot but foresee that this
+race-fanaticism will lead the nation to political and social suicide.
+Can one imagine a purely Turkish Turkey, when even the notion of a
+Greater Turkey failed?
+
+Pessimists have often said of the Turkish question that the Turks'
+principal aim in determining on a complete Turkification of Anatolia
+by any, even the most brutal, means, is that at the conclusion of
+war they can at least say with justification: "Anatolia is a purely
+Turkish country and must therefore be left to us." What they propose to
+bequeath to the victorious Russians is an Armenia without Armenians!
+
+The idea of "Turanism" is a most interesting one, and as a widespread
+nationalistic principle has given much food for thought to Turkey's
+ally, Germany. Turanism is the realisation, reawakened by neo-Turkish
+efforts at political and territorial expansion, of the original
+race-kinship existing between the Turks and the many peoples inhabiting
+the regions north of the Caucasus, between the Volga and the borders of
+Inner China, and particularly in Russian Central Asia. Ethnographically
+this idea was perfectly justified, but politically it entails a
+tremendous dissipation of strength which must in the end lead to grave
+disappointment and failure. All the Turkish attempts to rouse up the
+population of the Caucasus either fell on unfruitful ground or went
+to pieces against the strong Russian power reigning there. Enver's
+marvellous conception of an offensive against Russian Transcaucasia led
+right at the beginning of the war to terrible bloodshed and defeat.
+
+People in neutral countries have had plenty of opportunity of judging
+of the value of those arguments advanced by Tatar professors and
+journalists of Russian citizenship for the "Greater-Turkish" solution
+of the race questions of the Russian Tatars and Turkestan, for these
+refugees from Baku and the Caucasus, paid by the Stamboul Committee,
+journeyed half over Europe on their propaganda tour. The idea of
+Turanism has been taken up with such enthusiasm by the men of the
+Young Turkish Committee, and utilised with such effect for purposes of
+propaganda and to form a scientific basis for their neo-Turkish aims
+and aspirations, that a stream of feeling in favour of the Magyars has
+set in in Turkey, which has not failed to demolish to a still greater
+extent their already weakened enthusiasm for their German allies. And
+it is not confined to purely intellectual and cultural spheres, but
+takes practical form by the Turks declaring, as they have so often done
+in their papers in almost anti-German articles about Turanism, that
+what they really require in the way of European technique or European
+help they much prefer to accept from their kinsmen the Hungarians
+rather than from the Germans.
+
+To the great annoyance of Germany, who would like to keep her heavy
+hand laid on the ally whom she has so far guided and for whom she pays,
+the practical results of the idea of Turanism are already noticeable
+in many branches of economic and commercial life. The Hungarians are
+closely allied to the Turks not only by blood but in general outlook,
+and form a marked contrast to Germany's cold and methodical calculation
+in worming her way into Turkish commercial life. After the war when
+Turkey is seeking for stimulation, it will be easy enough to make use
+of Hungarian influence to the detriment of Germany. Turanistic ideas
+have even been brought into play to establish still more firmly the
+union between Turkey and her former enemy Bulgaria, and the people of
+Turkey are reminded that the Bulgars are not really Slavs but Slavic
+Fino-Tartars.
+
+In proportion as the Young Turks have brought racial politics to a
+fine art, so they have neglected the other, the religious side. More
+and more, Islam, the rock of Empire, has been sacrificed to the needs
+of race-politics. Those who look upon Enver and Talaat and their
+consorts to-day as a freemasonry of time-serving opportunists rather
+than as good Mohammedans come far nearer the truth than those who
+believe the idea spread by ignorant globe-trotters that every Turk is
+a zealous follower of Islam. It was not for nothing that Enver Pasha,
+the adventurer and revolutionary, went so far even in externals as
+to arouse the stern disapproval of a wide circle of his people. With
+true time-serving adaptability to all modern progress-and who will
+blame him?--he even finally sacrificed the Turkish soldier's hallowed
+traditional headgear, the fez. While the _kalpak_, even in its laced
+variety, could still be called a kind of field-grey or variegated
+or fur edition of the fez, the ragged-looking _kabalak_, called the
+"Enveriak" to distinguish it from other varieties, is certainly on the
+way towards being a real sun helmet. Still more recently (summer 1916)
+a black-and-white cap that looks absolutely European was introduced
+into the Ottoman Navy. The simple, devout Mohammedan folk were most
+unwilling to accept these changes which flew direct in the face of all
+tradition. They may be externals of but little importance, but in spite
+of their insignificance they show clearly the ruling spirit in official
+Young Turkish spheres.
+
+This is in the harmless realm of fashion, or at any rate military
+fashion, exactly the same spirit as has caused the Turkish Government
+to undertake since 1916 radical changes in the very much more
+important field of private and public law. Special commissions
+consisting of eminent Turkish lawyers have been formed to carry through
+this reform of law and justice, and they have been hard at work ever
+since their formation. What is characteristic and modern about the
+reform is that the preponderating rôle hitherto played by the Sheriat
+Law, founded on the Koran and at any rate semi-religious, is to be
+drastically curtailed in favour of a system of purely Civil law, which
+has been strung together from the most varied sources, even European
+law being brought under contribution, and the "Code Napoléon," which
+has hitherto only been used in Commercial law. This of course leads to
+a great curtailment of the activity and influence of the _kadis_ and
+_muftis_, the semi-religious judges, who have now to yield place to a
+more mundane system. The first inexorable consequence of the reform
+was that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the highest authority of Islam in the
+whole Ottoman Empire, had to give up a large part of his powers, and
+incidentally of his income.
+
+The changes made were so far-reaching, and the spirit of the reform
+so modern, that, in spite of the unshakable power of Talaat's truly
+dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed, a concession had to be made
+to the public opinion roused against the measure. The form was kept as
+it was, but the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Haïri Effendi, refused ostensibly to
+sign the decree and gave in his resignation. Not only, however, was an
+immediate successor found for him (Mussa Kiazim Effendi), who gave his
+signature and even began to work hard for the reform, but--and this
+is most significant for the relationship of the Young Turks towards
+Islam--Haïri Effendi, the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had proclaimed
+the _Fetwa_ for the "Holy War," gave up his post without a murmur, and
+in the most peaceable way, and remained one of the principal pillars of
+the "Committee for Union and Progress."
+
+His resignation was nothing but a farce to throw dust in the eyes of
+the all-too-trusting lower classes. After he had succeeded by this
+manoeuvre in getting the reform of the law (which as a measure of
+Turkification was of more consequence to him now than his own sadly
+curtailed juristic functions) accepted at a pinch by the conservative
+population who still clung firmly to Islam, he went on to play his
+great rôle in the programme of jingoism. A "measure of Turkification"
+we called it, for that is what it amounts to practically, like
+everything else the men of the "Ittihad" take in hand.
+
+I tried to give some hint of this within the limits of the censorship
+as long ago as the summer of 1916 in a series of articles I wrote for
+the _Kölnische Zeitung_. Here I should like just to confine myself
+to one point. Naturally the reform of the law aimed principally at
+substituting these newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for the
+Arabian legal ideas that had been the only thing available hitherto.
+(Everything that this victorious Turkey had absorbed and worked up
+in the way of civilised notions was either Arabian or Persian or of
+European origin.) It set to work now in the sphere of family law,
+which hitherto had been specially sacrosanct and only subordinate to
+the religious _Sheria_, and where tradition was strongest--not like
+commercial and maritime law which had been quite modern for a long time.
+
+The reform went so far that it even tried to introduce a kind of civil
+marriage, whereas up till now all marriages, divorces, and everything
+to do with inheritance had taken place exclusively before religious
+officials. I may just add that these newest reforms give women no
+wider rights than they had before. Perhaps this may be taken as an
+indication that they have been conceived far less from a social than
+from a political point of view. What induced the Turkish Government to
+introduce anything so entirely modern as civil marriage in defiance
+of age-old custom was more than likely the desire to put an end to
+non-Turkish Ottomans contracting marriages and making arrangements
+about inheritance, etc., before their own privileged, ethnically
+independent organisations, and so to deal the final death-blow to the
+Armenian and Greek Patriarchates. If Family Law was modernised in
+this way, there would not be the faintest shadow of excuse left for
+the existence of these institutions which enjoyed a far-reaching and
+influential autonomy.
+
+The Armenian Patriarchate got short shrift indeed. By dissolving the
+Patriarchate in the Capital, breaking off all relations with the
+Armenian headquarters in Etzmiadjin and allowing only a very small
+remainder of Patriarchate to be sent up in Jerusalem under special
+State supervision, the Turks, as a logical sequence to the Armenian
+atrocities, simply dealt the death-blow in the summer of 1916 to this
+important social institution.
+
+The Greek organisation, however, conducted by a more numerous and,
+outwardly at any rate, better protected people, offered far more
+resistance, and could not be simply wiped out with a stroke of the pen.
+A direct attempt to suppress it was made as early as 1910, but broke
+down entirely in face of the firm attitude of the Greek Patriarch in
+Constantinople. Now the Young Turks seem to have come to the conclusion
+that less drastic methods, beginning on a juristic basis, may have a
+better effect.
+
+We have taken this one example in order to get at the whole neo-Turkish
+method of procedure. It consists in pushing forward, if need be with
+greater delicacy than before and on the round-about road of real modern
+reforms, towards the one immovable goal: the complete Turkification of
+Turkey. The reform of the law, which we have treated more exhaustively
+as an example of the first rank, is typical of the Young Turkish
+national tendency. Naturally it has its use, too, as a means of further
+throwing off the foreign political yoke. Through the modernising
+of the whole Turkish legal system, Europe is to be shown that the
+Capitulations can be dispensed with.
+
+The reform throws a vivid light, too, on the inner relationship
+of the jingoistic, pure Pan-Turkish leaders of present-day Turkey
+towards religion. And it is perhaps not generally known that at all
+the deliberations of the "Committee" where the will of Talaat, the
+uncrowned king of Turkey, is alone decisive, the opinion of the Grand
+Master of the Turkish Freemasons is always listened to, and that he is
+one of the most willing tools of the "Ittihad."
+
+No, the members of the "Committee for Union and Progress" have
+for a very long time simply snapped their fingers at Islam if it
+hindered them making use of and profiting from their own subjects.
+They know very well how to retain at least the outward semblance of
+friendliness so long as Islam does not directly cross the path of
+Pan-Turkism. But the Armenian atrocities, instigated by Talaat, have
+as little to do with religion, they are as exclusively the result
+of pure race-fanaticism, professional jealousy, and greed, as the
+hostile, devil-may-care attitude towards Greece, and the millions of
+well-to-do Ottoman Greeks who are the next troublesome competitors
+and suitable victims of aggrandisement to be disposed of after the
+Armenians, or as the terrible persecutions against the highest class
+of Syrians and Arabs pictured in Djemal Pasha's famous paper. They
+are Turks, pure Turks with the most narrow-minded jingoistic point of
+view, and not broad-minded Mohammedans, that sit on the Committee in
+"Nur-el-Osmanieh" in Stamboul and make all these wonderful political
+plans, from internal reforms and measures of government which attempt
+to adapt themselves to European technique by sacrificing ancient
+traditions, to the hangman's tactics employed against their own
+subjects.
+
+Take the case of the Syrians and the Arabs. The "Ittihad" clique,
+weltering in a fog of Pan-Turkish illusion, were yet not without
+anxiety with regard to the intellectual and social superiority, to
+say nothing of the political sharpness, of these peoples compared with
+the Turks. They had yielded entirely to their brutal instincts of
+extermination and suppression towards foreign races, and the Germans
+had made no attempt to curb them. They were political parvenus suddenly
+freed from the control of the civilised Great Powers, and they did not
+know how to make use of that freedom. Perhaps they felt themselves
+already on the edge of an abyss and were constrained to snatch what
+they could while there was yet time.
+
+Is it any wonder, then, that the Turks should throw over all trace of
+decency towards the Syrians and the Arabs once they were sure that
+these peoples, who regarded their oppressors with most justifiable
+hatred, would refuse to have anything to do with the "Holy War" of the
+Turanian Pseudo-Caliph?
+
+The last remnants of the traditional Pan-Islamic esteem of their Arab
+neighbours, already sadly shattered by the Young Turks' ruthless policy
+towards them since 1909, were flung light-heartedly overboard by a
+Government that knew they were to blame for the Arab defection but
+thought they had found a substitute that appealed more to their true
+Asiatic character in these Turanistic dreams of expansion and measures
+of Turkification. And while fanatical adventurers and money-grubbing
+deputies paid by the easily duped German Embassy were preaching a
+perfectly useless "Holy War" on the confines of the Arabian territory
+of the Turkish Empire, towards the part occupied by the English, while
+Enver Pasha continued to visit the holy places of Islam, where he got
+a frosty enough reception, although the wonderfully worded communiqués
+on the subject succeeded in blinding the population to the true state
+of affairs, "the hangman's policy" of Djemal Pasha, the Commander of
+the Fourth Osmanic Army, and Naval Minister, had been for a long time
+in full swing in the old civilised land of Syria against the best
+families among the Mohammedan as well as the Christian population. The
+whole civilised world is laying up a store of accusations of this kind
+against the Turks, and it is to be hoped that a public sentence will be
+passed on these gentlemen of the "Ittihad" on the conclusion of peace
+by a combined court of Europeans and Americans.
+
+Here again the Young Turkish Government assumed the existence of a
+widespread conspiracy and a Syrian and Arabian Separatist movement
+towards autonomy, which was to free these lands from Turkish rule and
+to be established under Anglo-French protection. At the time of the
+Armenian persecutions the Committee had managed most cunningly to
+turn the whole Armenian question to their own account by publishing
+false official reports by the thousand, accompanied by any number of
+photographs of "bands of conspirators," the authenticity of which never
+has been proved and never will be; indeed one can only wonder where the
+Turkish Government got them from.
+
+In this case again there was no lack of official printed commentaries
+on Djemal Pasha's "hanging list," and any reader of the _Journal de
+Beyrouth_ in war-time would have had no difficulty in compiling it. It
+is certainly not my intention to question the existence of a Separatist
+movement towards autonomy in Syria, but it was a sporadic tendency
+only, and ought never to have been made the excuse for the wholesale
+execution of highly respected and well-born citizens who had nothing
+whatever to do with the matter.
+
+In the Young Turkish memorandum on this act of spying and bloodshed,
+the passages most underlined and printed in the boldest characters, the
+passages which, according to official intention, were to justify these
+frightful reprisals, form the most terrible indictment ever brought
+against Turkish despotism, and provide the most complete proof of the
+truth of all the accusations made against the Turkish Government by
+the ill-treated and oppressed Syrians and Arabians. On anyone who does
+not read with Young Turkish eyes the memorandum makes directly the
+opposite impression to what was intended. And even if the Separatist
+movement had existed in any greater extent--which was quite out of the
+question owing to lack of weapons, conflicting interests, the contrasts
+in the people themselves, some of them Mohammedan, some Christian,
+some sectarian, and the impossibility of any kind of organisation
+under the stern discipline of Turkish rule--the Turks would have most
+richly deserved it and it would have been justified by the thousands
+of brutalities inflicted by the Old and Young Turkish régimes on the
+highly civilised Arabian people and their industrious and commercial
+neighbours the Syrians, who had always been much influenced by European
+culture. Anyone who has once watched how the Committee in Stamboul
+made a pretext of events on the borders of Caucasia to exterminate a
+whole people, including women and children, even in Western and Central
+Anatolia and the Capital, can no longer be in the least doubt as to the
+methods employed by Djemal Pasha, the "hangman" of Syrians and Arabs,
+how grossly he must have exaggerated and misstated the facts to find
+enough victims so that he could look on for a year and a half with a
+cigar in his mouth--as he himself boasted--while the flower of Syrian
+and Arabian youth, the élite of society, and the aged heads of the best
+families in the land were either hanged or shot.
+
+I should like to take the opportunity here of giving a short
+description of Djemal Pasha, this man who, according to Turkish ideas,
+is destined still to play a great part in Turkish politics. I should
+also like to clear up a misunderstanding that seems to exist in
+civilised Europe with regard to him. There is still an idea abroad
+that Djemal Pasha is pro-French, this man who set out on his adventure
+against the Suez Canal as "Vice-king of Egypt," and, after he had been
+beaten there, settled in Syria as dictator with unlimited power--even
+openly defying the Central Government in Constantinople when he felt
+piqued--so that as commander of the Fourth Army he could support
+the attempt against Egypt, but principally to satisfy his murderous
+instincts. Anyone who has seen this man close at hand (whom a German
+journalist belonging to the _Berliner Tageblatt_ with the most fulsome
+flattery once called one of the handsomest men in Turkey) knows enough.
+Small, thickset, a beard and a pair of cunning cruel eyes are the
+most prominent features of this face from which everyone must turn in
+disgust who remembers the "hangman's" part played by the man.
+
+It is extraordinary that he should still pass as Pro-French in many
+quarters, and perhaps it is part of his slyness to preserve this rôle.
+Djemal is not Pro-French; he is only the most calculating of all the
+leading men of Turkey. He certainly had pro-French tendencies, in
+the current meaning of the word, before the war; that is, he thought
+the interests of his country would be best safeguarded against German
+machinations for winning over the Young Turks by taking advantage
+of Turkey's traditional friendship for France. He was also against
+Turkey's participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers,
+and he was furiously angry when the fleet which was supposed to be
+under his control appeared against his will under the direction of the
+German Admiral of the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ in the Black Sea.
+
+But when the war actually broke out, he very soon accommodated himself
+to the new state of affairs. Instead of handing in his resignation,
+he added to his naval duties the chief command of the army operating
+against Egypt, for Djemal's chief characteristics were characterless
+opportunism and inordinate ambition. Suiting his opinions to the facts
+of the case, he was not long in advertising his Pro-French feelings
+again so that he might be popular with the people of Syria. That of
+course did not prevent him later on from carrying out his "hangman's
+policy" against the Syrians who were bound by so many social ties to
+France. From that it is not difficult to judge just how genuine his
+Pro-French feelings are!
+
+The only genuine thing in his whole attitude is his admitted deep
+hatred of Germany and his personal animosity towards the pro-German
+Enver Pasha, arising partly from jealousy, partly from a feeling of
+being slighted, and only concealed for appearance' sake. During the
+war he has often enough made very plain utterances of his hatred of
+Germany, and it would certainly betoken ill for German politics in
+Turkey if Djemal Pasha succeeded in obtaining a more active rôle in the
+Central Government. So far the Minister for War has managed to hold him
+at arm's length, and Djemal has no doubt found it of advantage to wait
+for a later moment, and content himself for the present with his actual
+powerful position.
+
+From his own repeated anti-German speeches it has, however, been only
+too easy to glean that his anti-German opinions and actions are not
+the result of his being Pro-French, but of his being a jingoistic
+Pan-Turk. He may simulate Pro-French feelings again and play them as
+the trump card in his surely approaching decisive struggle with Enver
+Pasha, when Enver's system has failed; Djemal will no doubt maintain
+then that he foresaw everything, and that he has always been for France
+and the Entente. Everyone who knows his character is at any rate sure
+of one thing, and that is that he will stop at nothing, even a rising
+against the Central Government, if his ambitious opportunism should
+so dictate it. It is to be hoped, however, that public opinion among
+the Entente will not be deceived as to his true character, and will
+recognise that he is nothing more than a jingoistic, greedy, raging
+Young Turkish fanatic and one of the most cunning at that. It would
+really be doing too much honour to a man with a murderer's face and a
+murderer's instinct to credit him with honest sympathies for France.
+
+Djemal's work is nearing fruition. His cruel executions, his cynical
+breaking of promises in Syria, have at any rate contributed, along with
+other politically more important tendencies which have been cleverly
+utilised by England for the establishment of an Arabian Caliphate,
+towards the decisive result that the Emir of Mecca has revolted
+against the Turks. The Emir's son and his great Arabian suite had to
+pay a prolonged visit to Djemal at one time, and it is evident that
+the brutal execution of Arabian notables that he saw then directly
+influenced his father's attitude. The movement is bound to spread,
+and slowly and surely it will roll on till it ends in the full and
+perfect separation from Turkey of all Arabic-speaking districts as far
+as Northern Syria and the borders of Southern Kurdistan. The so-called
+Separatist movement, that Djemal tried to drown in a sea of blood
+before it was well begun, is now an actual fact.
+
+In Egypt England has been seeing for quite a long time the practical
+and favourable results of her success in founding the Arabian
+Caliphate. She has now gained practically absolute security for her
+rule on the Nile, and she has even been able to remove troops and
+artillery from the Suez Canal to other fronts. The German dream of an
+offensive against Egypt vanished long ago; now even the last trace
+of a German-Turkish attempt against the Canal has ceased, and the
+English troops have moved the scene of their operations to Southern
+Palestine. While I write these lines, there comes from the other side,
+from Arabian Mesopotamia, the news of the recapture of Kut-el-Amara by
+British troops. I should not like to prophesy what moral or political
+results the fall of Baghdad, Medina, and Jerusalem will have for
+Turkish rule; possibly, nay probably, iron necessity, the impossibility
+of returning, the constraint imposed by their German Allies--for Turkey
+is fully under German military rule--may weaken the direct results
+of even such catastrophes as these. But the hearts which beat to-day
+with high hopes for the freedom of Great Arabia and autonomy for Syria
+under Franco-English protection will flame with new rapture, and in the
+Turkish capital all grades of society will realise that Osmanic power
+is on the decline.
+
+Meantime Djemal Pasha is still occupied in Syria raking in the property
+of the murdered citizens and dividing it up among his minions, the
+least very often being given over to commissions consisting of
+individuals of extremely doubtful reputation. When he is not thus
+busily engaged, he spends his time round the green table playing poker.
+It is to be ardently hoped that even this great organiser will soon be
+at the end of his tether in Syria and have to leave the country where
+he has kinged in royally for two years. Then, perhaps, the moment may
+come when things are going so badly for the whole of Turkey that Djemal
+will at last have the opportunity, in spite of the failure of his
+policy in Syria, of measuring his military strength against his hated
+enemy Enver in Stamboul. That would be the beginning of the last stage
+before the complete collapse of Turkey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks--Turkish pessimism
+  about the war--How would Abdul-Hamid have acted?--A war of prevention
+  against Russia--Russia and a neutral Turkey--The agreement about the
+  Dardanelles--A peaceful solution scorned--Alleged criminal intentions
+  on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece and Salonika--To be
+  or not to be?--German influence--Turkey stakes on the wrong card--The
+  results.
+
+
+There has been no lack of cross currents _against_ the war policy of
+the Young Turkish Government. Ever since the entry of Turkey into the
+war, there has been a deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction among
+all kinds and conditions of men, even in the circles of the Pashas and
+the Court--the people of Turkey take too little interest in politics
+and are composed of far too heterogeneous elements for there to be
+anything in the nature of what we call "public opinion"--that Turkey's
+alliance with the Central Powers was a complete mistake and that it
+can lead to no good. It is of course known that since the outbreak of
+war Turkey has not only been under martial law and in a state of siege,
+but that under the régime of a brutal military dictatorship, with its
+system of espionage, personal liberty has been practically null and
+void. Any expressions of disapproval, therefore, or agitations against
+the "Committee" are naturally only possible in most intimate circles,
+and that with all secrecy. Little or nothing of the true opinions of
+this or that personage ever trickles through to publicity, and so it
+is utterly impossible, except from quite detached symptoms, to get
+any proper idea of what are the real thoughts and feelings of those
+cultured Turks who do not belong to the "Ittihad" and have no part in
+their system of pillage and aggrandisement.
+
+In spite of the limited information available it will be worth while,
+I think, to go into these counter-streams a little more fully. In
+pretty well every grade of society and among all nationalities in
+Turkey, there is the conviction that the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid would
+never have committed the fateful error of declaring war against the
+Entente and binding himself hand and foot to Germany. In the case of
+Turkey's remaining neutral, the Entente had formally promised her
+territorial integrity; Turkey refused. She felt herself driven to a war
+of prevention, principally through fear of the power of Russia. The
+statements made by those who agreed with Enver and Pasha and pushed
+for the war, that Turkey in the case of non-participation would be
+completely thrown on the mercy of a victorious Russia and that Russia's
+true aim in the war was the Dardanelles and Constantinople, have never
+been authenticated. There are still Turks, anti-Russian Turks, who even
+admitted this possibility, and yet believed the word of the Entente--at
+any rate of the Western Powers--and trusted to England's throwing her
+weight into the scale against Russia's plans of conquest, if Turkey
+remained neutral. They saw and still see no necessity for the Turkish
+Government to have entered on a war of prevention.
+
+Russia's aim was the Straits and Constantinople--well and good. But
+Russia would by hook or by crook have had to come to a friendly
+agreement with Turkey and could not have simply broken a definite
+promise given by the combined Entente to Turkey. It would have been
+quite different if Russia had demanded Constantinople from the Western
+Powers as the price of her participation in the war against Germany;
+then, but only then, the Entente would perhaps have had to come to an
+agreement satisfying Russia on this head. But Russia had quite other
+ideas, and long before Turkey's entry into the war and without any
+prospects of getting Constantinople, she flung her whole weight against
+Germany and Austria right at the beginning of the war.
+
+The treaty with regard to Constantinople between the Western Powers
+and Russia was not signed till six months after Turkey declared war,
+and England would certainly never have allowed Russia to encroach on a
+really neutral or sympathetically neutral Turkey. Then, but only then,
+there might have been some foundation in fact for the ideas one heard
+advanced by German-Turkish illusionists who would still have liked to
+believe that there was continual dissension within the Entente, even
+long after the official notification of the Anglo-Russian treaty
+with regard to the Straits, and by some even after the speech of the
+Russian minister Trepoff, that the English occupation of the islands
+at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which could be made into a second
+Gibraltar, aimed chiefly at blocking the Straits and preventing Russia
+from gaining undisturbed possession of Constantinople. Specially
+optimistic people even look to that chimerical antagonism between
+Russia and England for the salvation of Turkey, should Germany be
+finally overcome.
+
+Whether she liked it or not, then, Russia would have had to come to
+a friendly agreement with Turkey, had the latter remained neutral,
+in order to gain the desired goal. And this goal would have been
+necessarily limited, by the fact of Turkey's non-entry on the enemy
+side, rather to the stoppage of German Berlin-Baghdad efforts at
+expansion, the prevention of any strangulation of the enormous Russian
+trade in the south and desperate opposition to any attempt to keep
+Russia away from the Mediterranean, than to an attack on Turkey and
+her vital interests. And who knows whether under such an agreement,
+bound as it was to give Russia certain liberties and privileges in the
+Straits, Turkey also might not have got much in exchange, at any rate
+on financial lines, and might not also have obtained permission at last
+to develop Armenia by that west-to-east railway so long desired by the
+Turks and so strongly opposed by the Russians?
+
+Would the terrible bloodshed in the present war, the complete economic
+exhaustion entailed, and the risk of a doubtful outcome of the fight
+for existence or non-existence not have been far outweighed by the
+prospect, in the case of a friendly agreement with Russia, of seeing
+the orthodox cross again planted on the Hagia Sophia, an international
+régime established in Constantinople--with certain Russian privileges
+and the satisfaction of certain Russian moral demands, it is true,
+but otherwise nothing to disturb Turkish life in Stamboul or in any
+way prejudice Turkish prestige? Even the prospect of having to raze
+the forts on the Straits to the ground in order to give free access
+from the Mediterranean, or the necessity of having to inaugurate a
+more humane and beneficent policy in Armenia, perhaps with European
+supervision over the carrying out of the reforms would surely have
+been preferable to the present state of affairs. These would all
+have ensured for Turkey a long period of peace, capital wealth and
+intellectual and social improvement, perhaps at the expense of a
+momentary hurt to her feelings,--but these had been far more severely
+wounded already, as, for example, when she had to look on helplessly
+while bit after bit of her Empire was torn from her. It would have
+been impossible for Russia to get more than this from Turkey had she
+remained neutral. Her sovereignty and territorial integrity would have
+been completely guaranteed.
+
+But Turkey thought she had to stake all, her whole existence, on
+one card, and she staked on the wrong one, as is recognised now by
+thousands of intelligent Turks. Believers in the war policy followed
+by the Government make themselves hoarse maintaining that if Russia
+had not gradually overpowered a neutral Turkey to win Constantinople
+completely, at any rate the Entente would have finally forced her to
+join their side; in either case, therefore, war was inevitable. They
+point to Salonika, and, in face of all reason, maintain that the
+Entente Powers would in all probability have treated Turkey exactly
+as they treated Greece. They forget that their geographical position
+is entirely different, and would have a very different effect on
+military tactics. If Turkey had remained a sympathetic neutral, so
+would Bulgaria; or else the whole of the Balkan States, from Roumania
+and Bulgaria to Greece, would have joined the Entente right at the
+beginning. In either case there would have been no necessity at all for
+Turkey to join, for what military obligations had she to fulfil? The
+Entente would certainly never have driven Turkey to fight, simply to
+get the benefit of the Turkish soldiers available; there is no truth
+whatever in the statements circulated about unscrupulous compulsion
+with this end in view.
+
+The benefit for the Entente of Turkey's sympathetic neutrality would
+have been so enormous that they would most certainly have been content
+with that. Neither in Germany nor in Turkey is there any doubt whatever
+in military circles that it was Turkey's entry into the war on the
+German side and her blocking of the Straits, and so preventing Russia
+from obtaining supplies of ammunition and other war material, that has
+so far saved the Central Powers. Had Turkey remained neutral, constant
+streams of ammunition would have poured into Russia, Mackensen's
+offensive would have had no prospect at all of success, and Germany
+would have been beaten to all intents and purposes in 1915. The Turks
+do not scruple to let Germany feel that this is so on every suitable or
+unsuitable occasion.
+
+The Entente would certainly never have moved a finger to disturb
+Turkey's sympathetic neutrality and drive her into war. There would
+have been tremendous material advantages for Turkey in such a
+neutrality. Instead of being impoverished, bankrupt, utterly exhausted,
+wholly lost, as she now is, she might have been far richer than
+Roumania has ever been. There is one thing quite certain, and that is
+that Abdul-Hamid would never have let this golden opportunity slide of
+having a stream of money pouring in on himself and his country. And
+certainly Turkey would not have lacked moral justification had she so
+acted.
+
+These considerations I have put forward rather from the Turkish
+anti-war point of view than from my own. They are opinions expressed
+hundreds of times by thoroughly patriotic and intelligent Turks
+who saw how the ever more intensive propaganda work of the German
+Ambassadors, first Marschall von Bieberstein, then Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, gradually wormed its way through opposition and prejudice,
+how the German Military Mission in Constantinople tried to turn the
+Russian hatred of Germany against Turkey instead, how, finally, those
+optimists and jingoists on the "Committee," who knew as little about
+the true position of affairs throughout the world as they did of the
+intentions of the Entente or the means at their own disposal, proceeded
+to guide the ship of State more and more into German waters, without
+any reference to their own people, in return for promises won from
+Germany of personal power and material advantage. These were those days
+of excitement and smouldering unrest when Admiral von Souchon of the
+_Goeben_ and the _Breslau_, with complete lack of discipline towards
+his superior, Djemal Pasha, arranged with the German Government to
+pull off a coup without Djemal's knowledge--chiefly because he was
+itching to possess the "Pour le Mérite" order--and sailed off with the
+Turkish Fleet to the Black Sea. (I have my information from the former
+American Ambassador in Constantinople, Mr. Morgenthau, who was furious
+at the whole affair.)[2]
+
+These were the days when Enver and Talaat threw all their cards on the
+table in that fateful game of To Be or Not to Be, and brought on their
+country, scarcely yet recovered from the bloodshed of the Balkan War,
+a new and more terrible sacrifice of her manhood in a war extending
+over four, and later five, fronts. The whole result of this struggle
+for existence depended on final victory for Germany and that was
+becoming daily more doubtful; in fact, Ottoman troops had at last to be
+dispatched by German orders to the Balkans and Galicia.
+
+Turkey had, too, to submit to the ignominy of making friends with
+her very recent enemy and preventing imminent military catastrophe
+by handing over the country along the Maritza, right up to the gates
+of the sacred city of Adrianople, to the Bulgarians. She had to look
+on while Armenia was conquered by the Russians; while Mesopotamia
+and Syria, in spite of initial successes, were threatened by
+English troops; while the "Holy War" came to an untimely end, the
+most consecrated of all Islam's holy places, Mecca, fell away from
+Turkey, the Arabs revolted and the Caliphate was shattered; while her
+population in the Interior endured the most terrible sufferings, and
+economic and financial life tended slowly and surely towards complete
+and hopeless collapse.
+
+Not even yet, indeed now less than ever, is there any general
+acceptance among the people of the views held by Enver and Talaat
+and their acolytes. Not yet do intelligent, independent men believe
+the fine phrases of these minions of the "Committee," who are held
+in leading strings by these dictators partly through gifts of money,
+office, or the opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the
+people, partly through fear of the consequences should they revolt, or
+of those domestic servants who call themselves deputies and senators.
+On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say that three-quarters of
+the intelligent out-and-out Turkish male population--quite apart from
+Levantines, Greeks, and Armenians--and practically the entire female
+population, who are more sensitive about the war and whose hearts are
+touched more deeply by its immeasurable suffering, have either remained
+perfectly friendly to England and France or have become so again
+through terrible want and suffering.
+
+The consciousness that Turkey has committed an unbounded folly has long
+ago been borne in upon wide circles of Turks in spite of falsified
+reports and a stringent censorship. There would be no risk at all
+in taking on a wager that in private conversation with ten separate
+Turks, in no way connected with the "Committee," nine of them will
+admit, as soon as they know there is no chance of betrayal, that they
+do not believe Turkey will win, and that, with the exception of the
+much-feared Russia, they still feel as friendly as ever towards their
+present enemies. "_Quoi qu'il arrive, c'est toujours la pauvre Turquie
+qui va payer le pot cassé._" ("Whatever happens, it's always poor
+Turkey that'll have to pay the piper") and "_Nous avons fait une grande
+gaffe_" ("We _have_ put our foot in it") were the kind of remarks made
+in every single political discussion I ever had in Constantinople--even
+with Turks.
+
+So much for the men, who judge with their reason. What of the women?
+The one sigh of cultured Turkish women, up to the highest in the
+land--who should have a golden book written in their honour for their
+readiness to help, their sympathy, and humanity in this war--is: "When
+shall we get rid of the Boches; when will our good old friends, the
+English and the French, come back to us?" Nice results, these, of
+German propaganda, German culture, German brotherhood of arms! What
+a sad and shameful story for a German to have to tell! Naturally the
+drastic system of the military dictatorship precludes the public
+expression of such feelings, but one needs only have seen with one's
+own eyes the looks so often cast by even real Turkish cultured society
+at the German _Feldgrauen_ who often marched in close formation through
+the streets of Constantinople--for a time they used to sing German
+soldiers' songs, until that was prohibited at the express wish of the
+Turkish Government to see how the land lies.
+
+There was a marked and ill-concealed contrast in the coldness shown
+to Imperial German officers and the lavish affection showered on the
+Austrians and Hungarians who used for a time often to pass through
+Constantinople on their way to the Dardanelles or Anatolia with their
+heavy artillery. They were a great deal more sociable than their
+German comrades, and one could not fail to note the significance of
+such freely voiced comments as "_N'est-ce pas, ils sont charmants les
+Autrichiens?_" ("The Austrians _are_ delightful, aren't they?") The
+sight of us Germans, especially the very considerable German garrison
+stationed for a time in the Capital, awakened in the Turks, however
+much they might recognise the military necessity for their presence,
+remarkable ideas about the future "German Egyptising of Turkey," and
+everyone blamed Enver Pasha as the man responsible for Germany's
+penetrating thus far.
+
+A Turk in a high official position--whose name I shall naturally not
+divulge--even went so far as to say to me in an intimate personal
+discussion we were having one day between friend and friend: "We
+Turks are and will always remain, in spite of the war, pro-English
+and pro-French so far as social and intellectual life is concerned;
+and it would need twenty years of hard propaganda work on Germany's
+part, quite different from her present methods, to change this point
+of view, if it ever could be changed." He went on to recall the time
+of the pro-English era, and the enthusiastic demonstrations that had
+taken place at the Sirkedji station when the horses were taken out of
+the English Ambassador's carriage. "I was there myself," he said, "and
+believe me, apart from the war, heaps of us are at bottom still of the
+same mind." And, growing heated, he added: "What is your Embassy, tell
+me? Is it really an Embassy? No representation, no intimate intercourse
+with us, or at best only with your political agents, no personal charm,
+nothing but brusque demands and a most humiliating economic neglect
+of the Turkish population. The English and the French and even the
+Russians would treat us quite differently."
+
+This man is no exception in his ideas. He is a thorough Young Turk, who
+holds with the "Committee" through thick and thin and has to thank them
+for a very pleasant billet, but he is, besides, a youngish man with a
+modern European education. He is thoroughly imbued, as are all of his
+kind, with modern French ideas, and even the war cannot alter that.
+It only needs the final collapse of the Central Powers, and then the
+break-down of the whole political system under the direction of these
+jingoistic emancipationists who think they can get on without Europe,
+and the Turks will all, every one of them, be as thoroughly pro-English
+and pro-French as they ever were and will hate Germany and everything
+German with fanatical hatred.
+
+Towards Hungary, their blood relation, they will probably retain some
+friendliness in memory of their alliance in the Great War and the cause
+of Turanism; they will be quite indifferent to Bulgaria; they will lose
+their fear of Russia and come to an agreement with her; but after the
+war there will be no bridging the gulf between Turkey and Germany, and
+if Germany, on the conclusion of peace, is allotted any part of smaller
+Turkey by the rest of the European Powers, she will have to reckon
+for many a long year with the very chilly relations that will exist
+between Germans and Turks. Even those who went heart and soul into the
+war as a war of defence against Turkey's powerful northern neighbour
+foresee that when peace is declared Turkey will, so far as her enormous
+indebtedness to Germany permits, rather throw herself on the mercy
+of England and France and America and beg from them the capital
+necessary for reconstruction and for freeing them from the hated
+German influence--an aversion which is already evident in hundreds of
+different ways. Even Germany is beginning to recognise the existence
+of this tendency, which, hand in hand with the jingoistic attempt to
+turkify commercial life, bodes ill for German activity in Turkey after
+the war.
+
+These are the opinions of the educated classes. The people, however,
+the poor, ignorant Turkish people, were ready long ago to accept any
+solution that would liberate them from their terrible sufferings.
+The Turkish people have not the mental calibre of our German people
+which will perhaps make them fight on, just for the sake of leaving no
+stone unturned, even after it is quite evident that they are tending
+towards final collapse. The stake for which they are fighting is not
+so valuable to this agricultural people, who with an inferior and
+extortionate set of rulers have never been able really to enjoy life,
+as it is to the population of a modern industrial country like Germany,
+where every political gain or loss has a direct result on their own
+pockets; defeat will certainly have much less effect on the Oriental.
+One can therefore speak with confidence of a general longing for
+the end of the war at any price. The Turks have had quite enough of
+suffering, and there are limits to what even these willing and mutely
+resigned victims can bear.
+
+Nevertheless it is quite certain that the courageous Turkish soldier,
+in obedience to iron discipline and in unconditional submission to his
+Padishah, will continue to defend his lost cause to the very last
+drop of his blood, with an unquestioning resignation that absolutely
+precludes the idea of any defection within the army. Only a purely
+political military revolution, originating with the better-informed
+officers, who now really no longer believe in ultimate victory, is
+within the bounds of possibility.
+
+But the most confiding endurance on the part of the Turkish soldier,
+even when the military cause has long been lost, will not hinder this
+same soldier, when he is once more back in his own home as a peasant,
+from realising that European influence and European civilisation
+are a very competent protection against the miserably retrogressive
+Turkish rule, and that he has drawn more material profit from that
+single example of European activity, the Baghdad Railway, than from
+all Turkish official reforms put together, and so would willingly see
+Europe exercising a powerful control in his country. He would accept
+the military collapse of his country which he had so long and so
+bravely defended, and the dramatic political changes, with a quietly
+submissive "_Inshallah_." And although, deprived as he is of every
+kind of information and without even the beginnings of knowledge, he
+perhaps still believes in ultimate victory for the Padishah, he will
+probably heave a sigh of relief when the unexpected collapse comes, and
+he will not take long to understand what it means for him: freedom and
+happiness and an undreamt-of material well-being under strong European
+influence.
+
+The late successor to the throne, Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, was
+the highest of those in high authority who openly represented the
+pessimistic anti-war tendency. It was for this that he was murdered
+or perhaps made to commit suicide by Enver Pasha. The whole truth
+about this tragic occurrence can only be sifted to the bottom when the
+dictators of the "Committee" are no longer in their place and light
+finally breaks on Turkey. Whether it was murder or suicide, the death
+of the successor to the throne is one of the most dramatic scandals of
+Turkish history, and Enver Pasha has his blood, as well as the blood
+of so many others, on his head. As far as is possible during the war,
+Europe has already collected all the information available on the
+subject. I myself was in Constantinople when the tragic occurrence
+took place, and I can speak so far from personal experience.
+
+In connection with this sensational event, the world has already heard
+how Yussuf Izzedin was kept for years under the despotic Abdul-Hamid
+shut off from the world as a semi-prisoner in his beautiful _Konak of
+Sindjirlikuyu_, just outside the gates of Constantinople, where he
+became a sufferer from acute neurasthenia. In recent years, however,
+his health had improved and, although latently hostile to the men
+of the "Committee" and their politics, he had come more into the
+foreground, especially after the recapture of Adrianople, which he
+visited with full pomp and ceremony as Crown Prince of the Turkish
+Empire. While the Gallipoli campaign was going on, he even made a
+journey to the Front to greet his soldiers. Early one morning he was
+found lying dead in a pool of his own blood with a severed artery. He
+had received his death wound in exactly the same place and exactly
+the same way as his father, Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who fell a victim to
+Abdul-Hamid's hatred. The political significance of Yussuf Izzedin's
+death is perfectly clear. What we want to do now is to demonstrate
+Enver Pasha's moral culpability in the matter and to show how he was
+more or less directly the murderer of this quiet, cultured, highly
+respected, and thoroughly patriotic man, who was some day to ascend the
+throne of Turkey.
+
+So much at least seems to be clear, that Prince Izzedin, who was
+naturally interested in retaining his accession to the throne
+undisturbed and who in spite of his neurasthenia was man enough to
+stand up for his own rights, foresaw ruin for his kingdom by Turkey's
+entry into the war on the side of Germany. He was more far-seeing than
+the careless adventurers and narrow-minded fanatics of the "Committee"
+and recognised that the letting-go of the treasured Pan-Islamic
+traditions of old Sultan Hamid was a grave mistake which would lead
+to the alienation of the Arabs, and which endangered both the Ottoman
+Caliphate and Ottoman rule in the southern parts of the Empire. He
+could not console himself for the evacuation of the territory round
+Adrianople, right up to the gates of the sacred city, which meant much
+to him as the symbol of national enlightenment. He had a real personal
+dislike for upstarts of the stamp of Enver and Talaat. Apart from
+these differences of opinion and personal sympathies and antipathies,
+deep-rooted though these undoubtedly were, Yussuf Izzedin was and
+always would have been a thorough "Osmanli" with fiery nationalistic
+feelings, who wished for nothing but the good of his Empire and his
+country. And yet he was got rid of.
+
+It would be difficult for the present Turkish Government to prove that
+the successor to the throne, apart from his feeling of sorrow that
+his country had been drawn into the war, apart from his readiness to
+conclude an honourable separate peace at the first possible moment,
+did anything which might have caused them trouble. The officials of
+the Turkish Government had themselves made repeated efforts through
+their Swiss Ambassadors to find out how the land lay, and whether they
+could conclude a separate peace; so they had no grounds at all for
+reproaching Prince Yussuf Izzedin, who, as a leader of this movement,
+naturally let no opportunity of this kind slide. But he was far too
+clever not to know that any attempt in this direction behind the backs
+of the present Government would have no chance of success so long as
+Turkey was held under the iron fist of Germany.
+
+Perhaps the "Committee" had something to fear for the future, when the
+time came for the reverses now regarded as inevitable. Yussuf would
+then make use of his powerful influence in many circles--notably among
+the discontented retired military men--to demand redress from the
+"Committee." Enver, true to his unscrupulous character, quite hardened
+to the sight of Turkish blood, and determined to stick to his post
+at all costs--for it was not only lucrative, but flattering to his
+vanity--was not the man to stick at trifles with a poor neurasthenic,
+who under the present military dictatorship was absolutely at his
+mercy. He therefore decided on cold-blooded murder.
+
+The Prince, well aware of the danger that threatened him, tried at
+the last moment to leave the country and flee to safety. He had even
+taken his ticket, and intended to start by the midday Balkan train next
+day to travel to Switzerland via Germany. He was forbidden to travel.
+Whether, feeling himself thus driven into a corner and nothing but
+death at the hand of Enver's creatures staring him in the face, he
+killed himself in desperation, or whether, as thousands of people in
+Constantinople firmly believe, and as would seem to be corroborated by
+the generally accepted, although of course not actually verified, tale
+of a bloody encounter between the murderers and the Prince's bodyguard,
+with victims on both sides, he was actually assassinated, is not yet
+settled, and it is really not a matter of vast importance.
+
+One thing is clear, and that is that Izzedin Effendi did not pay
+with his life for any illoyal act, but merely for his personal and
+political opposition to Enver. He is but one on this murderer's long
+list of victims. The numerous doctors, all well known creatures of the
+"Committee" or easily won over by intimidation, who set their names
+as witnesses to this "suicide as a result of severe neurasthenia"--a
+most striking and suspicious similarity to the case of Abdul-Aziz--have
+not prevented one single thinking man in Constantinople from forming a
+correct opinion on the matter. The wily Turkish Government evidently
+chose this kind of death, just like his father's, so that they could
+diagnose the symptoms as those of incurable neurasthenia. History
+has already formed its own opinion as to how much free-will there was
+in Abdul-Aziz' death! The opinions of different people about Prince
+Yussuf's death only differ as to whether he was murdered or compelled
+to commit suicide. "_On l'a suicidé_," was the ironical and frank
+comment of one clever Old Turk. We will leave it at that.
+
+The funeral of the successor to the throne was a most interesting
+sight. I sent an article on it to my paper at the time, which of
+course had only very, very slight allusions to anything of a sinister
+character; but it did not find favour with the censor at the Berlin
+Foreign Office. The editorial staff of the paper evidently saw what I
+was driving at, and wrote to me: "We have revised and touched up your
+report so as at least to save the most essential part of it;" but even
+the altered version did not pass the censor's blue pencil. But I had at
+any rate the moral satisfaction of knowing that of all the papers with
+correspondents in the Turkish capital, mine, the _Kölnische Zeitung_,
+was the only one that could publish nothing, not a single line, about
+this important and highly sensational occurrence, for I simply wrote
+nothing more. That was surely clear enough!
+
+When in 1913, after the unsuccessful counter-revolution, Mahmud Shevket
+Pasha was assassinated and was going to be buried in Constantinople,
+the "Committee" issued invitations days beforehand to all foreign
+personages. This time nothing of the sort happened; and even the Press
+representatives were not invited to be present. On the former occasion
+everything possible was done, by putting off the interment as long as
+possible and repeatedly publishing the date, by lengthening the route
+of the funeral procession, to give several thousands of people an
+opportunity of taking part in the ceremony.
+
+This time, however, the authorities arranged the burial with all speed,
+and the very next day after the sensational occurrence the body was
+hurried by the shortest way, through the Gülhané Park, to the Mausoleum
+of Sultan Mahmud-Moshee. The coffin had been quietly brought in the
+twilight the evening before from the Kiosk of Sindjirlikuyu on the
+other side of Pera on the Maslak Hill, to the top of the Seraïl. Along
+the whole route, however, wherever the public had access, there were
+lines of police and soldiers; and the bright uniforms of the police
+who were inserted in groups of twenty between every single row of the
+procession of Ministers, members of the "Committee" and delegaters who
+walked behind the coffin, were really the most conspicuous thing in the
+whole ceremony. Enver Pasha passed quite close to me, and neither I,
+nor my companions, could fail to note the ill-concealed expression of
+satisfaction on his face.
+
+The most beautiful thing about this whole funeral, however, was the
+visit paid me by the Secretary-General of the Senate, the minute
+after I had reached home (and I had driven by the shortest way). With
+a zeal that might have surprised even the simplest minded of men,
+he offered to tell me about the Prince's life, lingering long and
+going into exhaustive detail over the well-known facts of his nervous
+ailment. Then, blushing at his own awkwardness and importunity, he
+begged me most earnestly to publish his version of all the details and
+circumstances of this tragic occurrence, "which no other paper will be
+in a position to publish." Naturally it was never written.
+
+So, once more, in the late summer of 1916, Enver Pasha, who was so fond
+of discovering conspiracies and political movements in order to get rid
+of his enemies, and go scot free himself, had a fresh opportunity of
+reflecting, with even more foundation than usual, on the firmness of
+his position and the security of his own life.
+
+It is perhaps time now to give a more comprehensive description of this
+man. We have already mentioned in connection with the failure of his
+Caucasus offensive that Enver has been extraordinarily over-estimated
+in Europe. The famous Enver is neither a prominent intellectual leader
+nor a good organiser--in this direction he is far surpassed by Djemal
+Pasha--nor an important strategist. In military matters his positive
+qualities are personal courage, optimism, and, consequently, initiative
+which is never daunted by fear of consequences, also cold-bloodedness
+and determination; but he is entirely lacking in judgment, power of
+discrimination, and largeness of conception. From the German point
+of view he is particularly valuable for his unquestioning and
+unconditional association with the Central Powers, his readiness to do
+anything that will further their cause, his pliability and his zeal in
+accommodating himself even to the most trenchant reforms. But it is
+just these qualities that make enemies for him among retired military
+men and among the people.
+
+Regarded from a purely personal point of view, Enver Pasha is, in spite
+of the fulsome praise showered on him by Germans inspired by that
+most pliant implement, German militarism, one of the most repugnant
+subjects ever produced by Turkey. Even from a purely external point of
+view his appearance does not at all correspond with the picture of him
+generally accepted in Germany from flattering reports and falsified
+photographs. Small of stature, with quite an ordinary face, he looks
+rather, as one of my journalistic colleagues said, like a "gardener's
+boy" than a Vice-General and War Minister, and anyone who ever has the
+opportunity I have so often had, of looking really closely at him, will
+certainly be repelled by his look of vanity and cunning. It was really
+most painful to have to listen to him (he has always been a bad and
+monotonous speaker) in the Senate and the Lower House at the conclusion
+of the Dardanelles campaign reading his report in a weak, halting
+voice, but with the disdainful tone of a dictator. Every third word was
+an "I." Even the Turkish Press accorded this parliamentary speech a
+fairly frosty reception.
+
+Besides this, Enver is one of the most cold-blooded liars imaginable.
+Time and again there has been no necessity for him to say certain
+things in Parliament, or to make certain promises, but apparently he
+found cynical enjoyment in making the people and Parliament feel their
+whole inferiority in his eyes. What can one think, for example, of such
+performances as this? At the end of 1916 when the discussion about
+military service for those who had paid the exemption tax (_bedel_) was
+going on, he gave an unsolicited and solemn assurance before the whole
+House that he had no intention whatever of calling up certain classes
+until the Bill had been finally passed and that it would show that he
+was really desirous of sparing commercial life as far as possible in
+the calling up of men. Exactly two hours after this speech the drum
+resounded through all the streets of Stamboul and Pera, calling up all
+those classes over which Enver had as yet no power of jurisdiction, and
+which he said he wanted to keep back because to tear them away from
+their employment would mean the complete disorganisation of the already
+sadly disordered commercial life of the country.
+
+This was Talaat's opinion, too, and he offered a firm resistance to
+Enver's plan, which it appears had been introduced by command of the
+German Government. In this case, however, resistance was useless, and
+had to give way to military necessity. If Enver said something in
+Parliament--this at any rate was the general conclusion--one might be
+quite certain that exactly the opposite would take place. He has now
+gained for himself the reputation of being a liar and a murderer among
+all those who are not followers of the "Committee."
+
+In contrast to Talaat, who is at least intelligent enough to keep up
+appearances and cunning enough to hold himself well in the background,
+Enver's personal lack of integrity in money matters is a subject of
+most shameful knowledge in Constantinople. It is pretty well generally
+known how he has made use of his position as Military Dictator to gain
+possession for himself of property worth thousands of pounds, and how
+in his financial dealings with Germany hundreds have found their way
+into his own pocket--up till the winter of 1915-1916, according to an
+estimate from confidential Turkish circles and from German sources I
+will not name, he had already managed to collect something like two
+million pounds, reckoned in English money. This son of a former lowly
+_conducteur_ in the service of the Roads and Bridges Board, whose
+mother, as I have been assured by Turks is the case, plied in Stamboul
+the much-despised trade of "layer-out" of corpses, now lives in his
+Konak in more than princely luxury, with flowers and silver and gold on
+his table, having married, out of pure ambition, a very plain-looking
+princess. That is the true portrait of this much-coddled darling of
+the Young Turks, and latterly of the German people as well. This is
+the idol of so many admiring German women, who are bewitched by his
+more than adventurous career and the halo surrounding him which he has
+enhanced by every known and unknown means of self-advertisement.
+
+Enver's character won for him in "Committee" circles personal dislike
+and bitter, though veiled, enmity even from his colleagues who were
+of exactly the same political persuasion as himself. Of his relations
+towards the infinitely more important Djemal Pasha we have already
+spoken; we shall speak in a moment of his relations to Talaat. In the
+world of the retired military men, however, who had been badgered about
+by Enver, neglected and simply forcibly pensioned off by hundreds
+before the war because of their divergent political opinions, and even
+thrown into the street, the War Minister was heartily hated. A very
+large part of them were of the same political views as the murdered
+successor to the throne, and their opinion of the Great War was as
+we have already indicated. They pointed bitterly to Enver as the
+all-too-pliable servant of Germany, who was only too ready to sacrifice
+the flower of Ottoman youth on those far battlefields of Galicia at
+a sign from the German Staff, and open door after door to German
+influence in the Interior without even attempting to protect the land
+of his fathers from invasion and decay.
+
+As we have said, political revolutions in Turkey usually start in
+military circles, not among the people, and there was an actual attempt
+in this direction in the autumn of 1916. Either by chance or by
+someone's betraying the plot, it was discovered by Enver in time, and
+the number of military men and Old Turkish personages associated with
+them, imprisoned in Constantinople alone, reached six hundred. At the
+head of the movement stood Major Yakub Djemil Bey.
+
+During the whole of the summer of 1916 Enver's position had been looked
+upon as quite insecure. The knowledge of his greed in money matters,
+his tactless pushing, and his ruthless brutality had totally alienated
+a wide circle of people, and many believed that he would soon have to
+resign.
+
+In addition to this, a deep inward antagonism reigned between him and
+Talaat, the real leader and by far the most important statesman of
+Turkey, which was far more than a cleverly veiled personal dislike.
+There was a constant struggle for power going on between the two men.
+By the end of May the crisis had become pretty acute, although outward
+appearances were still preserved and only well-informed circles knew
+anything at all about the matter. Enver had at that time to hurry back
+from the Irak, where he was on a visit of inspection with the German
+Chief of Staff and the Military Attaché, in order to safeguard his
+post. In confidential circles, the outbreak of open enmity between the
+two was fully expected; but this time again Talaat was the cleverer.
+He felt that, in spite of his own greater influence and following, in
+spite of his real superiority to Enver, he might perhaps, if he tried
+conclusions with him while he was still in command of the army, find
+himself the loser and, in view of Enver's murderous habits, pay for his
+rashness with his life. So he decided not to risk a decisive battle
+just yet. He was too patriotic, also, to let things come to an open
+break during the difficult time of war. Talaat disappeared for a short
+time on a visit of inspection to Angora, and things settled down to
+their old way again.
+
+There is still internal conflict going on. But Enver, with boundless
+ambition and no fine feelings of honour, clings to his post, and
+has shown by the way he dealt with the instigators of the conspiracy
+mentioned above that nothing but force will move him from his post,
+and that he will never yield to public opinion or the criticism of
+his colleagues. He was troubled by no qualms, in spite of the widely
+circulated opinion that he would certainly jeopardise his life if he
+went on in the same ruthless way towards the retired military men. He
+simply had the leader, Yakub Djemil Bey, hanged like a common criminal,
+and the whole of his followers, for the most part superior officers and
+highly respected persons, turned into soldiers of the second class, and
+put in the front-line trenches.
+
+Enver's removal would not alter the whole Young Turkish régime much,
+but it would take from it much of its ruthless barbarity, and its most
+repugnant representative would vanish from the picture. It would also
+be a severe blow for Germany and her militaristic policy of driving
+Turkey mercilessly to suicide. It would be a godsend to the anti-German
+Djemal Pasha. From a political point of view it would mean, far more
+than Talaat's appointment as Grand Vizier, the absolute supremacy of
+that statesman.
+
+At bottom probably less ruthless than Enver and certainly cleverer,
+there is no doubt but that he would pursue his jingoistic ideas in the
+realm of race-politics, but at any rate he would not want any military
+system of frightfulness. Enver's removal from office will come within
+the range of near possibility as soon as the new British operations
+against Southern Palestine and Mesopotamia have produced a real
+victory. Turkey is not in a good enough military position to prevent
+this, and the whole world will soon recognise that it is this servant
+of Germany, this careless optimist and very mediocre strategist who is
+to blame for the inexorable breaking-up of the Ottoman Empire.
+
+The contrast I have noted between Enver and Talaat provides the
+opportunity for saying a few words about Talaat, now Pasha and
+Grand Vizier, and by far the most important man of New Turkey.
+As Minister of the Interior, he has guided the whole fate of his
+country, except in purely military matters, as uncrowned king. It is
+he more than anyone else who is the originator of the whole system
+of home politics. Solidity of character, earnestness, freedom from
+careless optimism, and conspicuous power of judgment distinguish him
+most favourably from Enver, who possesses the opposite of all these
+qualities. A high degree of intelligence, an enormous knowledge of
+men, an exceptional gift of organisation and tireless energy combined
+with great personal authority, prudence and reserve, calm weighing
+of the actual possibilities--in a word, all the qualities of the
+real statesman--raise him head and shoulders above the whole of his
+colleagues and co-workers. It would be unjust to doubt his ardent
+patriotism or the honesty of his ideas and intentions. Talaat's
+character is so impressive that one often hears even Armenians, the
+victims of his own original policy of persecution, speak of him with
+respect, and I have even heard the opinion expressed that had it not
+been for Talaat's cleverness, the Committee would have gone much
+further with their mischievous policy.
+
+But his high intellectual abilities do not prevent him from suffering
+from that same plague of narrow-minded, jingoistic illusion peculiar
+to the Pan-Turks. He is as if intoxicated with a race-fanaticism that
+stifles all nobler emotions. Talaat is too methodical and clever not to
+avoid all intentional ruthlessness, but in practice his system, which
+he follows out with inflexible logic to the bitter end, turns out to
+be just as brutal as Enver's intrinsically more brutal policy. And
+although he accommodates himself outwardly to modern European methods
+and knows how to utilise them, the ethics of his system are out-and-out
+Asiatic. When Talaat speaks in the "Committee," there is very rarely
+the slightest opposition. He has usually prepared and coached the
+"Committee" so well beforehand that he can to all appearance keep in
+the background and only follow the majority. With the exception of a
+few military affairs, everything has always taken place that he has
+proposed in Parliament.
+
+Beside this man, whose sparkling eyes, massive shoulders, broad chest,
+clean-cut profile and exuberant health denote the whole unbounded
+energy of the dictator, the good-natured, degenerate, and epileptically
+inclined Sultan, Mehmed V, "El Ghazi" ("the hero"), is but a weak
+shadow. But if we fully recognise Talaat's high intellectual qualities,
+we should like all the more to emphasise that he must be held
+personally responsible more than all the others for everything that is
+now happening in Turkey, so far as it is not of a military character.
+The spirit reigning in Turkey to-day, the spirit of Pan-Turkish
+jingoism, is Talaat's spirit. The Armenian persecutions are his very
+own work. And when the day of reckoning comes for the Turkey of the
+"Committee of Union and Progress," it is to be hoped that Europe as
+judge and chastiser and avenger of an outraged civilisation, will lay
+the chief blame on Talaat Pasha rather than on his far weaker colleague
+Enver.
+
+All his eminent qualities, however, do not prevent this intellectual
+leader of Turkey, the most important man, beside the Sultan, in the
+land, from showing signs of something that is typical of the whole
+"Committee" clique with their dictatorial power, and which we may
+perhaps be allowed to call _parvenuishness_. At all points we see
+the characteristics of the parvenu in this statesman and one-time
+adventurer and in these creatures of the "Committee" who have recently
+become wealthy by certain abuses--I would remind you only of the
+Requisitions--and by a lucrative adherence to the ruling clique. There
+are of course individual cases of distinguished men of good birth
+throwing in their lot with the "Committee," but they are extremely
+rare, and they only help to give an even worse impression of the
+average Young Turk belonging to the Government. Their past is usually
+extremely doubtful, and their careers have been somewhat varied.
+
+No one of course would ever think of setting it down as a black mark
+against Talaat, for example, that he had to work his way up to his
+present supreme position from the very modest occupation of postman
+and postal coach conductor on the Adrianople road, via telegraph
+assistant and other branches of the Post Office; on the contrary, such
+intelligence and energy are worthy of the highest praise. But Talaat's
+case is a comparatively good one, and it is not so much their low
+social origin that is a drawback to these political leaders of Turkey,
+as their complete lack of education in statesmanship and history,
+which unfits them for the high rôle they are called upon to fill.
+Naturally it is not exactly pleasant when a man like Herr Paul Weitz,
+the correspondent of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, and a political agent,
+can boast with a certain amount of justification that he has given tips
+of money to many of the present members of the "Committee"--in the real
+sense of the word, not in the political meaning of _backshish_! It is
+no wonder, then, that German influence won its way through so easily!
+
+Even yet Talaat's lowly origin is a drawback to him socially, and,
+in spite of his jovial manner and his complete confidence in his own
+powers, he sometimes feels himself so unsure that he rather avoids
+social duties. Probably one of the reasons of his long delay in
+accepting the post of Grand Vizier--he was already definitely marked
+out for it in the summer of 1915--was his own inner consciousness
+that his whole past life unfitted him socially for the duties of such
+an office. That he has now decided to accept it, is only the logical
+sequence of the system of absolute Turkification, which, with its plan
+of muzzling and supplanting all non-Turkish elements, had of course
+to get rid of the Egyptian element in the Government, represented by
+Prince Halim Saïd, the late Grand Vizier, and his brother, the late
+Minister of Public Works.
+
+There are far more outstanding cases of incompatibility between social
+upbringing and present activity among the "Committee." I will simply
+take the single example of the Director General of the Press, Hikmet
+Bey. Mischievous Pera still gives him the nick-name of "_Sütdji_"
+("milkman"), because--although it is no reproach to him any more than
+in Talaat's case--he still kept his father's milk shop in the Rue
+Tepé Bashi in Pera before he managed to get himself launched on a
+political career by close adherence to the Committee. Sometimes, of
+course, one inherits from a low social origin far worse things than
+social inferiority. Perhaps Djemal Pasha's murderous instincts are to
+be traced to the fact that his grandfather was the official hangman in
+the service of Sultan Mahmud, and that his father still retained the
+nick-name of "hangman" among the people.
+
+One only needs to cast a glance at the Young Turks who are the
+leaders of fashion in the "Club de Constantinople"--after the English
+and French members are absent--with German officers who have been
+admitted as temporary members at a reduced subscription, and one will
+find there, as in the more exclusive "Cercle d'Orient," and in the
+"Yachting Club" in Prinkipo in the summer-time, individuals belonging
+to the "Committee" whose lowly origin and bad manners are evident at
+the first glance. Talaat, who is himself President of the Club, knows
+exactly how to get his adherents elected as members without one of them
+being blackballed. People who used not to know what an International
+Club was, and who perhaps, in accordance with their former social
+status, got as far as the vestibule to speak to the Concierge, are
+now great "club men" and can afford, with the money they have amassed
+in "clique" trade and by the famous system of Requisitions, to play
+poker every evening for stakes of hundreds of Turkish pounds. One
+single kaleidoscopic glance into the perpetual whirl of any one of
+these clubs, which used to be places of friendly social intercourse
+for the best European circles, is quite sufficient to see the class
+of degenerate, greedy parvenus that rule poor, bleeding, helpless,
+exhausted Turkey. One cannot but be filled with a deep sympathy for
+this unfortunate land.
+
+The Turks of decent birth are disgusted at these parvenus. I have had
+conversations with many an old Pasha and Senator, true representatives
+of the refined and kindly Old Turkish aristocracy, and heard many a
+word of stern disapproval of the "Committee" quite apart from their
+divergent political opinions. There is a whole distinguished Turkish
+world in Constantinople who completely boycott Enver and his consorts
+socially, although they have to put up with their caprices politically.
+"I don't know Enver at all," or "_Je ne connais pas ces gens-là_"
+("I don't know these people"), are phrases that one very often hears
+repeated with infinite disdain. In all these cases it is the purely
+personal side--birth and manners--that repels them.
+
+Socially the cleft between the two camps is far deeper than it is
+politically, for many of these same people accommodate themselves,
+though with reluctance in their heart, to sharing at least formally
+as Senators in the responsibility for the present Young Turkish
+policy. They have to do so, for otherwise they would simply be flung
+mercilessly by Enver's Clique on to the streets to beg for bread.
+This is how it comes about to-day that, with very few exceptions, the
+Senators, who, to tell the truth, have as little practical say as the
+members of the Lower House, are all outwardly complaisant followers
+of the "Committee." The more doctrinal, but at any rate courageous
+and honourable opposition of Ahmed Riza is likewise of very little
+significance. Once, about the middle of December, 1916, Enver even went
+so far as to hurl the epithet "shameless dog" at Ahmed Riza in the
+Senate without being called to order by the President.
+
+The Deputies are also, with even fewer exceptions than the
+Senators--only one or two are reasonable men--all slaves pure and
+simple of Enver and Talaat. The Lower House is nothing but a set of
+employees paid by the Clique. In other countries now at war the Lower
+House may have sunk to the level of a laughing-stock; in Turkey it
+has become the instrument of crime. And it is these same toadies
+and parasites, who daily carry out this military dictator's will in
+Parliament, that he daily treats with scarcely veiled irony and open
+and complete disdain. These are the "representatives of the people" in
+Turkey in war-time!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Djemal Pasha learnt the news that Admiral von Souchon had
+bombarded Russian ports, and so made war inevitable, one evening at the
+Club. Pale with rage, he sprang up and said: "So be it; but if things
+go wrong, Souchon will be the first to be hanged."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting Germany--The
+  Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The social necessity for this
+  deliverance--Anatolia, the new Turkey after the war--Forecasts about
+  the Turkish race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia
+  and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany, at peace,
+  benefits too--Farewell to the German "World-politicians"--German
+  interests in a victorious and in an amputated Turkey--The
+  German-Turkish treaty--A paradise on earth--The Russian commercial
+  impetus--The new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+  civilization--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation of Germany.
+
+
+We have come to the end of our sketches. The question before us now is:
+What will become of Turkey? The Entente has pronounced formal sentence
+of death on the Empire of the Sultan, and neither the slowly fading
+military power of Turkey, nor the help of Germany, who is herself
+already virtually conquered, will be able to arrest her fate.
+
+On the high frost-bound uplands of Armenia the Russians hold a
+strategic position from which it is impossible to dislodge them, and
+which will probably very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexandretta. In
+Mesopotamia, after that enormously important political event, the Fall
+of Baghdad, the union was effected between the British troops and
+the Russians, advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez Canal is now
+no longer threatened, and the British troops have been removed from
+there for a counter-offensive in Southern Palestine, and probably,
+when the psychological moment arrives, an offensive against Syria,
+now so sadly shattered politically. It is quite within the bounds of
+possibility, too, that during this war a big new Front may be formed
+in Western Anatolia, already completely broken up by the Pan-Hellenic
+Irredenta, and the Turks will be hard put to it to find troops to meet
+the new offensive. Arabia is finally and absolutely lost, and England,
+by establishing an Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war against
+Turkey. Meantime, on the far battlefields of Galicia and the Balkans,
+whole Ottoman divisions are pouring out their life-blood, fighting for
+that elusive German victory that never comes any nearer, while in every
+nook and corner of their own land there is a terrible lack of troops.
+Enver Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attempted to recall them, but
+in vain.
+
+That is a short résumé of the military situation. This is how the
+Turkey of Enver and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has placed in
+Germany.
+
+To a German journalist who went out two years ago to a great Turkey,
+striving for a "Greater Turkey," it does indeed seem a bitter irony of
+fate to see his sphere of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The fall
+of Turkey is the greatest blow that could have been dealt to German
+"world-politics"; it is a disappointment that will have the gravest
+consequences. But from the standpoint of culture, human civilisation,
+ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice, historical progress,
+the economic development of wide tracts of land of the greatest
+importance from their geographical position, it is one of the most
+brilliant results of the war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy.
+When I look back on how wonderfully things have shaped in the last two
+and a half years I am bound to admit that I am happy things have turned
+out as they have. If perchance any Turk who knows me happens to read
+these lines, I beg him not to think that my ideas are saturated with
+hatred of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the country and the Turkish
+race with those many attractive qualities that rightly appealed to a
+poet like Loti.
+
+I have asked myself thousands of times what would be the best political
+solution of the problem, how to help this people--and the other races
+inhabiting their country--to true and lasting happiness. From my many
+journeys in tropical lands, I have grown accustomed to the sight of
+autochthonous civilisations and semi-civilised peoples, and am as
+interested in them as in the most perfectly civilised nations of
+Europe. I have therefore, I think, been able to set aside entirely in
+my own mind the territorial interests of the West in the development
+of the Near East, and give my whole attention to Turkey's own good and
+Turkey's own needs. But even then I have been obliged to subscribe
+to the sentence of death passed on the Turkey of the Young Turks
+and the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It is with the fullest
+consciousness of what I am doing that I agree to the only seemingly
+cruel amputation of this State. It is merely the outer shell covering
+a number of peoples who suffer cruelly under an unjust system, chief
+among them the brave Turkish people who have been led by a criminal
+Government to take the last step on the road to ruin. The point of view
+I have adopted does not in any way detract from my personal sympathies,
+and I still have hopes that the many personal friendships I made
+in Constantinople will not be broken by the hard words I have been
+obliged to utter in the cause of truth, in the interests of outraged
+civilisation, and in the interests of a happier future for the Ottoman
+people themselves.
+
+The amputation of Turkey is a stern social necessity. Someone has
+said: "The greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I have too much love
+for the Turkish people, too much sympathy for them, to adopt this
+pessimistic attitude without great inward opposition; but unfortunately
+it is only too true. We have seen how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat
+has reacted sharply against the Western-minded, liberal era of the
+1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has turned again to Asia and her newly
+discovered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of to-day, European culture
+and civilisation are at best but a technical means; they are no longer
+an end in themselves. Their dream is no longer Western Europe, but a
+nationally awakened and strengthened Asiatentum.
+
+In face of this intellectual development, how can we hope that in the
+new Turkey there will be a radical alteration of what, in the whole
+course of Ottoman history, has always been the one characteristic,
+unchangeable, momentous fact, of what has always shattered the most
+honest efforts at reform, and always will shatter every attempt at
+improvement within a sovereign Turkey--I refer to the relationship
+of the Turk to the "_Rajah_" (the "herd"), the Christian subjects of
+the Padishah. The Ottoman, the Mohammedan conqueror, lives by the
+"herd" he has found in the land he has conquered; the "herd" are the
+"unbelievers," and rooted deep in the mind of this sovereign people,
+who have never quite lost their nomadic instincts, is the conviction
+that they have the right to live by the sweat of the brow of their
+Christian subjects and on the fruits of their labour. That we
+Europeans think this unjust the Turk will never be able to grasp.
+
+A Wali of Erzerum once said: "The Turkish Government and the Armenian
+people stand in the relationship of man and wife, and any third persons
+who feel sympathy for the wife and anger at the wife-beating husband
+will do better not to meddle in this domestic strife." This quotation
+has become famous, for it exactly characterises the relationship of
+the Turk to the "Rajah," not to the Armenians. In this phrase alone
+there lies, quite apart from all the crimes committed by the present
+Turkish Government, a sufficient moral and political foundation for
+the sentence of death passed on the sovereignty of the present Turkish
+State. For so long as the Turks cling to Islam, from which springs that
+opposition between Moslem rulers and "Giaur" subjects so detrimental
+to all social progress, it is Europe's sacred duty not to give Turkey
+sovereignty over any territory with a strong Christian element. That
+is why Turkey must at all costs be confined to Inner Anatolia; that is
+why complete amputation is necessary; and why the outlying districts
+of Turkey, the Straits, the Anatolian coast, the whole of Armenia must
+be rescued and, part of it at any rate, placed under formal European
+protection.
+
+Even in Inner Anatolia, which will probably still be left to the
+Ottomans after the war, the strongest European influence must be
+brought to bear--which will probably not be difficult in view of
+Turkey's financial bankruptcy; European customs and civilisation must
+be introduced; in a word, Europe must exercise sufficient control
+to be in a position to prevent the numerous non-Turks resident even
+in Anatolia from being exposed to the old system of exploiting the
+"Rajah." Discerning Turks themselves have admitted that it would be
+best for Europe to put the whole of Turkey for a generation under
+curatorship and general European supervision.
+
+I, personally, should not be satisfied with this system for the
+districts occupied more by non-Turks than by Turks; but, on the other
+hand, I should not go so far in the case of Inner Anatolia. I trust
+that strong European influence will make it possible to make Inner
+Anatolia a sovereign territory. I have pinned my faith on the Ottoman
+race being given another and final opportunity on her own ground of
+showing how she will develop now after the wonderful intellectual
+improvement that has taken place during the war. I hope at the same
+time that even in a sovereign Turkish Inner Anatolia Europe will have
+enough say to prevent any outgrowths of the "Rajah principle."
+
+The Turks must not be deprived of the opportunity to bring their
+new-found abilities, which even we must praise, to bear on the
+production of a new, modern, but thoroughly Turkish civilisation
+of their own on their own ground. Anatolia, beautiful and capable
+of development, is, even if we confine it to those interior parts
+chiefly inhabited by Ottomans, still quite a big enough field for the
+production of such a civilisation; it is quite big enough too for the
+terribly reduced numbers now belonging to the Osmanic race.
+
+The amputation and limitation of Turkey, even if they do not succeed
+in altering the real Turkish point of view--and this, so far as the
+relationship to the Christians is concerned, is the same, from the
+Pasha down to the poorest Anatolian peasant--will at least have a
+tremendously beneficial effect. The possibilities in the Turkish race
+will come to flower. "The worst patriots," I once dared to say in one
+of my articles in spite of the censorship, "are not those who look for
+the future of the nation in concentrated cultural work in the Turkish
+nucleus-land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the Caucasus and down
+into the sands of the African desert in their search for a 'Greater
+Turkey.'" And in connection with the series of lectures I have already
+mentioned about Anatolian hygiene and social politics, I said, with
+quite unmistakable meaning: "Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity
+on her own original ground, in the nucleus-land of the Ottomans, of
+proving her capability and showing that she has become a really modern,
+civilised State."
+
+My earnest wish is that all the Turks' high intellectual abilities,
+brought to the front by this war, may be concentrated on this beautiful
+and repaying task. Intensive labour and the concentration of all forces
+on positive work in the direction of civilisation will have to take the
+place of corrupt rule, boundless neglect, waste, the strangulation of
+all progressive movements, political illusions, the unquenchable desire
+for conquest and oppression. This is what we pray for for Anatolia,
+the real New Turkey after the war. In other districts, also, now fully
+under European control, the pure Turkish element will flourish much
+more exceedingly than ever before under the beneficent protection of
+modern, civilised Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turkish Power has
+vanished. But new life springs out of ruin and decay; the history of
+mankind is a continual change.
+
+Russia, too, after war, will no longer be what she seemed to terrified
+Turkish eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled by "world-politics": a
+colossal creature, stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow up her
+smaller neighbours; a country ruled by a dull, unthinking despotism.
+
+From the standpoint of universal civilisation it is to be hoped that
+the solution of the problem of the Near East will be to transform
+the Straits between the Black Sea and Aegea, together with the city
+of Constantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into a completely
+international stretch with open harbours. Then we need no longer oppose
+Russian aspirations. If England, the stronghold of Free Trade and of
+all principles of freedom of intercourse, and France, the land of
+culture, interested in Turkey to the extent of millions, were content
+to leave Russia a free hand in the Straits; if Roumania, shut in in
+the Black Sea, did not fear for her trade, but was willing to become
+an ally of Russia in full knowledge of the Entente agreement about
+the Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident what guarantee
+with regard to international freedom modern Russia will have to give
+after the war, and even the Germans have nothing to fear. Of course
+the German anti-European "Antwerp-Baghdad" dream will be shattered.
+But once Germany is at peace, she will probably find that even the
+Russian solution of the Straits question benefits her not a little. The
+final realisation of Russia's efforts, justifiable both historically
+and geographically, to reach the Mediterranean at this one eminently
+suitable spot, will certainly contribute in an extraordinary degree to
+remove the unbearable political pressure from Europe and ensure peace
+for the world.
+
+Just a few parting words to the German "World-politicians." Very often,
+as I have said, I heard during my stay in Constantinople expressions
+of anxiety on the part of Germans that all German interests, even
+purely commercial ones, would be gravely endangered in the victorious
+New Turkey, which would spring to life again with renewed jingoistic
+passions and renewed efforts at emancipation. And more than once--all
+honour to the feelings of justice and the sound common sense of those
+who dared to utter such opinions--I was told by Germans, in the middle
+of the war, and with no attempt at concealment, that they fully agreed
+it was an absolute necessity for Russia to have the control of the
+only outlet for her enormous trade to the Mediterranean, and that
+commercially at any rate the fight for Constantinople and the Straits
+was a fight for a just cause.
+
+Now, let us take these two points of view together. From the purely
+German standpoint, which is better?--a victorious and self-governing
+Turkey imbued with jingoism and the desire for emancipation,
+practically closed to us, even commercially, or an amputated Turkey,
+compelled to appeal for European help and European capital to recover
+from her state of complete exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those
+Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of all their fine phrases and
+the German help they had to accept for all their inward distaste of
+it, hate us from the very depths of their heart; a Turkey which, even
+if Russia,--as a last resort!--is allowed to become mistress of the
+Dardanelles with huge international guarantees, would, in the Anatolia
+that is left to her, capable of development as it is, and rich in
+national wealth, offer a very considerable field of activity for German
+enterprise? The short-sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting for the
+victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-Turkism against the modern, civilised
+States of the Entente, who had no wish at all that Germany should not
+fare as well as the rest in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can
+perhaps answer my question. They should have asked themselves this,
+and foreseen the consequences before they yielded weakly to Turkish
+caprices and themselves stirred up the Turks against Europe.
+
+As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit,
+in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty,
+guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at
+a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could
+possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect
+Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her
+long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the
+question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of
+Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if
+necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can
+thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No"
+before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia
+at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the
+Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal
+of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement
+about the war in Constantinople and elsewhere were not required to
+show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the
+bitter end."
+
+Never, however--and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of
+the World-politician--have I ever heard a single one of those Germans,
+who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order
+to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion
+the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German
+activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near
+East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have
+decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them,
+to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had
+committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further
+with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have
+any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of
+commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist
+were Turkey victorious.
+
+Luckily for mankind, history has decided otherwise. After the war, the
+huge and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will be carried down to
+the then open seaports between Europe and Asia; the wealth of Odessa
+and the Pontus ports, enormously increased and free to develop, will
+be concentrated on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and the whole
+hitherto neglected city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata to
+Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha, will become an earthly paradise
+of pulsing life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury and elegance of
+the Crimea will move southwards to these shores of unique natural
+beauty and mild climate which form the bridge between two continents
+and between two seas. Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful
+labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the
+Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the
+war, under Turkish régime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes
+which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth.
+
+Never, even after another hundred years of Turkish rule, would that
+unique coast ever have become what it can be and what it must be--one
+of the very greatest centres of international intercourse and the
+Riviera of the East, not only in beauty of landscape, but in luxury
+and wealth. The greatest stress in this connection is to be laid on
+the lively Russian impetus that will spring from a modernised Russia,
+untrammelled by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced as I am that
+Russia after the war will no longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared
+by Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey, I am prepared to give this
+impetus full play, as being the best possible means for the further
+development of Constantinople.
+
+In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes of the Taurus and the foot
+of the Armenian mountains, there will extend a modern Turkey which
+has finally come to rest, to concentration, to peaceful labour, after
+centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the suicidal policy of
+military adventurers, and superficial attempts at expansion coupled
+with neglect of the most important internal duties. The inhabitants
+of these lands will soon have forgotten that "Greater Turkey" has
+collapsed. They will be really happy at last, these people whose
+idea of happiness hitherto had been a veneer of material well-being
+obtained by toadying, while the great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt,
+ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an outworn militarism, oppressed
+by a decaying administration. Then, but not till then, the world will
+see what the Turkish people is capable of. Then there will be no need
+for pessimism about this kindly and honourable race. Then we can become
+honest "Pro-Turks" again.
+
+In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not forget that the whole shore,
+where once stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-out Hellenic
+centre of civilisation. Quite independently of all political feelings
+towards present-day Greece, this historical fact must be taken into
+consideration in the final ruling. It is to be hoped that the Greek
+people will not have to atone for ever for the faults of their
+non-Greek king who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty to be a
+Greek and nothing but a Greek, and who has betrayed the honour and the
+future of the nation.
+
+The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste by war, and emptied of men
+by Talaat's passion for persecution, will obtain autonomy from her
+conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps be linked up with all the other
+parts of the east, inhabited by the last remnants of the Armenian
+people. Armenia, with its central position and divided into three among
+Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may from its geographical position, its
+unfortunate history, and the endless sufferings it has been called
+upon to bear, be called the Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from the
+Turkish system, freed from all antagonistic Turko-Russian military
+principles of obstruction, linked up by railways to the west as well as
+the already well-developed region of Transcaucasia, with a big through
+trade from the Black Sea via Trapezunt to Persia and Mesopotamia,
+it will once more offer an excellent field of activity to the high
+intellectual and commercial abilities of its people, now, alas!
+scattered to the four winds of heaven. But they will return to their
+old home, bringing with them European ideas, European technique, and
+the most modern methods from America.
+
+If men are lacking, they can be obtained from the near Caucasus with
+its narrow, over-filled valleys, inhabited by a most superior race
+of men, who have always had strong emigrating instincts. Even this
+most unfortunate country in the whole world, which the Turks of the
+Old Régime and of the New have systematically mutilated and at last
+bequeathed to Russia with practically not a man left, is going to have
+its spring-time.
+
+In the south, Great Arabia and Syria will have autonomy under the
+protection of England and France with their skilful Islam policy; they
+will have the benefit of the approved methods of progressive work in
+Egypt, the Soudan, and India as well as the Atlas lands; they will be
+exposed to the influences and incitements of the rest of civilised
+Europe; they will probably be enriched with capital from America,
+where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as well as Armenian, refugees have
+found a home; they will provide the first opportunity in history of
+showing how the Arab race accommodates itself to modern civilisation
+on its own ground and with its own sovereign administration. The final
+deliverance of the Arabs from the oppressive and harmful supremacy of
+the Turks, now happily accomplished by the war, was one of the most
+urgent demands for a race that can look back on centuries of brilliant
+civilisation. The civilised world will watch with the keenest interest
+the self-development of the Arabian lands.
+
+Even Germany, once she is at peace, will have no need to grumble at
+these arrangements, however diametrically opposed they may be to the
+now sadly shattered plans of the Pan-German and Expansion politicians.
+Germany will not lose the countless millions she has invested in
+Turkey. She will have her full and sufficient share in the European
+work and commercial activity that will soon revive again in the Near
+East. The Baghdad railway of "Rohrbach & Company" will never be
+built, it is true; but the Baghdad Railway with a loyal international
+marking off of the different zones of interest, the Baghdad Railway,
+as a huge artery of peaceful intercourse linking up the whole of Asia
+Minor and bringing peace and commercial prosperity, will all the more
+surely rise from its ruins. And when once the German _Weltpolitik_
+with its jealousy, its tactless, sword-rattling interference in the
+time-honoured vital interests of other States, its political intrigues
+disguised in commercial dress, is safely dead and buried, there will be
+nothing whatever to hinder Germany from making use of this railway and
+carrying her purely commercial energy and the products of her peaceful
+labour to the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving in return the
+rich fruits of her cultural activity on the soil of Asia Minor.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+For the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the
+representative of a great national paper like the _Kölnische Zeitung_,
+could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the
+furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and
+which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as
+an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to
+explain the rôle I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how
+I came to the decision to publish my experiences.
+
+As far as my post on the _Kölnische Zeitung_ is concerned, I accepted
+it and went to Turkey although I was from the very beginning against
+German "World-politics" of the present-day style at any rate (not
+against German commercial and cultural activity in foreign countries)
+and against militarism--as was only to be expected from one who had
+studied colonial politics and universal history unreservedly, and had
+spent many years studying in the English, French, and German colonies
+of Africa--and although I was quite convinced that Germany's was the
+crime of setting the war in motion. Besides, my "anti-militarism" is
+not of a dogmatic kind, but refers merely to the relations customary
+between civilised nations--witness the fact that I took part in the
+Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-West Africa as a volunteer.
+
+I hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for my extra-European
+leanings, a sphere of labour less absorbed by German militarism, and
+opportunity for independent study, and surely no one will take it amiss
+that I seized such a chance, certainly unique in war-time, in spite of
+my political views.
+
+Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the background to begin with,
+so as to be able to form my own opinion, of course doing my uttermost
+at the same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken. In spite
+of everything I had to witness, it was quite easy to reconcile all
+oppositions, until that famous day when my wife denounced Germany to
+my face. From that moment I became an enemy of present-day Germany
+and began to think of one day publishing the whole truth about the
+system. Until then I had contented myself with never saying a good word
+about the war, as one can easily find for oneself from a perusal of my
+various articles in the _Kölnische Zeitung_ during 1915-16, dated from
+Constantinople and marked (a small steamship).
+
+That dramatic event which finally alienated me from the German cause
+took place just after the end of a severe crisis in my relationship
+with German-Turkish Headquarters. Some slight hints I had given of
+Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and jingoism in a series of articles
+appearing from February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title "Turkish
+Economic Problems," so far as they were possible under existing
+censorship conditions, was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine
+that Headquarters would certainly be furious with a journalist whose
+articles appeared one fine day, literally translated, in the _Matin_
+under the title: "_Situation insupportable en Turquie, décrite par un
+journaliste allemand_" ("Insufferable situation in Turkey, described
+by a German journalist"), and cropped up once more on June 1st, in
+the _Journal des Balcans_, I was three times over threatened with
+dismissal. My paper sent a confidential man to hold an inquiry, and
+after a month he made a confidential report, which resulted in my being
+allowed to remain. But the fact that the same journalist that wrote
+such things was married to a Czech was too much for my colleagues,
+who were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part in the pay of the
+Young Turkish Committee, whose politics they praised, regardless of
+their own inward convictions, like the representative of the _Berliner
+Tageblatt_, to get material benefit or make sure of their own jobs.
+I gleaned many humorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press
+colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded as a "dangerous
+character that must be got rid of," and my wife (who was far too young
+ever to worry about politics) as a "Russian spy"--perhaps because, with
+the justifiable pride and reserve of her race, she did not attempt to
+cultivate the society of the German colony. That began the period of
+intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did not succeed in damaging
+me, although matters went so far as a denunciation of me before the
+"Prevention of Espionage Department" of the General Staff in Berlin. My
+paper, after they had given me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had
+arranged for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all that had
+taken place, thought it was better to give me the chance of changing
+and offered me a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.
+
+However, I was now quite finished with Germany, or rather with its
+politics; it would have been a moral impossibility for me to write
+another single word in the editorial line; so I refused the offer and
+applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916, to the end of the war
+(by telegram about the middle of August). It was granted me with an
+expression of regret.
+
+Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917), I severed all connection
+with my paper by mutual consent from October 1st, 1916, onwards. After
+my resignation, no special editorial representative of the _Kölnische
+Zeitung_ was appointed to take my place, as the censorship made any
+kind of satisfactory work impossible.
+
+I should like to emphasise the fact that the intrigues against me,
+the crisis with Headquarters I have just mentioned, and my departure
+from Constantinople did not injure me in any way either morally
+or financially, and have nothing whatever to do with the present
+publication. It is certainly not any petty annoyance that could bring
+me to such an action, which will probably entail more than enough
+unpleasant consequences for me. The reproaches levelled against me by
+my pushing, jingoistic colleagues were as impotent as their attempts to
+get rid of me as "dangerous to the German Cause"; I have written proof
+of this from my paper in my hand, and also of the fact that it was of
+my own free-will that I retired. I can therefore look forward quite
+calmly to all the personal invective that is sure to be showered on me
+for political reasons.
+
+I had sufficient independent means not to feel the loss of my post
+in Constantinople too keenly; and if I still kept my post after the
+beginning of the crisis with Headquarters, it was simply and solely so
+that as a newspaper correspondent I might be in possession of fuller
+information, and able to follow up as long as possible the developments
+that were taking place on that most interesting soil of Turkey.
+When that was no longer possible, I refused the post offered me in
+Cologne--in fact twice, once by letter and once by telegram--for I
+could not pretend to opinions I directly opposed. I therefore remained
+as a free-lance in the Turkish capital. I was extremely glad that the
+difference of opinion ended as it did, for I had at last a free hand to
+say and write what I thought and felt.
+
+My stay in Constantinople for a further three months as a silent
+observer naturally did not escape the notice of the German authorities,
+and after they had reported to the Foreign Office that a "satisfactory
+co-operation between me and the German representatives was not longer
+possible," they had of course to discover some excuse for putting an
+end to my prolonged stay in Turkey. They finally attempted to get rid
+of me by calling me up for military duty again. But this was useless in
+my case, for my health had been badly shaken by my spell at the Front
+at the beginning of the war, and besides I had the doctor's word for it
+that I should never be able to stand the German climate after having
+lived so long in the Tropics.
+
+Whether they liked it or not, the authorities had to find some
+other means of getting me out of Constantinople. The Consul-General
+approached me, after he had discussed the matter with the Ambassador,
+to see if I would not like to go to Switzerland to get properly cured;
+otherwise he was sure I would be turned out by the Turks. They were
+evidently afraid, for I was getting more and more into bad odour
+with the German authorities for my ill-concealed opinions, that I
+would publish my impressions, with documentary support, as soon as
+ever there was a change of government in Turkey, or as soon as the
+German censorship was removed and anything of the kind was possible.
+They apparently thought that the frontier regulations would be quite
+sufficient to prevent my taking any documentary evidence with me to
+Switzerland.
+
+As a matter of fact this was the case, and the day before my departure
+from Constantinople I carefully burned the whole of my many notes,
+which would have produced a much more effective indictment against the
+moral sordidness of the German-Young Turkish system than these very
+general sketches. But the strictest frontier regulations could not
+prevent me from taking with me, free of all censorship, the impressions
+I had received in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after a
+painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German and to the duties I
+had undertaken. Even then I had considerable difficulty in getting
+across the frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days at the
+frontier before I was finally allowed into Switzerland. It was only
+owing to the fact that I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the
+authority of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging that no
+difficulties of a political kind might be placed in the way of my
+going to Switzerland, as I had been permitted to do so by medical
+certificate, the passport authorities and the local command, that I
+finally won my point with the frontier authorities and was permitted to
+cross into Switzerland.
+
+To tell the truth, I must admit that the high civil authorities, and
+particularly the Foreign Office, treated me throughout most kindly and
+courteously. For this one reason I had a hard fight with myself, right
+up to the very last, even after I arrived in Switzerland, before I
+sat down and wrote out my impressions and opinions of German-Turkish
+politics. And if I have now finally decided to make them public, I can
+only do so with an expression of the most honest regret that my private
+and political conscience has not allowed me to requite the kindness of
+the authorities by keeping silent about what I saw of the German and
+Turkish system.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
+have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
+this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Two War Years in Constantinople
+       Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics
+
+Author: Harry Stuermer
+
+Translator: E. Allen
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2019 [EBook #60638]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Graeme Mackreth and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
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+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph1">TWO WAR YEARS</p>
+<p class="ph4">IN</p>
+<p class="ph1">CONSTANTINOPLE</p>
+
+<p class="ph4"><i>Sketches of German and Young Turkish<br />
+Ethics and Politics</i></p>
+
+<p class="ph5">BY</p>
+<p class="ph3">DR. HARRY STUERMER</p>
+<p class="ph4">LATE CORRESPONDENT OF THE KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG<br />
+IN CONSTANTINOPLE (1915-16)</p>
+
+<p class="ph5">TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN</p>
+<p class="ph4">E. ALLEN<br />
+AND THE AUTHOR</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="ph5">NEW YORK<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph6" style="margin-top: 10em;">COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p>
+
+<p class="ph6">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">DECLARATION</p>
+
+
+<p>The undersigned hereby declares on his sworn word of honour that
+in writing this volume he has been in no way inspired by outside
+influence, and that he has never had any dealings whatsoever, material
+or otherwise, either before or during the war, with any Government,
+organisation, propaganda, or personality hostile to Germany or Turkey
+or even of a neutral character. His conscience alone has urged him to
+write and publish his impressions, and he hopes that by so doing he may
+perform a service towards the cause of truth and civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, he can give formal assurance that he has expressly avoided
+making the acquaintance of any person resident in Switzerland until his
+manuscript should have been sent to press.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, he has been actuated by no personal motives in thus
+giving public expression to his experiences and opinions, for he has
+no personal grievance, either material or moral, against any person
+whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<img src="images/illus01.jpg" alt="sig"/>
+</p>
+<p class="center"> <i>Dr. H. Stuermer</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span style="margin-left: 5%;"><span class="smcap">Geneva</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8%;"><i>June 1917</i>.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">PREFACE</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">While</span> the author of this work was waiting on the frontier of
+Switzerland for final permission from the German authorities to enter
+that country, Germany committed her second great crime, her first
+having completely missed its mark. She had begun to realise that she
+was beaten in the great conflict which she had so wantonly provoked
+with that characteristic over confidence in the power of her own
+militarism and disdainful undervaluation of the <i>morale</i> and general
+capacities of her enemies. In final renunciation of any last remnants
+of humanity in her methods, she was now making a dying effort to help
+her already lost cause by a ruthless extension of her policy of piracy
+at sea and a gratification of all her brutal instincts in complete
+violation of the rights of neutral countries.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore with all the more inward conviction, with all the
+more urgent moral persuasion, that the author makes use of the rare
+opportunity offered him by residence in Switzerland to range himself
+boldly on the side of truth and show that there are still Germans who
+find it impossible to condone even tacitly the moral transgression and
+political stupidity of their own and an allied Government. <i>That is the
+sole purpose of this publication.</i></p>
+
+<p>Regardless of the consequences, he holds it to be his duty and his
+privilege, just because he is a German, to make a frank statement,
+from the point of view of human civilisation, of what have become his
+convictions from personal observations made in the course of six months
+of actual warfare and practically two years of subsequent journalistic
+activity. He spent the time from Spring 1915 to Christmas 1916 in
+Turkey, and will of course only deal with what he knows from personal
+observation. The following essays are of the nature merely of sketches
+and make no claim whatever to completeness.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to purely German politics and ethics, therefore, the author
+will confine himself to a few indications and impressions of a personal
+kind, but he cannot forget the rôle Germany has played in Turkey as
+an ally of the present Young Turkish Government, nor can he ignore
+Germany's responsibility for the atrocities committed by them. The
+author publishes his impressions with a perfectly clear conscience,
+secure in the conviction that as the representative of a German paper
+he never once wrote a single word in favour of this criminal war, and
+that during his stay of more than twenty months in Turkey he never
+concealed his true opinions as soon as he had definitely made up his
+mind what these were.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, he was rather dangerously candid and frank in speaking
+to anyone who wanted to listen to him&mdash;so much so, that it is almost a
+miracle that he ever reached a neutral country. After the war he will
+be in a position to appeal to the testimony of dozens of people of high
+standing in all walks of life that in both thought and action a deep
+cleft has always divided him from his colleagues, and that he has ever
+ardently longed for the moment when he might, freely and without fear
+of consequences, do his bit towards the enlightenment of the civilised
+world.</p>
+
+<p>May these lines, written in all sincerity and hereby submitted to the
+tribunal of public opinion, free the author at last from the burden
+of silent reproach heaped on him by a mutilated, outraged, languishing
+humanity, of being a German among thousands of Germans who desired this
+war.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Several months have passed since the original text of the German and
+French editions of this little book was written. Baghdad was taken by
+British troops before the last chapter of the German manuscript had
+been completed, and since then military operations have been more and
+more in favour of the Entente. A number of important political events
+have occurred, such as the Russian Revolution and the entry of the
+United States of America into the war.</p>
+
+<p>Further developments of Russian politics may yet have a direct effect
+on the final solution of the problems surrounding the defeated Ottoman
+Empire. But the author has preferred to maintain the original text of
+his book, written early in March this year, and to make no changes
+whatever in the conclusions he had then arrived at as a result of the
+fresh impressions he carried away from Turkey.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">CONTENTS</p>
+
+
+<table summary="toc" width="80%">
+<tr><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+
+
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">At the outbreak of war in Germany&mdash;The German "world-politicians"
+(<i>Weltpolitiker</i>)&mdash;German and English mentality&mdash;The
+"place in the sun"&mdash;England's declaration
+of war&mdash;German methods in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine&mdash;Prussian
+arrogance&mdash;Militaristic journalism</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">To Constantinople&mdash;Pro-Turkish considerations&mdash;The dilemma
+of a Gallipoli correspondent&mdash;Under German military
+control</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">The great Armenian persecutions&mdash;The system of Talaat and
+Enver&mdash;A denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and
+conscienceless accomplice</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">The tide of war&mdash;Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+Caucasus"&mdash;The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+twice hangs in the balance&mdash;Nervous tension
+in international Pera&mdash;Bulgaria's attitude&mdash;Turkish rancour
+against her former enemy&mdash;German illusions of a
+separate peace with Russia&mdash;King Ferdinand's time-serving&mdash;Lack
+of munitions in the Dardanelles&mdash;A mysterious
+death: a political murder?&mdash;The evacuation of
+Gallipoli&mdash;The Turkish version of victory&mdash;Constantinople
+unreleased&mdash;Kut-el-Amara&mdash;Propaganda for the "Holy
+War"&mdash;A prisoner of repute&mdash;Loyalty of Anglo-Indian
+officers&mdash;Turkish communiqués and their worth&mdash;The fall
+of Erzerum&mdash;Official lies&mdash;The treatment of prisoners&mdash;Political
+speculation with prisoners of war&mdash;Treatment
+of enemy subjects&mdash;Stagnation and lassitude in the summer
+of 1916&mdash;The Greeks in Turkey&mdash;Dread of Greek
+massacres&mdash;Rumania's entry&mdash;Terrible disappointment&mdash;The
+three phases of the war for Turkey</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">The economic situation&mdash;Exaggerated Entente hopes&mdash;Hunger
+and suffering among the civil population&mdash;The system of
+requisitioning and the semi-official monopolists&mdash;Profiteering
+on the part of the Government clique&mdash;Frivolity and
+cynicism&mdash;The "Djemiet"&mdash;The delegates of the German
+<i>Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft</i> (Central Purchases Commission)&mdash;A
+hard battle between German and Turkish intrigue&mdash;Reform
+of the coinage&mdash;Paper money and its depreciation&mdash;The
+hoarding of bullion&mdash;The Russian rouble
+the best investment</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">German propaganda and ethics&mdash;The unsuccessful "Holy
+War" and the German Government&mdash;"The Holy War"
+a crime against civilisation, a chimera, a farce&mdash;Underhand
+dealings&mdash;The German Embassy the dupe of adventurers&mdash;The
+morality of German Press representatives&mdash;A
+trusty servant of the German Embassy&mdash;Fine official
+distinctions of morality&mdash;The German conception of the
+rights of individuals</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">Young Turkish nationalism&mdash;One-sided abolition of capitulations
+&mdash;Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation&mdash;Abolition of
+foreign languages&mdash;German simplicity&mdash;The Turkification
+of commercial life&mdash;Unmistakable intellectual improvement
+as a result of the war&mdash;Trade policy and customs
+tariff&mdash;National production&mdash;The founding of new businesses
+in Turkey&mdash;Germany supplanted&mdash;German starvation&mdash;Capitulations
+or full European control?&mdash;The
+colonisation and forcible Turkification of Anatolia&mdash;"The
+properties of people who have been dispatched elsewhere"&mdash;The
+"Mohadjirs"&mdash;Greek persecutions just before the
+Great War&mdash;The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus of
+the Ottoman Empire&mdash;Turkey finds herself at last&mdash;Anatolian
+dirt and decay&mdash;The "Greater Turkey" and the
+purely Turkish Turkey&mdash;Cleavage or concentration?</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">Religion and race&mdash;The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of
+the Young Turks&mdash;Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political
+principles&mdash;Turanism and the Quadruple Alliance&mdash;Greed
+and race-fanaticism&mdash;Religious traditions and
+modern reforms&mdash;Reform in the law&mdash;A modern Sheikh-ul-Islam&mdash;Reform
+and nationalization&mdash;The Armenian
+and Greek Patriarchates&mdash;The failure of Pan-Islamism&mdash;The
+alienation of the Arabs&mdash;Djemal Pasha's "hangman's
+policy" in Syria&mdash;Djemal as a "Pro-French"&mdash;Djemal
+and Enver&mdash;Djemal and Germany&mdash;His true character&mdash;The
+attempts against the Suez Canal&mdash;Djemal's murderous
+work nears completion&mdash;The great Arabian and
+Syrian Separatist movement&mdash;The defection of the Emir
+of Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks&mdash;Turkish
+pessimism about the war&mdash;How would Abdul-Hamid have
+acted?&mdash;A war of prevention against Russia&mdash;Russia and
+a neutral Turkey&mdash;The agreement about the Dardanelles&mdash;A
+peaceful solution scorned&mdash;Alleged criminal intentions
+on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece
+and Salonika&mdash;To be or not to be?&mdash;German influence&mdash;Turkey
+stakes on the wrong card&mdash;The results</p></td> <td  class="tdr"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="hang">The outlook for the future&mdash;The consequences of trusting
+Germany&mdash;The Entente's death sentence on Turkey&mdash;The
+social necessity for this deliverance&mdash;Anatolia, the
+new Turkey after the war; forecasts about the Turkish
+race&mdash;The Turkish element in the lost territory&mdash;Russia
+and Constantinople; international guarantees&mdash;Germany,
+at peace, benefits too&mdash;Farewell to the German "World
+Politicians"&mdash;German interests in a victorious and in a
+defeated Turkey&mdash;The German-Turkish treaty&mdash;A paradise
+on earth&mdash;The Russian commercial impulse&mdash;The
+new Armenia&mdash;Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+civilisation&mdash;Great Arabia and Syria&mdash;The reconciliation
+of Germany</p></td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Appendix</td> <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+<p class="ph2">TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">At the outbreak of war in Germany&mdash;The German "world-politicians"
+(<i>Weltpolitiker</i>)&mdash;German and English mentality&mdash;The "place in the
+sun"&mdash;England's declaration of war&mdash;German methods in Belgium and
+Alsace-Lorraine&mdash;Prussian arrogance&mdash;Militaristic journalism.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anyone</span> who, like myself, set foot on German soil for the first time
+after years of sojourn in foreign lands, and more particularly in
+the colonies, just at the moment that Germany was mobilising for the
+great European war, must surely have been filled, as I was, with a
+certain feeling of melancholy, a slight uneasiness with regard to
+the state of mind of his fellow-countrymen as it showed itself in
+these dramatic days of August in conversations in the street, in
+cafés and restaurants, and in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> articles appearing in the Press.
+We Germans have never learnt to think soundly on political subjects.
+Bismarck's political heritage, although set forth in most popular
+form in his <i>Thoughts and Recollections</i>, a book that anyone opposing
+this war from the point of view rather of prudence than of ethics
+might utilise as an unending source of propaganda, has not descended
+to our rulers in any sort of living form. But an unbounded political
+<i>naïveté</i>, an incredible lack of judgment and of understanding of
+the point of view of other peoples, who have their <i>raison d'être</i>
+just as much as we have, their vital interests, their standpoint of
+honour&mdash;have not prevented us from trying to carry on a grand system of
+<i>Weltpolitik</i> (world politics). The average everyday German has never
+really understood the English&mdash;either before or during the war; in the
+latter's colonial policy, which, according to pan-German ideas, has
+no other aim than to snatch from us our "place in the sun"; in their
+conception of liberty and civilisation, which has entailed such mighty
+sacrifices for them on behalf of their Allies; when we trod Belgian
+neutrality underfoot and thought England would stand and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> look on;
+at the time of the debates about universal service, when practically
+every German, even in the highest political circles, was ready to wager
+that there would be a revolution in England sooner than any general
+acceptance of Conscription; and coming down to more recent events,
+when the latest huge British war loan provided the only fit and proper
+answer to German frightfulness at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Let me here say a word on the subject of colonial policy, on which I
+may perhaps be allowed to speak with a certain amount of authority
+after extended travel in the farthest corners of Africa, and from
+an intimate, personal knowledge of German as well as English and
+French colonies. Germany has less colonial territory than the older
+colonists, it is true. It is also true that the German struggle for
+the most widespread, the most intensive and lucrative employment of
+the energies and capabilities of our highly developed commercial land
+is justified. But at the risk of being dubbed as absolutely lacking
+in patriotism, I should like to point out that in the first place the
+resources we had at our disposal in our own colonial territory in
+tropical and sub-trop<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>ical Africa, little exploited as they then were,
+would have amply sufficed for our commercial needs and colonising
+capacities&mdash;though possibly not for our aspirations after world power!
+And secondly, the very liberal character of England's trade and
+colonial policy did not hinder us in any way from reaching the top of
+the commercial tree even in foreign colonies.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone who knows English colonies knows that the British Government,
+wherever it has been possible to do so politically, that is, in all her
+colonies which are already properly organised and firmly established
+as British, has always met in a most generous and sympathetic way
+German, and indeed any foreign, trade or other enterprises. New firms,
+with German capital, were received with open arms, their excellence
+and value for the young country heartily recognised and ungrudgingly
+encouraged; not the slightest shadow of any jealousy of foreign
+undertakings could ever exist in a British colony, and every German
+could be as sure as an Englishman himself of being justly treated in
+every way and encouraged in the most generous fashion in his work.</p>
+
+<p>Thousands of Germans otherwise thorough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>ly embued with the national
+spirit make no secret of the fact that they would far rather live in
+a British than a German colony. Too often in the latter the newcomer
+was met at every point by an exaggerated bureaucracy and made to feel
+by some official that he was not a reserve officer, and consequently a
+social inferior. Hints were dropped to discourage him, and inquiries
+were even made as to whether he had enough money to book his passage
+back to where he came from!</p>
+
+<p>Far be it from me to wish to depreciate by these words the value of
+our own colonial efforts. As pioneers in Africa we were working on
+the very best possible lines, but we should have been content to go
+on learning from the much superior British colonial methods, and
+should have finished and perfected our own domain instead of always
+shouting jealously about other people's. I am quite convinced that
+another ten years of undisturbed peaceful competition and Germany,
+with her own very considerable colonial possessions on the one hand,
+and the possibility on the other of pushing commercial enterprise on
+the highest scale not only in independent overseas states<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> but under
+the beneficent protection of English rule with its true freedom and
+real furtherance of trade "uplift," would have reached her goal much
+better than by means of all the sword-rattling <i>Weltpolitik</i> of the
+Pan-Germans.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that in territory not yet properly organised or guaranteed,
+politically still doubtful, and in quite new protectorates, especially
+along the routes to India, where vital English interests are at stake,
+and on the much-talked-of Persian Gulf, England could not, until her
+main object was firmly secured, meet in the same fair way German
+desires with regard to commercial activity. And there she has more than
+once learnt to her cost the true character of the German <i>Weltpolitik</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That is the real meaning, at any rate so far as colonial politics are
+concerned, of the German-English contest for a "place in the sun." No
+one who understands it aright could ever condone the outgrowths of our
+<i>Weltpolitik</i>, however much he might desire to assist German ability to
+find practical outlet in all suitable overseas territory, nor could he
+ever forget the wealth of wonderful deeds, wrought in the service of
+human civilisation and freedom,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Englishmen can place to their credit
+years before we ever began. With such considerations of justice in
+view, we should have recognised that there was a limit to our efforts
+after expansion, and as a matter of fact we should have gone further
+and fared better&mdash;in a decade we should have probably been really
+wealthy&mdash;for the English in their open-handed way certainly left us
+a surprising amount of room for the free exercise of our commercial
+talents.</p>
+
+<p>I have intentionally given an illustration only of the colonial side
+of the problem affecting German-English relations, so that I may avoid
+dealing with any subject I do not know from personal observation.</p>
+
+<p>It was this English people, that, in spite of all their egoism, have
+really done something for civilisation, that the German of August 1914
+accused of being nothing but a nation of shopkeepers with a cowardly,
+narrow-minded policy that was unprepared to make any sacrifice for
+others. It was this people that the German of August 1914&mdash;and his
+spokesman von Bethmann-Hollweg, who later thought it necessary to
+defend himself against the charge of "having brought too much ethics<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+into politics"&mdash;expected to stand by and see Belgium overridden. It
+was this same England that we believed would hold back even when the
+Chancellor found it impossible to apply to French colonial possessions
+the guarantee he had given not to aim at any territorial conquests in
+the war with France!</p>
+
+<p>And so it was with all the more grimness, with all the more gravity,
+that on that memorable night of August 4th the terrible blow fell. The
+English declaration of war entered into the very soul of the German
+people, who stood as a sacrifice to a political miscalculation that had
+its roots less in a lack of thought and experience than in a boundless
+arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time I was a witness of those laughable scenes which
+took place on the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, where, in complete
+misjudgment of the whole political situation <i>Japanese</i> were carried
+shoulder high by the enthusiastic and worthy citizens of Berlin under
+the erroneous impression that these obvious arch-enemies of Russia
+would naturally be allies of Germany. Every German that was not blind
+to the trend of true "world-politics" must surely have shaken his head
+over this lament<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>able spectacle. A few days afterwards Japan sent its
+ultimatum against Kiao-Tchao!</p>
+
+<p>It was the same incapability of thinking in terms of true
+world-politics that led us lately to believe that we might find
+supporters in Mexico and Japan of the piracy we indulged in as a
+result of America's intervention in the war, the same incapability
+that blinded us to the effect our methods must have on other neutrals
+such as China and the South American States. And although one admits
+the possibility of a miscalculation being made, yet a miscalculation
+with regard to England's attitude was not only the height of political
+stupidity, but showed an absence of moral sense. <i>The moment England
+entered the war, Germany lost the war.</i></p>
+
+<p>And while the world-politicians of Berlin, having recovered from their
+first dismay, were making jokes about the "nation of shopkeepers" and
+its little army which they would just "have arrested"; while a little
+later the military events up to St. Quentin and the Battle of the Marne
+seemed to justify the idle mockers who knew nothing of England and had
+never even ventured their noses out of Ger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>many,&mdash;those who had lived
+in the colonies were uttering warnings against any kind of optimism,
+and some already felt the war would end badly for us.</p>
+
+<p>I belonged to the latter group. I expressed my conviction in this
+direction as early as August 6th, 1914, in a letter which I wrote from
+Berlin for my father's birthday. In it I maintained that in spite of
+all our brilliant military successes, which would certainly not last,
+this war was a mistake and would assuredly end in failure for Germany.
+<i>Littera scripta manet.</i> Never from that moment have I believed in
+final victory for Germany. Slowly but surely then I veered round to the
+position that I could no longer even <i>desire</i> victory for Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally I did my military duty. I saw the fearful crime Germany was
+committing, yet I hurried to the front with the millions who believed
+that Germany was innocent and had been attacked without cause. There
+was nothing else to be done, and it must of course be remembered that
+my final rupture with Germany did not take place all of a sudden. After
+a few months of war in Masuria I was re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>leased as unfit for active
+service as the result of a severe illness.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the many episodes of my life at the front, none is so deeply
+impressed on my memory as the silent war of mutual hatred I waged with
+my immediately superior officer, a true prototype of his race, a true
+Prussian. I can still see him, a man of fifty-five or so, who, in spite
+of former active service, had only reached the rank of lieutenant, and
+who, as he told me himself right at the beginning, in very misplaced
+confidence, rushed into active service again because in this way he
+could get really good pay and would even have a prospect of further
+promotion.</p>
+
+<p>This Lieutenant Stein told me too of the first weeks in Belgium, when
+he had been in command of a company, and I can still hear him boasting
+about his warlike propensities, and how his teacher had said about
+him when he was a boy "he was capable of stealing an altar-cloth and
+cutting it up to make breeches for himself."</p>
+
+<p>"When we wanted to do any commandeering or to plunder a house," so he
+told me, "there was a very simple means. A man be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>longing to my company
+would be ordered to throw a Belgian rifle through an open cellar
+window, the house would then be searched for weapons, and even if we
+found only one rifle we had orders to seize everything without mercy
+and to drive out the occupiers." I can still see the creature standing
+in front of me and relating this and many a similar tale in these first
+days before he knew me. I have never forgotten it; and I think I owe
+much to Lieutenant Stein. He helped me on the way I was predestined to
+go, for had I not just returned from the colonies and foreign lands,
+imbued with liberal ideas, and from the first torn by grave doubts?</p>
+
+<p>The Lieutenant may be an exception&mdash;granted; but he is an exception
+unfortunately but too often represented in that army of millions
+on its invading march into unhappy Belgium, among officers and
+non-commissioned officers, whom, at any rate so far as active service
+is concerned, everyone who has served in the German Army will agree
+with me in calling on the average thoroughly brutal. Lieutenant
+Stein gave me my first real deep disgust of war. He is a type that I
+have not in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>vented, and he will easily be identified by the German
+military authorities from his signature on my military pass as one
+of those arch-Prussians who suddenly readopt a martial air, suddenly
+revive and come into their element again, although they may be sickly
+old valetudinarians&mdash;the kind of men who in civil life are probably
+enthusiastic members of the "German Colonial Society," the "Naval
+Union," and the "Pan-German Association," and ardent world-politicians
+of the ale-bench type.</p>
+
+<p>I found his stories afterwards confirmed to the letter by one of the
+most famous German war-correspondents, Paul Schweder, the author of the
+four-volume work entitled <i>At Imperial Headquarters</i>. With a <i>naïveté</i>
+equal to Lieutenant Stein's, and trusting no doubt to my then official
+position as correspondent of a German paper, he gave me descriptions
+of Belgian atrocities committed by our soldiers and the results of
+our system of occupation that, in all their horrible nakedness, put
+everything that ever appeared in the Entente newspapers absolutely in
+the shade.</p>
+
+<p>As early as the beginning of 1916 he told me the plain truth that we
+were practically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> starving Belgium and that the country was really only
+kept alive by the Relief Commission, and that we were attempting to
+ruin any Belgian industry which might compete with ours by a systematic
+removal of machinery to Germany. And that was before the time of the
+Deportations!</p>
+
+<p>Schweder's descriptions dealt for the most part with the sexual
+morality of our soldiers in the trenches. In spite of severe
+punishments, so he assured me, thousands and thousands of cases
+occurred of women and young girls out of decent Belgian and French
+families being outraged. The soldier on short leave from the front,
+with the prospect of a speedy return to the first-line trenches and
+death staring him in the face, did not care what happened; the unhappy
+victims were for the most part silent about their shame, so that the
+cases of punishment were very few and far between.</p>
+
+<p>While I was at the front I heard extraordinary things, for which I
+had again detailed confirmation from Schweder, who knew the whole of
+the Western Front well, about the German policy of persecution in
+Alsace-Lorraine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> There the system was to punish with imprisonment
+not only actions but opinions. The authorities did not even scruple
+to imprison girls out of highly-respected houses who had perhaps made
+some harmless remark in youthful ignorance, and shut them up with
+common criminals and prostitutes to work out their long sentence.
+Such scandalous acts, which are a disgrace to humanity, Paul Schweder
+confirmed by the dozen or related at first-hand.</p>
+
+<p>He was intelligent enough, too, as was evident from the many statements
+made by him in confidential circles, to see through the utter lack
+of foundation, the mendacity, the immorality of what he wrote in his
+books merely for the sake of filthy lucre; but when I tried one day to
+take on a bet with him that Verdun would not fall, he took his revenge
+by spreading the report in Constantinople that I was an Pro-Entente,
+and doing his utmost to intrigue against me. That is the German
+war-correspondent's idea of morality!</p>
+
+<p>When I was released from the army in the beginning of 1915, I joined
+the editorial staff of the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i> and remained for some
+weeks in Cologne. I have not retained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> any very special impressions
+of this period of my activity, except perhaps the recollection of
+the spirit of jingoistic Prussianism that I&mdash;being a Badener&mdash;had
+scarcely ever come across before in its full glory, and, from the
+many confidential communications and discussions among the editorial
+staff, the feeling that even then there was a certain nervousness and
+insecurity among those who, in their leading articles, informed the
+public daily of their absolute confidence in victory.</p>
+
+<p>One curious thing at this time, perhaps worthy of mention, was the
+disdainful contempt with which these Prussians&mdash;even before the fall of
+Przemysl&mdash;regarded Austria. But the scornful and biting commentaries
+made behind the scenes in the editorial sanctum at the fall of this
+stronghold stood in most striking contrast to what the papers wrote
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when I had already been a long time in Turkey, a humorous
+incident gave me renewed opportunity of seeing this Prussian spirit of
+unbounded exaggeration of self and depreciation of others. The incident
+is at the same time characteristic of the spirit of mili<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>tarism with
+which the representatives of the German Press are thoroughly imbued, in
+spite of the opportunities most of them have had through long visits to
+other countries of gaining a little more <i>savoir faire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One beautiful summer afternoon at a promenade concert in the "Petit
+Champs" at Pera I introduced an Austrian Lieutenant of Dragoons I knew,
+belonging to one of the best regiments, to our Balkan correspondent who
+happened to be staying in Constantinople: "Lieutenant N.; Herr von M."
+The correspondent sat down at the table and repeated very distinctly:
+"<i>Lieutenant-Colonel von M.</i>" It turned out that he had been a
+second lieutenant in the Prussian Army, and had pushed himself up to
+this wonderful rank in the Bulgarian Army, instinctively combining
+journalism and militarism. My companion, however, with true Austrian
+calm, took not the slightest notice of the correction, did not spring
+up and greet him with an enthusiastic "Ah! my dear fellow-officer,
+etc.," but began an ordinary social conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Would anyone believe that next day old Herr von M. took me roundly
+to task for sit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>ting at the same table as an Austrian officer and
+appearing in public with him, and informed me quasi-officially that as
+a representative of the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i> I should associate only
+with the German colony in Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder which is the most irritating characteristic of this type of
+mind&mdash;its overbearing attitude towards our Allies, its jingoistic
+"Imperial German" cant, or its wounded dignity as a militarist who
+forgets that he is a journalist and no longer an officer?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">In Constantinople&mdash;Pro-Turkish considerations&mdash;The dilemma of a
+Gallipoli correspondent&mdash;Under German military control.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A few</span> days after the fall of Przemysl I set out for Constantinople. I
+left Germany with a good deal of friendly feeling towards the Turk. I
+was even quite well disposed towards the Young Turks, although I knew
+and appreciated the harm caused by their régime and the reproaches
+levelled against it since 1909. At any rate, when I landed on Turkish
+soil I was certainly not lacking in goodwill towards the Government
+of Enver and Talaat, and nothing was further from my thoughts than to
+prejudice myself against my new sphere of work by any preconceived
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p>In comparison with Abdul-Hamid I regarded the régime of the Young
+Turks, in spite of all, as a big step in advance and a necessary
+one, and the parting words of one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> of our old editors, a thorough
+connoisseur of Turkey, lingered in my ears without very much effect.
+He said: "You are going to Constantinople. You will soon be able to
+see for yourself the moral bankruptcy of the Young Turks, and you will
+find that Turkey is nothing but a dead body galvanised into action,
+that will only last as long as the war lasts and we Germans supply the
+galvanising power." I would not believe it, and went to Turkey with an
+absolutely open mind to form my own opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It must also be remembered that all the pro-Turkish utterances of
+Eastern experts of all shades and nationalities who emphasised the
+fact that the Turks were the most respectable nation of the East, were
+not without their effect upon me; also I had read Pierre Loti. I was
+determined to extend to the Turkish Government the strong sympathy I
+already felt for the Turkish people&mdash;and, let me here emphasise it,
+still feel. To undermine that sympathy, to make me lose my confidence
+in this race, things would have to go badly indeed. They went worse
+than I ever thought was possible.</p>
+
+<p>I went first of all to the new Turkish front<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> in the Dardanelles and
+the Gallipoli Peninsula, where everything was ruled by militarism and
+there was but little opportunity to worry about politics. The combined
+attack by sea and land had just begun, and I passed the next few weeks
+on the Ariburnu front. I found myself in the entirely new position of
+war-correspondent. I had now to write professionally about this war,
+which I detested with all my heart and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I simply had to make the back fit the burden. Whatever I did or
+did not do, I have certainly the clear satisfaction of knowing that I
+never wrote a single word in praise of war. One will understand that,
+in spite of my inward conviction that Germany by unloosing the war on
+Europe had committed a terrible crime against humanity, in spite of my
+consciousness of acting in a wrong cause, in spite of my deep disgust
+of much that I had already seen, I was still interested in Turkey's
+fight for existence, but from quite another standpoint.</p>
+
+<p>As an objective onlooker I did not have to be an absolute hypocrite to
+do justice to my journalistic duties to my paper. I got to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> know the
+Turkish soldier with his stoical heroism in defence, and the brilliant
+attacking powers and courage of the Anatolians with their blind belief
+in their Padishah, as they were rushed to the defence of Stamboul and
+hurled themselves in a bayonet charge against the British machine-guns
+under a hail of shells from the sea. I gained a high opinion of Turkish
+valour and powers of resistance. I had no reason to stint my praise or
+withhold my judgment. In mess-tents and at various observation-posts I
+made the personal acquaintance of crowds of thoroughly sympathetic and
+likeable Turkish officers. Let me mention but one&mdash;Essad Pasha, the
+defender of Jannina.</p>
+
+<p>I found quite enough material on my two visits to Gallipoli during
+various phases of the fighting to write a series of feuilletons without
+any glorification of militarism and political aims. I confined myself
+to what was of general human interest, to what was picturesque, what
+was dramatic in the struggle going on in this unique theatre of war.</p>
+
+<p>But even then I was beginning to have my own opinion about much that I
+saw; I was already torn by conflicting doubts. Already I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> was beginning
+to ask myself whether my sympathies would not gradually turn more and
+more definitely to those who were vainly storming these strong Turkish
+forts from the sea, under a deadly machine-gun fire, for the cause of
+true civilisation, the cause of liberty, was manifestly on their side.</p>
+
+<p>I had opportunity, too, of making comparisons from the dead and
+wounded and the few prisoners there were between the value of the
+human material sacrificed on either side&mdash;on the one, brave but stupid
+Anatolians, accustomed to dirt and misery; on the other cultured and
+highly civilised men, sportsmen from the colonies who had hurried from
+the farthest corners of the earth to fight not only for the British
+cause, but for the cause of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>But at that time I was not yet ripe for the decision forced upon me
+later by other things that I saw with my own eyes; I had not yet
+reached that deep inward conviction that I should have to make a break
+with Germany. The only thing I could do and felt compelled to do
+then was to pay my homage not only to Turkish patriotism and Turkish
+bravery, but to the wonderful courage and fearlessness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> death shown
+by those whom at that time I had, as a German, to regard as my enemies;
+this I did over and over again in my articles.</p>
+
+<p>I saw, too, the first indications of other things. Traces of the most
+outspoken jingoism among Turkish officers became gradually apparent,
+and more than one Turkish commander pointed out to me with ironical
+emphasis that things went just as smoothly and promptly in his sector,
+where there was no German officer in charge, as anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>On my second visit to the Dardanelles, in summer, I heard of
+considerable quarrels over questions of rank, and there was more than
+one outbreak of jingoistic arrogance on the part of both Turkish and
+German subalterns, leading in some cases even to blows and consequent
+severe punishment for insubordination. The climax was reached in the
+scandal of supplanting General Weber, commanding the "Southern Group"
+(Sedd-ul-Bahr) by Vehib Pasha, a grim and fanatical Turk. In this case
+the Turkish point of view prevailed, for General Liman von Sanders,
+Commander-in-Chief of the Gallipoli Army, was determined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> not to lose
+his post, and agreed slavishly with all that Enver Pasha ordained.</p>
+
+<p>From other fronts, such as the Irak and the "Caucasus" (which was
+becoming more and more a purely Armenian theatre of war, without losing
+that chimerical designation in the official reports!), there came
+even more significant tales; there German and Turkish officers seemed
+to live still more of a cat-and-dog life than in the Dardanelles. Of
+course under the iron discipline of both Turks and Germans, these
+unpleasant occurrences were never allowed to come to such a pass that
+they would interfere in any way with military operations, but they were
+of significance as symptoms of a deep distrust of the Germans even in
+Turkish military circles.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">The great Armenian persecutions&mdash;The system of Talaat and Enver&mdash;A
+denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and conscienceless accomplice.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> spite of all, I returned to Constantinople from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles with very little diminution of friendly feeling towards
+the Turks. My first experience when I returned to the capital was the
+beginning of the Armenian persecutions. And here I may as well say at
+once that my love for present-day Turkey perished absolutely with this
+unique example in the history of modern human civilisation of the most
+appalling bestiality and misguided jingoism. This, more than everything
+else I saw on the German-Turkish side throughout the war, persuaded me
+to take up arms against my own people and to adopt the position I now
+hold. I say "German-Turkish," for I must hold the German Government as
+equally responsible with the Turks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> for the atrocities they allowed
+them to commit.</p>
+
+<p>Here in neutral Switzerland, where so many of these unfortunate
+Armenians have taken refuge and such abundance of information is
+available, so much material has been collected that it is unnecessary
+for me to go into details in this book. Suffice it to say that the
+narration of all the heart-rending occurrences that came to my personal
+knowledge during my stay in Turkey, without my even trying to collect
+systematic information on the subject, would fill a book. To my deep
+sorrow I have to admit that, from everything I have heard from reliable
+sources&mdash;from German Red Cross doctors, officials and employees of
+the Baghdad Railway, members of the American Embassy, and Turks
+themselves&mdash;although they are but individual cases&mdash;I cannot regard
+as exaggerated such appalling facts and reports as are contained for
+example in Arnold Toynbee's <i>Armenian Atrocities</i>.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>In this little book, however, which partakes <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>more of the nature of an
+essay than an exhaustive treatise, my task will be rather to determine
+the system, the underlying political thought and the responsibility
+of Germany in all these horrors&mdash;massacres, the seduction of women,
+children left to die or thrown into the sea, pretty young girls
+carried off into houses of ill repute, the compulsory conversion to
+Islam and incorporation in Turkish harems of young women, the ejection
+from their homes of eminent and distinguished families by brutal
+gendarmes, attacks while on the march by paid bands of robbers and
+criminals, "emigration" to notorious malaria swamps and barren desert
+and mountain lands, victims handed over to the wild lusts of roaming
+Bedouins and Kurds&mdash;in a word, the triumph of the basest brutality and
+most cold-blooded refinement of cruelty in a war of extermination in
+which half a million men, and according to some estimates many more,
+have perished, while the remaining one and a half million of this
+most intelligent and cultured race, one of the principal pioneers of
+progress in the Ottoman Empire, see nothing but complete extinction
+staring them in the face through the rupture of family<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> ties, the
+deprivation of their rights, and economic ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The Armenian persecutions began in all their cruelty, practically
+unannounced, in April 1915. Certain events on the Caucasus front, which
+no number of lies could explain away, gave the Turkish Government
+the welcome pretext for falling like wild animals on the Armenians
+of the eastern vilajets&mdash;the so-called Armenia Proper&mdash;and getting
+to work there without deference to man, woman, or child. This was
+called "the restoration of order in the war zone by military measures,
+rendered necessary by the connivance of the inhabitants with the enemy,
+treachery and armed support." The first two or three hundred thousand
+Armenians fell in the first rounding up.</p>
+
+<p>That in those outlying districts situated directly on the Russian
+frontier a number of Armenians threw in their lot with the advancing
+Russians, no one will seek to deny, and not a single Armenian I
+have spoken to denies it. But the "Armenian Volunteer Corps" that
+fought on the side of Russia was composed for the most part&mdash;that at
+least has been proved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> beyond doubt&mdash;of Russian Armenians settled in
+Transcaucasian territory.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the Turkish Armenians taking part are concerned, no
+reasonable being would think of denying Turkey as Sovereign State the
+formal right of taking stringent measure against these traitors and
+deserters. But if I expressly recognise this right, I do so with the
+big reservation that the frightful sufferings undergone for centuries
+by a people left by their rulers to the mercy of marauding Kurds and
+oppressed by a government of shameless extortioners, absolutely absolve
+these deserters in the eyes of the whole civilised world from any moral
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I would willingly have gone so far for the benefit of the
+Turks, in spite of their terrible guilt towards this people, as perhaps
+to keep my own counsel on the subject, if it had merely been a case of
+the execution of some hundreds under martial law or the carrying out
+of other measures&mdash;such as deportation&mdash;against a couple of thousand
+Armenians and these strictly confined to men. It is even possible that
+Europe and America would have pardoned Turkey for taking even stronger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+steps in the nature of reprisals or measures of precaution against the
+male inhabitants of that part of Armenia Proper which was gradually
+becoming a war zone. But from the very beginning the persecutions were
+carried on against women and children as well as men, were extended
+to the hundred thousand inhabitants of the six eastern vilajets, and
+were characterised by such savage brutality that the methods of the
+slave-drivers of the African interior and the persecution of Christians
+under Nero are the only thing that can be compared with them.</p>
+
+<p>Every shred of justification for the Turkish Government in their
+attempt to establish this as an "evacuation necessary for military
+purposes and for the prevention of unrest" entirely vanishes in face
+of such methods, and I do not believe that there is a single decent
+German, cognisant of the facts of the case, who is not filled with real
+disgust of the Young Turkish Government by such cold-blooded butchery
+of the inhabitants of whole districts and the deportation of others
+with the express purpose of letting them die <i>en route</i>. Any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>one with
+human feelings, however pro-Turkish he may be politically, cannot think
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>This "evacuation necessary for military purposes" emptied Armenia
+Proper of men. How often have Turks themselves told me&mdash;I could mention
+names, but I will not expose my informants, who were on the whole
+decent exceptions to the rule, to the wrath of Enver or Talaat&mdash;how
+often have they assured me that practically not a single Armenian
+is to be found in Armenia! And it is equally certain that scarcely
+one can be left alive of all that horde of deported men who escaped
+the first massacres and were hunted up hill and down dale in a state
+of starvation, exposed to attacks by Kurds, decimated by spotted
+typhus, and finally abandoned to their fate in the scorching deserts
+of Northern Mesopotamia and Northern Syria. One has only to read the
+statistics of the population of the six vilajets of Armenia Proper to
+discover the hundreds of thousands of victims of this wholesale murder.</p>
+
+<p>But unfortunately that was not all. The Turkish Government went
+farther, much farther. They aimed at the whole Armenian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> people, not
+only in Armenia itself, but also in the "Diaspora," in Anatolia Proper
+and in the capital. They were at that time some hundred thousand. In
+this case they could scarcely go on the principle of "evacuation of the
+war zone," for the inhabitants were hundreds of miles both from the
+Eastern front and from the Dardanelles, so they had to resort to other
+measures.</p>
+
+<p>They suddenly and miraculously discovered a universal conspiracy among
+the Armenians of the Empire. It was only by a trick of this kind that
+they could succeed in carrying out their system of exterminating the
+entire Armenian race. The Turkish Government skilfully influenced
+public opinion throughout the whole world, and then discovered, nay,
+arranged for, local conspiracies. They then falsified all the details
+so that they might go on for months in peace and quiet with their
+campaign of extermination.</p>
+
+<p>In a series of semi-official articles in the newspapers of the
+Committee of Young Turks it was made quite clear that <i>all</i> Armenians
+were dangerous conspirators who, in order to shake off the Ottoman
+yoke, had collected firearms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> and bombs and had arranged, with the help
+of English and Russian money, for a terrible slaughter of Turks on the
+day that the English fleet overcame the armies on the Dardanelles.</p>
+
+<p>I must here emphasise the fact that all the arguments the Turkish
+Government brought against the Armenians did not escape my notice. They
+were indeed evident enough in official and semi-official publications
+and in the writings of German "experts on Turkey." I investigated
+everything, even right at the beginning of my stay in Turkey, and
+always from a thoroughly pro-Turkish point of view. That did not
+prevent me however, from coming to my present point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Zimmermann, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has only
+got to refer to the date of his letter to the editorial staff of my
+paper, in which he speaks of my confidential report to the paper on
+this subject which went through his hands and aroused his interest, and
+he will find what opinions I held as early as the summer of 1916 on the
+subject of the Armenian persecutions&mdash;and this without my having any
+particular sympathy for the Armenians, for it was not till much later<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+that I got to know them and their high intellectual qualities through
+personal intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>Here I can only give my final judgment on all these pros and cons, and
+say to the best of my knowledge and opinion, that after the first act
+in this drama of massacre and death&mdash;the brutal "evacuation of the war
+zone" in Armenia Proper&mdash;the meanest, the lowest, the most cynical,
+most criminal act of race-fanaticism that the history of mankind has to
+show was the extension of the system of deportation, with its wilful
+neglect and starvation of the victims, to further hundreds of thousands
+of Armenians in the Capital and Interior. And these were people who,
+through their place of residence, their surroundings, their social
+status, their preoccupation in work and wage-earning, were quite
+incapable of taking any active part in politics.</p>
+
+<p>Others of them, again, belonged to families of high social standing and
+culture, bound to the land by a thousand ties, coming of a well-to-do,
+old-established stock, and from traditional training and ordinary
+prudence holding themselves scrupulously apart from all revolutionary
+doings. All were surrounded by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> far superior number of inhabitants
+belonging to other races.</p>
+
+<p>This diabolical crime was committed solely and only because of the
+Turkish feeling of economic and intellectual inferiority to that
+non-Turkish element, for the set purpose of obtaining handsome
+compensation for themselves, and was undertaken with the cowardly
+acquiescence of the German Government in full knowledge of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Of this long chain of crime I saw at least the beginning thousands of
+times with my own eyes. Hardly had I returned from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles when these persecutions began in the whole of Anatolia
+and even in Constantinople, and continued with but slight intermissions
+of a week or two at different times till shortly before I left
+Constantinople in December 1916.</p>
+
+<p>That was the time when in the flourishing western vilajets of Anatolia,
+beginning with Brussa and Adabazar, where the well-stocked farms
+in Armenian hands must have been an eyesore to a Government that
+had written "forcible nationalisation" on their standard, the whole
+household goods of respectable fam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>ilies were thrown into the street
+and sold for a mere nothing, because their owners often had only an
+hour till they were routed out by the waiting gendarme and hustled off
+into the Interior. The fittings of the houses, naturally unsaleable
+in the hurry, usually fell to the lot of marauding "<i>mohadjis</i>"
+(Mohammedan immigrants), who, often enough armed to the teeth by
+the "Committee," began the disturbances which were then exposed as
+"Armenian conspiracies."</p>
+
+<p>That was the time when mothers, apparently in absolute despair, sold
+their own children, because they had been robbed of their last penny
+and could not let their children perish on that terrible march into the
+distant Interior.</p>
+
+<p>How many countless times did I have to look on at that typical
+spectacle of little bands of Armenians belonging to the capital being
+escorted through the streets of Pera by two gendarmes in their ragged
+murky grey uniforms with their typical brutal Anatolian faces, while a
+policeman who could read and write marched behind with a notebook in
+his hand, beckoning people at random out of the crowd with an imperious
+gesture, and if their papers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> showed them to be Armenians, simply
+herding them in with the rest and marching them off to the "Karakol" of
+Galata-Seraï, the chief police-station in Pera, where he delivered up
+his daily bag of Armenians!</p>
+
+<p>The way these imprisonments and deportations were carried on is a most
+striking confutation of the claims of the Turkish Government that they
+were acting only in righteous indignation over the discovery of a great
+conspiracy. This is entirely untrue.</p>
+
+<p>With the most cold-blooded calculation and method, the number of
+Armenians to be deported were divided out over a period of many months,
+indeed one may say over nearly a year and a half. The deportations
+only began to abate when the downfall of the Armenian Patriarchate in
+summer 1916 dealt the final blow to the social life of the Armenians.
+They more or less ceased in December 1916 with the gathering-in of all
+those who had formerly paid the military exemption tax&mdash;among them many
+eminent Armenian business men.</p>
+
+<p>What can be said of the "righteous, spontaneous indignation" of the
+Armenian Govern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>ment when, for example, of two Armenian porters
+belonging to the same house&mdash;brothers&mdash;one is deported to-day and the
+other not till a fortnight later; or when the number of Armenians to
+be delivered up daily from a certain quarter of the town is fixed at
+a definite figure, say two hundred or a thousand, as I have been told
+was the case by reliable Turks who were in full touch with the police
+organisation and knew the system of these deportations?</p>
+
+<p>Of the ebb and flow of these persecutions, all that can be said is that
+the daily number of deportations increased when the Turks were annoyed
+over some Russian victory, and that the banishments miraculously abated
+when the military catastrophes of Erzerum, Trebizond, and Erzindjan
+gave the Government food for thought and led them to wonder if perhaps
+Nemesis was going to overtake them after all.</p>
+
+<p>And then the method of transport! Every day towards evening, when
+these unfortunate creatures had been collected in the police-stations,
+the women and children were packed into electric-trams while the men
+and boys were compelled to go off on foot to Galata with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> couple of
+blankets and only the barest necessities for their terrible journey
+packed in a small bag. Of course they were not all poor people by any
+means.</p>
+
+<p>This dire fate might befall anyone any day or any hour, from the
+caretaker and the tradesman to members of the best families. I
+know cases where men of high education, belonging to aristocratic
+families&mdash;engineers, doctors, lawyers&mdash;were banished from Pera in
+this disgusting way under cover of darkness to spend the night on
+the platforms of the Haidar-Pasha station, and then be packed off in
+the morning on the Anatolian Railway&mdash;of course they paid for their
+tickets and all travelling expenses!&mdash;to the Interior, where they died
+of spotted typhus, or, in rare cases after their recovery from this
+terrible malady, were permitted, after endless pleading, to return
+broken in body and soul to their homes as "harmless." Among these
+bands herded about from pillar to post like cattle there were hundreds
+and thousands of gentle, refined women of good family and of perfect
+European culture and manners.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part it was the sad fate of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> those deported to be sent
+off on an endless journey by foot, to the far-off Arabian frontier,
+where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in
+the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic
+to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountain-side, without
+money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means
+of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery.</p>
+
+<p>The women and children were always separated from the men. That was the
+characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike
+at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the
+tearing asunder of all family ties.</p>
+
+<p>That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared.
+They were the "persons transported elsewhere," as the elegant title
+of the "Provisional Han" ran, which gave full stewardship over their
+well-stocked farms to the "Committee" with its zeal for "internal
+colonisation" with purely Turkish elements. In this way the great goal
+was reached&mdash;the forcible nationalisation of a land of mixed races.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>While Anatolia was gradually emptied of all the forces that had
+hitherto made for progress, while the deserted towns and villages and
+flourishing fields of those who had been banished fell into the hands
+of the lowest "<i>Mohadjr</i>"&mdash;hordes of the most dissipated Mohammedan
+emigrants&mdash;that stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever more slowly
+to its distant goal, leaving the dead bodies of women and children, old
+men and boys, as milestones to mark the way. The few that did reach
+the "settlement" alive&mdash;that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-stricken
+concentration camps&mdash;continually molested by raiding Bedouins and
+Kurds, gradually sickened and died a slower and even more terrible
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes even this was not speedy enough for the Government, and a
+case occurred in Autumn 1916&mdash;absolutely verified by statements made
+by German employees on the Baghdad Railway&mdash;where some thousands of
+Armenians, brought as workers to this stretch of railway, simply
+vanished one day without leaving a trace. Apparently they were simply
+shipped off into the desert without more ado and there massacred.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This terrible catalogue of crime on the part of the Government of
+Talaat is, however, in spite of all censorship and obstruction, being
+dealt with <i>officially</i> in all quarters of the globe&mdash;by the American
+Embassy at Constantinople and in neutral and Entente countries&mdash;and at
+the conclusion of peace it will be brought as an accusation against the
+criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by a merciless court of all the
+civilised nations of the world.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken to Armenians who have said to me, "In former times the
+old Sultan Abdul-Hamid used to have us massacred by thousands. We
+were delivered over by well-organised pogroms to the Kurds at stated
+times, and certainly we suffered cruelly enough. Then the Young Turks,
+as Adana 1909 shows, started on a bloodshed of thousands. But after
+what we have just gone through we long with all our hearts for the
+days of the old massacres. Now it is no longer a case of a certain
+number of massacred; now <i>our whole people</i> is being slowly but surely
+exterminated by the national hatred of an apparently civilised,
+apparently modern, and therefore infinitely more dangerous Government.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now they get hold of our women and children and send them long
+journeys on foot to concentration camps in barren districts where they
+die. The pitiful remains of our population in the villages and towns of
+the Interior, where the local authorities have carried out the commands
+of the central Government most zealously, are forcibly converted to
+Islam, and our young girls are confined in Turkish harems and places of
+low repute.</p>
+
+<p>"The race is to vanish to the very last man, and why? Because the
+Turks have recognised their intellectual bankruptcy, their economic
+incompetence, and their social inferiority to the progressive Armenian
+element, to which Abdul-Hamid, in spite of occasional massacres, knew
+well enough how to adapt himself, and which he even utilised in all its
+power in high offices of state. Because now that they themselves are
+being decimated by a weary and unsuccessful war of terrible bloodshed
+that was lost before it was begun, they hope in this way to retain the
+sympathy of their peoples and preserve the superiority of their element
+in the State.</p>
+
+<p>"These are not sporadic outbursts of wrath,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> as they were in the case
+of Hamid, but a definitely thought-out political measure against our
+people, and for this very reason they can hope for no mercy. Germany,
+as we have seen, tolerates the annihilation of our people through
+weakness and lack of conscience, and if the war lasts much longer the
+Armenian people will have ceased to exist. That is why we long for the
+old régime of Abdul-Hamid, terrible as it was for us."</p>
+
+<p>Has there ever been a greater tragedy in the history of a people&mdash;and
+of a people that have never held any illusions as to political
+independence, wedged in as they are between two Great Powers, and who
+had no real irredentistic feelings towards Russia, and, up to the
+moment when the Young Turks betrayed them shamefully and broke the ties
+of comradeship that had bound them together as revolutionaries against
+the old despotic system of Abdul-Hamid, were as thoroughly loyal
+citizens of the Ottoman Empire as any of the other peoples of this
+land, excepting perhaps the Turks themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I hope that these few words may have given sufficient indication of the
+spirit and outcome<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of this system of extermination. I should like to
+mention just one more episode which affected me personally more than
+anything I experienced in Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>One day in the summer of 1916 my wife went out alone about midday to
+buy something in the "Grand Rue de Péra." We lived a few steps from
+Galata-Seraï and had plenty of opportunity from our balcony of seeing
+the bands of Armenian deportees arriving at the police-station under
+the escort of gendarmes. Familiarity with such sights finally dulled
+our sympathies, and we began to think of them not as episodes affecting
+human individuals, but rather as political events.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular day, however, my wife came back to the house
+trembling all over. She had not been able to go on her errand. As she
+passed the "karakol," she had heard through the open hall door the
+agonising groans of a tortured being, a dull wailing like the sound of
+an animal being tormented to death. "An Armenian," she was informed
+by the people standing at the door. The crowd was then dispersed by a
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"If such scenes occur in broad daylight in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> the busiest part of the
+European town of Pera, I should like to know what is done to Armenians
+in the uncivilised Interior," my wife asked me. "If the Turks act like
+wild beasts here in the capital, so that a woman going through the main
+streets gets a shock like that to her nerves, then I can't live in this
+frightful country." And then she burst into a fit of sobbing and let
+loose all her pent-up passion against what she and I had had to witness
+for more than a year every time we set a foot out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>"You are brutes, you Germans, miserable brutes, that you tolerate this
+from the Turks when you still have the country absolutely in your
+hands. You are cowardly brutes, and I will never set foot in your
+horrible country again. God, how I hate Germany!"</p>
+
+<p>It was then, when my own wife, trembling and sobbing, in grief, rage,
+and disgust at such cowardliness, flung this denunciation of my
+country in my teeth that I finally and absolutely broke with Germany.
+Unfortunately I had known only too long that it had to come.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the conversations I had had about the Armenian question
+with members of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the German Embassy in Constantinople and, of a very
+different kind, with Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>I had never felt fully convinced by the protestations of the German
+Embassy that they had done their utmost to put a check on the murderous
+attacks on harmless Armenians far from the theatre of war, who from
+their whole surroundings and their social class could not be in a
+position to take an active part in politics, and on the cold-blooded
+neglect and starvation of women and children apparently deported for no
+other reason than to die. The attitude of the German Government towards
+the Armenian question had impressed me as a mixture of cowardice and
+lack of conscience on the one hand and the most short-sighted stupidity
+on the other.</p>
+
+<p>The American Ambassador, who took the most generous interest in the
+Armenians, and has done so much for the cause of humanity in Turkey,
+was naturally much too reserved on this most burning question to give
+a German journalist like myself his true opinion about the attitude of
+his German colleagues. But from the many conversations and discussions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+I had with him, I gathered nothing that would turn me from the opinion
+I had already formed of the German Embassy, and I had given him several
+hints of what that opinion was.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of Germany was, in the first place, as I have said, one of
+boundless <i>cowardice</i>. For we had the Turkish Government firmly enough
+in hand, from the military as well as the financial and political point
+of view, to insist upon the observance of the simplest principles
+of humanity if we wanted to. Enver, and still more Talaat, who as
+Minister of the Interior and really Dictator of Turkey was principally
+responsible for the Armenian persecutions, had no other choice than to
+follow Germany's lead unconditionally, and they would have accepted
+without any hesitation, if perhaps with a little grumbling, any
+definite ruling of Germany's even on this Armenian question that lay so
+near their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>From hundreds of examples it has been proved that the Germany Embassy
+never showed any undue delicacy for even perfectly legitimate Turkish
+interests and feelings in matters affecting German interests, and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+they always got their own way where it was a question, for example, of
+Germans being oppressed, or superseded by Turks in the Government and
+ruling bodies. And yet I had to stand and look on when our Embassy was
+not even capable of granting her due and proper rights to a perfectly
+innocent German lady married to an Armenian who had been deported with
+many other Armenians. She appealed for redress to the German Embassy,
+but her only reward was to wait day after day in the vestibule of the
+Embassy for her case to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>Turks themselves have found cynical enjoyment in this measureless
+cowardice of ours and compared it with the attitude of the Russian
+Government, who, if they had found themselves in a similar position
+to Germany, would have been prepared, in spite of the Capitulations
+being abolished, to make a political case, if necessary, out of the
+protection due to one poor Russian Jew. Turks have, very politely but
+none the less definitely, made it quite clear to me that at bottom they
+felt nothing but contempt for our policy of letting things slide.</p>
+
+<p>Our attitude was characterised, secondly, by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> <i>lack of conscience</i>.
+To look on while life and property, the well-being and culture of
+thousands, are sacrificed, and to content oneself with weak formal
+protests when one is in a position to take most energetic command of
+the situation, is nothing but the most criminal lack of conscience,
+and I cannot get rid of the suspicion that, in spite of the fine
+official phrases one was so often treated to in the German Embassy on
+the subject of the "Armenian problem," our diplomats were very little
+concerned with the preservation of this people.</p>
+
+<p>What leads me to bring this terrible charge against them? The fact that
+I never saw anything in all this pother on the part of our diplomats
+when the venerable old Armenian Patriarch appeared at the Embassy with
+his suite after some particularly frightful sufferings of the Armenian
+population, and begged with tears in his eyes for help from the
+Embassy, however late&mdash;and I assisted more than once at such scenes in
+the Embassy and listened to the conversations of the officials&mdash;I never
+saw anything but concern about German prestige and offended vanity. As
+far as I saw, there was never any concern for the fate of the Ar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>menian
+people. The fact that time and again I heard from the mouths of Germans
+of all grades, from the highest to the lowest, so far as they did not
+have to keep strictly to the official German versions, expressions of
+hatred against the Armenians which were based on the most short-sighted
+judgment, had no relation to the facts of the case, and were merely
+thoughtless echoes of the official Turkish statements.</p>
+
+<p>And cases have actually been proved to have occurred, from the
+testimony of German doctors and Red Cross nurses returned from the
+Interior, of German officers light-heartedly taking the initiative in
+exterminating and scattering the Armenians when the less-zealous local
+authorities who still retained some remnants of human feeling, scrupled
+to obey the instructions of "Nur-el-Osmanieh" (the headquarters of the
+Committee at Stamboul).</p>
+
+<p>The case is well known and has been absolutely verified of the
+scandalous conduct of two German officers passing through a village in
+far Asia Minor, where the Armenians had taken refuge in their houses
+and barricaded them to prevent being herded off like cattle.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> The order
+had been given that guns were to be turned on them, but not a single
+Turk had the courage to carry out this order and fire on women and
+children. Without any authority whatsoever, the two German officers
+then turned to and gave an exhibition of their shooting capacities!</p>
+
+<p>Such shameful acts are of course isolated cases, but they are on a par
+with the opinions expressed about the Armenian people by dozens of
+educated Germans of high position&mdash;not to speak of military men at all.</p>
+
+<p>A case of this kind where German soldiers were guilty of an attack on
+Armenians in the interior of Anatolia, was the subject of frequent
+official discussion at the German Embassy, and was finally brought to
+the notice of the authorities in Germany by Graf Wolff-Metternich, a
+really high-principled and humane man. The material result of this was
+that through the unheard-of cowardice of our Government, this man&mdash;who
+in spite of his age and in contrast to the weak-minded Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, and criminally optimistic had made many an attempt to get
+a firmer grip of the Turkish Government&mdash;was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> simply hounded out of
+office by the Turks and weakly sacrificed without a struggle by Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>What, finally, is one to think of the spirit of our German officials
+in regard to the Armenian question, when one hears such well-verified
+tales as were told me shortly before I left Constantinople by an
+eminent Hungarian banker (whose name I will not reveal)? He related,
+for example, that "a German officer, with the title of Baron, and
+closely connected with the military attaché," went one day to the
+bazaar in Stamboul and chose a valuable carpet from an Armenian, which
+he had put down to his account and sent to his house in Pera. Then when
+it came to paying for it, he promptly set the price twenty pounds lower
+than had been stipulated, and indicated to the Armenian dealer that
+in view of the good understanding between himself (the officer) and
+the Turkish President of police, he would do well not to trouble him
+further in the matter! I only cite this case because I am unfortunately
+compelled to believe in its absolute authenticity.</p>
+
+<p>Shortsighted stupidity, finally, is how I characterised the inactive
+toleration on the part of our Imperial representatives of this policy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+of extermination of the Armenian race. Our Government could not have
+been blind to the breaking flood of Turkish jingoism, and no one with
+any glimmer of foresight could have doubted for a moment since the
+summer of 1915 that Turkey would only go with us so long as she needed
+our military and financial aid, and that we should have no place, not
+even a purely commercial one, in a fully turkified Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the lamentations one heard often enough from the mouths
+of officials over this well-recognised and unpalatable fact, we
+tolerated the extermination of a race of over one and a half million
+of people of progressive culture, with the European point of view,
+intellectually adaptable, absolutely free from jingoism and fanaticism,
+and eminently cosmopolitan in feeling; we permitted the disappearance
+of the only conceivable counterbalance to the hopelessly nationalistic,
+anti-foreign Young Turkish element, and through our cowardice and lack
+of conscience have made deadly enemies of the few that will rise from
+the ruins of a race that used to be in thorough sympathy with Germany.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An intelligent German Government would, in face of the increasingly
+evident Young Turkish spirit, have used every means in their power
+to retain the sympathies of the Armenians, and indeed to win them in
+greater numbers. The Armenians waited for us, trembled with impatience
+for us, to give a definite ruling. Their disappointment, their hatred
+of us is unbounded now&mdash;and rightly so&mdash;and if a German ever again
+wants to take up business in the East he will have to reckon with this
+afflicted people so long as one of them exists.</p>
+
+<p>To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does
+not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy
+for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at
+least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.)
+One only requires to have a feeling for humanity to abhor the way in
+which hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate people were disposed
+of; one only requires to understand the commercial and social needs
+of a vast country like Turkey, so undeveloped and yet so capable of
+development, to place the highest value on the preservation of this
+restless,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> active, and eminently useful element; one only requires to
+open one's eyes and look at the facts dispassionately to deny utterly
+and absolutely what the Turks have tried to make the world believe
+about the Armenians, in order that they might go on with their work of
+extermination in peace and quiet; one only requires to have a slight
+feeling of one's dignity as a German to refuse to condone the pitiful
+cowardice of our Government over the Armenian question.</p>
+
+<p>The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight
+of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite
+enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking
+man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German
+cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of Pera
+the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation,
+with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social
+development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous
+with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>In long confidential reports to my paper I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> made perfectly clear to
+them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions and
+the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them. The
+Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no trace
+of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.</p>
+
+<p>The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that
+paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled her
+denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal debt of
+gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for it is to
+them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><p class="ph3">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This and other works on the subject came to my notice
+for the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in
+Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">The tide of war&mdash;Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+Caucasus"&mdash;The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+twice hangs in the balance&mdash;Nervous tension in international
+Pera&mdash;Bulgaria's attitude&mdash;Turkish rancour against her former
+enemy&mdash;German illusions of a separate peace with Russia&mdash;King
+Ferdinand's time-serving&mdash;Lack of munitions in the Dardanelles&mdash;A
+mysterious death: a political murder?&mdash;The evacuation of
+Gallipoli&mdash;The Turkish version of victory&mdash;Constantinople
+unreleased&mdash;Kut-el-Amara&mdash;Propaganda for the "Holy War"&mdash;A prisoner
+of repute&mdash;Loyalty of Anglo-Indian officers&mdash;Turkish communiqués and
+their worth&mdash;The fall of Erzerum&mdash;Official lies&mdash;The treatment of
+prisoners&mdash;Political speculation with prisoners of war&mdash;Treatment of
+enemy subjects&mdash;Stagnation and lassitude in the summer of 1916&mdash;The
+Greeks in Turkey&mdash;Dread of Greek massacres&mdash;Rumania's entry&mdash;Terrible
+disappointment&mdash;The three phases of the war for Turkey.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> will be necessary to devote a few lines to a review of the principal
+features of the war,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> so far as it affected the life of the Turkish
+capital, in order to have a military and political background for what
+I saw among the Turks during my twenty months' stay in their country.
+To that I will add a short description of the economic situation.</p>
+
+<p>When I arrived in Constantinople, Turkey had already completed her
+first winter campaign in the Caucasus, and had repelled the attack of
+the Entente fleet on the Dardanelles, culminating in the events of
+March 18th, 1915. But Enver Pasha had completely misjudged the relation
+between the means at his disposal and the task before him when, out of
+pure vanity and a mad desire for expansion, he undertook a personally
+conducted offensive for "the liberation of the Caucasus." The terrible
+defeats inflicted on the Turkish army on this occasion were kept
+from the knowledge of the people by a rigorous censorship and the
+falsification of the communiqués. This was particularly the case in the
+enormous Turkish losses sustained at Sarykamish.</p>
+
+<p>Enver had put this great Caucasus offensive in hand out of pure wanton
+folly, thinking by so doing to win laurels for himself and to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+something tangible to show those Turkish ultra-Nationalists who always
+had an eye on Turkestan and Turan and thought that now was the time
+to carry out their programme of a "Greater Turkey." It was this mad
+undertaking, bound as it was to come to grief, that first showed Enver
+Pasha in his true colours. I shall have something to say about his
+character in another connection, which will show how gravely he has
+been over-estimated in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of March 1915 to the beginning of January 1916 the
+situation was practically entirely commanded by the battles in the
+Dardanelles and Gallipoli. It has now been accepted as a recognised
+fact even in the countries belonging to the Entente that the sacrifice
+of a few more ships on March 18th would have decided the fate of the
+Dardanelles. To their great astonishment the gallant defenders of the
+coast forts found that the attack had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the
+German naval gunners who were manning the batteries of Chanakkalé on
+that memorable day told me later that they had quite made up their
+minds the fleet would ultimately win, and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> they themselves could
+not have held out much longer. Such an outcome was expected hourly
+in Constantinople, and I was told by influential people that all the
+archives, stores of money, etc., had already been removed to Konia.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable fact that for a second time, in the first days
+of September, the fate of Constantinople was again hanging in the
+balance&mdash;a fact which is no longer a secret in England and France.
+The British had extended their line northwards from Ariburnu to
+Anaforta, and a heroic dash by the Anzacs had captured the summit
+of the Koja-Jemen-Dagh, and so given them direct command of the
+whole peninsula of Gallipoli and the insufficiently protected
+Dardanelles forts behind them. It is still a mystery to the people of
+Constantinople why the British troops did not follow up this victory.
+The fact is that this time again the money and archives were hurried
+off from Constantinople to Asia, and a German officer in Constantinople
+gave me the entertaining information that he had really seriously
+thought of hiring a window in the Grand' Rue de Péra, so that he and
+his family<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> might watch the triumphal entry of the Entente troops! It
+would be easier to enjoy the joke of this if it were not overshadowed
+by such fearful tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>I have already indicated the dilemma in which I was placed on my first
+and second visits to the Gallipoli front. I was torn by conflicting
+doubts as to whom my sympathies ought ultimately to turn to&mdash;to the
+heroic Turkish defender, who was indeed fighting for the existence of
+his country, although in an unsuccessful and unjust cause, for German
+militarism and the exaggerated jingoism of the Young Turks, or to those
+who were officially my enemies but whom, knowing as I did who was
+responsible for the great crime of the war, I could not regard as such.</p>
+
+<p>In those September days I had already had some experience of Turkish
+politics and their defiance of the laws of humanity, and my sympathies
+were all for those thousands of fine colonial troops&mdash;such men as one
+seldom sees&mdash;sacrificing their lives in one last colossal attack,
+which if it had been prolonged even for another hour might have sealed
+the fate of the Straits and would have meant the first deci<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>sive step
+towards the overthrow of our forces; for the capture of Constantinople
+would have been the beginning of the end. I am not ashamed to confess
+that, German as I am, that was the only feeling I had when I heard of
+the British victory and the subsequent British defeat at Anaforta.
+The Battle of Anaforta was the last desperate attempt to break the
+resistance in the Dardanelles.</p>
+
+<p>While the men of Stamboul and Anatolia&mdash;the nucleus of the Ottoman
+Empire&mdash;were defending the City of the Caliph at the gate of the
+Dardanelles, with reinforcements from Arab regiments when they were
+utterly exhausted in the autumn, the other half of the metropolis,
+the cosmopolitan Galata-Pera, was trembling for the safety of the
+attacking Entente troops, and lived through the long months in a state
+of continual tension, longing always for the moment of release.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great deal of nervous calculation about the probable
+attitude of Bulgaria among both the Turks and the thousands of
+thoroughly illoyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire composing the
+population of the capital. From lack of information and also as a
+result<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> of Bulgaria's long delay in declaring her attitude, an undue
+optimism ruled right up to the last moment among those who desired the
+overthrow of the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian question was closely bound up with the question of the
+munitions supply. The Turkish resistance on Gallipoli threatened to
+collapse through lack of munitions, and general interest centred&mdash;with
+very varied desires with regard to the outcome&mdash;on the rare ammunition
+trains that were brought through Rumania only after an enormous
+expenditure of Turkish powers of persuasion and the application of any
+amount of "palm-oil."</p>
+
+<p>I was present at Sedd-ul-Bahr at the beginning of July, when, owing to
+lack of ammunition, the German-Turkish artillery could only reply with
+one shot to every ten British ones, while the insufficiently equipped
+factories of Top-hané and Zeitun-burnu, under the control of General
+Pieper, Director of Munitions, were turning out as many shells as was
+possible with the inferior material at their disposal, and the Turkish
+fortresses in the Interior had to send their supply of often very
+antiquated ammunition to the Dardanelles.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> The whole dramatic import of
+the situation, which might any day give rise to epoch-making events,
+was only too evident in Constantinople. It is not to be wondered at
+that everyone looked forward with feverish impatience to Bulgaria's
+entry either on one side or the other.</p>
+
+<p>But, in spite of all this, the Turks could scarcely bear the sight
+of the first Bulgarian soldiers who appeared in autumn 1915 in full
+uniform in the streets of "Carihrad." The necessary surrender of the
+land along the Maritza right to the gates of the holy city of "Edirne"
+(Adrianople) was but little to the liking of the Turkish patriots,
+and even the successful issue of the Dardanelles campaign, only made
+possible by Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers, was not sufficient
+to win the real sympathies of the Turks for their new allies.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until much later that the position was altered as a result
+of the combined fighting in Dobrudja. Practically right up to the end
+of 1916, the real, short-sighted, jingoistic Turk looked askance at
+his new ally and viewed with irritation and distrust the desecration
+of his sacred "Edirne," the symbol of his national renaissance, while
+the ambition of all politi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>cians was to bring Bulgaria one day to a
+surrender of the lost territory and more.</p>
+
+<p>Even in 1916 I found Young Turks, belonging to the Committee, who still
+regarded the Bulgarians as their erstwhile cunning foe and as a set
+of unscrupulous, unsympathetic opportunists who might again become a
+menace to them. They even admitted that the Serbs were "infinitely
+nicer enemies in the Balkan war," and appealed to them very much more
+than the Bulgarians. The late Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, of whose
+tragic death I shall speak later, was always a declared opponent of the
+cession of the Maritza territory.</p>
+
+<p>The possibility of Bulgaria's voluntarily surrendering this territory
+and possibly much more through extending her own possessions westward
+if Greece joined the Entente, had a great deal to do with Turkey's
+attitude during the whole of 1916, and goes far to explain why she
+dallied so long over the idea of alienating Greece, and used all sorts
+of chicanery against the Ottoman and Hellenic Greeks in Turkey. Another
+and much more important factor was, as we shall see, fundamental
+race-hatred and avarice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As the question as to which side Bulgaria was to join was of decisive
+moment for Turkish politics, I may perhaps be permitted to add a few
+details from personal information. I had an interesting sidelight on
+the German attempts to win over Bulgaria from a well-informed source in
+Sofia. Everyone was much puzzled over the apparent clumsiness of the
+German Ambassador in Sofia, Dr. Michahelles, in his diplomatic mission
+to gain help from Bulgaria. King Ferdinand, of course, made great
+difficulties, and at a very early stage of the proceedings he turned to
+the Prime Minister, Radoslavoff, and said: "Away with your German Jews!
+Why don't you take the good French gold?" (referring, of course, to the
+offered French loan).</p>
+
+<p>The king was cunning enough in his own way, but he was a poor
+politician and utterly vacillating, for he had no sort of ideals to
+live up to and was prompted by a spirit of unworthy opportunism, and
+it needed Radoslavoff's threat of instant resignation to bring him
+to a definite decision. The transference shortly afterwards of the
+German Ambassador to a northern post strengthened the im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>pression in
+confidential circles in Sofia that he had been lacking in diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that he had received most contradictory instructions from
+Berlin, which did not allow him to do his utmost to win Bulgaria for
+the German cause. The Imperial Chancellor seems even then&mdash;it was after
+the great German summer offensive against Russia&mdash;to have given serious
+consideration to the possibility of a separate peace with Russia, and
+was quite convinced that Russia would never lay down arms without
+having humiliated Bulgaria, should the latter prove a traitor to the
+Slavic cause and turn against Serbia.</p>
+
+<p>In diplomatic circles in Berlin this knowledge and the decision&mdash;so
+naïve in view of all their boasted <i>Weltpolitik</i>&mdash;to pursue the quite
+illusory dream of a separate peace with Russia, seemed to outweigh, at
+any rate for some time, anxiety with regard to the state of affairs in
+Gallipoli and the complete lack of munitions shortly to be expected,
+and lamed their initiative in their dealings with Bulgaria.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably not generally known that here again the military party
+assumed the lead in politics, and took the Bulgarian matter in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> hand
+themselves. In the space of no time at all, Bulgaria's entry on the
+German side was an accomplished fact. It was Colonel von Leipzig, the
+German military attaché at the Constantinople Embassy, that clinched
+the matter at the critical moment by a journey to Sofia, and the whole
+thing was arranged in less than a fortnight. But that journey cost him
+his life. On the way back to the Turkish capital Herr von Leipzig&mdash;one
+of the nicest and most gentlemanly men that ever wore a field-grey
+uniform&mdash;visited the Dardanelles front, and on the little Thracian
+railway-station of Uzunköprü he met his death mysteriously. He was
+found shot through the head in the bare little waiting-room of this
+miserable wayside station.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that on my way to the Dardanelles on that day at the end
+of June 1915, I passed through this little station, and was the sole
+European witness of this tragic event, which increased still further
+the excitement already hanging over Constantinople in these weeks of
+lack of ammunition and terrible onslaughts against Gallipoli, and which
+had already risen to fever-heat over the nervous ru<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>mours that were
+going the rounds as to Bulgaria's attitude. The occurrence, of course,
+was used by political intriguers for their own ends.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote a warm and truly heartfelt appreciation of this excellent man
+and good friend, which was published in my paper at the time, and it
+was not till long afterwards, weeks, indeed, after my return, that I
+had any idea that the sudden death of Herr von Leipzig on his return
+from a mission of the highest political importance was looked upon
+by the German anti-English party as the work of English spies in the
+service of Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was formerly at the English Embassy in
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>I was an eye-witness of the occurrence, or rather, I was beside the
+Colonel a minute after I heard the shot, and saw the hole in his
+revolver-holster where the bullet had gone through. I heard the
+frank evidence of all the Turks present, from the policeman who had
+arrived first on the scene to the staff doctor who came later, and I
+immediately telegraphed to my paper from the scene of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> accident,
+giving them my impression of the affair.</p>
+
+<p>On my return to Constantinople I was invited to give evidence under
+oath before the German Consulate General, and there one may find the
+written evidence of what I had to say: a pure and absolute accident.</p>
+
+<p>I must not omit to mention here that the German authorities themselves
+in Constantinople were so thoroughly convinced that the idea of murder
+was out of the question, that Colonel von Leipzig's widow, who,
+believing this version of the story, hurried to Turkey, to make her
+own investigations, had the greatest difficulty in being officially
+received by the Embassy and Consulate. I had a long interview with her
+in the "Pera Palace," where she complained bitterly of her treatment in
+this respect. I have tarried a little over this tragic episode as it
+shows all the political ramifications that ran together in the Turkish
+capital and the dramatic excitement that prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>The day came, however, when the Entente troops first evacuated
+Anaforta-Ariburnu, and then, after a long and protracted struggle,
+Sedd-ul-Bahr, and so the entire Gallipoli Pe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>ninsula. The Dardanelles
+campaign was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>The impossibility of ever breaking down that solid Turkish resistance,
+the sufferings of the soldiers practically starved to death in the
+trenches during the cold winter storms, the difficulties of obtaining
+supplies of provisions, drinking water, ammunition, etc., with a
+frozen sea and harbourless coast, anxiety about the superior heavy
+artillery that the enemy kept bringing up after the overthrow of
+Serbia&mdash;everything combined to strengthen the Entente in their decision
+to put an end to the campaign in Gallipoli.</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish soldiers had now free access to the sea, for all the
+British Dreadnoughts and cruisers had disappeared; the warlike activity
+which had raged for months on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula suddenly
+ceased; Austrian heavy and medium howitzers undertook the coast
+defence, and a garrison of a few thousand Turkish soldiers stayed
+behind in the Narrows for precaution's sake, while the whole huge
+Gallipoli army in an endless train was marched off to the Taurus to
+meet the Russian advance threatening in Armenia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Constantinople remained "unrelieved." And from that moment a
+dull resignation, a dreary waiting for one scarcely knew what,
+disappointment, and pessimism took the place of the nervous tension
+that had been so apparent in those who had been longing for the fall of
+the Turkish capital.</p>
+
+<p>But the Turks rejoiced. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they
+tried to construe the failure of the Gallipoli affair as a wonderful
+and dazzling victory for Islam over the combined forces of the
+Great Powers. It is only in line of course with Turkish official
+untruthfulness that, in shameless perversion of facts, they talked
+glibly of the irresistible bayonet attacks of their "ghazi" (heroes)
+and of thousands of Englishmen taken prisoner or chased back into the
+sea, whereas it was a well-known fact even in Pera that the retreat had
+been carried out in a most masterly way with practically no loss of
+life, and that the Turks themselves had been caught napping this time;
+but to lie is human, and the Turks owed it to their prestige to have an
+unmistakable and great military victory to form the basis of that "Holy
+War" that was so long in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> getting under weigh; and when all is said and
+done, their truly heroic defence really <i>was</i> a victory.</p>
+
+<p>The absurd thing about all these lies was the way they were foisted on
+a public who already knew the true state of affairs and had nothing
+whatever to do with the "Holy War."</p>
+
+<p>The Turks made even more of the second piece of good fortune that fell
+to their lot&mdash;the fall of Kut-el-Amara. General Townshend became their
+cherished prisoner, and was provided with a villa on the island of
+Halki in the Sea of Marmora, with a staff of Turkish naval officers to
+act as interpreters.</p>
+
+<p>In the neighbouring and more fashionable <i>Prinkipo</i> he was received
+by practically everyone with open arms, and once even a concert was
+arranged in his honour, which was attended by the élite of Turkish and
+Levantine Society&mdash;the Turks because of their vanity and pride in their
+important prisoner of war, the Levantines because of their political
+sympathy with General Townshend, who, although there against his will,
+seemed to bring them a breath of that world they had lost all contact
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> for nearly two years and for which they longed with the most
+ardent and passionate desire.</p>
+
+<p>On the occasion of the Bairam Festival&mdash;the highest Musulman
+festival&mdash;in 1916, the Turkish Government made a point of sending a
+group of about seventy Anglo-Indian Mohammedan officers, who had been
+taken prisoner at the fall of Kut and were now interned in Eski-Shehir,
+to the "Caliph City of Stamboul," where they were entertained for ten
+days in different Turkish hotels and shown everything that would seem
+to be of value for "Holy War" propaganda purposes.</p>
+
+<p>I had the opportunity of conversing with some of these Indian officers
+in the garden of the "Petit Champs," where their appearance one
+evening made a most tremendous sensation. I had of course to be very
+discreet, for we were surrounded by spies, but I came away firmly
+convinced that, in spite of their good treatment, which was of course
+not without its purpose, and most unceasing and determined efforts to
+influence them, the Turkish propaganda so far as these Indian officers
+was concerned had entirely failed and that their loyalty to England
+remained absolutely unshak<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>en. Will anyone blame me, if, angry and
+disgusted as I was at all these Turkish intrigues&mdash;it was shortly
+after that dramatic scene of the tortured Armenian which called forth
+that denunciation of Germany from my wife&mdash;I said to a group of these
+Indians&mdash;just this and nothing more!&mdash;that they should not believe all
+that the Turks told them, and that the result of the war would be very
+different from what the Turks thought? One of the officers thanked me
+with glowing eyes on behalf of his comrades and himself, and told me
+what a comfort my assurance was to them. They had nothing to complain
+of, he said, save being cut off from all news except official Turkish
+reports.</p>
+
+<p>The very most that even the wildest fancy could find in events like
+Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara was brought forward for the benefit of
+the "Holy War," but, despite everything, the propaganda was, as we
+have seen, a hopeless failure. Reverses such as the fall of Erzerum,
+Trebizond, and Ersindjan, on the contrary, which took place between the
+two above-mentioned victories, have never to this day been even so much
+as hinted at in the of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>ficial war communiqués for the Ottoman public.
+For the communiqués for home and foreign consumption were always
+radically different.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until very much later, when the Turkish counter-offensive
+against Bitlis seemed to be bearing fruit, that a few mild indications
+of these defeats were made in Parliament, with a careful suppression
+of all names, and the newspapers were empowered to make some mention
+of a "purely temporary retreat of no strategic importance" which had
+then taken place. The usual stereotyped report of 3,000 or 5,000 dead
+that was officially given out after every battle throughout the whole
+course of operations in the Irak scarcely came off in this case,
+however, and, to tell the truth, Erzerum and these countless English
+dead reported in the Irak did more than anything else to undermine
+completely the people's already sadly shaken confidence in the official
+war communiqués.</p>
+
+<p>If there was a real victory to be celebrated, the most stringent police
+orders were issued that flags were to be flown everywhere&mdash;on every
+building. Surely it is only in a land like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> Turkey that one could
+see the curious sight I witnessed after the fall of Bucharest&mdash;the
+victorious flags of the Central Powers, surmounted by the Turkish
+crescent, flying even from the balconies of Rumanian subjects, because
+there had been a definite police warning issued that, in the case
+of non-compliance with the order, the houses would be immediately
+ransacked and the families inhabiting them sent off to the interior
+of Anatolia. Under the circumstances, refusal to carry out police
+orders was impossible. That was the Turkish idea of the respect due to
+individual liberty.</p>
+
+<p>This gives me an opportunity to say something of the treatment of
+prisoners. I may say in one word that it is, on the whole, good.
+Justice compels me to admit that the Turk, when he does take prisoners,
+treats them kindly and chivalrously; but he takes few prisoners, for he
+knows only too well how to wield his bayonet in those murderous charges
+he makes. Indeed, apart from the few hundred that fell into their hands
+in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-Turkish front, together with the
+crews of a few captured submarines, all the Turkish prisoners of war
+come from Kut-el-Amara.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the primitive Turk is all too sadly lacking in the comforts of
+life himself to be able to provide them for his prisoners. Without the
+help of the Commission that works under the protection of the American
+Embassy for the relief of the Entente prisoners, and sends piles of
+warm clothing, excellent shoes (which rouse the special envy of the
+Turks), chocolate, cakes, etc., to the Anatolian camps, these men,
+accustomed to European ways of life, would be in a sad plight.</p>
+
+<p>The repeated and humiliating marching of prisoners of war through the
+streets of Constantinople to show them off to the childish gaze of a
+people much influenced by externals, might with advantage be dispensed
+with. And it was certainly not exactly kind to make wounded English
+officers process past the Sultan at the Friday's "Selamlik"; it was
+rather too like slave-driving methods and the abuses of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>I was an unwilling witness of one most regrettable incident that
+took place shortly before I left Constantinople. In this case the
+sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners of war were cruelly exploited
+for political ends.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> A whole troup of about 2,000 Rumanians, from
+Dobrudja, were hounded up and down the streets of Pera and Stamboul in
+a purposely destitute and exhausted condition, so that the appearance
+of these poor wretches, who hung their heads dejectedly and had lost
+all trace of military bearing, might give the impression that the Turks
+were dealing with a very inferior foe and would soon be at the end of
+the business. This is how the authorities were going to increase the
+confidence of the doubting population!</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish escort had apparently given these prisoners nothing to
+drink on the way&mdash;although the Turk, being a great water-drinker
+himself, knows only too well what a man needs on a dusty journey of
+several days on a transport train&mdash;for with my own eyes I saw dozens
+of them simply flinging themselves like animals full length on the
+ground when they reached the Taksim Fountain, and trying to slake their
+terrible thirst. It was with pitiable trickery like this&mdash;for which
+no doubt Enver Pasha was responsible, for the simple Turkish soldier
+is much too good-natured not to share his bread and water with his
+prisoners&mdash;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> attempts were made, at the expense of all feelings of
+humanity, to cheer up the uneducated masses.</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish Government, however, apart from a few cases of reprisals,
+where the prisoners were treated in an even more barbaric and primitive
+manner, did not, as a general rule, go the length of interning
+civilians. This was not without its own good grounds. In the first
+place, a very large part of the trade of the country lay in the hands
+of these Europeans, and they were consequently absolutely indispensable
+to the Turks in their everyday commercial life; secondly, a Government
+that had systematically rooted out the Armenians, hanged Arabian
+notables, and brutally mishandled the Greeks, could scarcely dispense,
+in the eyes of Europe, with the very last pretence of being more or
+less civilised; and, lastly, perhaps the fear of being brought to book
+later on may have had a restraining influence on them&mdash;we saw how
+growing anxiety about the Russian advance on the Eastern front led, at
+any rate for a time, to a discontinuance of Armenian persecutions.</p>
+
+<p>Besides all this, hundreds and thousands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> Turks were resident in
+enemy countries, and of course the desire was to avoid reprisals. So
+the Government contented itself with threats and subterfuges, after a
+first unsuccessful attempt to expose a large number of French subjects
+to fire from the enemy guns in Gallipoli&mdash;a plan which failed entirely,
+owing to the energetic opposition of officials of the American Embassy
+who had accompanied these chosen victims to Gallipoli. Every means
+was used, however, even announcements in the newspapers and a Vote of
+Credit "for the removal of enemy subjects to the interior," to keep the
+sword of Damocles for ever hanging over the heads of all subjects of
+Entente countries, even women and children.</p>
+
+<p>From the fall of Kut-el-Amara up to the time of Rumania's entry into
+the war, there were no important episodes of a military or political
+nature from the particular point of view of Turkey. (The Arabian
+catastrophe I will deal with in another connection.) With the ebb
+and flow of war and constant anxiety about Russia's movements, time
+passed slowly enough. It was well known that the Turkish offensive was
+already considerably weakened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> and the lack of means of transport was
+an open secret. Starvation and spotted fever raged at the Front as
+well as in the interior and the capital. Asiatic cholera even made its
+appearance in European Pera, but was fortunately successfully combated
+by vaccination.</p>
+
+<p>Further decisive Russian victories on the west and the Gulf of
+Alexandretta were expected after the fall of Ersindjian, for the
+ambition and personal hatred against the Turks of the Grand Duke
+Nicolai Nicolajivitch, commanding the armies in Armenia, would probably
+stop short at nothing less than complete overthrow of the enemy.
+Simple-minded souls, whose geography was not their strong point,
+reckoned how long it would take the Russians to get from Anatolia and
+when the conquest of Constantinople would take place.</p>
+
+<p>The less optimistic among those who were panting for final emancipation
+from the Young Turkish military yoke set their hopes on the entry of
+Rumania. In all circles Rumania's probable attitude was fairly clear,
+and no one ever doubted that she would be drawn into the war.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In consequence of the new operations after Rumania's declaration of
+war, the revival of the offensive in Macedonia, and the events in
+Athens, all eyes were turned again to the ever-doubtful Greece. The
+Greek element, Ottoman and Hellenic combined, in Constantinople alone
+may be reckoned at several hundred thousand. Never were sympathies so
+great for Venizelos, never was the spirit of the Irredenta so outspoken
+as among the Greeks in Turkey, who had been the dupes since 1909 of
+every possible kind of Young Turkish intrigue. In contrast to the
+Armenians, the great mass of whom thought and felt as loyal Ottoman
+citizens right up to the very end when Talaat and Enver's policy of
+extermination set in against them&mdash;in contrast to these absolutely
+helpless and therefore all the more easy victims to the Turkish
+national lust of persecution, the attitude of the Greek citizens was
+all the more marked.</p>
+
+<p>Since the Græco-Turkish war of 1912-13 and the impetus given to
+Pan-Hellenism by the successful issue of the war, there is not
+one single Greek in either country&mdash;no matter what his social
+standing&mdash;that has not ardently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> looked forward to and desired the
+overthrow of Turkey. But the Greek is much too clever to let his
+feelings be seen; and he is not so unprotected as the Armenian. And
+so up to the present time the Turk has confined himself more to
+small intrigues against the Greek population, except in a few remote
+districts&mdash;more especially the shores of the Black Sea&mdash;where massacres
+like those organised among the Armenians have been carried out, but on
+a very much smaller scale.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy with Venizelos and the Irredentistic desire for Greece to
+throw in her lot with the Entente are counterbalanced, however, in
+the case of the Greeks living in Turkey, by grave anxiety as to their
+own welfare if it came to a break between the two countries. Turkish
+hatred of the Greeks knows no bounds, and it was no idle fear that made
+the Greeks in Constantinople tremble, in spite of their satisfaction
+politically, when the rumours were afloat in autumn 1916 of King
+Constantine's abdication and Greece's entry on the side of the Entente.</p>
+
+<p>But the ideas as to how the Turks would act towards them in such a
+case were diametrically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> opposed even among those who had lived in the
+country a long time and knew the Turkish mind exactly. Many expected
+immediate Greek massacres on the largest scale; others, again, expected
+only brutal intrigues and chicanery, economic ruin; still others
+thought that nothing at all would happen, that the Turks were already
+too demoralised, and that at any rate in Pera the far superior Greek
+element would completely command the situation. This last I considered
+mere megalomaniac optimism in view of the fact that Turkey was still
+unbroken so far as things military were concerned, and I believe that
+those people were right who believed that Greece's entry on the side
+of the Entente would be the signal for the carrying out of atrocities
+against all Greeks, at any rate in the commercial world.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to know which idea the German authorities
+favoured. That the event would pass off without damage being done, they
+apparently did not believe, for in those days when Greece's decision
+seemed to be imminent, the former <i>Goeben</i> and the <i>Breslau</i>, which had
+been lying at Stenia on the Bosporus, were brought up with all speed
+and an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>chored just off the coast with their guns turned on Pera, and
+the German garrison, as I knew from different officers, had orders to
+be prepared for an alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Did the Germans think they were going to have to protect Turks or
+Greeks in the case of definite news from Athens? Was it Germany's
+intention to protect the European population, who had nothing to do
+with the impending political decision, although they might sympathise
+with it&mdash;was it Germany's intention to protect them, at any rate in
+this instance, from the Turkish lust of extermination? Had these two
+ships, now known as the <i>Jawuz Sultan Selim</i> and the <i>Midilli</i>, not
+belonged for a long time to the Imperial Ottoman Navy?</p>
+
+<p>When Rumania flung off her shackles, there was great rejoicing in Pera,
+and even the greatest pessimists believed that relief was near and
+would be accomplished within two months at latest. But another and more
+terrible reverse absolutely destroyed the last shred of anti-Turkish
+hope, and the victories in Rumania, especially the fall of Bucharest,
+combined with the speech of the Russian minister<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> Trepoff, had the
+effect of sending over solid to the side of the Government even the few
+who had hitherto, at least in theory, formed an opposition, although a
+powerless one.</p>
+
+<p>Victories shared with the Bulgarians, too, did away with the last
+remains of unfriendly feelings towards that people and consolidated the
+Turko-Bulgarian Alliance. Indeed, one may say that for Turkey the third
+great phase of the war began with the removal of all danger of the fall
+of Constantinople through the collapse of the Rumanian forces.</p>
+
+<p>The first comprised the time of the powerful attacks directed at the
+very heart of the Empire, its most vulnerable point, and ended with
+the English-French evacuation of Gallipoli. The second was the period
+of alternate successes and reverses, almost a time of stagnation,
+when practically all interest was centred on the Russian menace in
+Asia Minor and the efforts made to withstand it. It ended equally
+successfully with the removal of the Russian menace from the Balkans.
+The third will be the phase of increasing internal weakness, of the
+dissipation of strength through the sending of troops to Europe, of
+the successful renewal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of the English offensive in Mesopotamia,
+perhaps even of an English-French offensive against Syria and of the
+final revolt of all the Arabian lands, ushered in by the events in the
+Hedjaz and the founding of a purely Arabian Caliphate. The third phase
+<i>cannot</i> last longer than the year 1917; it will mean the decision of
+the whole European war.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">The economic situation&mdash;Exaggerated Entente hopes&mdash;Hunger and
+suffering among the civil population&mdash;The system of requisitioning
+and the semi-official monopolists&mdash;Profiteering on the part of
+the Government clique&mdash;Frivolity and cynicism&mdash;The "Djemiet"&mdash;The
+delegates of the German <i>Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft</i> (Central
+Purchases Commission)&mdash;A hard battle between German and
+Turkish intrigue&mdash;Reform of the coinage&mdash;Paper money and its
+depreciation&mdash;The hoarding of bullion&mdash;The Russian rouble the best
+investment.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> the entire course of the war as I have briefly sketched it
+in the foregoing pages, the economic situation in the whole country
+and particularly in the capital became more and more serious. But,
+let me just say here, in anticipation, that Turkey, being a purely
+agricultural country with a very modest population, can never be
+brought to sue for peace through starvation, nor, with Germany backing
+and financing her, through any general ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>haustion of commercial
+resources, until Germany herself is brought to her knees. Any victory
+must be a purely military and political one. The whole crux of the
+food problem in Turkey is that the people suffer, suffer cruelly, but
+not enough for hunger to have any results in the shape of an earlier
+conclusion of peace. This is the case also with the Central Powers, as
+the Entente have unfortunately only too surely convinced themselves now
+after their first illusions to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>There is another element in the Turkish question too&mdash;the large
+majority of the population are a heterogeneous mass of enslaved and
+degenerate beings, outcasts of society, plunged in the lowest social
+and commercial depths, entirely lacking in all initiative, who can
+never become a factor in any political upheaval, for in Turkey this can
+only be looked for from the military or the educated classes. If the
+Entente Powers ever counted on Turkey's chronic state of starvation
+and lack of supplies coming to their aid in this war, they have made
+a sad mistake. Therefore in attempting to sketch in a few pages the
+conditions of life and the economic situation in Tur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>key, my aim is
+solely to bring to light the underlying Turkish methods, and the ethics
+and spirit of the Young Turkish Government.</p>
+
+<p>During the periods of the very acute bread crises, which occurred
+more than once, but notably in the beginning of 1916, some dozen men
+literally died of hunger daily in Constantinople alone. With my own
+eyes I have repeatedly seen women collapsing from exhaustion in the
+streets. From many parts of the interior, particularly Syria, there
+were reliable reports of a still worse state of affairs. But even in
+more normal times there was always a difficulty in obtaining bread, for
+the means of communication in that vast and primitive land of Turkey
+are precarious at best, and it was no easy matter to get the grain
+transported to the centres of consumption.</p>
+
+<p>Then in Constantinople there was a shortage not only of skilled labour,
+but of coal for milling purposes. The result was that the townspeople
+only received a daily ration of a quarter of a kilogramme (about 8
+oz.&mdash;not a quarter of an oka, which would be about 10 oz.) of bread,
+which was mostly of an indigestible and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> occasionally very doubtful
+quality&mdash;utterly uneatable by Europeans&mdash;although occasionally it was
+quite good though coarse. If the poor people in Constantinople wanted
+to supplement this very insufficient allowance, they could do so when
+things were in a flourishing condition at the price of about 2-1/2 or
+3 piastres (1 piastre = about 2-1/4<i>d.</i>) the English pound, and later
+4 or 5 piastres. Even this was for the most part only procurable by
+clandestine means from soldiers who were usually willing to turn part
+of their bread ration into money.</p>
+
+<p>This is about all that can be said about the feeding of the people, for
+bread is by far the most important food of the Oriental, and the prices
+of the other foodstuffs soon reached exorbitant heights. What were the
+poor to feed on when rice, reckoned in English coinage, cost roughly
+from 3<i>s.</i> 2<i>d.</i> to 4<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> an oka (about 2-1/2 lb.), beans 2<i>s.</i>
+4<i>d.</i> the oka, meat 3<i>s.</i> to 4<i>s.</i>, and the cheapest sheep's cheese and
+olives, hitherto the most common Turkish condiment to eat with bread,
+rose to 3<i>s.</i> and 1<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> the oka?</p>
+
+<p>Wages, on the other hand, were ludicrously low. We may obtain some
+idea of the standard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> of living from the fact that the Government, who
+always favoured the soldiers, did not pay more than 5 piastres (about
+1<i>s.</i>) a day to the families of soldiers on active service. I have
+often wondered what the people really did eat, and I was never able to
+come to any satisfactory conclusion, although I often went to market
+myself to buy and see what other people bought. It is significant
+enough that just shortly before I left Constantinople&mdash;that is, a few
+weeks after the Turko-Bulgarian-German victories in Rumania and the
+fall of Bucharest&mdash;the price of bread in the Turkish capital, in spite
+of the widely advertised "enormous supplies" taken in Rumania, rose
+still higher.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot speak from personal experience of what happened after
+Christmas 1916 in this connection, but everyone was quite convinced,
+in spite of the official report, that the harvest of 1916, despite the
+tremendous and praiseworthy efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture
+and the military authorities, would show a very marked decrease as a
+result of the mobilisation of agricultural labour, the requisitioning
+of implements, and the shortage of buffaloes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> which, instead of
+ploughing fields, were pulling guns over the snow-covered uplands of
+Armenia. There was a very general idea that the harvest of 1917 would
+be a horrible catastrophe. And yet I am fully convinced, and I must
+emphasise it again, that, in spite of agricultural disaster, Turkey
+will still go on as a military power.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us see what the Government did in connection with the
+food problem. At a comparatively early stage they followed Germany's
+example and introduced bread tickets, which were quite successful
+so long as the flour lasted. In the autumn of 1915 they took the
+organisation of the bread supply for large towns out of the hands
+of the municipalities, and gave it over to the War Office. They got
+Parliament to vote a large fund to buy up all available supplies of
+flour, and in view of the immense importance of bread as the chief
+means of nourishment of the masses, they decided to sell it at a very
+considerable loss to themselves, so that the price of the daily ration
+(though not of the supplementary ration) remained very much as it
+had been in peace time. The Government always favoured the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> purely
+Mohammedan quarters of the town so far as bread supply was concerned,
+and the people living in Fatih and other parts of Stamboul were very
+much better off than the inhabitants of Græco-European Pera.</p>
+
+<p>Then Talaat made speeches in the House on the food question in which
+he did all in his power to throw dust in the eyes of the starving
+population, but he did not really succeed in blinding anyone as to the
+true state of affairs. In February 1916, when there was practically a
+famine in the land, he even went so far as to declare in Parliament
+that the food supplies for the whole of Turkey had been so increased by
+enormous purchases in Rumania, that they were now fully assured for two
+years.</p>
+
+<p>It was no doubt with cynical enjoyment that the "Committee" of
+the Young Turks enlarged on the privations of the people in such
+publications as the semi-official <i>Tanin</i>, in which the following
+wonderful sentiment appeared: "One can pass the night in relative
+brightness without oil in one's lamp if one thinks of the bright and
+glorious future that this war is preparing for Turkey!"</p>
+
+<p>One could have forgiven such cheap phrases<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> if they had been a true,
+though possibly misguided, attempt to provide comfort in face of real
+want; but at the same time as such paragraphs were appearing in the
+<i>Tanin</i> and thousands of poor Turkish households had to spend the
+long winter nights without the slightest light, thousands of tons of
+oil were lying in Constantinople alone in the stores of the official
+<i>accapareurs</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This brings me to the second series of measures taken by the Turkish
+Government to relieve the economic situation&mdash;those of a negative
+nature. Their positive measures are pretty well exhausted when one has
+mentioned their treatment of the bread crisis.</p>
+
+<p>The question of <i>requisitioning</i> is one of the most important in
+Turkish life in war-time, and is not without its ludicrous side.
+In imitation of German war-time methods, either wrongly understood
+or wittingly misapplied by Oriental greed, the Turkish Government
+requisitioned pretty well everything in the food line or in the
+shape of articles of daily use that were sure to be scarce and would
+necessarily rise in price. But while in the civilised countries of
+Central Europe the supplies so requisitioned were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> sagely applied to
+the general good, the members of the "Committee of Union and Progress"
+looked with fine contempt and the grim cynicism of arch-dictators on
+the privations and sufferings of the people so long as they did not
+actually starve, and used the supplies requisitioned for the personal
+enrichment of their clique.</p>
+
+<p>When I speak of requisitioning, I do not mean the necessary military
+carrying off of grain, cattle, vehicles, buffaloes, and horses, general
+equipment, and so on, in exchange for a scrap of paper to be redeemed
+after the war (of very doubtful value in view of Turkey's position)&mdash;I
+do not mean that, even though the way it was accomplished bled the
+country far more than was necessary, falling as it did in the country
+districts into the hands of ignorant, brutal, and fanatical underlings,
+and in the town being carried out with every kind of refinement
+by the central authorities. Too often it was a means of violent
+"nationalisation" and deprivation of property and rights exercised
+especially against Armenians, Greeks, and subjects of other Entente
+countries. If there was a particularly nice villa or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> handsome estate
+belonging to someone who was not a Turk, soldiers were immediately
+billeted there under some pretext or other, and it was not long before
+these rough Anatolians had reduced everything to rack and ruin.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean either the terrible damage to commercial life brought
+about by the way the military authorities, in complete disregard of
+agricultural interests, were always seizing railway waggons, and so
+completely laming all initiative on the part of farmers and merchants,
+whose goods were usually simply emptied out on the spot, exposed to
+ruin, or disposed of without any kind of compensation being given.</p>
+
+<p>What I do mean is the huge semi-official cornering of food, which must
+be regarded as typical of the Young Turks' idea of their official
+responsibility towards those for whom they exercised stewardship.</p>
+
+<p>The "Bakal Clique" ("provision merchants," "grocers") was known through
+the whole of Constantinople, and was keenly criticised by the much
+injured public. It was, first of all, under the official patronage of
+the city prefect, Ismet Bey, a creature of the Committee; but later
+on, when they realised that dire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> necessity made a continuance of this
+system of cornering quite unthinkable, he was made the scapegoat, and
+his dismissal from office was freely commented on in the Committee
+newspapers as "an act of deliverance." The Committee thought that
+they would thus throw dust in the eyes of the sorely-tried people
+of Constantinople. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish pounds were
+turned into cash in the shortest possible time by this semi-official
+syndicate, at the expense of the starving population, and found their
+way into the pockets of the administrators.</p>
+
+<p>That was how the Young Turkish parvenus were able to fulfil their one
+desire and wriggle their way into the best clubs, where they gambled
+away huge sums of money. The method was simple enough: whatever was
+eatable or useable, but could only be obtained by import from abroad,
+was "taken charge of," and starvation rations, which were simply
+ludicrously inadequate and quite insufficient for the needs of even the
+poorest household, were doled out by "<i>vesikas</i>" (the ticket system).</p>
+
+<p>The great stock of goods, however, was sold secretly at exorbitant
+prices by the creatures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> of the "Bakal Clique," who simply cornered the
+market. That is how it happened that in Constantinople, cut off as it
+was from the outer world and without imports, even at the end of 1916,
+with a population of well over a million, there were still unlimited
+stores of everything available for those who could pay fancy prices,
+while by the beginning of 1915 those less well endowed with worldly
+goods had quite forgotten the meaning of comfort and the poor were
+starving with ample stores of everything still available.</p>
+
+<p>In businesses belonging to enemy subjects the system of requisitioning,
+of course, reached a climax, stores of all kinds worth thousands of
+pounds simply disappearing, without any reason being given for carrying
+them off, and nothing offered in exchange, but one of these famous
+"scraps of paper." Cases have been verified and were freely discussed
+in Pera of ladies' shoes and ladies' clothing even being requisitioned
+and turned into large sums of cash by the consequent rise in price.</p>
+
+<p>The profiteering of Ismet and company, who chose the specially
+productive centre of the capital for their system of usury, was not,
+how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>ever, by any means an isolated case of administrative corruption,
+for exactly the same system of requisitioning, holding up and then
+reselling under private management at as great a profit as possible,
+underlay and underlies the great semi-official Young Turkish commercial
+organisation, with branches throughout the whole country, known as the
+"Djemiet" and under the distinguished patronage of Talaat himself.</p>
+
+<p>After Ismet Bey's fall, the "Djemiet" took over the supplying of the
+capital as well (with the exception of bread). We will speak elsewhere
+of this great organisation, which is established not only for war
+purposes, but serves towards the nationalisation of economic life. So
+far as the system of requisitioning is concerned, it comes into the
+picture through its firm opposition to German merchants who were trying
+to buy up stores of food and raw materials from their ally Turkey.
+The intrigues and counter-intrigues on both sides sometimes had most
+remarkable results.</p>
+
+<p>One of the really bright sides of life in Constantinople in war-time
+was the amusement one extracted from the silent and desperate war<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+continually being waged by the many well-fed gentlemen of the "Z.E.G."
+("<i>Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft</i>," "Central Purchasing Commission") and
+their minions who tried to rob Turkey of foodstuffs and raw material
+for the benefit of Germany, against the "Djemiet" and more particularly
+the Quartermaster-General, Ismail Hakki Pasha, that wooden-legged,
+enormously wealthy representative of the neo-Turkish spirit&mdash;he was the
+most perfect blend of Oriental politeness and narrow-minded decision
+to do exactly the opposite of what he had promised. On the Turkish
+side, the determination to safeguard the interests of the Army, and in
+the case of the "Djemiet" the effort not to let any foodstuffs out of
+Germany&mdash;a standpoint that has at last found expression in a formal
+prohibition of all export&mdash;then the quest of personal enrichment on the
+part of the great "Clique"; on the German side, the insatiable hunger
+for everything Turkey could provide that had been lacking for a long
+time in Germany: the whole thing was a wonderfully variegated picture
+of mutual intrigue.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen of the "Z.E.G.," after months of inactivity spent in
+reviling the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> Turks and studying Young Turkish and other morals and
+manners by frequenting all the pleasure resorts in the place, managed
+at last to get the exports of raw materials set on the right road, and
+so it came about that the fabulous sums in German money that had to be
+put into circulation in payment of these goods, in spite of Turkey's
+indebtedness to Germany, led to a very considerable depreciation in the
+value of the Mark even in Turkey for some time.</p>
+
+<p>But until the understanding as to exports was finally arrived at, there
+were many dramatic events in Constantinople, culminating in the Turks
+re-requisitioning, with the help of armed detachments, stores already
+paid for by Germany and lying in the warehouses of the "Z.E.G." and the
+German Bank!</p>
+
+<p>On the financial side, apart from Turkey's enormous debt to Germany,
+the wonderful attempt at a reform and standardisation of the coinage in
+the middle of May 1916 is worthy of mention. The reform, which was a
+simplification of huge economic value of the tremendously complicated
+money system and introducing a theoretical gold unit, must be re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>garded
+chiefly as a war measure to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkish
+paper money.</p>
+
+<p>This last attempt, as was obvious after a few months' trial, was
+entirely unsuccessful, and even hastened the fall of paper money, for
+the population soon discovered at the back of these drastic measures
+the thinly veiled anxiety of the Government lest there should be a
+further deterioration. Dire punishments, such as the closing down of
+money-changers' businesses and arraignment before a military court
+for the slightest offence, were meted out to anyone found guilty of
+changing gold or even silver for paper.</p>
+
+<p>In November 1916, however, it was an open secret that, in spite of all
+these prohibitions, there was no difficulty in the inland provinces
+and in Syria and Palestine in changing a gold pound for two or more
+paper pounds. In still more unfrequented spots no paper money would
+be accepted, so that the whole trade of the country simply came to a
+standstill. Even in Constantinople at the beginning of December 1916,
+paper stood to gold as 100 to 175.</p>
+
+<p>The Anatolian population still went gaily on, burying all the available
+silver <i>medjidiehs</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in the
+ground, because being simple country folk they could not understand,
+as the Government with all its prayers and threats were so anxious
+they should, that throughout Turkey and in the greater and mightier
+and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed paper money was really
+much better than actual coins, and was just as valuable as gold! The
+people, too, could not but remember what had happened with the "Kaimé"
+after the Turko-Russian war, when thousands who had believed in the
+assurances of the Government suddenly found themselves penniless. In
+Constantinople it was a favourite joke to take one of the new pound,
+half-pound, or quarter-pound notes issued under German paper, not gold,
+guarantee and printed only on one side and say, "This [pointing to the
+right side] is the present value, and that [blank side] will be the
+value on the conclusion of peace."</p>
+
+<p>Even those who were better informed, however, and sat at the receipt of
+custom, did exactly the same as these stupid Anatolian country-people;
+no idea of patriotism prevented them from collecting everything metal
+they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> could lay their hands on, and, in spite of all threats of
+punishment&mdash;which could never overtake them!&mdash;paying the highest price
+in paper money for every gold piece they could get. Their argument was:
+"One must of course have something to live on in the time directly
+following the conclusion of peace." In ordinary trade and commerce,
+filthy, torn paper notes, down to a paper piastre, came more and more
+to be practically the only exchange.</p>
+
+<p>A discerning Turk said to me once: "It would be a very good plan
+sometime to have the police search these great men for bullion every
+evening on their return from the official exchanges. That would be more
+to the point than any reform in the coinage!"</p>
+
+<p>Those who could not get gold, bought roubles, which were regarded as
+one of the very best speculations going, until one day the Turkish
+Government, in their annoyance at some Russian victory, suddenly
+deported to Anatolia a rich Greek banker of the name of Vlasdari, who
+was accused of having speculated in roubles, which of course gave them
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> double benefit of getting rid of a Greek and seizing his beautiful
+estate in Pera.</p>
+
+<p>Only the greatest optimists were deceived into believing that it was a
+profitable transaction to buy Austrian paper money at the fabulously
+low price the Austrian <i>Krone</i> had reached against the Turkish pound,
+which was really neither politically nor financially in any better a
+state. The members of the "Committee of Union and Progress" had of
+course shipped their gold off to Switzerland long ago.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">German propaganda and ethics&mdash;The unsuccessful "Holy War" and the
+German Government&mdash;"The Holy War" a crime against civilisation, a
+chimera, a farce&mdash;Underhand dealings&mdash;The German Embassy the dupe
+of adventurers&mdash;The morality of German Press representatives&mdash;A
+trusty servant of the German Embassy&mdash;Fine official distinctions of
+morality&mdash;The German conception of the rights of individuals.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Now</span> that we have given a rough sketch of the main events of the war
+as it affected the economic life of the people, and have devoted a
+chapter to that sinister crime, the Armenian persecutions, we shall
+leave the Young Turks for a moment and turn to an examination of German
+propaganda methods.</p>
+
+<p>It is a very painful task for a German who does not profess to
+be a "World Politician," but really thinks in terms of true
+"world-politics," to deal with the many intrigues and machinations of
+our Government in their rela<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>tion to the so-called "Holy War" (Arab.
+<i>Djihad</i>), where in their quest of a vain illusion they stooped to
+the very lowest means. Practically all their hopes in that direction
+have been sadly shattered. Their costly, unscrupulous, thoroughly
+unmoral efforts against European civilisation in Mohammedan countries
+have resulted in the terrific counter-stroke of the defection of the
+Arabs and the foundation of a purely Arabian Chaliphate under English
+protection. Thus England has already won a brilliant victory against
+Germany and Turkey in spite of Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara, although
+it seems probable that even these will be wiped out by greater deeds
+on the part of the Entente before long. One could not have a better
+example of Germany's total inability to succeed in the sphere of
+world-politics.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called "Holy War," if it had succeeded, would have been one
+of the greatest crimes against human civilisation that even Germany
+has on her conscience, remembering as we do her recent ruthless
+"frightfulness" at sea, and her attempt to set Mexico and the Japanese
+against the land of most modern civilisation and of greatest liberty.
+A success<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>ful "Djihad" spreading to all the lands of Islam would have
+set back by years all that civilisation so patiently and so painfully
+won; it would not have been at all comparable with the Entente's use
+of coloured troops in Europe which Germany deprecated so loudly, for
+in the Holy War it would have been a case of letting the wildest
+fanaticism loose against the armies of law and order and civilisation;
+in the case of the Entente it was part of a purely military action
+on the part of England and France, who held under their sway all the
+inhabitants, coloured and otherwise, of those Colonial regions from
+which troops were sent to Europe and to which they will return.</p>
+
+<p>But the attempt against colonial civilisation did not succeed. The
+"Djihad," proclaimed as it was by the Turanian pseudo-Chaliph and
+violently anti-Entente, was doomed to failure from the very start
+from its obvious artificiality. It was a miserable farce, or rather a
+tragicomedy, the present ending of which, namely the defection of the
+Arabian Chaliphate, is the direct contrary of what had been aimed at
+with such fanatical urgency and the use of such immoral propaganda.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The attempt to "unloose" the Holy War was due primarily to the most
+absurd illusions. It would seem that in Germany, the land of science,
+the home of so many eminent doctors of research, even the scholars
+have been attacked by that disease of being dazzled by wild political
+illusions, or surely, knowing the countries of Islam outside-in as they
+must, they would long ago have raised their voices against such arrant
+folly. It would seem that all her inherent knowledge, all her studies,
+have been of little or no avail to Germany, so that mistake after
+mistake has been committed in the realm of world politics. It may be
+said that Germany, even if she were doubtful of the issue, should still
+not have left untried this means of crippling her opponents. To that
+I can only reply by pointing to the actual position of affairs, well
+known to Germany, not only in English, but also in French and Russian
+Islamic colonial territory, which should have rendered the "Djihad"
+entirely and absolutely out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take for example Egypt, French North-West Africa, and Russian
+Turkestan, not to speak of the masterly English colonial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> rule in
+India, which has now been tested and tried for centuries. Anyone who
+has ever seen Egypt with the area under culture practically doubled
+under modern English rule by the help of every kind of technical
+contrivance for the betterment of existing conditions, and the skilful
+utilisation of all available means at an expense of millions of pounds,
+with its needy population given an opportunity to earn a living wage
+and even wealth through a lucrative cultivation of the land under
+conditions that are a paradise compared with what they were under the
+Turkish rule of extortion and despotism&mdash;anyone who has seen that
+must have looked from the very beginning with a very doubtful eye on
+Germany's and Turkey's illusions of stirring up these well-doing people
+against their rulers.</p>
+
+<p>The same thing occurs again in the extended territory of North-West
+Africa from the Atlas lands to the Guinea coast and Lake Chad, where
+France, as I know from personal experience, stands on a high level
+of colonial excellence, developing all the resources of the country
+with consummate skill, shaping her "<i>empire colonial</i>" more and more
+into a shining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> gem in the crown of colonial endeavour, and, as I
+can testify from my own observations in Morocco, Senegal, the Niger,
+and the Interior of the Guinea territories of the "A.O.F." (Afrique
+Occidentale Française), capturing the hearts of the whole population by
+her essential culture, and, last but not least, winning the Mohammedans
+by her clever Islam policy.</p>
+
+<p>That, finally, Russia, at any rate from the psychological standpoint,
+is perhaps the best coloniser of Further Asia, even German textbooks
+on colonial policy admit unreservedly, and the glowing conditions that
+she has brought about especially in the basin of Ferghana in Turkestan
+by the introduction of the flourishing and lucrative business of
+cotton-growing are known to everyone. Only politicians of the most
+wildly fantastic type, who see everywhere what they want to see, could
+believe that in this war the Turkish "Turanistic" bait would ever have
+any effect in Russian Central Asia, or make its inhabitants now living
+in security, peace, and well-being wish back again the conditions
+which prevailed under the Emirs of Samarkand, Khiva, and Bokhara. But
+Germany, who should have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> well informed if anyone was, believed
+all these fantastic impossibilities.</p>
+
+<p>One could let it pass with a slight feeling of irritation against
+Germany if it were merely a case of the failure of the "Djihad."
+But unfortunately the propaganda, as stupid as it was unsuccessful,
+exercised in this connection, will be written down for all time as one
+of the blackest and most despicable marks against Germany's account in
+this war. In Turkey alone, the underhand manipulation for the unloosing
+of the "Holy War" and the German Press propaganda so closely allied
+with it, indeed the whole way in which the German cause in the East
+was represented journalistically throughout the war, are subjects full
+of the saddest, most biting irony, to sympathise with which must lower
+every German who has lived in the Turkish capital in the eyes of the
+whole civilised world.</p>
+
+<p>In order to demonstrate the rôle played in this affair by the German
+Embassy at Constantinople I will not make an exhaustive survey but
+simply confine myself to a few episodes and outstanding features. An
+eminent German Red Cross doctor, clear-sighted and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> reliable, who had
+many tales to tell of what he had seen in the "Caucasus" campaign,
+said to me one evening, as we sat together at a promenade concert:
+"Do you see that man in Prussian major's uniform going past? I met
+him twice in Erzerum last winter. The man was nothing but an employee
+in a merchant's business in Baku, and had learnt Russian there. He
+has never done military service. When war broke out, he hurried to
+the Embassy in Pera and offered his services to stir up the Georgians
+and other peoples of the Caucasus against Russia. Of course he got
+full powers to do what he wanted, and guns and ammunition and piles
+of propaganda pamphlets were placed at his disposal so that he might
+carry on his work from the frontier of the then still neutral Turkey.
+Whole chests full of good gold coins were sent to him to be distributed
+confidentially for propaganda purposes; of course he was his own most
+confidential friend! He went back to Erzerum without having won a
+single soul for the cause of the 'Djihad.' That has not prevented his
+living as a 'grand seigneur,' for the Embassy are not yet daunted,
+and now the fellow struts about in a major's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> uniform, lent to him,
+although he has never been a soldier, so that the cause may gain still
+more prestige."</p>
+
+<p>Numerous examples of similar measures might be cited, and instances
+without number given, of the German Embassy being made the dupe of
+greedy adventurers who treated them as an inexhaustible source of gold.
+First one would appear on the scene who announced himself as the one
+man to cope with Afghanistan, then another would come along on his way
+to Persia and play the great man "on a special mission" for a time in
+Pera while money belonging to the German Empire would find its way into
+all sorts of low haunts. And so things went on for two years until,
+with the Arabian catastrophe, even the eyes of the great diplomatic
+optimists of Ayas-Pasha might have been opened.</p>
+
+<p>I will only mention here how even a <i>bona fide</i> connoisseur of the East
+like Baron von Oppenheim, who had already made tours of considerable
+value for research purposes right across the Arabian Peninsula, and so
+should have known better than to share these false illusions, doled
+out thousands of marks from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> own pocket&mdash;and millions from the
+Treasury!&mdash;to stir up the tribes to take part in the "Djihad," and how
+he returned to Pera from his propaganda tour with a real Bedouin beard,
+and, still unabashed, took over the control of the German Embassy's
+"News Bureau," which kept up these much-derided war telegraph and
+picture offices known in Pera and elsewhere by the non-German populace
+as <i>sacs de mensonges</i>, and which flooded the whole of the East with
+waggon loads of pamphlets in every conceivable tongue&mdash;in fact these,
+with guns and ammunition, formed the chief load of the bi-weekly
+"culture-bringing" Balkan train!</p>
+
+<p>I will only cite the one example of the far-famed Mario Passarge&mdash;a
+real <i>Apache</i> to look at. With his friend Frobenius, the ethnographer
+and German agent, well known to me personally from French West
+Africa for his liking for absinthe and negro women and his Teutonic
+brusqueness emphasised in comparison with the kindly, helpful French
+officials, as well as by hearsay from many scandalous tales, Passarge
+undertook that disastrous expedition to the Abyssinians which failed
+so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> lamentably owing to the Italians, and then after its collapse
+came to Turkey as special correspondent of the <i>Vossische Zeitung</i>
+and managed to swindle his way through Macedonia with a false Italian
+passport to Greece, where he wrote sensational reports for his
+wonderful newspaper about the atrocities and low morale of Sarrail's
+army&mdash;the same newspaper that had made itself the laughing-stock of the
+whole of Europe, and at the same time had managed to get the German
+Government to pursue for two years the shadow of a separate peace with
+Russia, by publishing a marvellous series of "Special Reports via
+Stockholm," on conditions in Russia that were nothing but a tissue of
+lies inspired by blind Jewish hate; if a tithe of them had been true,
+Russia would have gone under long ago.</p>
+
+<p>I need not repeat my own opinion on all the machinations of the German
+Embassy, but I will simply give you word for word what a German Press
+agent in Constantinople (I will mention no names) once said to me:
+"It is unbelievable," he declared, "what a mob of low characters
+frequent the German Embassy now. The scum of the earth, people who
+would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> never have dared before the war to have been seen on the
+pavements of Ayas-Pasha, have now free entry. Any day you can see
+some doubtful-looking character accosting the porter at the Embassy,
+whispering something in his ear, and then being ushered down the steps
+to where the propaganda department, the news bureau, has its quarters.
+There he gives wonderful assurances of what he can do, and promises to
+stir up some Mohammedan people for the "Djihad." Then he waits a while
+in the ante-room, and is finally received by the authorities; but the
+next time he comes to the Embassy he walks in through the well-carpeted
+main entrance, and requests an audience with the Ambassador or other
+high official, and we soon find him comfortably equipped and setting
+off on a 'special mission' as the confidential servant of the German
+Embassy." But even the recognition of these truths has not prevented
+this journalist from eating from the crib of the German Embassy!</p>
+
+<p>I cannot leave this disagreeable subject without making some mention
+of a type that does more than anything to throw light on the morale of
+this German propaganda. Every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>one in Constantinople knows&mdash;or rather
+knew, for he has now feathered his nest comfortably and departed to
+Germany with his money&mdash;Mehmed Zekki "Bey," the publisher and chief
+editor of the military paper <i>Die Nationalverteidigung</i> and its
+counterpart <i>La Défense</i>, published daily in French but representative
+of Young Turkish-German interests. Hundreds of those who know Zekki
+also know that he used to be called "Capitaine Nelken y Waldberg."
+Fewer know that "Nelken" alone would have been more in accordance with
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>I will relate the history of this individual, as I know it from the
+mouths of reliable informants&mdash;the members of the Embassy and the
+Consulate. Nelken, a Roumanian Jew, a shopkeeper by trade, had been
+several times in prison for bankruptcy and fraud, and at last fled from
+Roumania. He took refuge in the Turkish capital, where he continued
+his business and married a Greek wife. Here again he became bankrupt,
+as is only too clear from the public notice of restoration in the
+Constantinople newspapers, when his lucrative political activity as the
+champion of Krupp's, of the German cause and "the holy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> German war,"
+as much a purely pan-Germanic as Islamic affair, provided him with the
+wherewithal to pay off his former disreputable debts.</p>
+
+<p>To go back to his history&mdash;with money won by fraud in his pocket, he
+deserted his wife and went off, no doubt having made a thorough and
+most professional study of the subject in the low haunts of Pera,
+as a white-slave trader to the Argentine, and then&mdash;I rely for my
+information on an official of the German Consulate in Pera&mdash;set up as
+proprietor of a brothel in Buenos Ayres. Then, as often happens, the
+Argentine special police took him into their service, thinking, on the
+principle of "setting a thief to catch a thief," that he would have
+special experience for the post. Grounds enough there for him to add
+on the second name of his falsified passport "Nelken y Waldberg" and
+to call himself in Europe a "Capitaine de la Gendarmerie" from the
+Argentine.</p>
+
+<p>From there he went to Cairo and edited a little private paper called
+<i>Les Petites Nouvelles Egyptiennes</i>. For repeated extortion he was
+sentenced to one year's imprisonment, but unfortunately only <i>in
+contumaciam</i>, for he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> had already fled the country, not, however,
+before he had been publicly smacked on the face in the "Flasch"
+beer garden without offering satisfaction as an "Argentine General"
+should&mdash;a performance that was later repeated in every detail in
+Toklian's Restaurant in Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>He told me once that he had been sentenced in this way because, on
+an understanding with the then German Diplomatic Agent in Cairo, von
+Miquel, he had attacked Lord Cromer's policy sharply, and that his
+patron von Miquel had given him the timely hint to leave Egypt. I
+will leave it to one's imagination to discover how much truth there
+was in this former brothel-keeper's connection with official German
+"world-politics" and high diplomacy. From what I have seen personally
+since, I believe that Zekki, alias Nelken, was probably speaking the
+truth in this case, although it is certainly a fact that in German
+circles in Cairo at that time ordinary extortion was recognised as
+being punishable by imprisonment for a considerable length of time.</p>
+
+<p>Nelken then returned to Constantinople and devoted himself with
+unflagging energy to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> his previous business of agent. He turned to
+the Islamic faith and became a citizen of the Ottoman Empire because
+he found it more profitable so to do, and could thus escape from his
+former liabilities. Then in spite of lack of means, he managed to found
+a military newspaper, which, however, soon petered out. Nelken became
+Mehmed Zekki and a journalist, and of course called himself "Bey."</p>
+
+<p>Up to this point the history of this individual is nothing but a
+characteristic extract from life as it is lived by hundreds of rogues
+in the East. But now we come to something which is almost unbelievable
+and which leads me to give credence to his version of his relations
+with von Miquel, which after all only shows more clearly than ever that
+German "world-politics" are not above making use of the scum of the
+earth for their intrigues. In full knowledge of this man's whole black
+past&mdash;as Dr. Weber of the German Embassy himself told me&mdash;the German
+Embassy with the sanction of the Imperial Government (this I know from
+letters Zekki showed me in great glee from the Foreign Office and the
+War Office) appointed this fellow, whom all Pera said they would not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+touch with gloves on or with the tongs, to be their confidential agent
+with a large monthly honorarium and to become a pillar of "the German
+cause" in the East. And it could not even be said in extenuation that
+the man had any great desire or any wonderful vocation to represent
+Germany, for&mdash;as the Embassy official said to me&mdash;"We knew that Zekki
+was a dangerous character and rather inclined to the Entente at the
+outbreak of war, so we decided to win him over by giving him a salary
+rather than drive him into the enemy's camp." So it simply comes to
+this, that Germany buys a bankrupt, a blackmailer, a procurer, a
+brothel-keeper with cash to fight her "Holy War" for her!</p>
+
+<p>As publisher of the <i>Défense</i> Zekki received a large salary from
+Germany, one from Austria, afterwards cut down not from any excess of
+moral sense, but simply from excess of economy, and a very considerable
+sum from Krupp's. As representative of German interests he did all he
+could to propitiate the Young Turks by the most fulsome flattery, and
+more recently he was pushing hard to get on the Committee of Union and
+Progress. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Turks jibbed at what the German Embassy had brought
+on themselves&mdash;seeing Zekki "Bey" moving about their sacred halls with
+the most imposing nonchalance and condescension. Zekki himself once
+complained to me bitterly that in spite of his having presented Enver
+Pasha with a valuable clock worth eighty Turkish pounds which Enver
+had accepted with pleasure, he would not even answer a written request
+from Zekki craving an audience with him. (This, incidentally, is a most
+excellent example of the working of Enver's mind, a megalomaniac as
+greedy as he was proud.)</p>
+
+<p>The military director of the Turkish Press said to me once: "We
+are only waiting for the first 'gaffe' in his paper to get this
+filthy creature hunted out of his lair," and one day when through
+carelessness a small uncensored and really quite harmless military
+notice appeared in print (everything is submitted to the censor),
+the Turkish Government gave it short shrift indeed, and banned <i>sine
+die</i> this "Ottoman" paper which lived by Krupp and the German trade
+advertisements, and had become an advocate of the German Embassy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+because it was paid in good solid cash for it. The paper was replaced
+by a new one in Turkish hands, called <i>Le Soir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I could go on talking for ages from most intimate personal knowledge
+about this man, superb in his own way. His doings were not without
+a certain comic side which amused while it aggravated one. I could
+mention, for example, his great lawsuit in Germany in 1916, in which he
+brought an accusation of libel against some German who had called him a
+blackmailer and a criminal who had been repeatedly punished. He managed
+to win the lawsuit&mdash;that is, the defenders had to pay a fine of twenty
+marks, because the evidence brought against Zekki could not be followed
+up to Egypt on account of England's supremacy on the sea, and also no
+doubt because the interests of Krupp and the German Embassy could not
+have this cherished blossom of German propaganda disturbed! So for him
+at any rate the lack of "freedom of the seas" he had so often raged
+about in his leading articles was a very appreciable advantage.</p>
+
+<p>The last time I remember seeing the man he was engaged in an earnest
+<i>tête-à-tête</i> about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> propagation of German political interests by
+means of arms with the Nationalist Reichstag deputy, Dr. Streesemann, a
+representative of the German heavy goods trade and of German jingoism
+who had hastened to Constantinople for the furtherance of German
+culture. Most significantly, no doubt in remembrance of his days in
+Buenos Ayres, Zekki had chosen for this interview the most private room
+of the Hôtel Moderne, a pension with a bar where sect could be had;
+and the worthy representative of the German people, probably nothing
+loth to have a change from his eternal "Pan-German" diet, accepted his
+invitation with alacrity. I followed the two gentlemen to make my own
+investigations, and I certainly got as much amusement, although in a
+different sense, as one usually does in such haunts. It was really
+most entertaining to watch Nelken the ex-Jew and Young Turk, with his
+fez on his head, nodding jovially to all the German officers at the
+neighbouring tables, and settling the affairs of the realm with this
+Pan-German representative of the people.</p>
+
+<p>I trust my readers will forgive me if, in spite of the distaste I
+feel at having to write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> this unsavoury chapter about German Press
+representatives and those in high diplomatic authority who commission
+them, I relate one more episode of a like character before I close.
+One of these writers employed in the service of the German Embassy had
+done one of his female employees an injury which cannot be repeated
+here. His colleague&mdash;out of professional jealousy, the other said&mdash;gave
+evidence against him under oath at the German Consulate, and the other
+brought a charge of perjury against him. The German Consulate, in order
+not to lose such a trusty champion of the German cause for a trifle
+like the wounded honour of a mere woman&mdash;an Armenian to boot!&mdash;simply
+suppressed the whole case, although all Pera was speaking about it.</p>
+
+<p>Against this we have the case later on of a German journalist, most
+jealous of German interests, who had a highly important document
+stolen out of his desk with false keys by one of his clerks in the pay
+of the Young Turkish Committee. The document was the copy of a very
+confidential report addressed to high official quarters in Germany, in
+which there were some rather more uncomplimentary re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>marks about Enver
+and Talaat than appeared in the version for public consumption. An
+Embassy less notoriously cowardly than the German one would simply have
+shielded their man in consideration of the fact that the report was
+never meant for publication and of the reprehensible way it had been
+stolen and made public. But our chicken-hearted diplomats allowed him
+to be dismissed in disgrace by the Turks, and so practically gave their
+official sanction to the meanest Oriental methods of espionage.</p>
+
+<p>I have, however, now come to the conclusion from information I have
+received that German cowardice in this case probably had a background
+of hypocrisy and malice, for this same journalist had spoken with
+remarkable freedom, not indeed as a pro-Englander, but in contrast
+to German and Turkish narrow-mindedness, of how well he had been
+treated by the English authorities, and particularly General Maxwell
+in the exercise of his profession in Cairo, where he had been allowed
+for fully five weeks, after the outbreak of war, to edit a German
+newspaper. (I have seen the numbers myself and wondered at the al<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>most
+incredible liberality of the English censorship.) Instead of being sent
+to Malta he had been treated most fairly and kindly and given every
+opportunity to get away safely to Syria. Of course the narration of
+events like these were rather out of place in our "God Punish England"
+time, and it was no doubt on account of this, apart from all cowardice,
+that the German Embassy made their fine distinctions between personal
+and political morality in the case of their Press representative.</p>
+
+<p>We have spoken of German propaganda for the "Holy War," as carried
+out by individuals as well as by pamphlets and the Press. The Turkish
+capital saw a very appreciable amount of this in the shape of wandering
+adventurers and printed paper. Several thousand Algerian, Tunisian,
+French West African, Russian Tartar, and Turkestan prisoners of war
+of Mohammedan religion from the German internment camps were kept for
+weeks in Pera and urged by the German Government in defiance of all the
+laws of the peoples to join the "Djihad" against their own rulers.</p>
+
+<p>They were told that they would have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> great honour of being
+presented to the Caliph in Stamboul; as devout Mohammedans they could
+of course not find much to object to in that. A wonderfully attractive
+picture was painted for them of the delights of settling in the
+flourishing lands of the East, and living free of expense instead of
+starving in prison under the rod of German non-commissioned officers
+till the far-distant conclusion of peace. One can well imagine how such
+marvellous conjuring tricks would appeal to these poor fellows.</p>
+
+<p>They have repeatedly told me that they had been promised to be allowed
+to settle in Turkey without any mention being made of using them
+again as soldiers. But once on the way to Constantinople there was no
+further question of asking them what their opinion was of what was
+being done to them. They were simply treated as Turkish voluntary
+soldiers and sent off to the Front, to Armenia, and the Irak. How far
+they were used as real front-line soldiers or in service behind the
+lines I do not know; what I do know is that they left Constantinople
+in as great numbers as they came from Germany, armed with rifles and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+fully equipped for service in the field. One can therefore guess how
+many of them became "settlers" as they had been promised. Several days
+running in the early summer of 1916 I saw them being marched off in
+the direction of the Haidar-Pasha station on the Anatolian Railway.
+They were headed by a Turkish band, but on not one single face of all
+these serried ranks did I see the slightest spark of enthusiasm, and
+the German soldiers and officers escorting each separate section were
+not exactly calculated to leave the impression with the public that
+these were zealots fighting voluntarily for their faith who could not
+get fast enough out to the Front to be shot or hanged by their former
+masters!</p>
+
+<p>In her system of recruiting in the newly founded kingdom of Poland,
+Germany demonstrated even more clearly of what she was capable in this
+direction.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">Young Turkish nationalism&mdash;One-sided abolition of
+capitulations&mdash;Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation&mdash;Abolition of
+foreign languages&mdash;German simplicity&mdash;The Turkification of commercial
+life&mdash;Unmistakable intellectual improvement as a result of the
+war&mdash;Trade policy and customs tariff&mdash;National production&mdash;The
+founding of new businesses in Turkey&mdash;Germany supplanted&mdash;German
+starvation&mdash;Capitulations or full European control?&mdash;The colonisation
+and forcible Turkification of Anatolia&mdash;"The properties of people who
+have been dispatched elsewhere"&mdash;The "Mohadjirs"&mdash;Greek persecutions
+just before the Great War&mdash;The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus
+of the Ottoman Empire&mdash;Turkey finds herself at last&mdash;Anatolian
+dirt and decay&mdash;The "Greater Turkey" and the purely Turkish
+Turkey&mdash;Cleavage or concentration?</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">From</span> the Germans we now turn again to the Turks, to try to fathom
+the exact mentality of the Young Turks during the great war, and
+to discover what were the intellectual sources for their various
+activities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To give a better idea of the whole position I will just preface my
+remarks by stating a few of the outstanding features of the present
+Young Turkish Government and their dependents. Their first and chief
+characteristic is <i>hostility to foreigners</i>, but this does not prevent
+them from making every possible use of their ally Germany, or from
+appropriating in every walk of life anything European, be it a matter
+of technical skill, government, civilisation, that they consider might
+be profitable. Secondly they are possessed of an unbounded store of
+<i>jingoism</i>, which has its origin in <i>Pan-Turkism</i> with its ruling idea
+of "Turanism." Pan-Turkism, which seems to be the governing passion of
+all the leading men of the day, finds expression in two directions.
+Outwardly it is a constant striving for a "Greater Turkey," a movement
+that for a large part in its essence, and certainly in its territorial
+aims, runs parallel with the "Holy War"; inwardly it is a fanatical
+desire for a general Turkification which finds outlet in political
+nationalistic measures, some of criminal barbarity, others partaking of
+the nature of modern reforms, beginning with the language regulations
+and "in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>ternal colonisation" and ending in the Armenian persecutions.</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of note that of the two intellectual sources of the "Holy
+War," namely Turanism&mdash;which one might reverse and call an extended
+form of Old-Turkism&mdash;and Pan-Islamism, the men of the "Committee for
+Unity and Progress" have only made logical though unsuccessful use
+of the former, although theoretically speaking they recognise the
+value of the latter as well. While Turkish race-fanaticism, which
+finds practical outlet in Turanistic ideas, is still the intellectual
+backbone of official Turkey to-day and has to be broken by the present
+war, the Young Turkish Islam policy is already completely bankrupt and
+can therefore be studied here dispassionately in all its aspects. We
+propose to treat the matter in some detail.</p>
+
+<p>All New-Turkish Nationalistic efforts at emancipation had as first
+principle the abolition of Capitulations. The whole Young Turkish
+period we have here under review is therefore to be dated from that
+day, shortly before Turkey's entry into the war, when that injunction
+was flung overboard which Europe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> had anxiously placed for the
+protection of the interests of Europeans on a State but too little
+civilised. It was Turkey herself that did this after having curtly
+refused the Entente offer to remove the Capitulations as a reward for
+Turkey's remaining neutral. Germany, who was equally interested in
+the existence or non-existence of Capitulations, never mentioned this
+painful subject to her ally for a very long time, and it was 1916
+before she formally recognised the abolition of Capitulations, long
+after she had lost all hold on Turkey in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>As early as summer 1915 there were clear outward indications in the
+streets of Constantinople of a smouldering Nationalism ready to break
+out at any moment. Turkey, under the leadership of Talaat Bey, pursued
+her course along the well-trodden paths, and the first sphere in which
+there was evidence of an attempt at forcible Turkification was the
+language. Somewhere toward the end of 1915 Talaat suddenly ordered the
+removal of all French and English inscriptions, shop signs, etc., even
+in the middle of European Pera. In tramcars and at stopping-places the
+French<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> text was blocked out; boards with public police warnings in
+French were either removed altogether or replaced by unreadable Turkish
+scrawls; the street indications were simply abolished. The authorities
+apparently thought it preferable that the Levantine public should get
+into the wrong tramcar, should break their legs getting out, pick
+flowers in the parks and wander round helplessly in a maze of unnamed
+streets rather than that the spirit of forcible Turkification should
+make even the least sacrifice to comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Of the thousand inhabitants of Pera, not ten can read Turkish; but
+under the pressure of the official order and for fear of brutal assault
+or some kind of underhand treatment in case of non-compliance, the
+inhabitants really surpassed themselves, and before one could turn,
+all the names over the shops had been painted over and replaced by
+wonderful Turkish characters that looked like decorative shields or
+something of the kind painted in the red and white of the national
+colours. If one had not noted the entrance to the shop and the look of
+the window very carefully, one might wander helplessly up and down the
+Grand Rue de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Péra if one wanted to buy something in a particular shop.</p>
+
+<p>But the German, as simple-minded as ever where political matters
+were concerned, was highly delighted in spite of the extraordinary
+difficulty of communal life. "Away with French and English," he would
+shout. "God punish England; hurrah, our Turkish brothers are helping us
+and favouring the extension of the German language!"</p>
+
+<p>The answer to these pan-German expansion politicians and language
+fanatics, whose spiritual home was round the beer-tables of the
+"Teutonia," was provided by a second decree of Talaat's some weeks
+later when all German notices had to disappear. A few, who would not
+believe the order, held out obstinately, and the signs remained in
+German till they were either supplemented in 1916, on a very clear
+hint from Stamboul, by the obligatory Turkish language or later
+quite supplanted. It was not till some time after the German had
+disappeared&mdash;and this is worthy of note&mdash;that the Greek signs ceased to
+exist. Greek had been up to that time the most used tongue and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> was the
+commercial language of the Armenians.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the famous language regulations, which even went so far&mdash;with
+a year of grace granted owing to the extraordinary difficulties of
+the Turkish script&mdash;as to decree that in the offices of all trade
+undertakings of any public interest whatsoever, such as banks,
+newspapers, transport agencies, etc., the Turkish language should be
+used exclusively for book-keeping and any written communication with
+customers. One can imagine the "Osmanic Lloyd" and the "German Bank"
+with Turkish book-keeping and Turkish letters written to an exclusively
+European clientèle! Old and trusty employees suddenly found themselves
+faced with the choice of learning the difficult Turkish script or being
+turned out in a year's time. The possibility&mdash;indeed, the necessity&mdash;of
+employing Turkish hands in European businesses suddenly came within
+the range of practical politics&mdash;and that was exactly what the Turkish
+Government wanted.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangement had not yet come into operation when I left
+Constantinople, but it was hanging like the sword of Damocles over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+commercial undertakings that had hitherto been purely German. Optimists
+still hoped it never would come to this pass and would have welcomed
+any political-military blow that would put a damper on Turkey's
+arrogance. Others, believing firmly in a final Turkish victory, began
+to learn Turkish feverishly. Be that as it may, the new arrangements
+were hung up on the walls of all offices in the summer of 1916 and
+created confusion enough.</p>
+
+<p>Many other measures for the systematic Turkification of commercial life
+and public intercourse followed hard on this first bold step, which I
+need scarcely mention here. And in spite of the ever-growing number of
+German officials in the different ministries, partly foisted on the
+Turkish Government by the German authorities, partly gladly accepted
+for the moment because the Turks had still much to learn from German
+organisation and could profit from employing Germans, in spite of the
+appointment of a number of German professors to the Turkish University
+of Stamboul (who, however, as a matter of fact, like the German
+Government officials, had to wear the fez and learn Turkish within a
+year, and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>sides roused most unfavourable and anti-German comment
+in the newspapers), it was soon perfectly evident to every unbiased
+witness that Germany would find no place in a victorious Turkey after
+the war if the "Committee for Union and Progress" did not need her.
+Some sort of light must surely have broken over the last blind optimism
+of the Germans in the course of the summer of 1916.</p>
+
+<p>Hand in hand with the nationalistic attempt to coerce European
+businesses into using the Turkish language there went more practical
+attempts to turkify all the important branches of commerce by the
+founding of indigenous organisations and the introduction of reforms
+of more material content than those language decrees. These efforts,
+in spite of the enormous absorption of all intellectual capabilities
+and energies in war and the clash of arms, were expressed with a truly
+marvellous directness of aim, and, from the national standpoint, a
+truly commendable magnificence of conception.</p>
+
+<p>This latter has indeed never been lacking as a progressive ethnic
+factor in Turkish politics. The Turks have a wonderful understanding,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+too, of the importance of social problems, or at least, as a sovereign
+people, they feel instinctively what in a social connection will
+further their sovereignty. The war with its enormous intellectual
+activity has certainly brought all the political and economic resources
+of the Turks&mdash;including the Young Turkish Government&mdash;to the highest
+possible stage of development, and we ought not to be surprised if
+we often find that measures, whether of a beneficent or injurious
+character, are not lacking in modern exactness, clever technicality,
+and thoroughness of conception. Without anticipating, I should just
+like to note here how this change appears to affect the war. No one
+can doubt that it will enormously intensify zeal in the fight for
+the existence of the Turkey of the future, freed from its jingoistic
+outgrowths, once more come to its senses and confined to its own proper
+sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of the Empire. But, on the other
+hand, iron might and determined warfare against this misguided State
+are needed to root out false and harmful ideas.</p>
+
+<p>If, after this slight digression, we glance for a moment at the
+practical measures for a com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>plete Turkification of Turkey, the
+economic efforts at emancipation and the civic reforms carried
+through, we find first of all that the new Turkey, when she had thrown
+the Capitulations overboard, then proceeded to emancipate herself
+completely from European supervision in the realm of trade and commerce.</p>
+
+<p>A very considerable step in advance in the way of Turkish sovereignty
+and Turkish economic patriotism was the organisation and&mdash;since
+September 1916&mdash;execution of the neo-Turkish autonomic customs tariff,
+which with one blow gives Turkish finances what the Government formerly
+managed to extract painfully from the Great Powers bit by bit, by
+fair means or foul, at intervals of many years, and which with its
+hard-and-fast scale of taxes&mdash;which there appears to be no inclination
+in political circles at the moment to modify by trade treaties!&mdash;means
+an exceedingly adequate protection of Turkey's national productions,
+without any reference whatever to the export interests of her allies,
+and is a very strong inducement to the renaissance of at any rate the
+most important national industries. The far-flung net of the "Djemiet"
+(whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> acquaintance we have already made in another connection),
+that purely Turkish commercial undertaking with Talaat Bey at its
+head, regulating everything as it did, taking everything into its own
+hands, from the realising of the products of the Anatolian farmers
+(and incidentally bringing it about that their ally Germany had to pay
+heavily and always in cash, even although the Government itself owed
+millions, to Germany and got everything on credit from flour out of
+Roumania to paper for their journals) to the most difficult rationing
+of towns, forms a foundation for the nationalising of economic life of
+the very greatest importance.</p>
+
+<p>The establishment of purely Turkish trade and transport companies,
+often with pensioned Ministers as directors and principal shareholders,
+and the new language regulations and other privileges will soon cut the
+ground away from under the feet of European concerns. Able assistance
+is given in this direction by the <i>Tanin</i> and the <i>Hilal</i> (the
+"Crescent"), the newly founded "Committee" paper in the French language
+(when it is a question of the official influencing of public opinion
+in Euro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>pean and Levantine quarters, exceptions can be made even in
+language fanaticism!) in which a series of articles invariably appear
+at the founding of each new company praising the patriotic zeal of the
+founders.</p>
+
+<p>Then again there are the increasingly thinly veiled efforts to
+establish a purely Turkish national banking system. Quite lately there
+has been a movement in favour of founding a Turkish National Bank with
+the object of supplanting the much-hated "Deutsche Bank" in spite of
+the credit it always gives, and that international and preponderatingly
+French institution, the "Banque Impériale Ottomane," which had already
+simply been sequestrated without more ado.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks have decided, too, that the mines are to be nationalised, and
+Turkish companies have already been formed, without capital it is true,
+to work the mines after the war. The same applies to the railways&mdash;in
+spite of the fine German plans for the Baghdad Railway.</p>
+
+<p>All these wonderful efforts at emancipation are perfectly justified
+from the patriotic point of view, and are so many blows dealt at
+Germany, who, quite apart from Rohrbach's <i>Welt</i>-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span><i>politik</i>, had at
+least hoped to find a lucrative field of privileged commercial activity
+in the country of her close and devoted allies the Turks. It is of
+supreme significance that while the war is still at its height, while
+the Empire of the Sultan is defending its very existence at the gates
+of the capital with German arms and German money, there is manifested
+with the most startling clearness the failure of German policy, the
+endangering of all these German "vital interests" in Turkey which
+according to Pan-German and Imperialistic views were one of the most
+important stakes to be won by wantonly letting loose this criminal war
+on Europe.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt many a German was only too well aware of the fact that in
+this Turkey suddenly roused by the war all the ground had been lost
+that he had built on with such profit before, and many an anxious face
+did one see in German circles in Constantinople. I need not tarry here
+over the drastic comments I heard from so many German merchants on
+this subject. They show a most curious state of mind on the part of
+those who had formerly, in their quest for gain and nothing but gain,
+profited in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> true parasitical fashion from the financial benefits of
+the Capitulations and had seen nothing but the money side of this
+arrangement which was, after all, entered into for other purposes. It
+was no rare thing and no paradox to find a German company director say,
+as I heard one say: "If things went against Turkey to-day, I would
+willingly shoulder my gun, old man as I am."</p>
+
+<p>No thinking man will expend too much grief over the ruthless abolition
+of the Capitulations, for they were unmoral and gave too much
+opportunity to parasites and rogues, while they were quite inadequate
+to protect the interests of civilisation. They may have sufficed in
+the time of Abdul-Hamid, who was easily frightened off and was always
+sensible and polite in his dealings with Europe. For the Turkey of
+Enver and Talaat quite other measures are needed. One must, according
+to one's political standpoint, either recognise and accept their
+nationalistic programme of emancipation or combat it forcibly by
+introducing full European control. And however willing one may be
+to let foreign nations develop in their own particular way and work
+out their own salva<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>tion, one's standpoint with regard to a State so
+behindhand, so fanatical, so misguided as Turkey can be but one: the
+introduction and continuation at all costs of whatever guarantees
+the best protection to European civilisation in this land of such
+importance culturally and historically.</p>
+
+<p>Not only were Europeans, but the natives themselves, affected by the
+series of measures that one might class together under the heading of
+Turkish Internal Colonisation and the Nationalising of Anatolia. The
+programme of the Young Turks was not only a "Greater Turkey," but above
+all a purely Turkish Turkey; and if the former showed signs of failing
+because they had over-estimated their powers and their chances in the
+war or had employed wrong methods, there was nothing at all to hinder
+a sovereign Government from striving all the more ruthlessly to gain
+their second point.</p>
+
+<p>The way this Turkification of Anatolia was carried on was certainly
+not lacking in thoroughness, like all their nationalistic efforts. The
+best means that lay to hand were the frightful Armenian persecutions
+which af<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>fected a wonderful clearance among the population. "The
+properties of persons who have been dispatched elsewhere" within the
+meaning of the Provisory Bill were either distributed free or sold
+for a mere song to anyone who applied to the Committee for them and
+proved themselves of the same political persuasion or of pure Turkish
+or preponderatingly Turkish nationality. The rent was often fixed
+as low as 30 piastres a month (about 5<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i>) for officials and
+retired military men. In the case of the latter, Enver Pasha thought
+this an excellent opportunity for getting rid, through the medium of a
+kindly invitation to settle in the Interior, of those who worried him
+by their dissatisfaction with his system and who might have prepared
+difficulties for him. This "settling" was carried out with the greatest
+zeal in the exceptionally flourishing and fruitful districts of Brussa,
+Smyrna-Aidin, Eskishehir, Adabazar, Angora, and Adana, where Armenians
+and Greeks had played such a great, and, to the Turks, unpopular part
+as pioneers of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>The semi-official articles in the <i>Tanin</i> were perfectly right in
+praising the local authorities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> who in contrast with their former
+indifference and ignorance "had now fully recognised the great national
+importance of internal colonisation and the settling of Mohadjirs
+(emigrants from the lost Turkish territory in Bosnia, Macedonia,
+Thrace, etc.) in the country." There is nothing to be said in favour
+of the stupid, unprogressive character of the Anatolian as contrasted
+with the strength, physical endurance, intelligence, and mobility of
+these emigrants. The latter had also, generally speaking, lived in more
+highly developed districts.</p>
+
+<p>The great drawback of the Mohadjirs, however, is their instability,
+their idleness and love of wandering, their frivolity, and their
+extraordinary fanaticism. As faithful Mohammedans following the
+standard of their Padishah and leaving the parts of the country
+that had fallen under Christian rule, they seemed to think they
+were justified in behaving like spoilt children towards the native
+population. They treated them with ruthless disregard, they were
+bumptious, and, if their new neighbours were Greek or Armenian, they
+inclined to use force, a proceeding which was always possible because
+the Government did not take away <i>their</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> firearms and were even known
+to have doled them out to stir up unrest. It has occurred more than
+once that Mohadjirs have crossed swords even with Turkish Anatolians
+living peacefully in their own villages. One can then easily imagine
+how much more the heretic <i>giaurs</i> ("Christian dogs," "unclean men")
+had to suffer at their hands.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to say a word here about these Greek persecutions in
+Thrace and Western Anatolia that have become notorious throughout the
+whole of Europe. They took place just before the outbreak of war, and
+cost thousands of peaceful Greeks&mdash;men, women, and children-their
+lives, and reduced to ashes dozens of flourishing villages and towns.
+At the time of the murder of Sarajevo, I happened to be staying in
+the vilajet of Aidin, in Smyrna and the <i>Hinterland</i>, and saw with
+my own eyes such shameful deeds as must infuriate anyone against the
+Turkish Government that aids and abets such barbarity&mdash;from old women
+being driven along by a dozen Mohadjirs and dissipated soldiers to the
+smoking ruins of Phocæa.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone at that time, at any rate in Smyr<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>na, expected the immediate
+outbreak of a new Græco-Turkish war, and perhaps the only thing
+that prevented it was the method of procrastination adopted by both
+sides, for both were waiting for the Dreadnoughts they had ordered,
+until finally these smaller clouds were swallowed up in the mighty
+thunder-cloud gathering on the European horizon. Only the extreme speed
+with which one dramatic event followed another, and my own mobilisation
+which precluded my writing anything of a political nature, prevented me
+on that occasion from giving my sinister impressions of Young Turkish
+jingoism and Mohadjir brutality. Even if I had been able to write what
+I thought it is extremely doubtful if it would ever have seen the
+light of day, for the German papers were but little inclined, as I had
+opportunity of discovering personally, to say anything unpleasant about
+the Young Turkish Government, whose help they were already reckoning
+on, and preferred rather to behave in a most un-neutral manner and keep
+absolutely silent about all the ill-treatment and abuse that had been
+meted out to Greece. But I remembered these scenes most opportunely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+later, and that visit of mine to Western Anatolia was certainly most
+useful in increasing my knowledge of Young Turkish methods of "internal
+colonisation."</p>
+
+<p>But all the methods used are by no means forcible. Attempts are now
+being made&mdash;and this again is most significant for the spirit of the
+newest Young Turkish era&mdash;to gain a footing in the world of science
+as opposed to force, and so to be able to carry out their measures
+more systematically and give them the appearance of beneficent modern
+social reforms. So it comes about that the Turkish idea of penetrating
+and "cleaning-up" Anatolia finds practical expression on the one hand
+in exterminating and robbing the Christian population, while on the
+other it inclines to efforts which in time may work out to be a real
+blessing. The common principle underlying both is Nationalism.</p>
+
+<p>Anatolia was suddenly "discovered." At long length the Young Turkish
+Government, roused intellectually and patriotically by the war and
+brought to their senses by the terrible loss of human life entailed,
+suddenly realised the enormous national importance of Anatolia,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> that
+hitherto much-neglected nucleus of the Ottoman Empire. Under the
+spiritual inspiration of Mehmed Emin, the national poet of Anatolian
+birth whose poems with their sympathy of outlook and noble simplicity
+of form make such a warm-hearted and successful appeal to the best
+kind of patriotism, men have begun since 1916, even in the circles of
+the arrogant "Stambul Effendi," to take an interest in the <i>kaba türk</i>
+(uncouth Turk), the Anatolian peasant, his needs and his standard of
+civilisation. The real, needy, primitive Turk of the Interior has
+suddenly become the general favourite.</p>
+
+<p>A whole series of most remarkable lectures was delivered publicly in
+the <i>Türk Odjaghi</i>, under the auspices of the Committee, by doctors,
+social politicians, and political economists, and these were reported
+and discussed at great length in all the Turkish newspapers. Their
+subject was the incredible destitution in Anatolia, the devastation
+wrought by syphilis, malaria, and other terrible dirt diseases,
+abortions as a result of hopeless poverty, the lack of men as a result
+of constant military service<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> in many wars, and they called for
+immediate and drastic reforms.</p>
+
+<p>It is with the greatest pleasure that I acknowledge that this first
+late step on the way of improvement, this self-knowledge, which
+appeals to me more thoroughly than anything else I saw in Turkey, is
+probably really the beginning of a happier era for that beautiful land
+of Anatolia, so capable of development but so cruelly neglected. For
+one can no longer doubt that the Government has the real intention of
+carrying out actual reforms, for they must be only too well aware that
+the strengthening and healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Turkish
+race, is absolutely essential for any Turkish mastery, and is the very
+first necessity for the successful carrying out of more far-reaching
+national exertions. With truly modern realisation of the needs of
+the case, directly after Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey's first compelling
+lecture, different local government officials, especially the Vali
+of the Vilajet of Kastamuni, which was notorious for its syphilis
+epidemics, made unprecedented efforts to improve the terrible hygienic
+conditions then reigning. Let us hope that such ef<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>forts will bear
+fruit. But this will probably only be the case to any measurable extent
+later, after the war, when Turkey will find herself really confined to
+Anatolia, and will have time and strength for positive social work.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime I cannot get rid of the uneasy impression that this
+"discovery" of Anatolia and zealous Turkish social politics are no more
+than a cleverly worked excuse on the part of the Government for further
+measures of Turkification, and the cloven hoof is unfortunately only
+too apparent in all this seemingly noble effort on the part of the
+Committee. One hears and sees daily the methods that go hand in hand
+with this official pushing into the foreground of the great importance
+of the purely Turkish elements in Anatolia&mdash;Armenian persecutions,
+trickery, expropriations carried out against Greeks, the yielding up
+of flourishing districts to quarrelsome Mohadjirs. So long as the
+Turkish Government fancy themselves conquerors in the great war, so
+long as they pursue the shadow of a "Greater Turkey," so long as Turkey
+continues to dissipate her forces she will not accomplish much for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+Anatolia, in spite of her awakening and her real desire for reform.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in this discovery of Anatolia, in this desire to put an end to
+traditional destitution, this recognition of the real import of even
+the poorest, most primitive, dullest peasant peoples in the undeveloped
+Interior, so long as they are of Turkish race, in this sudden flood
+of learned eloquence over the needs and the true inner worth of these
+miserable neglected Turkish peasants, in this pressing demand for
+thorough reforms for the economic and social strengthening of this
+element&mdash;measures which with the present ruling spirit of jingoism
+in the Government threaten to be carried through only at the expense
+of the non-Turkish population of Anatolia&mdash;we see very clear proof
+that the neo-Turkish movement is a pure race movement, is nothing but
+Pan-Turkism both outwardly and inwardly, and has very little indeed to
+do with religious questions or with Islam. The idea of Islam, or rather
+Pan-Islamism, is a complete failure. This we shall try to show in the
+following chapter.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">Religion and race&mdash;The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of the Young
+Turks&mdash;Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political principles&mdash;Turanism
+and the Quadruple Alliance&mdash;Greed and race-fanaticism&mdash;Religious
+traditions and modern reforms&mdash;Reform in the law&mdash;A modern
+Sheikh-ul-Islam&mdash;Reform and nationalisation&mdash;The Armenian and
+Greek Patriarchates&mdash;The failure of Pan-Islamism&mdash;The alienation
+of the Arabs&mdash;Djemal Pasha's "hangman's policy" in Syria&mdash;Djemal
+as a "Pro-French"&mdash;Djemal and Enver&mdash;Djemal and Germany&mdash;His true
+character&mdash;The attempt against the Suez Canal&mdash;Djemal's murderous
+work nears completion&mdash;The great Arabian and Syrian Separatist
+movement&mdash;The defection of the Emir of Mecca and the great Arabian
+catastrophe.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> little-informed circles in Europe people are still under the
+false impression that the Young Turks of to-day, the intellectual
+and political leaders of Turkey in this war, are authentic, zealous,
+and even fanatical Mohammedans,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> and superficial observers explain
+all unpleasant occurrences and outbreaks of Young Turkish jingoism
+on Pan-Islamic grounds, especially as Turkey has not been slow in
+proclaiming her "Holy War." But this conception is entirely wrong.
+The artificial character of the "Djihad," which was only set in
+motion against a portion of the "unbelievers," while the others
+became more and more the ruling body in Turkey, is the best proof
+of the untenability of this theory. The truth is that the present
+political régime is the complete denial of the Pan-Islamic idea and the
+substitution of the Pan-Turkish idea of race.</p>
+
+<p>Abdul-Hamid, that much-maligned and dethroned Sultan, who, however,
+towers head and shoulders above all the Young Turks put together in
+practical intelligence and statesmanly skill, and would never have
+committed the unpardonable error of throwing in his lot with Germany
+in the war and so bringing about the certain downfall of Turkey, was
+the last ruler of Turkey that knew how to make use of Pan-Islamism as a
+successful instrument of authority.</p>
+
+<p>Enver and Talaat and all that breed of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> jingoists on the <i>Ittahad</i>
+(Committee for Union and Progress) were upstarts without any schooling
+in political history, and so all the more inclined to the doctrinal
+revolutionism and short-sighted fanaticism of the successful
+adventurer, and were much too limited to recognise the tremendous
+political import of Pan-Islamism. Naturally once they had conceived
+the idea of the "Djihad," they tried to make theoretical use of
+Pan-Islamism; but practically, far from extending Turkey's influence
+to distant Arabian lands, to the Soudan and India, they simply let
+Turkey go to ruin through their Pan-Turkish illusions and their
+race-fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>Abdul-Hamid with his clever diplomacy managed to maintain, if not the
+real sympathies, at any rate the formal loyalty of the Arabs and their
+solidarity with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. It was he who conceived
+the idea of that undertaking of eminent political importance, the
+Hedjaz Railway, which facilitates pilgrimages to the holy cities of
+Mecca and Medina and links up the Arabian territory with the Turkish,
+and he was always able to quell any disturbances in these outly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>ing
+parts of the Empire with very few troops indeed. Nowadays the Young
+Turkish Government, even if they had the troops to spare, might send
+a whole army to the Hedjaz and they would be like an island of sand
+in the midst of that stormy Arab sea. The Arabs, intellectually far
+superior to the Turks, have at last made up their minds to defy their
+oppressors, and all the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire may
+be taken as already lost, no matter what the final result of the great
+war may be.</p>
+
+<p>The Young Turks had scarcely come into power when they began with
+incredible lack of tact to treat the Arabs in a most supercilious
+manner, although as a matter of fact the Arabs far surpassed them in
+intellect and culture. They inaugurated a most un-modern campaign of
+shameless blood-sucking, cheated them of their rights, treated them
+in a bureaucratic manner, and generally acted in such an unskilful
+way that they finally alienated for ever the Arab element as they
+had already done in the case of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the
+Albanians.</p>
+
+<p>The ever-recurring disturbances in Yemen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> finally somewhat
+inadequately quelled by Izzet Pasha, are still in the memory of all.
+And later, directly after the reconquering of Adrianople during the
+Second Balkan war, there was another moment of real national rebirth
+when a reconciliation might have been effected. The visit of a great
+Syrian and Arabian deputation to the Sultan to congratulate him over
+this auspicious event should have provided an excellent opportunity.
+I was staying some months then in Constantinople on my way back from
+Africa, and I certainly thought that the half-broken threads might have
+been knotted together again then if the Young Turks had only approached
+the Arabs in the right way. Even the great Franco-British attack on
+Stamboul might have been calculated to rouse a feeling of solidarity
+among the Mohammedans living under the Ottoman flag, and in the autumn
+and winter of 1915-1916 Arab troops actually did defend the entrance
+to the Dardanelles with great courage and skill. But Arab loyalty
+could not withstand for ever the mighty flood of race-selfishness that
+possessed the Young Turks right from the moment of their entry into the
+war. The enthusiasm of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> the Arabs soon disappeared when Pan-Turkish
+ideas were proclaimed all too clearly even to the inhabitants of their
+own land, when an era of systematic enmity towards the non-Turkish
+parts of the population was introduced and the heavy fist of the
+Central Committee was laid on the southern parts of the Empire as well.</p>
+
+<p>An attempt was made to bring the ethnic principle of "Turanism" within
+the region of practical politics, but it simply degenerated into
+complete race-partiality and was not calculated to further the ideas
+of Pan-Islamism and the Turko-Arabian alliance which were both of such
+importance in the present war. It is this idea of Turanism that lies
+at the back of the efforts being made towards a purely Turkish Turkey,
+and that of course makes it clear at once that it must to a very large
+extent oppose the idea of Pan-Islamism. It is true that both principles
+may be made use of side by side as sources of propaganda for the idea
+of expansion and the policy of a "Greater Turkey." Turanists peep over
+the crest of the Caucasus down into the Steppes of the Volga, where the
+Russian Tartars live, and to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> borders of Western Siberia and Inner
+China where in Russian Turkestan a race of people of very close kinship
+live and where very probably the Ottoman people had their cradle. The
+Pan-Islamists want the alliance of these Russian parts as well, but
+from another point of view, and, above all, they aim at the expansion
+of Ottoman rule to the farthest corners of Africa and South-West Asia,
+to the borders of negro territory, and through Persia, Afghanistan, and
+Baluchistan to the foot of the Himalayas, while on grounds of practical
+politics they strive to abolish the old, seemingly insurmountable
+antithesis between Sonnites and Shiites within the sanctuary of Islam.</p>
+
+<p>The programme of the so-called "Djihad" works on this principle, but
+goes much farther. As well as stirring up against their present rulers
+those parts of Egypt and Tripoli which once owned allegiance to the
+Sultan and the Atlas lands, which are at any rate spiritually dependent
+on the Caliph in Stamboul, the "Djihad" aims at introducing the spirit
+of independence into all English, French, Italian, and Russian Colonial
+territory by rousing the Mohammedans and so doing infinite harm to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+the enemies of Turkey. It is most important, therefore, always to
+differentiate between this "Holy War" "stirring-up" propaganda from
+Senegal to Turkestan and British India, and the more territorial
+Pan-Islamism of the present war, which goes hand in hand with the
+efforts being made towards a "Greater Turkey."</p>
+
+<p>Instead of uniting all these principles skilfully for the realisation
+of a great end, making sure of the Arab element by wisely restraining
+their selfish and exaggeratedly pro-Turkish instincts and their
+despotic lust for power, and so giving their programme of expansion
+southwards some prospect of succeeding, the Turks gave way right from
+the beginning of the war to such a flood of brutal, narrow-minded
+race-fanaticism and desire to enrich the Turkish element at the cost
+of the other inhabitants of the country, that no one can really be
+surprised at the pitiable result of the efforts to secure a Greater
+Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>I should just like to give one small example of the fanatical hatred
+that exists even in high official circles against the non-Turkish
+element in this country of mixed race. The following anecdote will
+give a clear enough idea of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> ruling spirit of fanaticism and
+greed. I was house-hunting in Pera once and could not find anything
+suitable. I approached a member of the Committee and he said in solemn
+earnest: "Oh, just wait a few weeks. We are all hoping that Greece
+will declare war on us before long, and then <i>all</i> the Greeks will
+be treated as the Armenians have been. I can let you have the nicest
+villa on the Bosporus. But then," he added with gleaming eyes, "we
+won't be so stupid as merely to turn them out. These Greek dogs (<i>köpek
+rum</i>) will have the pleasure of seeing us take everything away from
+them&mdash;<i>everything</i>&mdash;and compelling them to give up their own property
+by formal contract."</p>
+
+<p>I can guarantee that this is practically a word-for-word rendering of
+this extraordinary outburst of fanaticism and greed on the part of
+an otherwise harmless and decent man. I could not help shuddering at
+such opinions. Apparently it was not enough that Turkey was already at
+war with three Great Powers; she must needs seek armed conflict with
+Greece, so that, as was the outspoken, the open, and freely-admitted
+intention of official per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>sons, she might then deal with four and a
+half millions of Ottoman Greeks, practically her own countrymen, as she
+had done with the unfortunate Armenians. In face of such opinions one
+cannot but realise how unsure the existence of the Young Turkish State
+has become by its entry into the war, and cannot but foresee that this
+race-fanaticism will lead the nation to political and social suicide.
+Can one imagine a purely Turkish Turkey, when even the notion of a
+Greater Turkey failed?</p>
+
+<p>Pessimists have often said of the Turkish question that the Turks'
+principal aim in determining on a complete Turkification of Anatolia
+by any, even the most brutal, means, is that at the conclusion of
+war they can at least say with justification: "Anatolia is a purely
+Turkish country and must therefore be left to us." What they propose to
+bequeath to the victorious Russians is an Armenia without Armenians!</p>
+
+<p>The idea of "Turanism" is a most interesting one, and as a widespread
+nationalistic principle has given much food for thought to Turkey's
+ally, Germany. Turanism is the realisation, reawakened by neo-Turkish
+efforts at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> political and territorial expansion, of the original
+race-kinship existing between the Turks and the many peoples inhabiting
+the regions north of the Caucasus, between the Volga and the borders of
+Inner China, and particularly in Russian Central Asia. Ethnographically
+this idea was perfectly justified, but politically it entails a
+tremendous dissipation of strength which must in the end lead to grave
+disappointment and failure. All the Turkish attempts to rouse up the
+population of the Caucasus either fell on unfruitful ground or went
+to pieces against the strong Russian power reigning there. Enver's
+marvellous conception of an offensive against Russian Transcaucasia led
+right at the beginning of the war to terrible bloodshed and defeat.</p>
+
+<p>People in neutral countries have had plenty of opportunity of judging
+of the value of those arguments advanced by Tatar professors and
+journalists of Russian citizenship for the "Greater-Turkish" solution
+of the race questions of the Russian Tatars and Turkestan, for these
+refugees from Baku and the Caucasus, paid by the Stamboul Committee,
+journeyed half over Europe on their propaganda<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> tour. The idea of
+Turanism has been taken up with such enthusiasm by the men of the
+Young Turkish Committee, and utilised with such effect for purposes of
+propaganda and to form a scientific basis for their neo-Turkish aims
+and aspirations, that a stream of feeling in favour of the Magyars has
+set in in Turkey, which has not failed to demolish to a still greater
+extent their already weakened enthusiasm for their German allies. And
+it is not confined to purely intellectual and cultural spheres, but
+takes practical form by the Turks declaring, as they have so often done
+in their papers in almost anti-German articles about Turanism, that
+what they really require in the way of European technique or European
+help they much prefer to accept from their kinsmen the Hungarians
+rather than from the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>To the great annoyance of Germany, who would like to keep her heavy
+hand laid on the ally whom she has so far guided and for whom she pays,
+the practical results of the idea of Turanism are already noticeable
+in many branches of economic and commercial life. The Hungarians are
+closely allied to the Turks not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> only by blood but in general outlook,
+and form a marked contrast to Germany's cold and methodical calculation
+in worming her way into Turkish commercial life. After the war when
+Turkey is seeking for stimulation, it will be easy enough to make use
+of Hungarian influence to the detriment of Germany. Turanistic ideas
+have even been brought into play to establish still more firmly the
+union between Turkey and her former enemy Bulgaria, and the people of
+Turkey are reminded that the Bulgars are not really Slavs but Slavic
+Fino-Tartars.</p>
+
+<p>In proportion as the Young Turks have brought racial politics to a
+fine art, so they have neglected the other, the religious side. More
+and more, Islam, the rock of Empire, has been sacrificed to the needs
+of race-politics. Those who look upon Enver and Talaat and their
+consorts to-day as a freemasonry of time-serving opportunists rather
+than as good Mohammedans come far nearer the truth than those who
+believe the idea spread by ignorant globe-trotters that every Turk is
+a zealous follower of Islam. It was not for nothing that Enver Pasha,
+the adventurer and revolution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>ary, went so far even in externals as
+to arouse the stern disapproval of a wide circle of his people. With
+true time-serving adaptability to all modern progress-and who will
+blame him?&mdash;he even finally sacrificed the Turkish soldier's hallowed
+traditional headgear, the fez. While the <i>kalpak</i>, even in its laced
+variety, could still be called a kind of field-grey or variegated
+or fur edition of the fez, the ragged-looking <i>kabalak</i>, called the
+"Enveriak" to distinguish it from other varieties, is certainly on the
+way towards being a real sun helmet. Still more recently (summer 1916)
+a black-and-white cap that looks absolutely European was introduced
+into the Ottoman Navy. The simple, devout Mohammedan folk were most
+unwilling to accept these changes which flew direct in the face of all
+tradition. They may be externals of but little importance, but in spite
+of their insignificance they show clearly the ruling spirit in official
+Young Turkish spheres.</p>
+
+<p>This is in the harmless realm of fashion, or at any rate military
+fashion, exactly the same spirit as has caused the Turkish Government
+to undertake since 1916 radical changes in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> very much more
+important field of private and public law. Special commissions
+consisting of eminent Turkish lawyers have been formed to carry through
+this reform of law and justice, and they have been hard at work ever
+since their formation. What is characteristic and modern about the
+reform is that the preponderating rôle hitherto played by the Sheriat
+Law, founded on the Koran and at any rate semi-religious, is to be
+drastically curtailed in favour of a system of purely Civil law, which
+has been strung together from the most varied sources, even European
+law being brought under contribution, and the "Code Napoléon," which
+has hitherto only been used in Commercial law. This of course leads to
+a great curtailment of the activity and influence of the <i>kadis</i> and
+<i>muftis</i>, the semi-religious judges, who have now to yield place to a
+more mundane system. The first inexorable consequence of the reform
+was that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the highest authority of Islam in the
+whole Ottoman Empire, had to give up a large part of his powers, and
+incidentally of his income.</p>
+
+<p>The changes made were so far-reaching, and the spirit of the reform
+so modern, that, in spite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> of the unshakable power of Talaat's truly
+dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed, a concession had to be made
+to the public opinion roused against the measure. The form was kept as
+it was, but the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Haïri Effendi, refused ostensibly to
+sign the decree and gave in his resignation. Not only, however, was an
+immediate successor found for him (Mussa Kiazim Effendi), who gave his
+signature and even began to work hard for the reform, but&mdash;and this
+is most significant for the relationship of the Young Turks towards
+Islam&mdash;Haïri Effendi, the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had proclaimed
+the <i>Fetwa</i> for the "Holy War," gave up his post without a murmur, and
+in the most peaceable way, and remained one of the principal pillars of
+the "Committee for Union and Progress."</p>
+
+<p>His resignation was nothing but a farce to throw dust in the eyes of
+the all-too-trusting lower classes. After he had succeeded by this
+man&oelig;uvre in getting the reform of the law (which as a measure of
+Turkification was of more consequence to him now than his own sadly
+curtailed juristic functions) accepted at a pinch by the conservative
+population who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> still clung firmly to Islam, he went on to play his
+great rôle in the programme of jingoism. A "measure of Turkification"
+we called it, for that is what it amounts to practically, like
+everything else the men of the "Ittihad" take in hand.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to give some hint of this within the limits of the censorship
+as long ago as the summer of 1916 in a series of articles I wrote for
+the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i>. Here I should like just to confine myself
+to one point. Naturally the reform of the law aimed principally at
+substituting these newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for the
+Arabian legal ideas that had been the only thing available hitherto.
+(Everything that this victorious Turkey had absorbed and worked up
+in the way of civilised notions was either Arabian or Persian or of
+European origin.) It set to work now in the sphere of family law,
+which hitherto had been specially sacrosanct and only subordinate to
+the religious <i>Sheria</i>, and where tradition was strongest&mdash;not like
+commercial and maritime law which had been quite modern for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>The reform went so far that it even tried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> to introduce a kind of civil
+marriage, whereas up till now all marriages, divorces, and everything
+to do with inheritance had taken place exclusively before religious
+officials. I may just add that these newest reforms give women no
+wider rights than they had before. Perhaps this may be taken as an
+indication that they have been conceived far less from a social than
+from a political point of view. What induced the Turkish Government to
+introduce anything so entirely modern as civil marriage in defiance
+of age-old custom was more than likely the desire to put an end to
+non-Turkish Ottomans contracting marriages and making arrangements
+about inheritance, etc., before their own privileged, ethnically
+independent organisations, and so to deal the final death-blow to the
+Armenian and Greek Patriarchates. If Family Law was modernised in
+this way, there would not be the faintest shadow of excuse left for
+the existence of these institutions which enjoyed a far-reaching and
+influential autonomy.</p>
+
+<p>The Armenian Patriarchate got short shrift indeed. By dissolving the
+Patriarchate in the Capital, breaking off all relations with the
+Ar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>menian headquarters in Etzmiadjin and allowing only a very small
+remainder of Patriarchate to be sent up in Jerusalem under special
+State supervision, the Turks, as a logical sequence to the Armenian
+atrocities, simply dealt the death-blow in the summer of 1916 to this
+important social institution.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek organisation, however, conducted by a more numerous and,
+outwardly at any rate, better protected people, offered far more
+resistance, and could not be simply wiped out with a stroke of the pen.
+A direct attempt to suppress it was made as early as 1910, but broke
+down entirely in face of the firm attitude of the Greek Patriarch in
+Constantinople. Now the Young Turks seem to have come to the conclusion
+that less drastic methods, beginning on a juristic basis, may have a
+better effect.</p>
+
+<p>We have taken this one example in order to get at the whole neo-Turkish
+method of procedure. It consists in pushing forward, if need be with
+greater delicacy than before and on the round-about road of real modern
+reforms, towards the one immovable goal: the complete Turkification of
+Turkey. The reform of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> law, which we have treated more exhaustively
+as an example of the first rank, is typical of the Young Turkish
+national tendency. Naturally it has its use, too, as a means of further
+throwing off the foreign political yoke. Through the modernising
+of the whole Turkish legal system, Europe is to be shown that the
+Capitulations can be dispensed with.</p>
+
+<p>The reform throws a vivid light, too, on the inner relationship
+of the jingoistic, pure Pan-Turkish leaders of present-day Turkey
+towards religion. And it is perhaps not generally known that at all
+the deliberations of the "Committee" where the will of Talaat, the
+uncrowned king of Turkey, is alone decisive, the opinion of the Grand
+Master of the Turkish Freemasons is always listened to, and that he is
+one of the most willing tools of the "Ittihad."</p>
+
+<p>No, the members of the "Committee for Union and Progress" have
+for a very long time simply snapped their fingers at Islam if it
+hindered them making use of and profiting from their own subjects.
+They know very well how to retain at least the outward semblance of
+friendliness so long as Islam does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> directly cross the path of
+Pan-Turkism. But the Armenian atrocities, instigated by Talaat, have
+as little to do with religion, they are as exclusively the result
+of pure race-fanaticism, professional jealousy, and greed, as the
+hostile, devil-may-care attitude towards Greece, and the millions of
+well-to-do Ottoman Greeks who are the next troublesome competitors
+and suitable victims of aggrandisement to be disposed of after the
+Armenians, or as the terrible persecutions against the highest class
+of Syrians and Arabs pictured in Djemal Pasha's famous paper. They
+are Turks, pure Turks with the most narrow-minded jingoistic point of
+view, and not broad-minded Mohammedans, that sit on the Committee in
+"Nur-el-Osmanieh" in Stamboul and make all these wonderful political
+plans, from internal reforms and measures of government which attempt
+to adapt themselves to European technique by sacrificing ancient
+traditions, to the hangman's tactics employed against their own
+subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Take the case of the Syrians and the Arabs. The "Ittihad" clique,
+weltering in a fog of Pan-Turkish illusion, were yet not without
+anxiety with regard to the intellectual and so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>cial superiority, to
+say nothing of the political sharpness, of these peoples compared with
+the Turks. They had yielded entirely to their brutal instincts of
+extermination and suppression towards foreign races, and the Germans
+had made no attempt to curb them. They were political parvenus suddenly
+freed from the control of the civilised Great Powers, and they did not
+know how to make use of that freedom. Perhaps they felt themselves
+already on the edge of an abyss and were constrained to snatch what
+they could while there was yet time.</p>
+
+<p>Is it any wonder, then, that the Turks should throw over all trace of
+decency towards the Syrians and the Arabs once they were sure that
+these peoples, who regarded their oppressors with most justifiable
+hatred, would refuse to have anything to do with the "Holy War" of the
+Turanian Pseudo-Caliph?</p>
+
+<p>The last remnants of the traditional Pan-Islamic esteem of their Arab
+neighbours, already sadly shattered by the Young Turks' ruthless policy
+towards them since 1909, were flung light-heartedly overboard by a
+Government that knew they were to blame for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> Arab defection but
+thought they had found a substitute that appealed more to their true
+Asiatic character in these Turanistic dreams of expansion and measures
+of Turkification. And while fanatical adventurers and money-grubbing
+deputies paid by the easily duped German Embassy were preaching a
+perfectly useless "Holy War" on the confines of the Arabian territory
+of the Turkish Empire, towards the part occupied by the English, while
+Enver Pasha continued to visit the holy places of Islam, where he got
+a frosty enough reception, although the wonderfully worded communiqués
+on the subject succeeded in blinding the population to the true state
+of affairs, "the hangman's policy" of Djemal Pasha, the Commander of
+the Fourth Osmanic Army, and Naval Minister, had been for a long time
+in full swing in the old civilised land of Syria against the best
+families among the Mohammedan as well as the Christian population. The
+whole civilised world is laying up a store of accusations of this kind
+against the Turks, and it is to be hoped that a public sentence will be
+passed on these gentlemen of the "Ittihad" on the conclusion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> peace
+by a combined court of Europeans and Americans.</p>
+
+<p>Here again the Young Turkish Government assumed the existence of a
+widespread conspiracy and a Syrian and Arabian Separatist movement
+towards autonomy, which was to free these lands from Turkish rule and
+to be established under Anglo-French protection. At the time of the
+Armenian persecutions the Committee had managed most cunningly to
+turn the whole Armenian question to their own account by publishing
+false official reports by the thousand, accompanied by any number of
+photographs of "bands of conspirators," the authenticity of which never
+has been proved and never will be; indeed one can only wonder where the
+Turkish Government got them from.</p>
+
+<p>In this case again there was no lack of official printed commentaries
+on Djemal Pasha's "hanging list," and any reader of the <i>Journal de
+Beyrouth</i> in war-time would have had no difficulty in compiling it. It
+is certainly not my intention to question the existence of a Separatist
+movement towards autonomy in Syria, but it was a sporadic tendency
+only, and ought never to have been made the excuse for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the wholesale
+execution of highly respected and well-born citizens who had nothing
+whatever to do with the matter.</p>
+
+<p>In the Young Turkish memorandum on this act of spying and bloodshed,
+the passages most underlined and printed in the boldest characters, the
+passages which, according to official intention, were to justify these
+frightful reprisals, form the most terrible indictment ever brought
+against Turkish despotism, and provide the most complete proof of the
+truth of all the accusations made against the Turkish Government by
+the ill-treated and oppressed Syrians and Arabians. On anyone who does
+not read with Young Turkish eyes the memorandum makes directly the
+opposite impression to what was intended. And even if the Separatist
+movement had existed in any greater extent&mdash;which was quite out of the
+question owing to lack of weapons, conflicting interests, the contrasts
+in the people themselves, some of them Mohammedan, some Christian,
+some sectarian, and the impossibility of any kind of organisation
+under the stern discipline of Turkish rule&mdash;the Turks would have most
+richly deserved it and it would have been justified by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the thousands
+of brutalities inflicted by the Old and Young Turkish régimes on the
+highly civilised Arabian people and their industrious and commercial
+neighbours the Syrians, who had always been much influenced by European
+culture. Anyone who has once watched how the Committee in Stamboul
+made a pretext of events on the borders of Caucasia to exterminate a
+whole people, including women and children, even in Western and Central
+Anatolia and the Capital, can no longer be in the least doubt as to the
+methods employed by Djemal Pasha, the "hangman" of Syrians and Arabs,
+how grossly he must have exaggerated and misstated the facts to find
+enough victims so that he could look on for a year and a half with a
+cigar in his mouth&mdash;as he himself boasted&mdash;while the flower of Syrian
+and Arabian youth, the élite of society, and the aged heads of the best
+families in the land were either hanged or shot.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to take the opportunity here of giving a short
+description of Djemal Pasha, this man who, according to Turkish ideas,
+is destined still to play a great part in Turkish politics. I should
+also like to clear up a mis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>understanding that seems to exist in
+civilised Europe with regard to him. There is still an idea abroad
+that Djemal Pasha is pro-French, this man who set out on his adventure
+against the Suez Canal as "Vice-king of Egypt," and, after he had been
+beaten there, settled in Syria as dictator with unlimited power&mdash;even
+openly defying the Central Government in Constantinople when he felt
+piqued&mdash;so that as commander of the Fourth Army he could support
+the attempt against Egypt, but principally to satisfy his murderous
+instincts. Anyone who has seen this man close at hand (whom a German
+journalist belonging to the <i>Berliner Tageblatt</i> with the most fulsome
+flattery once called one of the handsomest men in Turkey) knows enough.
+Small, thickset, a beard and a pair of cunning cruel eyes are the
+most prominent features of this face from which everyone must turn in
+disgust who remembers the "hangman's" part played by the man.</p>
+
+<p>It is extraordinary that he should still pass as Pro-French in many
+quarters, and perhaps it is part of his slyness to preserve this rôle.
+Djemal is not Pro-French; he is only the most calculating of all the
+leading men of Turkey.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> He certainly had pro-French tendencies, in
+the current meaning of the word, before the war; that is, he thought
+the interests of his country would be best safeguarded against German
+machinations for winning over the Young Turks by taking advantage
+of Turkey's traditional friendship for France. He was also against
+Turkey's participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers,
+and he was furiously angry when the fleet which was supposed to be
+under his control appeared against his will under the direction of the
+German Admiral of the <i>Goeben</i> and <i>Breslau</i> in the Black Sea.</p>
+
+<p>But when the war actually broke out, he very soon accommodated himself
+to the new state of affairs. Instead of handing in his resignation,
+he added to his naval duties the chief command of the army operating
+against Egypt, for Djemal's chief characteristics were characterless
+opportunism and inordinate ambition. Suiting his opinions to the facts
+of the case, he was not long in advertising his Pro-French feelings
+again so that he might be popular with the people of Syria. That of
+course did not prevent him later on from car<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>rying out his "hangman's
+policy" against the Syrians who were bound by so many social ties to
+France. From that it is not difficult to judge just how genuine his
+Pro-French feelings are!</p>
+
+<p>The only genuine thing in his whole attitude is his admitted deep
+hatred of Germany and his personal animosity towards the pro-German
+Enver Pasha, arising partly from jealousy, partly from a feeling of
+being slighted, and only concealed for appearance' sake. During the
+war he has often enough made very plain utterances of his hatred of
+Germany, and it would certainly betoken ill for German politics in
+Turkey if Djemal Pasha succeeded in obtaining a more active rôle in the
+Central Government. So far the Minister for War has managed to hold him
+at arm's length, and Djemal has no doubt found it of advantage to wait
+for a later moment, and content himself for the present with his actual
+powerful position.</p>
+
+<p>From his own repeated anti-German speeches it has, however, been only
+too easy to glean that his anti-German opinions and actions are not
+the result of his being Pro-French, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> of his being a jingoistic
+Pan-Turk. He may simulate Pro-French feelings again and play them as
+the trump card in his surely approaching decisive struggle with Enver
+Pasha, when Enver's system has failed; Djemal will no doubt maintain
+then that he foresaw everything, and that he has always been for France
+and the Entente. Everyone who knows his character is at any rate sure
+of one thing, and that is that he will stop at nothing, even a rising
+against the Central Government, if his ambitious opportunism should
+so dictate it. It is to be hoped, however, that public opinion among
+the Entente will not be deceived as to his true character, and will
+recognise that he is nothing more than a jingoistic, greedy, raging
+Young Turkish fanatic and one of the most cunning at that. It would
+really be doing too much honour to a man with a murderer's face and a
+murderer's instinct to credit him with honest sympathies for France.</p>
+
+<p>Djemal's work is nearing fruition. His cruel executions, his cynical
+breaking of promises in Syria, have at any rate contributed, along with
+other politically more important tendencies which have been cleverly
+utilised by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> England for the establishment of an Arabian Caliphate,
+towards the decisive result that the Emir of Mecca has revolted
+against the Turks. The Emir's son and his great Arabian suite had to
+pay a prolonged visit to Djemal at one time, and it is evident that
+the brutal execution of Arabian notables that he saw then directly
+influenced his father's attitude. The movement is bound to spread,
+and slowly and surely it will roll on till it ends in the full and
+perfect separation from Turkey of all Arabic-speaking districts as far
+as Northern Syria and the borders of Southern Kurdistan. The so-called
+Separatist movement, that Djemal tried to drown in a sea of blood
+before it was well begun, is now an actual fact.</p>
+
+<p>In Egypt England has been seeing for quite a long time the practical
+and favourable results of her success in founding the Arabian
+Caliphate. She has now gained practically absolute security for her
+rule on the Nile, and she has even been able to remove troops and
+artillery from the Suez Canal to other fronts. The German dream of an
+offensive against Egypt vanished long ago; now even the last trace
+of a German-Turkish attempt against the Canal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> has ceased, and the
+English troops have moved the scene of their operations to Southern
+Palestine. While I write these lines, there comes from the other side,
+from Arabian Mesopotamia, the news of the recapture of Kut-el-Amara by
+British troops. I should not like to prophesy what moral or political
+results the fall of Baghdad, Medina, and Jerusalem will have for
+Turkish rule; possibly, nay probably, iron necessity, the impossibility
+of returning, the constraint imposed by their German Allies&mdash;for Turkey
+is fully under German military rule&mdash;may weaken the direct results
+of even such catastrophes as these. But the hearts which beat to-day
+with high hopes for the freedom of Great Arabia and autonomy for Syria
+under Franco-English protection will flame with new rapture, and in the
+Turkish capital all grades of society will realise that Osmanic power
+is on the decline.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Djemal Pasha is still occupied in Syria raking in the property
+of the murdered citizens and dividing it up among his minions, the
+least very often being given over to commissions consisting of
+individuals of extremely doubtful reputation. When he is not thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+busily engaged, he spends his time round the green table playing poker.
+It is to be ardently hoped that even this great organiser will soon be
+at the end of his tether in Syria and have to leave the country where
+he has kinged in royally for two years. Then, perhaps, the moment may
+come when things are going so badly for the whole of Turkey that Djemal
+will at last have the opportunity, in spite of the failure of his
+policy in Syria, of measuring his military strength against his hated
+enemy Enver in Stamboul. That would be the beginning of the last stage
+before the complete collapse of Turkey.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hang">Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks&mdash;Turkish pessimism
+about the war&mdash;How would Abdul-Hamid have acted?&mdash;A war of prevention
+against Russia&mdash;Russia and a neutral Turkey&mdash;The agreement about the
+Dardanelles&mdash;A peaceful solution scorned&mdash;Alleged criminal intentions
+on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece and Salonika&mdash;To be
+or not to be?&mdash;German influence&mdash;Turkey stakes on the wrong card&mdash;The
+results.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> has been no lack of cross currents <i>against</i> the war policy of
+the Young Turkish Government. Ever since the entry of Turkey into the
+war, there has been a deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction among
+all kinds and conditions of men, even in the circles of the Pashas and
+the Court&mdash;the people of Turkey take too little interest in politics
+and are composed of far too heterogeneous elements for there to be
+anything in the nature of what we call "public opinion"&mdash;that Turkey's
+alliance with the Central Powers was a complete<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> mistake and that it
+can lead to no good. It is of course known that since the outbreak of
+war Turkey has not only been under martial law and in a state of siege,
+but that under the régime of a brutal military dictatorship, with its
+system of espionage, personal liberty has been practically null and
+void. Any expressions of disapproval, therefore, or agitations against
+the "Committee" are naturally only possible in most intimate circles,
+and that with all secrecy. Little or nothing of the true opinions of
+this or that personage ever trickles through to publicity, and so it
+is utterly impossible, except from quite detached symptoms, to get
+any proper idea of what are the real thoughts and feelings of those
+cultured Turks who do not belong to the "Ittihad" and have no part in
+their system of pillage and aggrandisement.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the limited information available it will be worth while,
+I think, to go into these counter-streams a little more fully. In
+pretty well every grade of society and among all nationalities in
+Turkey, there is the conviction that the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid would
+never have committed the fateful error of declaring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> war against the
+Entente and binding himself hand and foot to Germany. In the case of
+Turkey's remaining neutral, the Entente had formally promised her
+territorial integrity; Turkey refused. She felt herself driven to a war
+of prevention, principally through fear of the power of Russia. The
+statements made by those who agreed with Enver and Pasha and pushed
+for the war, that Turkey in the case of non-participation would be
+completely thrown on the mercy of a victorious Russia and that Russia's
+true aim in the war was the Dardanelles and Constantinople, have never
+been authenticated. There are still Turks, anti-Russian Turks, who even
+admitted this possibility, and yet believed the word of the Entente&mdash;at
+any rate of the Western Powers&mdash;and trusted to England's throwing her
+weight into the scale against Russia's plans of conquest, if Turkey
+remained neutral. They saw and still see no necessity for the Turkish
+Government to have entered on a war of prevention.</p>
+
+<p>Russia's aim was the Straits and Constantinople&mdash;well and good. But
+Russia would by hook or by crook have had to come to a friendly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+agreement with Turkey and could not have simply broken a definite
+promise given by the combined Entente to Turkey. It would have been
+quite different if Russia had demanded Constantinople from the Western
+Powers as the price of her participation in the war against Germany;
+then, but only then, the Entente would perhaps have had to come to an
+agreement satisfying Russia on this head. But Russia had quite other
+ideas, and long before Turkey's entry into the war and without any
+prospects of getting Constantinople, she flung her whole weight against
+Germany and Austria right at the beginning of the war.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty with regard to Constantinople between the Western Powers
+and Russia was not signed till six months after Turkey declared war,
+and England would certainly never have allowed Russia to encroach on a
+really neutral or sympathetically neutral Turkey. Then, but only then,
+there might have been some foundation in fact for the ideas one heard
+advanced by German-Turkish illusionists who would still have liked to
+believe that there was continual dissension within the Entente, even
+long after the official notification<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> of the Anglo-Russian treaty
+with regard to the Straits, and by some even after the speech of the
+Russian minister Trepoff, that the English occupation of the islands
+at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which could be made into a second
+Gibraltar, aimed chiefly at blocking the Straits and preventing Russia
+from gaining undisturbed possession of Constantinople. Specially
+optimistic people even look to that chimerical antagonism between
+Russia and England for the salvation of Turkey, should Germany be
+finally overcome.</p>
+
+<p>Whether she liked it or not, then, Russia would have had to come to
+a friendly agreement with Turkey, had the latter remained neutral,
+in order to gain the desired goal. And this goal would have been
+necessarily limited, by the fact of Turkey's non-entry on the enemy
+side, rather to the stoppage of German Berlin-Baghdad efforts at
+expansion, the prevention of any strangulation of the enormous Russian
+trade in the south and desperate opposition to any attempt to keep
+Russia away from the Mediterranean, than to an attack on Turkey and
+her vital interests. And who knows whether under such an agreement,
+bound as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> it was to give Russia certain liberties and privileges in the
+Straits, Turkey also might not have got much in exchange, at any rate
+on financial lines, and might not also have obtained permission at last
+to develop Armenia by that west-to-east railway so long desired by the
+Turks and so strongly opposed by the Russians?</p>
+
+<p>Would the terrible bloodshed in the present war, the complete economic
+exhaustion entailed, and the risk of a doubtful outcome of the fight
+for existence or non-existence not have been far outweighed by the
+prospect, in the case of a friendly agreement with Russia, of seeing
+the orthodox cross again planted on the Hagia Sophia, an international
+régime established in Constantinople&mdash;with certain Russian privileges
+and the satisfaction of certain Russian moral demands, it is true,
+but otherwise nothing to disturb Turkish life in Stamboul or in any
+way prejudice Turkish prestige? Even the prospect of having to raze
+the forts on the Straits to the ground in order to give free access
+from the Mediterranean, or the necessity of having to inaugurate a
+more humane and beneficent policy in Armenia, perhaps with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> European
+supervision over the carrying out of the reforms would surely have
+been preferable to the present state of affairs. These would all
+have ensured for Turkey a long period of peace, capital wealth and
+intellectual and social improvement, perhaps at the expense of a
+momentary hurt to her feelings,&mdash;but these had been far more severely
+wounded already, as, for example, when she had to look on helplessly
+while bit after bit of her Empire was torn from her. It would have
+been impossible for Russia to get more than this from Turkey had she
+remained neutral. Her sovereignty and territorial integrity would have
+been completely guaranteed.</p>
+
+<p>But Turkey thought she had to stake all, her whole existence, on
+one card, and she staked on the wrong one, as is recognised now by
+thousands of intelligent Turks. Believers in the war policy followed
+by the Government make themselves hoarse maintaining that if Russia
+had not gradually overpowered a neutral Turkey to win Constantinople
+completely, at any rate the Entente would have finally forced her to
+join their side; in either case, therefore, war was inevitable. They
+point to Salonika, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> in face of all reason, maintain that the
+Entente Powers would in all probability have treated Turkey exactly
+as they treated Greece. They forget that their geographical position
+is entirely different, and would have a very different effect on
+military tactics. If Turkey had remained a sympathetic neutral, so
+would Bulgaria; or else the whole of the Balkan States, from Roumania
+and Bulgaria to Greece, would have joined the Entente right at the
+beginning. In either case there would have been no necessity at all for
+Turkey to join, for what military obligations had she to fulfil? The
+Entente would certainly never have driven Turkey to fight, simply to
+get the benefit of the Turkish soldiers available; there is no truth
+whatever in the statements circulated about unscrupulous compulsion
+with this end in view.</p>
+
+<p>The benefit for the Entente of Turkey's sympathetic neutrality would
+have been so enormous that they would most certainly have been content
+with that. Neither in Germany nor in Turkey is there any doubt whatever
+in military circles that it was Turkey's entry into the war on the
+German side and her blocking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> of the Straits, and so preventing Russia
+from obtaining supplies of ammunition and other war material, that has
+so far saved the Central Powers. Had Turkey remained neutral, constant
+streams of ammunition would have poured into Russia, Mackensen's
+offensive would have had no prospect at all of success, and Germany
+would have been beaten to all intents and purposes in 1915. The Turks
+do not scruple to let Germany feel that this is so on every suitable or
+unsuitable occasion.</p>
+
+<p>The Entente would certainly never have moved a finger to disturb
+Turkey's sympathetic neutrality and drive her into war. There would
+have been tremendous material advantages for Turkey in such a
+neutrality. Instead of being impoverished, bankrupt, utterly exhausted,
+wholly lost, as she now is, she might have been far richer than
+Roumania has ever been. There is one thing quite certain, and that is
+that Abdul-Hamid would never have let this golden opportunity slide of
+having a stream of money pouring in on himself and his country. And
+certainly Turkey would not have lacked moral justification had she so
+acted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These considerations I have put forward rather from the Turkish
+anti-war point of view than from my own. They are opinions expressed
+hundreds of times by thoroughly patriotic and intelligent Turks
+who saw how the ever more intensive propaganda work of the German
+Ambassadors, first Marschall von Bieberstein, then Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, gradually wormed its way through opposition and prejudice,
+how the German Military Mission in Constantinople tried to turn the
+Russian hatred of Germany against Turkey instead, how, finally, those
+optimists and jingoists on the "Committee," who knew as little about
+the true position of affairs throughout the world as they did of the
+intentions of the Entente or the means at their own disposal, proceeded
+to guide the ship of State more and more into German waters, without
+any reference to their own people, in return for promises won from
+Germany of personal power and material advantage. These were those days
+of excitement and smouldering unrest when Admiral von Souchon of the
+<i>Goeben</i> and the <i>Breslau</i>, with complete lack of discipline towards
+his superior, Djemal Pasha, arranged with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> German Government to
+pull off a coup without Djemal's knowledge&mdash;chiefly because he was
+itching to possess the "Pour le Mérite" order&mdash;and sailed off with the
+Turkish Fleet to the Black Sea. (I have my information from the former
+American Ambassador in Constantinople, Mr. Morgenthau, who was furious
+at the whole affair.)<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>These were the days when Enver and Talaat threw all their cards on the
+table in that fateful game of To Be or Not to Be, and brought on their
+country, scarcely yet recovered from the bloodshed of the Balkan War,
+a new and more terrible sacrifice of her manhood in a war extending
+over four, and later five, fronts. The whole result of this struggle
+for existence depended on final victory for Germany and that was
+becoming daily more doubtful; in fact, Ottoman troops had at last to be
+dispatched by German orders to the Balkans and Galicia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Turkey had, too, to submit to the ignominy of making friends with
+her very recent enemy and preventing imminent military catastrophe
+by handing over the country along the Maritza, right up to the gates
+of the sacred city of Adrianople, to the Bulgarians. She had to look
+on while Armenia was conquered by the Russians; while Mesopotamia
+and Syria, in spite of initial successes, were threatened by
+English troops; while the "Holy War" came to an untimely end, the
+most consecrated of all Islam's holy places, Mecca, fell away from
+Turkey, the Arabs revolted and the Caliphate was shattered; while her
+population in the Interior endured the most terrible sufferings, and
+economic and financial life tended slowly and surely towards complete
+and hopeless collapse.</p>
+
+<p>Not even yet, indeed now less than ever, is there any general
+acceptance among the people of the views held by Enver and Talaat
+and their acolytes. Not yet do intelligent, independent men believe
+the fine phrases of these minions of the "Committee," who are held
+in leading strings by these dictators partly through gifts of money,
+office, or the oppor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>tunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the
+people, partly through fear of the consequences should they revolt, or
+of those domestic servants who call themselves deputies and senators.
+On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say that three-quarters of
+the intelligent out-and-out Turkish male population&mdash;quite apart from
+Levantines, Greeks, and Armenians&mdash;and practically the entire female
+population, who are more sensitive about the war and whose hearts are
+touched more deeply by its immeasurable suffering, have either remained
+perfectly friendly to England and France or have become so again
+through terrible want and suffering.</p>
+
+<p>The consciousness that Turkey has committed an unbounded folly has long
+ago been borne in upon wide circles of Turks in spite of falsified
+reports and a stringent censorship. There would be no risk at all
+in taking on a wager that in private conversation with ten separate
+Turks, in no way connected with the "Committee," nine of them will
+admit, as soon as they know there is no chance of betrayal, that they
+do not believe Turkey will win, and that, with the exception of the
+much-feared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Russia, they still feel as friendly as ever towards their
+present enemies. "<i>Quoi qu'il arrive, c'est toujours la pauvre Turquie
+qui va payer le pot cassé.</i>" ("Whatever happens, it's always poor
+Turkey that'll have to pay the piper") and "<i>Nous avons fait une grande
+gaffe</i>" ("We <i>have</i> put our foot in it") were the kind of remarks made
+in every single political discussion I ever had in Constantinople&mdash;even
+with Turks.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the men, who judge with their reason. What of the women?
+The one sigh of cultured Turkish women, up to the highest in the
+land&mdash;who should have a golden book written in their honour for their
+readiness to help, their sympathy, and humanity in this war&mdash;is: "When
+shall we get rid of the Boches; when will our good old friends, the
+English and the French, come back to us?" Nice results, these, of
+German propaganda, German culture, German brotherhood of arms! What
+a sad and shameful story for a German to have to tell! Naturally the
+drastic system of the military dictatorship precludes the public
+expression of such feelings, but one needs only have seen with one's
+own eyes the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> looks so often cast by even real Turkish cultured society
+at the German <i>Feldgrauen</i> who often marched in close formation through
+the streets of Constantinople&mdash;for a time they used to sing German
+soldiers' songs, until that was prohibited at the express wish of the
+Turkish Government to see how the land lies.</p>
+
+<p>There was a marked and ill-concealed contrast in the coldness shown
+to Imperial German officers and the lavish affection showered on the
+Austrians and Hungarians who used for a time often to pass through
+Constantinople on their way to the Dardanelles or Anatolia with their
+heavy artillery. They were a great deal more sociable than their
+German comrades, and one could not fail to note the significance of
+such freely voiced comments as "<i>N'est-ce pas, ils sont charmants les
+Autrichiens?</i>" ("The Austrians <i>are</i> delightful, aren't they?") The
+sight of us Germans, especially the very considerable German garrison
+stationed for a time in the Capital, awakened in the Turks, however
+much they might recognise the military necessity for their presence,
+remarkable ideas about the future "German Egyptising of Turkey," and
+everyone blamed Enver Pasha<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> as the man responsible for Germany's
+penetrating thus far.</p>
+
+<p>A Turk in a high official position&mdash;whose name I shall naturally not
+divulge&mdash;even went so far as to say to me in an intimate personal
+discussion we were having one day between friend and friend: "We
+Turks are and will always remain, in spite of the war, pro-English
+and pro-French so far as social and intellectual life is concerned;
+and it would need twenty years of hard propaganda work on Germany's
+part, quite different from her present methods, to change this point
+of view, if it ever could be changed." He went on to recall the time
+of the pro-English era, and the enthusiastic demonstrations that had
+taken place at the Sirkedji station when the horses were taken out of
+the English Ambassador's carriage. "I was there myself," he said, "and
+believe me, apart from the war, heaps of us are at bottom still of the
+same mind." And, growing heated, he added: "What is your Embassy, tell
+me? Is it really an Embassy? No representation, no intimate intercourse
+with us, or at best only with your political agents, no personal charm,
+nothing but brusque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> demands and a most humiliating economic neglect
+of the Turkish population. The English and the French and even the
+Russians would treat us quite differently."</p>
+
+<p>This man is no exception in his ideas. He is a thorough Young Turk, who
+holds with the "Committee" through thick and thin and has to thank them
+for a very pleasant billet, but he is, besides, a youngish man with a
+modern European education. He is thoroughly imbued, as are all of his
+kind, with modern French ideas, and even the war cannot alter that.
+It only needs the final collapse of the Central Powers, and then the
+break-down of the whole political system under the direction of these
+jingoistic emancipationists who think they can get on without Europe,
+and the Turks will all, every one of them, be as thoroughly pro-English
+and pro-French as they ever were and will hate Germany and everything
+German with fanatical hatred.</p>
+
+<p>Towards Hungary, their blood relation, they will probably retain some
+friendliness in memory of their alliance in the Great War and the cause
+of Turanism; they will be quite indifferent to Bulgaria; they will lose
+their fear of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Russia and come to an agreement with her; but after the
+war there will be no bridging the gulf between Turkey and Germany, and
+if Germany, on the conclusion of peace, is allotted any part of smaller
+Turkey by the rest of the European Powers, she will have to reckon
+for many a long year with the very chilly relations that will exist
+between Germans and Turks. Even those who went heart and soul into the
+war as a war of defence against Turkey's powerful northern neighbour
+foresee that when peace is declared Turkey will, so far as her enormous
+indebtedness to Germany permits, rather throw herself on the mercy
+of England and France and America and beg from them the capital
+necessary for reconstruction and for freeing them from the hated
+German influence&mdash;an aversion which is already evident in hundreds of
+different ways. Even Germany is beginning to recognise the existence
+of this tendency, which, hand in hand with the jingoistic attempt to
+turkify commercial life, bodes ill for German activity in Turkey after
+the war.</p>
+
+<p>These are the opinions of the educated classes. The people, however,
+the poor, igno<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>rant Turkish people, were ready long ago to accept any
+solution that would liberate them from their terrible sufferings.
+The Turkish people have not the mental calibre of our German people
+which will perhaps make them fight on, just for the sake of leaving no
+stone unturned, even after it is quite evident that they are tending
+towards final collapse. The stake for which they are fighting is not
+so valuable to this agricultural people, who with an inferior and
+extortionate set of rulers have never been able really to enjoy life,
+as it is to the population of a modern industrial country like Germany,
+where every political gain or loss has a direct result on their own
+pockets; defeat will certainly have much less effect on the Oriental.
+One can therefore speak with confidence of a general longing for
+the end of the war at any price. The Turks have had quite enough of
+suffering, and there are limits to what even these willing and mutely
+resigned victims can bear.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it is quite certain that the courageous Turkish soldier,
+in obedience to iron discipline and in unconditional submission to his
+Padishah, will continue to defend his lost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> cause to the very last
+drop of his blood, with an unquestioning resignation that absolutely
+precludes the idea of any defection within the army. Only a purely
+political military revolution, originating with the better-informed
+officers, who now really no longer believe in ultimate victory, is
+within the bounds of possibility.</p>
+
+<p>But the most confiding endurance on the part of the Turkish soldier,
+even when the military cause has long been lost, will not hinder this
+same soldier, when he is once more back in his own home as a peasant,
+from realising that European influence and European civilisation
+are a very competent protection against the miserably retrogressive
+Turkish rule, and that he has drawn more material profit from that
+single example of European activity, the Baghdad Railway, than from
+all Turkish official reforms put together, and so would willingly see
+Europe exercising a powerful control in his country. He would accept
+the military collapse of his country which he had so long and so
+bravely defended, and the dramatic political changes, with a quietly
+submissive "<i>Inshallah</i>." And although, deprived as he is of every
+kind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of information and without even the beginnings of knowledge, he
+perhaps still believes in ultimate victory for the Padishah, he will
+probably heave a sigh of relief when the unexpected collapse comes, and
+he will not take long to understand what it means for him: freedom and
+happiness and an undreamt-of material well-being under strong European
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>The late successor to the throne, Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, was
+the highest of those in high authority who openly represented the
+pessimistic anti-war tendency. It was for this that he was murdered
+or perhaps made to commit suicide by Enver Pasha. The whole truth
+about this tragic occurrence can only be sifted to the bottom when the
+dictators of the "Committee" are no longer in their place and light
+finally breaks on Turkey. Whether it was murder or suicide, the death
+of the successor to the throne is one of the most dramatic scandals of
+Turkish history, and Enver Pasha has his blood, as well as the blood
+of so many others, on his head. As far as is possible during the war,
+Europe has already collected all the information available on the
+subject. I myself was in Constantinople when the tragic oc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>currence
+took place, and I can speak so far from personal experience.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with this sensational event, the world has already heard
+how Yussuf Izzedin was kept for years under the despotic Abdul-Hamid
+shut off from the world as a semi-prisoner in his beautiful <i>Konak of
+Sindjirlikuyu</i>, just outside the gates of Constantinople, where he
+became a sufferer from acute neurasthenia. In recent years, however,
+his health had improved and, although latently hostile to the men
+of the "Committee" and their politics, he had come more into the
+foreground, especially after the recapture of Adrianople, which he
+visited with full pomp and ceremony as Crown Prince of the Turkish
+Empire. While the Gallipoli campaign was going on, he even made a
+journey to the Front to greet his soldiers. Early one morning he was
+found lying dead in a pool of his own blood with a severed artery. He
+had received his death wound in exactly the same place and exactly
+the same way as his father, Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who fell a victim to
+Abdul-Hamid's hatred. The political significance of Yussuf Izzedin's
+death is perfectly clear. What we want to do now is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> to demonstrate
+Enver Pasha's moral culpability in the matter and to show how he was
+more or less directly the murderer of this quiet, cultured, highly
+respected, and thoroughly patriotic man, who was some day to ascend the
+throne of Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>So much at least seems to be clear, that Prince Izzedin, who was
+naturally interested in retaining his accession to the throne
+undisturbed and who in spite of his neurasthenia was man enough to
+stand up for his own rights, foresaw ruin for his kingdom by Turkey's
+entry into the war on the side of Germany. He was more far-seeing than
+the careless adventurers and narrow-minded fanatics of the "Committee"
+and recognised that the letting-go of the treasured Pan-Islamic
+traditions of old Sultan Hamid was a grave mistake which would lead
+to the alienation of the Arabs, and which endangered both the Ottoman
+Caliphate and Ottoman rule in the southern parts of the Empire. He
+could not console himself for the evacuation of the territory round
+Adrianople, right up to the gates of the sacred city, which meant much
+to him as the symbol of national enlightenment. He had a real per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>sonal
+dislike for upstarts of the stamp of Enver and Talaat. Apart from
+these differences of opinion and personal sympathies and antipathies,
+deep-rooted though these undoubtedly were, Yussuf Izzedin was and
+always would have been a thorough "Osmanli" with fiery nationalistic
+feelings, who wished for nothing but the good of his Empire and his
+country. And yet he was got rid of.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult for the present Turkish Government to prove that
+the successor to the throne, apart from his feeling of sorrow that
+his country had been drawn into the war, apart from his readiness to
+conclude an honourable separate peace at the first possible moment,
+did anything which might have caused them trouble. The officials of
+the Turkish Government had themselves made repeated efforts through
+their Swiss Ambassadors to find out how the land lay, and whether they
+could conclude a separate peace; so they had no grounds at all for
+reproaching Prince Yussuf Izzedin, who, as a leader of this movement,
+naturally let no opportunity of this kind slide. But he was far too
+clever not to know that any attempt in this direction behind the backs
+of the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> Government would have no chance of success so long as
+Turkey was held under the iron fist of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the "Committee" had something to fear for the future, when the
+time came for the reverses now regarded as inevitable. Yussuf would
+then make use of his powerful influence in many circles&mdash;notably among
+the discontented retired military men&mdash;to demand redress from the
+"Committee." Enver, true to his unscrupulous character, quite hardened
+to the sight of Turkish blood, and determined to stick to his post
+at all costs&mdash;for it was not only lucrative, but flattering to his
+vanity&mdash;was not the man to stick at trifles with a poor neurasthenic,
+who under the present military dictatorship was absolutely at his
+mercy. He therefore decided on cold-blooded murder.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince, well aware of the danger that threatened him, tried at
+the last moment to leave the country and flee to safety. He had even
+taken his ticket, and intended to start by the midday Balkan train next
+day to travel to Switzerland via Germany. He was forbidden to travel.
+Whether, feeling himself thus driven into a corner and nothing but
+death at the hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> of Enver's creatures staring him in the face, he
+killed himself in desperation, or whether, as thousands of people in
+Constantinople firmly believe, and as would seem to be corroborated by
+the generally accepted, although of course not actually verified, tale
+of a bloody encounter between the murderers and the Prince's bodyguard,
+with victims on both sides, he was actually assassinated, is not yet
+settled, and it is really not a matter of vast importance.</p>
+
+<p>One thing is clear, and that is that Izzedin Effendi did not pay
+with his life for any illoyal act, but merely for his personal and
+political opposition to Enver. He is but one on this murderer's long
+list of victims. The numerous doctors, all well known creatures of the
+"Committee" or easily won over by intimidation, who set their names
+as witnesses to this "suicide as a result of severe neurasthenia"&mdash;a
+most striking and suspicious similarity to the case of Abdul-Aziz&mdash;have
+not prevented one single thinking man in Constantinople from forming a
+correct opinion on the matter. The wily Turkish Government evidently
+chose this kind of death, just like his father's, so that they could
+diagnose the symptoms as those of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> incurable neurasthenia. History
+has already formed its own opinion as to how much free-will there was
+in Abdul-Aziz' death! The opinions of different people about Prince
+Yussuf's death only differ as to whether he was murdered or compelled
+to commit suicide. "<i>On l'a suicidé</i>," was the ironical and frank
+comment of one clever Old Turk. We will leave it at that.</p>
+
+<p>The funeral of the successor to the throne was a most interesting
+sight. I sent an article on it to my paper at the time, which of
+course had only very, very slight allusions to anything of a sinister
+character; but it did not find favour with the censor at the Berlin
+Foreign Office. The editorial staff of the paper evidently saw what I
+was driving at, and wrote to me: "We have revised and touched up your
+report so as at least to save the most essential part of it;" but even
+the altered version did not pass the censor's blue pencil. But I had at
+any rate the moral satisfaction of knowing that of all the papers with
+correspondents in the Turkish capital, mine, the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i>,
+was the only one that could publish nothing, not a single line, about
+this important and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> highly sensational occurrence, for I simply wrote
+nothing more. That was surely clear enough!</p>
+
+<p>When in 1913, after the unsuccessful counter-revolution, Mahmud Shevket
+Pasha was assassinated and was going to be buried in Constantinople,
+the "Committee" issued invitations days beforehand to all foreign
+personages. This time nothing of the sort happened; and even the Press
+representatives were not invited to be present. On the former occasion
+everything possible was done, by putting off the interment as long as
+possible and repeatedly publishing the date, by lengthening the route
+of the funeral procession, to give several thousands of people an
+opportunity of taking part in the ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>This time, however, the authorities arranged the burial with all speed,
+and the very next day after the sensational occurrence the body was
+hurried by the shortest way, through the Gülhané Park, to the Mausoleum
+of Sultan Mahmud-Moshee. The coffin had been quietly brought in the
+twilight the evening before from the Kiosk of Sindjirlikuyu on the
+other side of Pera on the Maslak Hill, to the top of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> the Seraïl. Along
+the whole route, however, wherever the public had access, there were
+lines of police and soldiers; and the bright uniforms of the police
+who were inserted in groups of twenty between every single row of the
+procession of Ministers, members of the "Committee" and delegaters who
+walked behind the coffin, were really the most conspicuous thing in the
+whole ceremony. Enver Pasha passed quite close to me, and neither I,
+nor my companions, could fail to note the ill-concealed expression of
+satisfaction on his face.</p>
+
+<p>The most beautiful thing about this whole funeral, however, was the
+visit paid me by the Secretary-General of the Senate, the minute
+after I had reached home (and I had driven by the shortest way). With
+a zeal that might have surprised even the simplest minded of men,
+he offered to tell me about the Prince's life, lingering long and
+going into exhaustive detail over the well-known facts of his nervous
+ailment. Then, blushing at his own awkwardness and importunity, he
+begged me most earnestly to publish his version of all the details and
+circumstances of this tragic occurrence, "which no other paper will be
+in a posi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>tion to publish." Naturally it was never written.</p>
+
+<p>So, once more, in the late summer of 1916, Enver Pasha, who was so fond
+of discovering conspiracies and political movements in order to get rid
+of his enemies, and go scot free himself, had a fresh opportunity of
+reflecting, with even more foundation than usual, on the firmness of
+his position and the security of his own life.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps time now to give a more comprehensive description of this
+man. We have already mentioned in connection with the failure of his
+Caucasus offensive that Enver has been extraordinarily over-estimated
+in Europe. The famous Enver is neither a prominent intellectual leader
+nor a good organiser&mdash;in this direction he is far surpassed by Djemal
+Pasha&mdash;nor an important strategist. In military matters his positive
+qualities are personal courage, optimism, and, consequently, initiative
+which is never daunted by fear of consequences, also cold-bloodedness
+and determination; but he is entirely lacking in judgment, power of
+discrimination, and largeness of conception. From the German point
+of view he is particu<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>larly valuable for his unquestioning and
+unconditional association with the Central Powers, his readiness to do
+anything that will further their cause, his pliability and his zeal in
+accommodating himself even to the most trenchant reforms. But it is
+just these qualities that make enemies for him among retired military
+men and among the people.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded from a purely personal point of view, Enver Pasha is, in spite
+of the fulsome praise showered on him by Germans inspired by that
+most pliant implement, German militarism, one of the most repugnant
+subjects ever produced by Turkey. Even from a purely external point of
+view his appearance does not at all correspond with the picture of him
+generally accepted in Germany from flattering reports and falsified
+photographs. Small of stature, with quite an ordinary face, he looks
+rather, as one of my journalistic colleagues said, like a "gardener's
+boy" than a Vice-General and War Minister, and anyone who ever has the
+opportunity I have so often had, of looking really closely at him, will
+certainly be repelled by his look of vanity and cunning. It was really
+most painful to have to listen to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> (he has always been a bad and
+monotonous speaker) in the Senate and the Lower House at the conclusion
+of the Dardanelles campaign reading his report in a weak, halting
+voice, but with the disdainful tone of a dictator. Every third word was
+an "I." Even the Turkish Press accorded this parliamentary speech a
+fairly frosty reception.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this, Enver is one of the most cold-blooded liars imaginable.
+Time and again there has been no necessity for him to say certain
+things in Parliament, or to make certain promises, but apparently he
+found cynical enjoyment in making the people and Parliament feel their
+whole inferiority in his eyes. What can one think, for example, of such
+performances as this? At the end of 1916 when the discussion about
+military service for those who had paid the exemption tax (<i>bedel</i>) was
+going on, he gave an unsolicited and solemn assurance before the whole
+House that he had no intention whatever of calling up certain classes
+until the Bill had been finally passed and that it would show that he
+was really desirous of sparing commercial life as far as possible in
+the calling up of men. Exactly two hours after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> this speech the drum
+resounded through all the streets of Stamboul and Pera, calling up all
+those classes over which Enver had as yet no power of jurisdiction, and
+which he said he wanted to keep back because to tear them away from
+their employment would mean the complete disorganisation of the already
+sadly disordered commercial life of the country.</p>
+
+<p>This was Talaat's opinion, too, and he offered a firm resistance to
+Enver's plan, which it appears had been introduced by command of the
+German Government. In this case, however, resistance was useless, and
+had to give way to military necessity. If Enver said something in
+Parliament&mdash;this at any rate was the general conclusion&mdash;one might be
+quite certain that exactly the opposite would take place. He has now
+gained for himself the reputation of being a liar and a murderer among
+all those who are not followers of the "Committee."</p>
+
+<p>In contrast to Talaat, who is at least intelligent enough to keep up
+appearances and cunning enough to hold himself well in the background,
+Enver's personal lack of integrity in money matters is a subject of
+most shameful knowledge in Constantinople. It is pretty well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> generally
+known how he has made use of his position as Military Dictator to gain
+possession for himself of property worth thousands of pounds, and how
+in his financial dealings with Germany hundreds have found their way
+into his own pocket&mdash;up till the winter of 1915-1916, according to an
+estimate from confidential Turkish circles and from German sources I
+will not name, he had already managed to collect something like two
+million pounds, reckoned in English money. This son of a former lowly
+<i>conducteur</i> in the service of the Roads and Bridges Board, whose
+mother, as I have been assured by Turks is the case, plied in Stamboul
+the much-despised trade of "layer-out" of corpses, now lives in his
+Konak in more than princely luxury, with flowers and silver and gold on
+his table, having married, out of pure ambition, a very plain-looking
+princess. That is the true portrait of this much-coddled darling of
+the Young Turks, and latterly of the German people as well. This is
+the idol of so many admiring German women, who are bewitched by his
+more than adventurous career and the halo surrounding him which he has
+enhanced by every known<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and unknown means of self-advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>Enver's character won for him in "Committee" circles personal dislike
+and bitter, though veiled, enmity even from his colleagues who were
+of exactly the same political persuasion as himself. Of his relations
+towards the infinitely more important Djemal Pasha we have already
+spoken; we shall speak in a moment of his relations to Talaat. In the
+world of the retired military men, however, who had been badgered about
+by Enver, neglected and simply forcibly pensioned off by hundreds
+before the war because of their divergent political opinions, and even
+thrown into the street, the War Minister was heartily hated. A very
+large part of them were of the same political views as the murdered
+successor to the throne, and their opinion of the Great War was as
+we have already indicated. They pointed bitterly to Enver as the
+all-too-pliable servant of Germany, who was only too ready to sacrifice
+the flower of Ottoman youth on those far battlefields of Galicia at
+a sign from the German Staff, and open door after door to German
+influence in the Interior with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>out even attempting to protect the land
+of his fathers from invasion and decay.</p>
+
+<p>As we have said, political revolutions in Turkey usually start in
+military circles, not among the people, and there was an actual attempt
+in this direction in the autumn of 1916. Either by chance or by
+someone's betraying the plot, it was discovered by Enver in time, and
+the number of military men and Old Turkish personages associated with
+them, imprisoned in Constantinople alone, reached six hundred. At the
+head of the movement stood Major Yakub Djemil Bey.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of the summer of 1916 Enver's position had been looked
+upon as quite insecure. The knowledge of his greed in money matters,
+his tactless pushing, and his ruthless brutality had totally alienated
+a wide circle of people, and many believed that he would soon have to
+resign.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this, a deep inward antagonism reigned between him and
+Talaat, the real leader and by far the most important statesman of
+Turkey, which was far more than a cleverly veiled personal dislike.
+There was a constant struggle for power going on be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>tween the two men.
+By the end of May the crisis had become pretty acute, although outward
+appearances were still preserved and only well-informed circles knew
+anything at all about the matter. Enver had at that time to hurry back
+from the Irak, where he was on a visit of inspection with the German
+Chief of Staff and the Military Attaché, in order to safeguard his
+post. In confidential circles, the outbreak of open enmity between the
+two was fully expected; but this time again Talaat was the cleverer.
+He felt that, in spite of his own greater influence and following, in
+spite of his real superiority to Enver, he might perhaps, if he tried
+conclusions with him while he was still in command of the army, find
+himself the loser and, in view of Enver's murderous habits, pay for his
+rashness with his life. So he decided not to risk a decisive battle
+just yet. He was too patriotic, also, to let things come to an open
+break during the difficult time of war. Talaat disappeared for a short
+time on a visit of inspection to Angora, and things settled down to
+their old way again.</p>
+
+<p>There is still internal conflict going on. But Enver, with boundless
+ambition and no fine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> feelings of honour, clings to his post, and
+has shown by the way he dealt with the instigators of the conspiracy
+mentioned above that nothing but force will move him from his post,
+and that he will never yield to public opinion or the criticism of
+his colleagues. He was troubled by no qualms, in spite of the widely
+circulated opinion that he would certainly jeopardise his life if he
+went on in the same ruthless way towards the retired military men. He
+simply had the leader, Yakub Djemil Bey, hanged like a common criminal,
+and the whole of his followers, for the most part superior officers and
+highly respected persons, turned into soldiers of the second class, and
+put in the front-line trenches.</p>
+
+<p>Enver's removal would not alter the whole Young Turkish régime much,
+but it would take from it much of its ruthless barbarity, and its most
+repugnant representative would vanish from the picture. It would also
+be a severe blow for Germany and her militaristic policy of driving
+Turkey mercilessly to suicide. It would be a godsend to the anti-German
+Djemal Pasha. From a political point of view it would mean, far more
+than Talaat's appoint<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>ment as Grand Vizier, the absolute supremacy of
+that statesman.</p>
+
+<p>At bottom probably less ruthless than Enver and certainly cleverer,
+there is no doubt but that he would pursue his jingoistic ideas in the
+realm of race-politics, but at any rate he would not want any military
+system of frightfulness. Enver's removal from office will come within
+the range of near possibility as soon as the new British operations
+against Southern Palestine and Mesopotamia have produced a real
+victory. Turkey is not in a good enough military position to prevent
+this, and the whole world will soon recognise that it is this servant
+of Germany, this careless optimist and very mediocre strategist who is
+to blame for the inexorable breaking-up of the Ottoman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast I have noted between Enver and Talaat provides the
+opportunity for saying a few words about Talaat, now Pasha and
+Grand Vizier, and by far the most important man of New Turkey.
+As Minister of the Interior, he has guided the whole fate of his
+country, except in purely military matters, as uncrowned king. It is
+he more than anyone else who is the originator of the whole system
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> home politics. Solidity of character, earnestness, freedom from
+careless optimism, and conspicuous power of judgment distinguish him
+most favourably from Enver, who possesses the opposite of all these
+qualities. A high degree of intelligence, an enormous knowledge of
+men, an exceptional gift of organisation and tireless energy combined
+with great personal authority, prudence and reserve, calm weighing
+of the actual possibilities&mdash;in a word, all the qualities of the
+real statesman&mdash;raise him head and shoulders above the whole of his
+colleagues and co-workers. It would be unjust to doubt his ardent
+patriotism or the honesty of his ideas and intentions. Talaat's
+character is so impressive that one often hears even Armenians, the
+victims of his own original policy of persecution, speak of him with
+respect, and I have even heard the opinion expressed that had it not
+been for Talaat's cleverness, the Committee would have gone much
+further with their mischievous policy.</p>
+
+<p>But his high intellectual abilities do not prevent him from suffering
+from that same plague of narrow-minded, jingoistic illusion peculiar
+to the Pan-Turks. He is as if intoxicated with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> a race-fanaticism that
+stifles all nobler emotions. Talaat is too methodical and clever not to
+avoid all intentional ruthlessness, but in practice his system, which
+he follows out with inflexible logic to the bitter end, turns out to
+be just as brutal as Enver's intrinsically more brutal policy. And
+although he accommodates himself outwardly to modern European methods
+and knows how to utilise them, the ethics of his system are out-and-out
+Asiatic. When Talaat speaks in the "Committee," there is very rarely
+the slightest opposition. He has usually prepared and coached the
+"Committee" so well beforehand that he can to all appearance keep in
+the background and only follow the majority. With the exception of a
+few military affairs, everything has always taken place that he has
+proposed in Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>Beside this man, whose sparkling eyes, massive shoulders, broad chest,
+clean-cut profile and exuberant health denote the whole unbounded
+energy of the dictator, the good-natured, degenerate, and epileptically
+inclined Sultan, Mehmed V, "El Ghazi" ("the hero"), is but a weak
+shadow. But if we fully recognise Talaat's high intellectual qualities,
+we should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> like all the more to emphasise that he must be held
+personally responsible more than all the others for everything that is
+now happening in Turkey, so far as it is not of a military character.
+The spirit reigning in Turkey to-day, the spirit of Pan-Turkish
+jingoism, is Talaat's spirit. The Armenian persecutions are his very
+own work. And when the day of reckoning comes for the Turkey of the
+"Committee of Union and Progress," it is to be hoped that Europe as
+judge and chastiser and avenger of an outraged civilisation, will lay
+the chief blame on Talaat Pasha rather than on his far weaker colleague
+Enver.</p>
+
+<p>All his eminent qualities, however, do not prevent this intellectual
+leader of Turkey, the most important man, beside the Sultan, in the
+land, from showing signs of something that is typical of the whole
+"Committee" clique with their dictatorial power, and which we may
+perhaps be allowed to call <i>parvenuishness</i>. At all points we see
+the characteristics of the parvenu in this statesman and one-time
+adventurer and in these creatures of the "Committee" who have recently
+become wealthy by certain abuses&mdash;I would remind you only of the
+Requisitions&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>and by a lucrative adherence to the ruling clique. There
+are of course individual cases of distinguished men of good birth
+throwing in their lot with the "Committee," but they are extremely
+rare, and they only help to give an even worse impression of the
+average Young Turk belonging to the Government. Their past is usually
+extremely doubtful, and their careers have been somewhat varied.</p>
+
+<p>No one of course would ever think of setting it down as a black mark
+against Talaat, for example, that he had to work his way up to his
+present supreme position from the very modest occupation of postman
+and postal coach conductor on the Adrianople road, via telegraph
+assistant and other branches of the Post Office; on the contrary, such
+intelligence and energy are worthy of the highest praise. But Talaat's
+case is a comparatively good one, and it is not so much their low
+social origin that is a drawback to these political leaders of Turkey,
+as their complete lack of education in statesmanship and history,
+which unfits them for the high rôle they are called upon to fill.
+Naturally it is not exactly pleasant when a man like Herr Paul Weitz,
+the correspondent of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> the <i>Frankfurter Zeitung</i>, and a political agent,
+can boast with a certain amount of justification that he has given tips
+of money to many of the present members of the "Committee"&mdash;in the real
+sense of the word, not in the political meaning of <i>backshish</i>! It is
+no wonder, then, that German influence won its way through so easily!</p>
+
+<p>Even yet Talaat's lowly origin is a drawback to him socially, and,
+in spite of his jovial manner and his complete confidence in his own
+powers, he sometimes feels himself so unsure that he rather avoids
+social duties. Probably one of the reasons of his long delay in
+accepting the post of Grand Vizier&mdash;he was already definitely marked
+out for it in the summer of 1915&mdash;was his own inner consciousness
+that his whole past life unfitted him socially for the duties of such
+an office. That he has now decided to accept it, is only the logical
+sequence of the system of absolute Turkification, which, with its plan
+of muzzling and supplanting all non-Turkish elements, had of course
+to get rid of the Egyptian element in the Government, represented by
+Prince Halim Saïd, the late<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> Grand Vizier, and his brother, the late
+Minister of Public Works.</p>
+
+<p>There are far more outstanding cases of incompatibility between social
+upbringing and present activity among the "Committee." I will simply
+take the single example of the Director General of the Press, Hikmet
+Bey. Mischievous Pera still gives him the nick-name of "<i>Sütdji</i>"
+("milkman"), because&mdash;although it is no reproach to him any more than
+in Talaat's case&mdash;he still kept his father's milk shop in the Rue
+Tepé Bashi in Pera before he managed to get himself launched on a
+political career by close adherence to the Committee. Sometimes, of
+course, one inherits from a low social origin far worse things than
+social inferiority. Perhaps Djemal Pasha's murderous instincts are to
+be traced to the fact that his grandfather was the official hangman in
+the service of Sultan Mahmud, and that his father still retained the
+nick-name of "hangman" among the people.</p>
+
+<p>One only needs to cast a glance at the Young Turks who are the
+leaders of fashion in the "Club de Constantinople"&mdash;after the English
+and French members are absent&mdash;with Ger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>man officers who have been
+admitted as temporary members at a reduced subscription, and one will
+find there, as in the more exclusive "Cercle d'Orient," and in the
+"Yachting Club" in Prinkipo in the summer-time, individuals belonging
+to the "Committee" whose lowly origin and bad manners are evident at
+the first glance. Talaat, who is himself President of the Club, knows
+exactly how to get his adherents elected as members without one of them
+being blackballed. People who used not to know what an International
+Club was, and who perhaps, in accordance with their former social
+status, got as far as the vestibule to speak to the Concierge, are
+now great "club men" and can afford, with the money they have amassed
+in "clique" trade and by the famous system of Requisitions, to play
+poker every evening for stakes of hundreds of Turkish pounds. One
+single kaleidoscopic glance into the perpetual whirl of any one of
+these clubs, which used to be places of friendly social intercourse
+for the best European circles, is quite sufficient to see the class
+of degenerate, greedy parvenus that rule poor, bleeding, helpless,
+exhausted Tur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>key. One cannot but be filled with a deep sympathy for
+this unfortunate land.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks of decent birth are disgusted at these parvenus. I have had
+conversations with many an old Pasha and Senator, true representatives
+of the refined and kindly Old Turkish aristocracy, and heard many a
+word of stern disapproval of the "Committee" quite apart from their
+divergent political opinions. There is a whole distinguished Turkish
+world in Constantinople who completely boycott Enver and his consorts
+socially, although they have to put up with their caprices politically.
+"I don't know Enver at all," or "<i>Je ne connais pas ces gens-là</i>"
+("I don't know these people"), are phrases that one very often hears
+repeated with infinite disdain. In all these cases it is the purely
+personal side&mdash;birth and manners&mdash;that repels them.</p>
+
+<p>Socially the cleft between the two camps is far deeper than it is
+politically, for many of these same people accommodate themselves,
+though with reluctance in their heart, to sharing at least formally
+as Senators in the responsibility for the present Young Turkish
+policy. They have to do so, for otherwise they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> would simply be flung
+mercilessly by Enver's Clique on to the streets to beg for bread.
+This is how it comes about to-day that, with very few exceptions, the
+Senators, who, to tell the truth, have as little practical say as the
+members of the Lower House, are all outwardly complaisant followers
+of the "Committee." The more doctrinal, but at any rate courageous
+and honourable opposition of Ahmed Riza is likewise of very little
+significance. Once, about the middle of December, 1916, Enver even went
+so far as to hurl the epithet "shameless dog" at Ahmed Riza in the
+Senate without being called to order by the President.</p>
+
+<p>The Deputies are also, with even fewer exceptions than the
+Senators&mdash;only one or two are reasonable men&mdash;all slaves pure and
+simple of Enver and Talaat. The Lower House is nothing but a set of
+employees paid by the Clique. In other countries now at war the Lower
+House may have sunk to the level of a laughing-stock; in Turkey it
+has become the instrument of crime. And it is these same toadies
+and parasites, who daily carry out this military dictator's will in
+Parliament, that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> daily treats with scarcely veiled irony and open
+and complete disdain. These are the "representatives of the people" in
+Turkey in war-time!</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><p class="ph3">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="hang"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Djemal Pasha learnt the news that Admiral von Souchon had
+bombarded Russian ports, and so made war inevitable, one evening at the
+Club. Pale with rage, he sprang up and said: "So be it; but if things
+go wrong, Souchon will be the first to be hanged."</p></div></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>The outlook for the future&mdash;The consequences of trusting Germany&mdash;The
+Entente's death sentence on Turkey&mdash;The social necessity for this
+deliverance&mdash;Anatolia, the new Turkey after the war&mdash;Forecasts about
+the Turkish race&mdash;The Turkish element in the lost territory&mdash;Russia
+and Constantinople; international guarantees&mdash;Germany, at peace,
+benefits too&mdash;Farewell to the German "World-politicians"&mdash;German
+interests in a victorious and in an amputated Turkey&mdash;The
+German-Turkish treaty&mdash;A paradise on earth&mdash;The Russian commercial
+impetus&mdash;The new Armenia&mdash;Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+civilization&mdash;Great Arabia and Syria&mdash;The reconciliation of Germany.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have come to the end of our sketches. The question before us now is:
+What will become of Turkey? The Entente has pronounced formal sentence
+of death on the Empire of the Sultan, and neither the slowly fading
+military power of Turkey, nor the help of Germany, who is herself
+already virtually conquered, will be able to arrest her fate.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the high frost-bound uplands of Armenia the Russians hold a
+strategic position from which it is impossible to dislodge them, and
+which will probably very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexandretta. In
+Mesopotamia, after that enormously important political event, the Fall
+of Baghdad, the union was effected between the British troops and
+the Russians, advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez Canal is now
+no longer threatened, and the British troops have been removed from
+there for a counter-offensive in Southern Palestine, and probably,
+when the psychological moment arrives, an offensive against Syria,
+now so sadly shattered politically. It is quite within the bounds of
+possibility, too, that during this war a big new Front may be formed
+in Western Anatolia, already completely broken up by the Pan-Hellenic
+Irredenta, and the Turks will be hard put to it to find troops to meet
+the new offensive. Arabia is finally and absolutely lost, and England,
+by establishing an Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war against
+Turkey. Meantime, on the far battlefields of Galicia and the Balkans,
+whole Ottoman divisions are pouring out their life-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>blood, fighting for
+that elusive German victory that never comes any nearer, while in every
+nook and corner of their own land there is a terrible lack of troops.
+Enver Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attempted to recall them, but
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>That is a short résumé of the military situation. This is how the
+Turkey of Enver and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has placed in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>To a German journalist who went out two years ago to a great Turkey,
+striving for a "Greater Turkey," it does indeed seem a bitter irony of
+fate to see his sphere of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The fall
+of Turkey is the greatest blow that could have been dealt to German
+"world-politics"; it is a disappointment that will have the gravest
+consequences. But from the standpoint of culture, human civilisation,
+ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice, historical progress,
+the economic development of wide tracts of land of the greatest
+importance from their geographical position, it is one of the most
+brilliant results of the war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy.
+When I look back on how wonderfully things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> have shaped in the last two
+and a half years I am bound to admit that I am happy things have turned
+out as they have. If perchance any Turk who knows me happens to read
+these lines, I beg him not to think that my ideas are saturated with
+hatred of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the country and the Turkish
+race with those many attractive qualities that rightly appealed to a
+poet like Loti.</p>
+
+<p>I have asked myself thousands of times what would be the best political
+solution of the problem, how to help this people&mdash;and the other races
+inhabiting their country&mdash;to true and lasting happiness. From my many
+journeys in tropical lands, I have grown accustomed to the sight of
+autochthonous civilisations and semi-civilised peoples, and am as
+interested in them as in the most perfectly civilised nations of
+Europe. I have therefore, I think, been able to set aside entirely in
+my own mind the territorial interests of the West in the development
+of the Near East, and give my whole attention to Turkey's own good and
+Turkey's own needs. But even then I have been obliged to subscribe
+to the sentence of death passed on the Turkey of the Young Turks
+and the sovereignty of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Ottoman Empire. It is with the fullest
+consciousness of what I am doing that I agree to the only seemingly
+cruel amputation of this State. It is merely the outer shell covering
+a number of peoples who suffer cruelly under an unjust system, chief
+among them the brave Turkish people who have been led by a criminal
+Government to take the last step on the road to ruin. The point of view
+I have adopted does not in any way detract from my personal sympathies,
+and I still have hopes that the many personal friendships I made
+in Constantinople will not be broken by the hard words I have been
+obliged to utter in the cause of truth, in the interests of outraged
+civilisation, and in the interests of a happier future for the Ottoman
+people themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The amputation of Turkey is a stern social necessity. Someone has
+said: "The greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I have too much love
+for the Turkish people, too much sympathy for them, to adopt this
+pessimistic attitude without great inward opposition; but unfortunately
+it is only too true. We have seen how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat
+has reacted sharply against the Western-minded,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> liberal era of the
+1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has turned again to Asia and her newly
+discovered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of to-day, European culture
+and civilisation are at best but a technical means; they are no longer
+an end in themselves. Their dream is no longer Western Europe, but a
+nationally awakened and strengthened Asiatentum.</p>
+
+<p>In face of this intellectual development, how can we hope that in the
+new Turkey there will be a radical alteration of what, in the whole
+course of Ottoman history, has always been the one characteristic,
+unchangeable, momentous fact, of what has always shattered the most
+honest efforts at reform, and always will shatter every attempt at
+improvement within a sovereign Turkey&mdash;I refer to the relationship
+of the Turk to the "<i>Rajah</i>" (the "herd"), the Christian subjects of
+the Padishah. The Ottoman, the Mohammedan conqueror, lives by the
+"herd" he has found in the land he has conquered; the "herd" are the
+"unbelievers," and rooted deep in the mind of this sovereign people,
+who have never quite lost their nomadic instincts, is the conviction
+that they have the right to live by the sweat of the brow of their
+Chris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>tian subjects and on the fruits of their labour. That we
+Europeans think this unjust the Turk will never be able to grasp.</p>
+
+<p>A Wali of Erzerum once said: "The Turkish Government and the Armenian
+people stand in the relationship of man and wife, and any third persons
+who feel sympathy for the wife and anger at the wife-beating husband
+will do better not to meddle in this domestic strife." This quotation
+has become famous, for it exactly characterises the relationship of
+the Turk to the "Rajah," not to the Armenians. In this phrase alone
+there lies, quite apart from all the crimes committed by the present
+Turkish Government, a sufficient moral and political foundation for
+the sentence of death passed on the sovereignty of the present Turkish
+State. For so long as the Turks cling to Islam, from which springs that
+opposition between Moslem rulers and "Giaur" subjects so detrimental
+to all social progress, it is Europe's sacred duty not to give Turkey
+sovereignty over any territory with a strong Christian element. That
+is why Turkey must at all costs be confined to Inner Anatolia; that is
+why complete amputation is necessary; and why the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> outlying districts
+of Turkey, the Straits, the Anatolian coast, the whole of Armenia must
+be rescued and, part of it at any rate, placed under formal European
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>Even in Inner Anatolia, which will probably still be left to the
+Ottomans after the war, the strongest European influence must be
+brought to bear&mdash;which will probably not be difficult in view of
+Turkey's financial bankruptcy; European customs and civilisation must
+be introduced; in a word, Europe must exercise sufficient control
+to be in a position to prevent the numerous non-Turks resident even
+in Anatolia from being exposed to the old system of exploiting the
+"Rajah." Discerning Turks themselves have admitted that it would be
+best for Europe to put the whole of Turkey for a generation under
+curatorship and general European supervision.</p>
+
+<p>I, personally, should not be satisfied with this system for the
+districts occupied more by non-Turks than by Turks; but, on the other
+hand, I should not go so far in the case of Inner Anatolia. I trust
+that strong European influence will make it possible to make Inner
+Anatolia a sovereign territory. I have pinned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> my faith on the Ottoman
+race being given another and final opportunity on her own ground of
+showing how she will develop now after the wonderful intellectual
+improvement that has taken place during the war. I hope at the same
+time that even in a sovereign Turkish Inner Anatolia Europe will have
+enough say to prevent any outgrowths of the "Rajah principle."</p>
+
+<p>The Turks must not be deprived of the opportunity to bring their
+new-found abilities, which even we must praise, to bear on the
+production of a new, modern, but thoroughly Turkish civilisation
+of their own on their own ground. Anatolia, beautiful and capable
+of development, is, even if we confine it to those interior parts
+chiefly inhabited by Ottomans, still quite a big enough field for the
+production of such a civilisation; it is quite big enough too for the
+terribly reduced numbers now belonging to the Osmanic race.</p>
+
+<p>The amputation and limitation of Turkey, even if they do not succeed
+in altering the real Turkish point of view&mdash;and this, so far as the
+relationship to the Christians is concerned, is the same, from the
+Pasha down to the poorest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> Anatolian peasant&mdash;will at least have a
+tremendously beneficial effect. The possibilities in the Turkish race
+will come to flower. "The worst patriots," I once dared to say in one
+of my articles in spite of the censorship, "are not those who look for
+the future of the nation in concentrated cultural work in the Turkish
+nucleus-land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the Caucasus and down
+into the sands of the African desert in their search for a 'Greater
+Turkey.'" And in connection with the series of lectures I have already
+mentioned about Anatolian hygiene and social politics, I said, with
+quite unmistakable meaning: "Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity
+on her own original ground, in the nucleus-land of the Ottomans, of
+proving her capability and showing that she has become a really modern,
+civilised State."</p>
+
+<p>My earnest wish is that all the Turks' high intellectual abilities,
+brought to the front by this war, may be concentrated on this beautiful
+and repaying task. Intensive labour and the concentration of all forces
+on positive work in the direction of civilisation will have to take the
+place of corrupt rule, boundless neglect,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> waste, the strangulation of
+all progressive movements, political illusions, the unquenchable desire
+for conquest and oppression. This is what we pray for for Anatolia,
+the real New Turkey after the war. In other districts, also, now fully
+under European control, the pure Turkish element will flourish much
+more exceedingly than ever before under the beneficent protection of
+modern, civilised Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turkish Power has
+vanished. But new life springs out of ruin and decay; the history of
+mankind is a continual change.</p>
+
+<p>Russia, too, after war, will no longer be what she seemed to terrified
+Turkish eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled by "world-politics": a
+colossal creature, stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow up her
+smaller neighbours; a country ruled by a dull, unthinking despotism.</p>
+
+<p>From the standpoint of universal civilisation it is to be hoped that
+the solution of the problem of the Near East will be to transform
+the Straits between the Black Sea and Aegea, together with the city
+of Constantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into a com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>pletely
+international stretch with open harbours. Then we need no longer oppose
+Russian aspirations. If England, the stronghold of Free Trade and of
+all principles of freedom of intercourse, and France, the land of
+culture, interested in Turkey to the extent of millions, were content
+to leave Russia a free hand in the Straits; if Roumania, shut in in
+the Black Sea, did not fear for her trade, but was willing to become
+an ally of Russia in full knowledge of the Entente agreement about
+the Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident what guarantee
+with regard to international freedom modern Russia will have to give
+after the war, and even the Germans have nothing to fear. Of course
+the German anti-European "Antwerp-Baghdad" dream will be shattered.
+But once Germany is at peace, she will probably find that even the
+Russian solution of the Straits question benefits her not a little. The
+final realisation of Russia's efforts, justifiable both historically
+and geographically, to reach the Mediterranean at this one eminently
+suitable spot, will certainly contribute in an extraordinary degree to
+remove the unbearable politi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>cal pressure from Europe and ensure peace
+for the world.</p>
+
+<p>Just a few parting words to the German "World-politicians." Very often,
+as I have said, I heard during my stay in Constantinople expressions
+of anxiety on the part of Germans that all German interests, even
+purely commercial ones, would be gravely endangered in the victorious
+New Turkey, which would spring to life again with renewed jingoistic
+passions and renewed efforts at emancipation. And more than once&mdash;all
+honour to the feelings of justice and the sound common sense of those
+who dared to utter such opinions&mdash;I was told by Germans, in the middle
+of the war, and with no attempt at concealment, that they fully agreed
+it was an absolute necessity for Russia to have the control of the
+only outlet for her enormous trade to the Mediterranean, and that
+commercially at any rate the fight for Constantinople and the Straits
+was a fight for a just cause.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let us take these two points of view together. From the purely
+German standpoint, which is better?&mdash;a victorious and self-governing
+Turkey imbued with jingoism and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> the desire for emancipation,
+practically closed to us, even commercially, or an amputated Turkey,
+compelled to appeal for European help and European capital to recover
+from her state of complete exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those
+Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of all their fine phrases and
+the German help they had to accept for all their inward distaste of
+it, hate us from the very depths of their heart; a Turkey which, even
+if Russia,&mdash;as a last resort!&mdash;is allowed to become mistress of the
+Dardanelles with huge international guarantees, would, in the Anatolia
+that is left to her, capable of development as it is, and rich in
+national wealth, offer a very considerable field of activity for German
+enterprise? The short-sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting for the
+victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-Turkism against the modern, civilised
+States of the Entente, who had no wish at all that Germany should not
+fare as well as the rest in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can
+perhaps answer my question. They should have asked themselves this,
+and foreseen the consequences before they yielded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> weakly to Turkish
+caprices and themselves stirred up the Turks against Europe.</p>
+
+<p>As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit,
+in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty,
+guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at
+a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could
+possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect
+Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her
+long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the
+question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of
+Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if
+necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can
+thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No"
+before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia
+at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the
+Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal
+of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement
+about the war in Constantinople and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> elsewhere were not required to
+show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the
+bitter end."</p>
+
+<p>Never, however&mdash;and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of
+the World-politician&mdash;have I ever heard a single one of those Germans,
+who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order
+to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion
+the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German
+activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near
+East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have
+decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them,
+to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had
+committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further
+with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have
+any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of
+commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist
+were Turkey victorious.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for mankind, history has decided<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> otherwise. After the war, the
+huge and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will be carried down to
+the then open seaports between Europe and Asia; the wealth of Odessa
+and the Pontus ports, enormously increased and free to develop, will
+be concentrated on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and the whole
+hitherto neglected city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata to
+Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha, will become an earthly paradise
+of pulsing life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury and elegance of
+the Crimea will move southwards to these shores of unique natural
+beauty and mild climate which form the bridge between two continents
+and between two seas. Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful
+labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the
+Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the
+war, under Turkish régime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes
+which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Never, even after another hundred years of Turkish rule, would that
+unique coast ever have become what it can be and what it must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> be&mdash;one
+of the very greatest centres of international intercourse and the
+Riviera of the East, not only in beauty of landscape, but in luxury
+and wealth. The greatest stress in this connection is to be laid on
+the lively Russian impetus that will spring from a modernised Russia,
+untrammelled by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced as I am that
+Russia after the war will no longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared
+by Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey, I am prepared to give this
+impetus full play, as being the best possible means for the further
+development of Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes of the Taurus and the foot
+of the Armenian mountains, there will extend a modern Turkey which
+has finally come to rest, to concentration, to peaceful labour, after
+centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the suicidal policy of
+military adventurers, and superficial attempts at expansion coupled
+with neglect of the most important internal duties. The inhabitants
+of these lands will soon have forgotten that "Greater Turkey" has
+collapsed. They will be really happy at last, these people whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+idea of happiness hitherto had been a veneer of material well-being
+obtained by toadying, while the great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt,
+ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an outworn militarism, oppressed
+by a decaying administration. Then, but not till then, the world will
+see what the Turkish people is capable of. Then there will be no need
+for pessimism about this kindly and honourable race. Then we can become
+honest "Pro-Turks" again.</p>
+
+<p>In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not forget that the whole shore,
+where once stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-out Hellenic
+centre of civilisation. Quite independently of all political feelings
+towards present-day Greece, this historical fact must be taken into
+consideration in the final ruling. It is to be hoped that the Greek
+people will not have to atone for ever for the faults of their
+non-Greek king who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty to be a
+Greek and nothing but a Greek, and who has betrayed the honour and the
+future of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste by war, and emptied of men
+by Talaat's passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> for persecution, will obtain autonomy from her
+conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps be linked up with all the other
+parts of the east, inhabited by the last remnants of the Armenian
+people. Armenia, with its central position and divided into three among
+Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may from its geographical position, its
+unfortunate history, and the endless sufferings it has been called
+upon to bear, be called the Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from the
+Turkish system, freed from all antagonistic Turko-Russian military
+principles of obstruction, linked up by railways to the west as well as
+the already well-developed region of Transcaucasia, with a big through
+trade from the Black Sea via Trapezunt to Persia and Mesopotamia,
+it will once more offer an excellent field of activity to the high
+intellectual and commercial abilities of its people, now, alas!
+scattered to the four winds of heaven. But they will return to their
+old home, bringing with them European ideas, European technique, and
+the most modern methods from America.</p>
+
+<p>If men are lacking, they can be obtained from the near Caucasus with
+its narrow, over-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>filled valleys, inhabited by a most superior race
+of men, who have always had strong emigrating instincts. Even this
+most unfortunate country in the whole world, which the Turks of the
+Old Régime and of the New have systematically mutilated and at last
+bequeathed to Russia with practically not a man left, is going to have
+its spring-time.</p>
+
+<p>In the south, Great Arabia and Syria will have autonomy under the
+protection of England and France with their skilful Islam policy; they
+will have the benefit of the approved methods of progressive work in
+Egypt, the Soudan, and India as well as the Atlas lands; they will be
+exposed to the influences and incitements of the rest of civilised
+Europe; they will probably be enriched with capital from America,
+where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as well as Armenian, refugees have
+found a home; they will provide the first opportunity in history of
+showing how the Arab race accommodates itself to modern civilisation
+on its own ground and with its own sovereign administration. The final
+deliverance of the Arabs from the oppressive and harmful supremacy of
+the Turks, now happily accomplished by the war,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> was one of the most
+urgent demands for a race that can look back on centuries of brilliant
+civilisation. The civilised world will watch with the keenest interest
+the self-development of the Arabian lands.</p>
+
+<p>Even Germany, once she is at peace, will have no need to grumble at
+these arrangements, however diametrically opposed they may be to the
+now sadly shattered plans of the Pan-German and Expansion politicians.
+Germany will not lose the countless millions she has invested in
+Turkey. She will have her full and sufficient share in the European
+work and commercial activity that will soon revive again in the Near
+East. The Baghdad railway of "Rohrbach &amp; Company" will never be
+built, it is true; but the Baghdad Railway with a loyal international
+marking off of the different zones of interest, the Baghdad Railway,
+as a huge artery of peaceful intercourse linking up the whole of Asia
+Minor and bringing peace and commercial prosperity, will all the more
+surely rise from its ruins. And when once the German <i>Weltpolitik</i>
+with its jealousy, its tactless, sword-rattling interference in the
+time-honoured vital interests of other States,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> its political intrigues
+disguised in commercial dress, is safely dead and buried, there will be
+nothing whatever to hinder Germany from making use of this railway and
+carrying her purely commercial energy and the products of her peaceful
+labour to the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving in return the
+rich fruits of her cultural activity on the soil of Asia Minor.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<p class="ph2"><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the
+representative of a great national paper like the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i>,
+could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the
+furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and
+which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as
+an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to
+explain the rôle I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how
+I came to the decision to publish my experiences.</p>
+
+<p>As far as my post on the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i> is concerned, I accepted
+it and went to Turkey although I was from the very beginning against
+German "World-politics" of the present-day style at any rate (not
+against German commercial and cultural activity in foreign countries)
+and against militarism&mdash;as was only to be expected from one who had
+studied colonial politics and universal history unreserved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>ly, and had
+spent many years studying in the English, French, and German colonies
+of Africa&mdash;and although I was quite convinced that Germany's was the
+crime of setting the war in motion. Besides, my "anti-militarism" is
+not of a dogmatic kind, but refers merely to the relations customary
+between civilised nations&mdash;witness the fact that I took part in the
+Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-West Africa as a volunteer.</p>
+
+<p>I hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for my extra-European
+leanings, a sphere of labour less absorbed by German militarism, and
+opportunity for independent study, and surely no one will take it amiss
+that I seized such a chance, certainly unique in war-time, in spite of
+my political views.</p>
+
+<p>Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the background to begin with,
+so as to be able to form my own opinion, of course doing my uttermost
+at the same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken. In spite
+of everything I had to witness, it was quite easy to reconcile all
+oppositions, until that famous day when my wife denounced Germany to
+my face. From that moment I became an enemy of pres<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>ent-day Germany
+and began to think of one day publishing the whole truth about the
+system. Until then I had contented myself with never saying a good word
+about the war, as one can easily find for oneself from a perusal of my
+various articles in the <i>Kölnische Zeitung</i> during 1915-16, dated from
+Constantinople and marked (a small steamship).</p>
+
+<p>That dramatic event which finally alienated me from the German cause
+took place just after the end of a severe crisis in my relationship
+with German-Turkish Headquarters. Some slight hints I had given of
+Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and jingoism in a series of articles
+appearing from February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title "Turkish
+Economic Problems," so far as they were possible under existing
+censorship conditions, was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine
+that Headquarters would certainly be furious with a journalist whose
+articles appeared one fine day, literally translated, in the <i>Matin</i>
+under the title: "<i>Situation insupportable en Turquie, décrite par un
+journaliste allemand</i>" ("Insufferable situation in Turkey, described
+by a German journalist"), and cropped up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> once more on June 1st, in
+the <i>Journal des Balcans</i>, I was three times over threatened with
+dismissal. My paper sent a confidential man to hold an inquiry, and
+after a month he made a confidential report, which resulted in my being
+allowed to remain. But the fact that the same journalist that wrote
+such things was married to a Czech was too much for my colleagues,
+who were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part in the pay of the
+Young Turkish Committee, whose politics they praised, regardless of
+their own inward convictions, like the representative of the <i>Berliner
+Tageblatt</i>, to get material benefit or make sure of their own jobs.
+I gleaned many humorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press
+colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded as a "dangerous
+character that must be got rid of," and my wife (who was far too young
+ever to worry about politics) as a "Russian spy"&mdash;perhaps because, with
+the justifiable pride and reserve of her race, she did not attempt to
+cultivate the society of the German colony. That began the period of
+intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did not succeed in damaging
+me, although matters went so far as a denunciation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> of me before the
+"Prevention of Espionage Department" of the General Staff in Berlin. My
+paper, after they had given me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had
+arranged for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all that had
+taken place, thought it was better to give me the chance of changing
+and offered me a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>However, I was now quite finished with Germany, or rather with its
+politics; it would have been a moral impossibility for me to write
+another single word in the editorial line; so I refused the offer and
+applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916, to the end of the war
+(by telegram about the middle of August). It was granted me with an
+expression of regret.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917), I severed all connection
+with my paper by mutual consent from October 1st, 1916, onwards. After
+my resignation, no special editorial representative of the <i>Kölnische
+Zeitung</i> was appointed to take my place, as the censorship made any
+kind of satisfactory work impossible.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to emphasise the fact that the intrigues against me,
+the crisis with Head<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>quarters I have just mentioned, and my departure
+from Constantinople did not injure me in any way either morally
+or financially, and have nothing whatever to do with the present
+publication. It is certainly not any petty annoyance that could bring
+me to such an action, which will probably entail more than enough
+unpleasant consequences for me. The reproaches levelled against me by
+my pushing, jingoistic colleagues were as impotent as their attempts to
+get rid of me as "dangerous to the German Cause"; I have written proof
+of this from my paper in my hand, and also of the fact that it was of
+my own free-will that I retired. I can therefore look forward quite
+calmly to all the personal invective that is sure to be showered on me
+for political reasons.</p>
+
+<p>I had sufficient independent means not to feel the loss of my post
+in Constantinople too keenly; and if I still kept my post after the
+beginning of the crisis with Headquarters, it was simply and solely so
+that as a newspaper correspondent I might be in possession of fuller
+information, and able to follow up as long as possible the developments
+that were taking place on that most interesting soil of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> Turkey.
+When that was no longer possible, I refused the post offered me in
+Cologne&mdash;in fact twice, once by letter and once by telegram&mdash;for I
+could not pretend to opinions I directly opposed. I therefore remained
+as a free-lance in the Turkish capital. I was extremely glad that the
+difference of opinion ended as it did, for I had at last a free hand to
+say and write what I thought and felt.</p>
+
+<p>My stay in Constantinople for a further three months as a silent
+observer naturally did not escape the notice of the German authorities,
+and after they had reported to the Foreign Office that a "satisfactory
+co-operation between me and the German representatives was not longer
+possible," they had of course to discover some excuse for putting an
+end to my prolonged stay in Turkey. They finally attempted to get rid
+of me by calling me up for military duty again. But this was useless in
+my case, for my health had been badly shaken by my spell at the Front
+at the beginning of the war, and besides I had the doctor's word for it
+that I should never be able to stand the German climate after having
+lived so long in the Tropics.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whether they liked it or not, the authorities had to find some
+other means of getting me out of Constantinople. The Consul-General
+approached me, after he had discussed the matter with the Ambassador,
+to see if I would not like to go to Switzerland to get properly cured;
+otherwise he was sure I would be turned out by the Turks. They were
+evidently afraid, for I was getting more and more into bad odour
+with the German authorities for my ill-concealed opinions, that I
+would publish my impressions, with documentary support, as soon as
+ever there was a change of government in Turkey, or as soon as the
+German censorship was removed and anything of the kind was possible.
+They apparently thought that the frontier regulations would be quite
+sufficient to prevent my taking any documentary evidence with me to
+Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact this was the case, and the day before my departure
+from Constantinople I carefully burned the whole of my many notes,
+which would have produced a much more effective indictment against the
+moral sordidness of the German-Young Turkish system than these very
+general sketches. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> strictest frontier regulations could not
+prevent me from taking with me, free of all censorship, the impressions
+I had received in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after a
+painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German and to the duties I
+had undertaken. Even then I had considerable difficulty in getting
+across the frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days at the
+frontier before I was finally allowed into Switzerland. It was only
+owing to the fact that I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the
+authority of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging that no
+difficulties of a political kind might be placed in the way of my
+going to Switzerland, as I had been permitted to do so by medical
+certificate, the passport authorities and the local command, that I
+finally won my point with the frontier authorities and was permitted to
+cross into Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, I must admit that the high civil authorities, and
+particularly the Foreign Office, treated me throughout most kindly and
+courteously. For this one reason I had a hard fight with myself, right
+up to the very last, even after I arrived in Switzerland, before I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+sat down and wrote out my impressions and opinions of German-Turkish
+politics. And if I have now finally decided to make them public, I can
+only do so with an expression of the most honest regret that my private
+and political conscience has not allowed me to requite the kindness of
+the authorities by keeping silent about what I saw of the German and
+Turkish system.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
+have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
+this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Two War Years in Constantinople
+       Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics
+
+Author: Harry Stuermer
+
+Translator: E. Allen
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2019 [EBook #60638]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Graeme Mackreth and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ TWO WAR YEARS IN
+ CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+
+
+ TWO WAR YEARS
+ IN
+ CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+ _Sketches of German and Young Turkish
+ Ethics and Politics_
+
+
+ BY
+ DR. HARRY STUERMER
+ LATE CORRESPONDENT OF THE KOeLNISCHE ZEITUNG
+ IN CONSTANTINOPLE (1915-16)
+
+
+ TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
+ E. ALLEN
+ AND THE AUTHOR
+
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ NEW YORK
+ GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
+ GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DECLARATION
+
+
+The undersigned hereby declares on his sworn word of honour that
+in writing this volume he has been in no way inspired by outside
+influence, and that he has never had any dealings whatsoever, material
+or otherwise, either before or during the war, with any Government,
+organisation, propaganda, or personality hostile to Germany or Turkey
+or even of a neutral character. His conscience alone has urged him to
+write and publish his impressions, and he hopes that by so doing he may
+perform a service towards the cause of truth and civilisation.
+
+Moreover, he can give formal assurance that he has expressly avoided
+making the acquaintance of any person resident in Switzerland until his
+manuscript should have been sent to press.
+
+Furthermore, he has been actuated by no personal motives in thus
+giving public expression to his experiences and opinions, for he has
+no personal grievance, either material or moral, against any person
+whatsoever.
+
+
+[Illustration: _Dr. H. Stuermer_]
+
+ Geneva,
+ _June 1917_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+While the author of this work was waiting on the frontier of
+Switzerland for final permission from the German authorities to enter
+that country, Germany committed her second great crime, her first
+having completely missed its mark. She had begun to realise that she
+was beaten in the great conflict which she had so wantonly provoked
+with that characteristic over confidence in the power of her own
+militarism and disdainful undervaluation of the _morale_ and general
+capacities of her enemies. In final renunciation of any last remnants
+of humanity in her methods, she was now making a dying effort to help
+her already lost cause by a ruthless extension of her policy of piracy
+at sea and a gratification of all her brutal instincts in complete
+violation of the rights of neutral countries.
+
+It is therefore with all the more inward conviction, with all the
+more urgent moral persuasion, that the author makes use of the rare
+opportunity offered him by residence in Switzerland to range himself
+boldly on the side of truth and show that there are still Germans who
+find it impossible to condone even tacitly the moral transgression and
+political stupidity of their own and an allied Government. _That is the
+sole purpose of this publication._
+
+Regardless of the consequences, he holds it to be his duty and his
+privilege, just because he is a German, to make a frank statement,
+from the point of view of human civilisation, of what have become his
+convictions from personal observations made in the course of six months
+of actual warfare and practically two years of subsequent journalistic
+activity. He spent the time from Spring 1915 to Christmas 1916 in
+Turkey, and will of course only deal with what he knows from personal
+observation. The following essays are of the nature merely of sketches
+and make no claim whatever to completeness.
+
+With regard to purely German politics and ethics, therefore, the author
+will confine himself to a few indications and impressions of a personal
+kind, but he cannot forget the role Germany has played in Turkey as
+an ally of the present Young Turkish Government, nor can he ignore
+Germany's responsibility for the atrocities committed by them. The
+author publishes his impressions with a perfectly clear conscience,
+secure in the conviction that as the representative of a German paper
+he never once wrote a single word in favour of this criminal war, and
+that during his stay of more than twenty months in Turkey he never
+concealed his true opinions as soon as he had definitely made up his
+mind what these were.
+
+On the contrary, he was rather dangerously candid and frank in speaking
+to anyone who wanted to listen to him--so much so, that it is almost a
+miracle that he ever reached a neutral country. After the war he will
+be in a position to appeal to the testimony of dozens of people of high
+standing in all walks of life that in both thought and action a deep
+cleft has always divided him from his colleagues, and that he has ever
+ardently longed for the moment when he might, freely and without fear
+of consequences, do his bit towards the enlightenment of the civilised
+world.
+
+May these lines, written in all sincerity and hereby submitted to the
+tribunal of public opinion, free the author at last from the burden
+of silent reproach heaped on him by a mutilated, outraged, languishing
+humanity, of being a German among thousands of Germans who desired this
+war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Several months have passed since the original text of the German and
+French editions of this little book was written. Baghdad was taken by
+British troops before the last chapter of the German manuscript had
+been completed, and since then military operations have been more and
+more in favour of the Entente. A number of important political events
+have occurred, such as the Russian Revolution and the entry of the
+United States of America into the war.
+
+Further developments of Russian politics may yet have a direct effect
+on the final solution of the problems surrounding the defeated Ottoman
+Empire. But the author has preferred to maintain the original text of
+his book, written early in March this year, and to make no changes
+whatever in the conclusions he had then arrived at as a result of the
+fresh impressions he carried away from Turkey.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+                                                                       PAGE
+
+  At the outbreak of war in Germany--The German "world-politicians"
+  (_Weltpolitiker_)--German and English mentality--The
+  "place in the sun"--England's declaration
+  of war--German methods in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine--Prussian
+  arrogance--Militaristic journalism                                     17
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  To Constantinople--Pro-Turkish considerations--The dilemma
+  of a Gallipoli correspondent--Under German military
+  control                                                                35
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  The great Armenian persecutions--The system of Talaat and
+  Enver--A denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and
+  conscienceless accomplice                                              42
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  The tide of war--Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+  Caucasus"--The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+  twice hangs in the balance--Nervous tension
+  in international Pera--Bulgaria's attitude--Turkish rancour
+  against her former enemy--German illusions of a
+  separate peace with Russia--King Ferdinand's time-serving--Lack
+  of munitions in the Dardanelles--A mysterious
+  death: a political murder?--The evacuation of
+  Gallipoli--The Turkish version of victory--Constantinople
+  unreleased--Kut-el-Amara--Propaganda for the "Holy
+  War"--A prisoner of repute--Loyalty of Anglo-Indian
+  officers--Turkish communiques and their worth--The fall
+  of Erzerum--Official lies--The treatment of prisoners--Political
+  speculation with prisoners of war--Treatment
+  of enemy subjects--Stagnation and lassitude in the summer
+  of 1916--The Greeks in Turkey--Dread of Greek
+  massacres--Rumania's entry--Terrible disappointment--The
+  three phases of the war for Turkey                                     75
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  The economic situation--Exaggerated Entente hopes--Hunger
+  and suffering among the civil population--The system of
+  requisitioning and the semi-official monopolists--Profiteering
+  on the part of the Government clique--Frivolity and
+  cynicism--The "Djemiet"--The delegates of the German
+  _Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_ (Central Purchases Commission)--A
+  hard battle between German and Turkish intrigue--Reform
+  of the coinage--Paper money and its depreciation--The
+  hoarding of bullion--The Russian rouble
+  the best investment                                                   107
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  German propaganda and ethics--The unsuccessful "Holy
+  War" and the German Government--"The Holy War"
+  a crime against civilisation, a chimera, a farce--Underhand
+  dealings--The German Embassy the dupe of adventurers--The
+  morality of German Press representatives--A
+  trusty servant of the German Embassy--Fine official
+  distinctions of morality--The German conception of the
+  rights of individuals                                                 126
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  Young Turkish nationalism--One-sided abolition of capitulations
+  --Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation--Abolition of
+  foreign languages--German simplicity--The Turkification
+  of commercial life--Unmistakable intellectual improvement
+  as a result of the war--Trade policy and customs
+  tariff--National production--The founding of new businesses
+  in Turkey--Germany supplanted--German starvation--Capitulations
+  or full European control?--The
+  colonisation and forcible Turkification of Anatolia--"The
+  properties of people who have been dispatched elsewhere"--The
+  "Mohadjirs"--Greek persecutions just before the
+  Great War--The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus of
+  the Ottoman Empire--Turkey finds herself at last--Anatolian
+  dirt and decay--The "Greater Turkey" and the
+  purely Turkish Turkey--Cleavage or concentration?                     151
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Religion and race--The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of
+  the Young Turks--Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political
+  principles--Turanism and the Quadruple Alliance--Greed
+  and race-fanaticism--Religious traditions and
+  modern reforms--Reform in the law--A modern Sheikh-ul-Islam--Reform
+  and nationalization--The Armenian
+  and Greek Patriarchates--The failure of Pan-Islamism--The
+  alienation of the Arabs--Djemal Pasha's "hangman's
+  policy" in Syria--Djemal as a "Pro-French"--Djemal
+  and Enver--Djemal and Germany--His true character--The
+  attempts against the Suez Canal--Djemal's murderous
+  work nears completion--The great Arabian and
+  Syrian Separatist movement--The defection of the Emir
+  of Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe                            176
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks--Turkish
+  pessimism about the war--How would Abdul-Hamid have
+  acted?--A war of prevention against Russia--Russia and
+  a neutral Turkey--The agreement about the Dardanelles--A
+  peaceful solution scorned--Alleged criminal intentions
+  on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece
+  and Salonika--To be or not to be?--German influence--Turkey
+  stakes on the wrong card--The results                                 209
+
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting
+  Germany--The Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The
+  social necessity for this deliverance--Anatolia, the
+  new Turkey after the war; forecasts about the Turkish
+  race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia
+  and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany,
+  at peace, benefits too--Farewell to the German "World
+  Politicians"--German interests in a victorious and in a
+  defeated Turkey--The German-Turkish treaty--A paradise
+  on earth--The Russian commercial impulse--The
+  new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+  civilisation--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation
+  of Germany                                                            258
+
+  Appendix                                                              283
+
+
+
+
+TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  At the outbreak of war in Germany--The German "world-politicians"
+  (_Weltpolitiker_)--German and English mentality--The "place in the
+  sun"--England's declaration of war--German methods in Belgium and
+  Alsace-Lorraine--Prussian arrogance--Militaristic journalism.
+
+
+Anyone who, like myself, set foot on German soil for the first time
+after years of sojourn in foreign lands, and more particularly in
+the colonies, just at the moment that Germany was mobilising for the
+great European war, must surely have been filled, as I was, with a
+certain feeling of melancholy, a slight uneasiness with regard to
+the state of mind of his fellow-countrymen as it showed itself in
+these dramatic days of August in conversations in the street, in
+cafes and restaurants, and in the articles appearing in the Press.
+We Germans have never learnt to think soundly on political subjects.
+Bismarck's political heritage, although set forth in most popular
+form in his _Thoughts and Recollections_, a book that anyone opposing
+this war from the point of view rather of prudence than of ethics
+might utilise as an unending source of propaganda, has not descended
+to our rulers in any sort of living form. But an unbounded political
+_naivete_, an incredible lack of judgment and of understanding of
+the point of view of other peoples, who have their _raison d'etre_
+just as much as we have, their vital interests, their standpoint of
+honour--have not prevented us from trying to carry on a grand system of
+_Weltpolitik_ (world politics). The average everyday German has never
+really understood the English--either before or during the war; in the
+latter's colonial policy, which, according to pan-German ideas, has
+no other aim than to snatch from us our "place in the sun"; in their
+conception of liberty and civilisation, which has entailed such mighty
+sacrifices for them on behalf of their Allies; when we trod Belgian
+neutrality underfoot and thought England would stand and look on;
+at the time of the debates about universal service, when practically
+every German, even in the highest political circles, was ready to wager
+that there would be a revolution in England sooner than any general
+acceptance of Conscription; and coming down to more recent events,
+when the latest huge British war loan provided the only fit and proper
+answer to German frightfulness at sea.
+
+Let me here say a word on the subject of colonial policy, on which I
+may perhaps be allowed to speak with a certain amount of authority
+after extended travel in the farthest corners of Africa, and from
+an intimate, personal knowledge of German as well as English and
+French colonies. Germany has less colonial territory than the older
+colonists, it is true. It is also true that the German struggle for
+the most widespread, the most intensive and lucrative employment of
+the energies and capabilities of our highly developed commercial land
+is justified. But at the risk of being dubbed as absolutely lacking
+in patriotism, I should like to point out that in the first place the
+resources we had at our disposal in our own colonial territory in
+tropical and sub-tropical Africa, little exploited as they then were,
+would have amply sufficed for our commercial needs and colonising
+capacities--though possibly not for our aspirations after world power!
+And secondly, the very liberal character of England's trade and
+colonial policy did not hinder us in any way from reaching the top of
+the commercial tree even in foreign colonies.
+
+Anyone who knows English colonies knows that the British Government,
+wherever it has been possible to do so politically, that is, in all her
+colonies which are already properly organised and firmly established
+as British, has always met in a most generous and sympathetic way
+German, and indeed any foreign, trade or other enterprises. New firms,
+with German capital, were received with open arms, their excellence
+and value for the young country heartily recognised and ungrudgingly
+encouraged; not the slightest shadow of any jealousy of foreign
+undertakings could ever exist in a British colony, and every German
+could be as sure as an Englishman himself of being justly treated in
+every way and encouraged in the most generous fashion in his work.
+
+Thousands of Germans otherwise thoroughly embued with the national
+spirit make no secret of the fact that they would far rather live in
+a British than a German colony. Too often in the latter the newcomer
+was met at every point by an exaggerated bureaucracy and made to feel
+by some official that he was not a reserve officer, and consequently a
+social inferior. Hints were dropped to discourage him, and inquiries
+were even made as to whether he had enough money to book his passage
+back to where he came from!
+
+Far be it from me to wish to depreciate by these words the value of
+our own colonial efforts. As pioneers in Africa we were working on
+the very best possible lines, but we should have been content to go
+on learning from the much superior British colonial methods, and
+should have finished and perfected our own domain instead of always
+shouting jealously about other people's. I am quite convinced that
+another ten years of undisturbed peaceful competition and Germany,
+with her own very considerable colonial possessions on the one hand,
+and the possibility on the other of pushing commercial enterprise on
+the highest scale not only in independent overseas states but under
+the beneficent protection of English rule with its true freedom and
+real furtherance of trade "uplift," would have reached her goal much
+better than by means of all the sword-rattling _Weltpolitik_ of the
+Pan-Germans.
+
+It is true that in territory not yet properly organised or guaranteed,
+politically still doubtful, and in quite new protectorates, especially
+along the routes to India, where vital English interests are at stake,
+and on the much-talked-of Persian Gulf, England could not, until her
+main object was firmly secured, meet in the same fair way German
+desires with regard to commercial activity. And there she has more than
+once learnt to her cost the true character of the German _Weltpolitik_.
+
+That is the real meaning, at any rate so far as colonial politics are
+concerned, of the German-English contest for a "place in the sun." No
+one who understands it aright could ever condone the outgrowths of our
+_Weltpolitik_, however much he might desire to assist German ability to
+find practical outlet in all suitable overseas territory, nor could he
+ever forget the wealth of wonderful deeds, wrought in the service of
+human civilisation and freedom, Englishmen can place to their credit
+years before we ever began. With such considerations of justice in
+view, we should have recognised that there was a limit to our efforts
+after expansion, and as a matter of fact we should have gone further
+and fared better--in a decade we should have probably been really
+wealthy--for the English in their open-handed way certainly left us
+a surprising amount of room for the free exercise of our commercial
+talents.
+
+I have intentionally given an illustration only of the colonial side
+of the problem affecting German-English relations, so that I may avoid
+dealing with any subject I do not know from personal observation.
+
+It was this English people, that, in spite of all their egoism, have
+really done something for civilisation, that the German of August 1914
+accused of being nothing but a nation of shopkeepers with a cowardly,
+narrow-minded policy that was unprepared to make any sacrifice for
+others. It was this people that the German of August 1914--and his
+spokesman von Bethmann-Hollweg, who later thought it necessary to
+defend himself against the charge of "having brought too much ethics
+into politics"--expected to stand by and see Belgium overridden. It
+was this same England that we believed would hold back even when the
+Chancellor found it impossible to apply to French colonial possessions
+the guarantee he had given not to aim at any territorial conquests in
+the war with France!
+
+And so it was with all the more grimness, with all the more gravity,
+that on that memorable night of August 4th the terrible blow fell. The
+English declaration of war entered into the very soul of the German
+people, who stood as a sacrifice to a political miscalculation that had
+its roots less in a lack of thought and experience than in a boundless
+arrogance.
+
+About the same time I was a witness of those laughable scenes which
+took place on the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, where, in complete
+misjudgment of the whole political situation _Japanese_ were carried
+shoulder high by the enthusiastic and worthy citizens of Berlin under
+the erroneous impression that these obvious arch-enemies of Russia
+would naturally be allies of Germany. Every German that was not blind
+to the trend of true "world-politics" must surely have shaken his head
+over this lamentable spectacle. A few days afterwards Japan sent its
+ultimatum against Kiao-Tchao!
+
+It was the same incapability of thinking in terms of true
+world-politics that led us lately to believe that we might find
+supporters in Mexico and Japan of the piracy we indulged in as a
+result of America's intervention in the war, the same incapability
+that blinded us to the effect our methods must have on other neutrals
+such as China and the South American States. And although one admits
+the possibility of a miscalculation being made, yet a miscalculation
+with regard to England's attitude was not only the height of political
+stupidity, but showed an absence of moral sense. _The moment England
+entered the war, Germany lost the war._
+
+And while the world-politicians of Berlin, having recovered from their
+first dismay, were making jokes about the "nation of shopkeepers" and
+its little army which they would just "have arrested"; while a little
+later the military events up to St. Quentin and the Battle of the Marne
+seemed to justify the idle mockers who knew nothing of England and had
+never even ventured their noses out of Germany,--those who had lived
+in the colonies were uttering warnings against any kind of optimism,
+and some already felt the war would end badly for us.
+
+I belonged to the latter group. I expressed my conviction in this
+direction as early as August 6th, 1914, in a letter which I wrote from
+Berlin for my father's birthday. In it I maintained that in spite of
+all our brilliant military successes, which would certainly not last,
+this war was a mistake and would assuredly end in failure for Germany.
+_Littera scripta manet._ Never from that moment have I believed in
+final victory for Germany. Slowly but surely then I veered round to the
+position that I could no longer even _desire_ victory for Germany.
+
+Naturally I did my military duty. I saw the fearful crime Germany was
+committing, yet I hurried to the front with the millions who believed
+that Germany was innocent and had been attacked without cause. There
+was nothing else to be done, and it must of course be remembered that
+my final rupture with Germany did not take place all of a sudden. After
+a few months of war in Masuria I was released as unfit for active
+service as the result of a severe illness.
+
+Of all the many episodes of my life at the front, none is so deeply
+impressed on my memory as the silent war of mutual hatred I waged with
+my immediately superior officer, a true prototype of his race, a true
+Prussian. I can still see him, a man of fifty-five or so, who, in spite
+of former active service, had only reached the rank of lieutenant, and
+who, as he told me himself right at the beginning, in very misplaced
+confidence, rushed into active service again because in this way he
+could get really good pay and would even have a prospect of further
+promotion.
+
+This Lieutenant Stein told me too of the first weeks in Belgium, when
+he had been in command of a company, and I can still hear him boasting
+about his warlike propensities, and how his teacher had said about
+him when he was a boy "he was capable of stealing an altar-cloth and
+cutting it up to make breeches for himself."
+
+"When we wanted to do any commandeering or to plunder a house," so he
+told me, "there was a very simple means. A man belonging to my company
+would be ordered to throw a Belgian rifle through an open cellar
+window, the house would then be searched for weapons, and even if we
+found only one rifle we had orders to seize everything without mercy
+and to drive out the occupiers." I can still see the creature standing
+in front of me and relating this and many a similar tale in these first
+days before he knew me. I have never forgotten it; and I think I owe
+much to Lieutenant Stein. He helped me on the way I was predestined to
+go, for had I not just returned from the colonies and foreign lands,
+imbued with liberal ideas, and from the first torn by grave doubts?
+
+The Lieutenant may be an exception--granted; but he is an exception
+unfortunately but too often represented in that army of millions
+on its invading march into unhappy Belgium, among officers and
+non-commissioned officers, whom, at any rate so far as active service
+is concerned, everyone who has served in the German Army will agree
+with me in calling on the average thoroughly brutal. Lieutenant
+Stein gave me my first real deep disgust of war. He is a type that I
+have not invented, and he will easily be identified by the German
+military authorities from his signature on my military pass as one
+of those arch-Prussians who suddenly readopt a martial air, suddenly
+revive and come into their element again, although they may be sickly
+old valetudinarians--the kind of men who in civil life are probably
+enthusiastic members of the "German Colonial Society," the "Naval
+Union," and the "Pan-German Association," and ardent world-politicians
+of the ale-bench type.
+
+I found his stories afterwards confirmed to the letter by one of the
+most famous German war-correspondents, Paul Schweder, the author of the
+four-volume work entitled _At Imperial Headquarters_. With a _naivete_
+equal to Lieutenant Stein's, and trusting no doubt to my then official
+position as correspondent of a German paper, he gave me descriptions
+of Belgian atrocities committed by our soldiers and the results of
+our system of occupation that, in all their horrible nakedness, put
+everything that ever appeared in the Entente newspapers absolutely in
+the shade.
+
+As early as the beginning of 1916 he told me the plain truth that we
+were practically starving Belgium and that the country was really only
+kept alive by the Relief Commission, and that we were attempting to
+ruin any Belgian industry which might compete with ours by a systematic
+removal of machinery to Germany. And that was before the time of the
+Deportations!
+
+Schweder's descriptions dealt for the most part with the sexual
+morality of our soldiers in the trenches. In spite of severe
+punishments, so he assured me, thousands and thousands of cases
+occurred of women and young girls out of decent Belgian and French
+families being outraged. The soldier on short leave from the front,
+with the prospect of a speedy return to the first-line trenches and
+death staring him in the face, did not care what happened; the unhappy
+victims were for the most part silent about their shame, so that the
+cases of punishment were very few and far between.
+
+While I was at the front I heard extraordinary things, for which I
+had again detailed confirmation from Schweder, who knew the whole of
+the Western Front well, about the German policy of persecution in
+Alsace-Lorraine. There the system was to punish with imprisonment
+not only actions but opinions. The authorities did not even scruple
+to imprison girls out of highly-respected houses who had perhaps made
+some harmless remark in youthful ignorance, and shut them up with
+common criminals and prostitutes to work out their long sentence.
+Such scandalous acts, which are a disgrace to humanity, Paul Schweder
+confirmed by the dozen or related at first-hand.
+
+He was intelligent enough, too, as was evident from the many statements
+made by him in confidential circles, to see through the utter lack
+of foundation, the mendacity, the immorality of what he wrote in his
+books merely for the sake of filthy lucre; but when I tried one day to
+take on a bet with him that Verdun would not fall, he took his revenge
+by spreading the report in Constantinople that I was an Pro-Entente,
+and doing his utmost to intrigue against me. That is the German
+war-correspondent's idea of morality!
+
+When I was released from the army in the beginning of 1915, I joined
+the editorial staff of the _Koelnische Zeitung_ and remained for some
+weeks in Cologne. I have not retained any very special impressions
+of this period of my activity, except perhaps the recollection of
+the spirit of jingoistic Prussianism that I--being a Badener--had
+scarcely ever come across before in its full glory, and, from the
+many confidential communications and discussions among the editorial
+staff, the feeling that even then there was a certain nervousness and
+insecurity among those who, in their leading articles, informed the
+public daily of their absolute confidence in victory.
+
+One curious thing at this time, perhaps worthy of mention, was the
+disdainful contempt with which these Prussians--even before the fall of
+Przemysl--regarded Austria. But the scornful and biting commentaries
+made behind the scenes in the editorial sanctum at the fall of this
+stronghold stood in most striking contrast to what the papers wrote
+about it.
+
+Later, when I had already been a long time in Turkey, a humorous
+incident gave me renewed opportunity of seeing this Prussian spirit of
+unbounded exaggeration of self and depreciation of others. The incident
+is at the same time characteristic of the spirit of militarism with
+which the representatives of the German Press are thoroughly imbued, in
+spite of the opportunities most of them have had through long visits to
+other countries of gaining a little more _savoir faire_.
+
+One beautiful summer afternoon at a promenade concert in the "Petit
+Champs" at Pera I introduced an Austrian Lieutenant of Dragoons I knew,
+belonging to one of the best regiments, to our Balkan correspondent who
+happened to be staying in Constantinople: "Lieutenant N.; Herr von M."
+The correspondent sat down at the table and repeated very distinctly:
+"_Lieutenant-Colonel von M._" It turned out that he had been a
+second lieutenant in the Prussian Army, and had pushed himself up to
+this wonderful rank in the Bulgarian Army, instinctively combining
+journalism and militarism. My companion, however, with true Austrian
+calm, took not the slightest notice of the correction, did not spring
+up and greet him with an enthusiastic "Ah! my dear fellow-officer,
+etc.," but began an ordinary social conversation.
+
+Would anyone believe that next day old Herr von M. took me roundly
+to task for sitting at the same table as an Austrian officer and
+appearing in public with him, and informed me quasi-officially that as
+a representative of the _Koelnische Zeitung_ I should associate only
+with the German colony in Constantinople.
+
+I wonder which is the most irritating characteristic of this type of
+mind--its overbearing attitude towards our Allies, its jingoistic
+"Imperial German" cant, or its wounded dignity as a militarist who
+forgets that he is a journalist and no longer an officer?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  In Constantinople--Pro-Turkish considerations--The dilemma of a
+  Gallipoli correspondent--Under German military control.
+
+
+A few days after the fall of Przemysl I set out for Constantinople. I
+left Germany with a good deal of friendly feeling towards the Turk. I
+was even quite well disposed towards the Young Turks, although I knew
+and appreciated the harm caused by their regime and the reproaches
+levelled against it since 1909. At any rate, when I landed on Turkish
+soil I was certainly not lacking in goodwill towards the Government
+of Enver and Talaat, and nothing was further from my thoughts than to
+prejudice myself against my new sphere of work by any preconceived
+criticism.
+
+In comparison with Abdul-Hamid I regarded the regime of the Young
+Turks, in spite of all, as a big step in advance and a necessary
+one, and the parting words of one of our old editors, a thorough
+connoisseur of Turkey, lingered in my ears without very much effect.
+He said: "You are going to Constantinople. You will soon be able to
+see for yourself the moral bankruptcy of the Young Turks, and you will
+find that Turkey is nothing but a dead body galvanised into action,
+that will only last as long as the war lasts and we Germans supply the
+galvanising power." I would not believe it, and went to Turkey with an
+absolutely open mind to form my own opinion.
+
+It must also be remembered that all the pro-Turkish utterances of
+Eastern experts of all shades and nationalities who emphasised the
+fact that the Turks were the most respectable nation of the East, were
+not without their effect upon me; also I had read Pierre Loti. I was
+determined to extend to the Turkish Government the strong sympathy I
+already felt for the Turkish people--and, let me here emphasise it,
+still feel. To undermine that sympathy, to make me lose my confidence
+in this race, things would have to go badly indeed. They went worse
+than I ever thought was possible.
+
+I went first of all to the new Turkish front in the Dardanelles and
+the Gallipoli Peninsula, where everything was ruled by militarism and
+there was but little opportunity to worry about politics. The combined
+attack by sea and land had just begun, and I passed the next few weeks
+on the Ariburnu front. I found myself in the entirely new position of
+war-correspondent. I had now to write professionally about this war,
+which I detested with all my heart and soul.
+
+Well, I simply had to make the back fit the burden. Whatever I did or
+did not do, I have certainly the clear satisfaction of knowing that I
+never wrote a single word in praise of war. One will understand that,
+in spite of my inward conviction that Germany by unloosing the war on
+Europe had committed a terrible crime against humanity, in spite of my
+consciousness of acting in a wrong cause, in spite of my deep disgust
+of much that I had already seen, I was still interested in Turkey's
+fight for existence, but from quite another standpoint.
+
+As an objective onlooker I did not have to be an absolute hypocrite to
+do justice to my journalistic duties to my paper. I got to know the
+Turkish soldier with his stoical heroism in defence, and the brilliant
+attacking powers and courage of the Anatolians with their blind belief
+in their Padishah, as they were rushed to the defence of Stamboul and
+hurled themselves in a bayonet charge against the British machine-guns
+under a hail of shells from the sea. I gained a high opinion of Turkish
+valour and powers of resistance. I had no reason to stint my praise or
+withhold my judgment. In mess-tents and at various observation-posts I
+made the personal acquaintance of crowds of thoroughly sympathetic and
+likeable Turkish officers. Let me mention but one--Essad Pasha, the
+defender of Jannina.
+
+I found quite enough material on my two visits to Gallipoli during
+various phases of the fighting to write a series of feuilletons without
+any glorification of militarism and political aims. I confined myself
+to what was of general human interest, to what was picturesque, what
+was dramatic in the struggle going on in this unique theatre of war.
+
+But even then I was beginning to have my own opinion about much that I
+saw; I was already torn by conflicting doubts. Already I was beginning
+to ask myself whether my sympathies would not gradually turn more and
+more definitely to those who were vainly storming these strong Turkish
+forts from the sea, under a deadly machine-gun fire, for the cause of
+true civilisation, the cause of liberty, was manifestly on their side.
+
+I had opportunity, too, of making comparisons from the dead and
+wounded and the few prisoners there were between the value of the
+human material sacrificed on either side--on the one, brave but stupid
+Anatolians, accustomed to dirt and misery; on the other cultured and
+highly civilised men, sportsmen from the colonies who had hurried from
+the farthest corners of the earth to fight not only for the British
+cause, but for the cause of civilisation.
+
+But at that time I was not yet ripe for the decision forced upon me
+later by other things that I saw with my own eyes; I had not yet
+reached that deep inward conviction that I should have to make a break
+with Germany. The only thing I could do and felt compelled to do
+then was to pay my homage not only to Turkish patriotism and Turkish
+bravery, but to the wonderful courage and fearlessness of death shown
+by those whom at that time I had, as a German, to regard as my enemies;
+this I did over and over again in my articles.
+
+I saw, too, the first indications of other things. Traces of the most
+outspoken jingoism among Turkish officers became gradually apparent,
+and more than one Turkish commander pointed out to me with ironical
+emphasis that things went just as smoothly and promptly in his sector,
+where there was no German officer in charge, as anywhere else.
+
+On my second visit to the Dardanelles, in summer, I heard of
+considerable quarrels over questions of rank, and there was more than
+one outbreak of jingoistic arrogance on the part of both Turkish and
+German subalterns, leading in some cases even to blows and consequent
+severe punishment for insubordination. The climax was reached in the
+scandal of supplanting General Weber, commanding the "Southern Group"
+(Sedd-ul-Bahr) by Vehib Pasha, a grim and fanatical Turk. In this case
+the Turkish point of view prevailed, for General Liman von Sanders,
+Commander-in-Chief of the Gallipoli Army, was determined not to lose
+his post, and agreed slavishly with all that Enver Pasha ordained.
+
+From other fronts, such as the Irak and the "Caucasus" (which was
+becoming more and more a purely Armenian theatre of war, without losing
+that chimerical designation in the official reports!), there came
+even more significant tales; there German and Turkish officers seemed
+to live still more of a cat-and-dog life than in the Dardanelles. Of
+course under the iron discipline of both Turks and Germans, these
+unpleasant occurrences were never allowed to come to such a pass that
+they would interfere in any way with military operations, but they were
+of significance as symptoms of a deep distrust of the Germans even in
+Turkish military circles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  The great Armenian persecutions--The system of Talaat and Enver--A
+  denunciation of Germany as a cowardly and conscienceless accomplice.
+
+
+In spite of all, I returned to Constantinople from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles with very little diminution of friendly feeling towards
+the Turks. My first experience when I returned to the capital was the
+beginning of the Armenian persecutions. And here I may as well say at
+once that my love for present-day Turkey perished absolutely with this
+unique example in the history of modern human civilisation of the most
+appalling bestiality and misguided jingoism. This, more than everything
+else I saw on the German-Turkish side throughout the war, persuaded me
+to take up arms against my own people and to adopt the position I now
+hold. I say "German-Turkish," for I must hold the German Government as
+equally responsible with the Turks for the atrocities they allowed
+them to commit.
+
+Here in neutral Switzerland, where so many of these unfortunate
+Armenians have taken refuge and such abundance of information is
+available, so much material has been collected that it is unnecessary
+for me to go into details in this book. Suffice it to say that the
+narration of all the heart-rending occurrences that came to my personal
+knowledge during my stay in Turkey, without my even trying to collect
+systematic information on the subject, would fill a book. To my deep
+sorrow I have to admit that, from everything I have heard from reliable
+sources--from German Red Cross doctors, officials and employees of
+the Baghdad Railway, members of the American Embassy, and Turks
+themselves--although they are but individual cases--I cannot regard
+as exaggerated such appalling facts and reports as are contained for
+example in Arnold Toynbee's _Armenian Atrocities_.[1]
+
+In this little book, however, which partakes more of the nature of an
+essay than an exhaustive treatise, my task will be rather to determine
+the system, the underlying political thought and the responsibility
+of Germany in all these horrors--massacres, the seduction of women,
+children left to die or thrown into the sea, pretty young girls
+carried off into houses of ill repute, the compulsory conversion to
+Islam and incorporation in Turkish harems of young women, the ejection
+from their homes of eminent and distinguished families by brutal
+gendarmes, attacks while on the march by paid bands of robbers and
+criminals, "emigration" to notorious malaria swamps and barren desert
+and mountain lands, victims handed over to the wild lusts of roaming
+Bedouins and Kurds--in a word, the triumph of the basest brutality and
+most cold-blooded refinement of cruelty in a war of extermination in
+which half a million men, and according to some estimates many more,
+have perished, while the remaining one and a half million of this
+most intelligent and cultured race, one of the principal pioneers of
+progress in the Ottoman Empire, see nothing but complete extinction
+staring them in the face through the rupture of family ties, the
+deprivation of their rights, and economic ruin.
+
+The Armenian persecutions began in all their cruelty, practically
+unannounced, in April 1915. Certain events on the Caucasus front, which
+no number of lies could explain away, gave the Turkish Government
+the welcome pretext for falling like wild animals on the Armenians
+of the eastern vilajets--the so-called Armenia Proper--and getting
+to work there without deference to man, woman, or child. This was
+called "the restoration of order in the war zone by military measures,
+rendered necessary by the connivance of the inhabitants with the enemy,
+treachery and armed support." The first two or three hundred thousand
+Armenians fell in the first rounding up.
+
+That in those outlying districts situated directly on the Russian
+frontier a number of Armenians threw in their lot with the advancing
+Russians, no one will seek to deny, and not a single Armenian I
+have spoken to denies it. But the "Armenian Volunteer Corps" that
+fought on the side of Russia was composed for the most part--that at
+least has been proved beyond doubt--of Russian Armenians settled in
+Transcaucasian territory.
+
+So far as the Turkish Armenians taking part are concerned, no
+reasonable being would think of denying Turkey as Sovereign State the
+formal right of taking stringent measure against these traitors and
+deserters. But if I expressly recognise this right, I do so with the
+big reservation that the frightful sufferings undergone for centuries
+by a people left by their rulers to the mercy of marauding Kurds and
+oppressed by a government of shameless extortioners, absolutely absolve
+these deserters in the eyes of the whole civilised world from any moral
+crime.
+
+And yet I would willingly have gone so far for the benefit of the
+Turks, in spite of their terrible guilt towards this people, as perhaps
+to keep my own counsel on the subject, if it had merely been a case of
+the execution of some hundreds under martial law or the carrying out
+of other measures--such as deportation--against a couple of thousand
+Armenians and these strictly confined to men. It is even possible that
+Europe and America would have pardoned Turkey for taking even stronger
+steps in the nature of reprisals or measures of precaution against the
+male inhabitants of that part of Armenia Proper which was gradually
+becoming a war zone. But from the very beginning the persecutions were
+carried on against women and children as well as men, were extended
+to the hundred thousand inhabitants of the six eastern vilajets, and
+were characterised by such savage brutality that the methods of the
+slave-drivers of the African interior and the persecution of Christians
+under Nero are the only thing that can be compared with them.
+
+Every shred of justification for the Turkish Government in their
+attempt to establish this as an "evacuation necessary for military
+purposes and for the prevention of unrest" entirely vanishes in face
+of such methods, and I do not believe that there is a single decent
+German, cognisant of the facts of the case, who is not filled with real
+disgust of the Young Turkish Government by such cold-blooded butchery
+of the inhabitants of whole districts and the deportation of others
+with the express purpose of letting them die _en route_. Anyone with
+human feelings, however pro-Turkish he may be politically, cannot think
+otherwise.
+
+This "evacuation necessary for military purposes" emptied Armenia
+Proper of men. How often have Turks themselves told me--I could mention
+names, but I will not expose my informants, who were on the whole
+decent exceptions to the rule, to the wrath of Enver or Talaat--how
+often have they assured me that practically not a single Armenian
+is to be found in Armenia! And it is equally certain that scarcely
+one can be left alive of all that horde of deported men who escaped
+the first massacres and were hunted up hill and down dale in a state
+of starvation, exposed to attacks by Kurds, decimated by spotted
+typhus, and finally abandoned to their fate in the scorching deserts
+of Northern Mesopotamia and Northern Syria. One has only to read the
+statistics of the population of the six vilajets of Armenia Proper to
+discover the hundreds of thousands of victims of this wholesale murder.
+
+But unfortunately that was not all. The Turkish Government went
+farther, much farther. They aimed at the whole Armenian people, not
+only in Armenia itself, but also in the "Diaspora," in Anatolia Proper
+and in the capital. They were at that time some hundred thousand. In
+this case they could scarcely go on the principle of "evacuation of the
+war zone," for the inhabitants were hundreds of miles both from the
+Eastern front and from the Dardanelles, so they had to resort to other
+measures.
+
+They suddenly and miraculously discovered a universal conspiracy among
+the Armenians of the Empire. It was only by a trick of this kind that
+they could succeed in carrying out their system of exterminating the
+entire Armenian race. The Turkish Government skilfully influenced
+public opinion throughout the whole world, and then discovered, nay,
+arranged for, local conspiracies. They then falsified all the details
+so that they might go on for months in peace and quiet with their
+campaign of extermination.
+
+In a series of semi-official articles in the newspapers of the
+Committee of Young Turks it was made quite clear that _all_ Armenians
+were dangerous conspirators who, in order to shake off the Ottoman
+yoke, had collected firearms and bombs and had arranged, with the help
+of English and Russian money, for a terrible slaughter of Turks on the
+day that the English fleet overcame the armies on the Dardanelles.
+
+I must here emphasise the fact that all the arguments the Turkish
+Government brought against the Armenians did not escape my notice. They
+were indeed evident enough in official and semi-official publications
+and in the writings of German "experts on Turkey." I investigated
+everything, even right at the beginning of my stay in Turkey, and
+always from a thoroughly pro-Turkish point of view. That did not
+prevent me however, from coming to my present point of view.
+
+Herr Zimmermann, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has only
+got to refer to the date of his letter to the editorial staff of my
+paper, in which he speaks of my confidential report to the paper on
+this subject which went through his hands and aroused his interest, and
+he will find what opinions I held as early as the summer of 1916 on the
+subject of the Armenian persecutions--and this without my having any
+particular sympathy for the Armenians, for it was not till much later
+that I got to know them and their high intellectual qualities through
+personal intercourse.
+
+Here I can only give my final judgment on all these pros and cons, and
+say to the best of my knowledge and opinion, that after the first act
+in this drama of massacre and death--the brutal "evacuation of the war
+zone" in Armenia Proper--the meanest, the lowest, the most cynical,
+most criminal act of race-fanaticism that the history of mankind has to
+show was the extension of the system of deportation, with its wilful
+neglect and starvation of the victims, to further hundreds of thousands
+of Armenians in the Capital and Interior. And these were people who,
+through their place of residence, their surroundings, their social
+status, their preoccupation in work and wage-earning, were quite
+incapable of taking any active part in politics.
+
+Others of them, again, belonged to families of high social standing and
+culture, bound to the land by a thousand ties, coming of a well-to-do,
+old-established stock, and from traditional training and ordinary
+prudence holding themselves scrupulously apart from all revolutionary
+doings. All were surrounded by a far superior number of inhabitants
+belonging to other races.
+
+This diabolical crime was committed solely and only because of the
+Turkish feeling of economic and intellectual inferiority to that
+non-Turkish element, for the set purpose of obtaining handsome
+compensation for themselves, and was undertaken with the cowardly
+acquiescence of the German Government in full knowledge of the facts.
+
+Of this long chain of crime I saw at least the beginning thousands of
+times with my own eyes. Hardly had I returned from my first visit to
+the Dardanelles when these persecutions began in the whole of Anatolia
+and even in Constantinople, and continued with but slight intermissions
+of a week or two at different times till shortly before I left
+Constantinople in December 1916.
+
+That was the time when in the flourishing western vilajets of Anatolia,
+beginning with Brussa and Adabazar, where the well-stocked farms
+in Armenian hands must have been an eyesore to a Government that
+had written "forcible nationalisation" on their standard, the whole
+household goods of respectable families were thrown into the street
+and sold for a mere nothing, because their owners often had only an
+hour till they were routed out by the waiting gendarme and hustled off
+into the Interior. The fittings of the houses, naturally unsaleable
+in the hurry, usually fell to the lot of marauding "_mohadjis_"
+(Mohammedan immigrants), who, often enough armed to the teeth by
+the "Committee," began the disturbances which were then exposed as
+"Armenian conspiracies."
+
+That was the time when mothers, apparently in absolute despair, sold
+their own children, because they had been robbed of their last penny
+and could not let their children perish on that terrible march into the
+distant Interior.
+
+How many countless times did I have to look on at that typical
+spectacle of little bands of Armenians belonging to the capital being
+escorted through the streets of Pera by two gendarmes in their ragged
+murky grey uniforms with their typical brutal Anatolian faces, while a
+policeman who could read and write marched behind with a notebook in
+his hand, beckoning people at random out of the crowd with an imperious
+gesture, and if their papers showed them to be Armenians, simply
+herding them in with the rest and marching them off to the "Karakol" of
+Galata-Serai, the chief police-station in Pera, where he delivered up
+his daily bag of Armenians!
+
+The way these imprisonments and deportations were carried on is a most
+striking confutation of the claims of the Turkish Government that they
+were acting only in righteous indignation over the discovery of a great
+conspiracy. This is entirely untrue.
+
+With the most cold-blooded calculation and method, the number of
+Armenians to be deported were divided out over a period of many months,
+indeed one may say over nearly a year and a half. The deportations
+only began to abate when the downfall of the Armenian Patriarchate in
+summer 1916 dealt the final blow to the social life of the Armenians.
+They more or less ceased in December 1916 with the gathering-in of all
+those who had formerly paid the military exemption tax--among them many
+eminent Armenian business men.
+
+What can be said of the "righteous, spontaneous indignation" of the
+Armenian Government when, for example, of two Armenian porters
+belonging to the same house--brothers--one is deported to-day and the
+other not till a fortnight later; or when the number of Armenians to
+be delivered up daily from a certain quarter of the town is fixed at
+a definite figure, say two hundred or a thousand, as I have been told
+was the case by reliable Turks who were in full touch with the police
+organisation and knew the system of these deportations?
+
+Of the ebb and flow of these persecutions, all that can be said is that
+the daily number of deportations increased when the Turks were annoyed
+over some Russian victory, and that the banishments miraculously abated
+when the military catastrophes of Erzerum, Trebizond, and Erzindjan
+gave the Government food for thought and led them to wonder if perhaps
+Nemesis was going to overtake them after all.
+
+And then the method of transport! Every day towards evening, when
+these unfortunate creatures had been collected in the police-stations,
+the women and children were packed into electric-trams while the men
+and boys were compelled to go off on foot to Galata with a couple of
+blankets and only the barest necessities for their terrible journey
+packed in a small bag. Of course they were not all poor people by any
+means.
+
+This dire fate might befall anyone any day or any hour, from the
+caretaker and the tradesman to members of the best families. I
+know cases where men of high education, belonging to aristocratic
+families--engineers, doctors, lawyers--were banished from Pera in
+this disgusting way under cover of darkness to spend the night on
+the platforms of the Haidar-Pasha station, and then be packed off in
+the morning on the Anatolian Railway--of course they paid for their
+tickets and all travelling expenses!--to the Interior, where they died
+of spotted typhus, or, in rare cases after their recovery from this
+terrible malady, were permitted, after endless pleading, to return
+broken in body and soul to their homes as "harmless." Among these
+bands herded about from pillar to post like cattle there were hundreds
+and thousands of gentle, refined women of good family and of perfect
+European culture and manners.
+
+For the most part it was the sad fate of those deported to be sent
+off on an endless journey by foot, to the far-off Arabian frontier,
+where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in
+the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic
+to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountain-side, without
+money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means
+of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery.
+
+The women and children were always separated from the men. That was the
+characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike
+at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the
+tearing asunder of all family ties.
+
+That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared.
+They were the "persons transported elsewhere," as the elegant title
+of the "Provisional Han" ran, which gave full stewardship over their
+well-stocked farms to the "Committee" with its zeal for "internal
+colonisation" with purely Turkish elements. In this way the great goal
+was reached--the forcible nationalisation of a land of mixed races.
+
+While Anatolia was gradually emptied of all the forces that had
+hitherto made for progress, while the deserted towns and villages and
+flourishing fields of those who had been banished fell into the hands
+of the lowest "_Mohadjr_"--hordes of the most dissipated Mohammedan
+emigrants--that stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever more slowly
+to its distant goal, leaving the dead bodies of women and children, old
+men and boys, as milestones to mark the way. The few that did reach
+the "settlement" alive--that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-stricken
+concentration camps--continually molested by raiding Bedouins and
+Kurds, gradually sickened and died a slower and even more terrible
+death.
+
+Sometimes even this was not speedy enough for the Government, and a
+case occurred in Autumn 1916--absolutely verified by statements made
+by German employees on the Baghdad Railway--where some thousands of
+Armenians, brought as workers to this stretch of railway, simply
+vanished one day without leaving a trace. Apparently they were simply
+shipped off into the desert without more ado and there massacred.
+
+This terrible catalogue of crime on the part of the Government of
+Talaat is, however, in spite of all censorship and obstruction, being
+dealt with _officially_ in all quarters of the globe--by the American
+Embassy at Constantinople and in neutral and Entente countries--and at
+the conclusion of peace it will be brought as an accusation against the
+criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by a merciless court of all the
+civilised nations of the world.
+
+I have spoken to Armenians who have said to me, "In former times the
+old Sultan Abdul-Hamid used to have us massacred by thousands. We
+were delivered over by well-organised pogroms to the Kurds at stated
+times, and certainly we suffered cruelly enough. Then the Young Turks,
+as Adana 1909 shows, started on a bloodshed of thousands. But after
+what we have just gone through we long with all our hearts for the
+days of the old massacres. Now it is no longer a case of a certain
+number of massacred; now _our whole people_ is being slowly but surely
+exterminated by the national hatred of an apparently civilised,
+apparently modern, and therefore infinitely more dangerous Government.
+
+"Now they get hold of our women and children and send them long
+journeys on foot to concentration camps in barren districts where they
+die. The pitiful remains of our population in the villages and towns of
+the Interior, where the local authorities have carried out the commands
+of the central Government most zealously, are forcibly converted to
+Islam, and our young girls are confined in Turkish harems and places of
+low repute.
+
+"The race is to vanish to the very last man, and why? Because the
+Turks have recognised their intellectual bankruptcy, their economic
+incompetence, and their social inferiority to the progressive Armenian
+element, to which Abdul-Hamid, in spite of occasional massacres, knew
+well enough how to adapt himself, and which he even utilised in all its
+power in high offices of state. Because now that they themselves are
+being decimated by a weary and unsuccessful war of terrible bloodshed
+that was lost before it was begun, they hope in this way to retain the
+sympathy of their peoples and preserve the superiority of their element
+in the State.
+
+"These are not sporadic outbursts of wrath, as they were in the case
+of Hamid, but a definitely thought-out political measure against our
+people, and for this very reason they can hope for no mercy. Germany,
+as we have seen, tolerates the annihilation of our people through
+weakness and lack of conscience, and if the war lasts much longer the
+Armenian people will have ceased to exist. That is why we long for the
+old regime of Abdul-Hamid, terrible as it was for us."
+
+Has there ever been a greater tragedy in the history of a people--and
+of a people that have never held any illusions as to political
+independence, wedged in as they are between two Great Powers, and who
+had no real irredentistic feelings towards Russia, and, up to the
+moment when the Young Turks betrayed them shamefully and broke the ties
+of comradeship that had bound them together as revolutionaries against
+the old despotic system of Abdul-Hamid, were as thoroughly loyal
+citizens of the Ottoman Empire as any of the other peoples of this
+land, excepting perhaps the Turks themselves.
+
+I hope that these few words may have given sufficient indication of the
+spirit and outcome of this system of extermination. I should like to
+mention just one more episode which affected me personally more than
+anything I experienced in Turkey.
+
+One day in the summer of 1916 my wife went out alone about midday to
+buy something in the "Grand Rue de Pera." We lived a few steps from
+Galata-Serai and had plenty of opportunity from our balcony of seeing
+the bands of Armenian deportees arriving at the police-station under
+the escort of gendarmes. Familiarity with such sights finally dulled
+our sympathies, and we began to think of them not as episodes affecting
+human individuals, but rather as political events.
+
+On this particular day, however, my wife came back to the house
+trembling all over. She had not been able to go on her errand. As she
+passed the "karakol," she had heard through the open hall door the
+agonising groans of a tortured being, a dull wailing like the sound of
+an animal being tormented to death. "An Armenian," she was informed
+by the people standing at the door. The crowd was then dispersed by a
+policeman.
+
+"If such scenes occur in broad daylight in the busiest part of the
+European town of Pera, I should like to know what is done to Armenians
+in the uncivilised Interior," my wife asked me. "If the Turks act like
+wild beasts here in the capital, so that a woman going through the main
+streets gets a shock like that to her nerves, then I can't live in this
+frightful country." And then she burst into a fit of sobbing and let
+loose all her pent-up passion against what she and I had had to witness
+for more than a year every time we set a foot out of doors.
+
+"You are brutes, you Germans, miserable brutes, that you tolerate this
+from the Turks when you still have the country absolutely in your
+hands. You are cowardly brutes, and I will never set foot in your
+horrible country again. God, how I hate Germany!"
+
+It was then, when my own wife, trembling and sobbing, in grief, rage,
+and disgust at such cowardliness, flung this denunciation of my
+country in my teeth that I finally and absolutely broke with Germany.
+Unfortunately I had known only too long that it had to come.
+
+I thought of the conversations I had had about the Armenian question
+with members of the German Embassy in Constantinople and, of a very
+different kind, with Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador.
+
+I had never felt fully convinced by the protestations of the German
+Embassy that they had done their utmost to put a check on the murderous
+attacks on harmless Armenians far from the theatre of war, who from
+their whole surroundings and their social class could not be in a
+position to take an active part in politics, and on the cold-blooded
+neglect and starvation of women and children apparently deported for no
+other reason than to die. The attitude of the German Government towards
+the Armenian question had impressed me as a mixture of cowardice and
+lack of conscience on the one hand and the most short-sighted stupidity
+on the other.
+
+The American Ambassador, who took the most generous interest in the
+Armenians, and has done so much for the cause of humanity in Turkey,
+was naturally much too reserved on this most burning question to give
+a German journalist like myself his true opinion about the attitude of
+his German colleagues. But from the many conversations and discussions
+I had with him, I gathered nothing that would turn me from the opinion
+I had already formed of the German Embassy, and I had given him several
+hints of what that opinion was.
+
+The attitude of Germany was, in the first place, as I have said, one of
+boundless _cowardice_. For we had the Turkish Government firmly enough
+in hand, from the military as well as the financial and political point
+of view, to insist upon the observance of the simplest principles
+of humanity if we wanted to. Enver, and still more Talaat, who as
+Minister of the Interior and really Dictator of Turkey was principally
+responsible for the Armenian persecutions, had no other choice than to
+follow Germany's lead unconditionally, and they would have accepted
+without any hesitation, if perhaps with a little grumbling, any
+definite ruling of Germany's even on this Armenian question that lay so
+near their hearts.
+
+From hundreds of examples it has been proved that the Germany Embassy
+never showed any undue delicacy for even perfectly legitimate Turkish
+interests and feelings in matters affecting German interests, and that
+they always got their own way where it was a question, for example, of
+Germans being oppressed, or superseded by Turks in the Government and
+ruling bodies. And yet I had to stand and look on when our Embassy was
+not even capable of granting her due and proper rights to a perfectly
+innocent German lady married to an Armenian who had been deported with
+many other Armenians. She appealed for redress to the German Embassy,
+but her only reward was to wait day after day in the vestibule of the
+Embassy for her case to be heard.
+
+Turks themselves have found cynical enjoyment in this measureless
+cowardice of ours and compared it with the attitude of the Russian
+Government, who, if they had found themselves in a similar position
+to Germany, would have been prepared, in spite of the Capitulations
+being abolished, to make a political case, if necessary, out of the
+protection due to one poor Russian Jew. Turks have, very politely but
+none the less definitely, made it quite clear to me that at bottom they
+felt nothing but contempt for our policy of letting things slide.
+
+Our attitude was characterised, secondly, by _lack of conscience_.
+To look on while life and property, the well-being and culture of
+thousands, are sacrificed, and to content oneself with weak formal
+protests when one is in a position to take most energetic command of
+the situation, is nothing but the most criminal lack of conscience,
+and I cannot get rid of the suspicion that, in spite of the fine
+official phrases one was so often treated to in the German Embassy on
+the subject of the "Armenian problem," our diplomats were very little
+concerned with the preservation of this people.
+
+What leads me to bring this terrible charge against them? The fact that
+I never saw anything in all this pother on the part of our diplomats
+when the venerable old Armenian Patriarch appeared at the Embassy with
+his suite after some particularly frightful sufferings of the Armenian
+population, and begged with tears in his eyes for help from the
+Embassy, however late--and I assisted more than once at such scenes in
+the Embassy and listened to the conversations of the officials--I never
+saw anything but concern about German prestige and offended vanity. As
+far as I saw, there was never any concern for the fate of the Armenian
+people. The fact that time and again I heard from the mouths of Germans
+of all grades, from the highest to the lowest, so far as they did not
+have to keep strictly to the official German versions, expressions of
+hatred against the Armenians which were based on the most short-sighted
+judgment, had no relation to the facts of the case, and were merely
+thoughtless echoes of the official Turkish statements.
+
+And cases have actually been proved to have occurred, from the
+testimony of German doctors and Red Cross nurses returned from the
+Interior, of German officers light-heartedly taking the initiative in
+exterminating and scattering the Armenians when the less-zealous local
+authorities who still retained some remnants of human feeling, scrupled
+to obey the instructions of "Nur-el-Osmanieh" (the headquarters of the
+Committee at Stamboul).
+
+The case is well known and has been absolutely verified of the
+scandalous conduct of two German officers passing through a village in
+far Asia Minor, where the Armenians had taken refuge in their houses
+and barricaded them to prevent being herded off like cattle. The order
+had been given that guns were to be turned on them, but not a single
+Turk had the courage to carry out this order and fire on women and
+children. Without any authority whatsoever, the two German officers
+then turned to and gave an exhibition of their shooting capacities!
+
+Such shameful acts are of course isolated cases, but they are on a par
+with the opinions expressed about the Armenian people by dozens of
+educated Germans of high position--not to speak of military men at all.
+
+A case of this kind where German soldiers were guilty of an attack on
+Armenians in the interior of Anatolia, was the subject of frequent
+official discussion at the German Embassy, and was finally brought to
+the notice of the authorities in Germany by Graf Wolff-Metternich, a
+really high-principled and humane man. The material result of this was
+that through the unheard-of cowardice of our Government, this man--who
+in spite of his age and in contrast to the weak-minded Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, and criminally optimistic had made many an attempt to get
+a firmer grip of the Turkish Government--was simply hounded out of
+office by the Turks and weakly sacrificed without a struggle by Berlin.
+
+What, finally, is one to think of the spirit of our German officials
+in regard to the Armenian question, when one hears such well-verified
+tales as were told me shortly before I left Constantinople by an
+eminent Hungarian banker (whose name I will not reveal)? He related,
+for example, that "a German officer, with the title of Baron, and
+closely connected with the military attache," went one day to the
+bazaar in Stamboul and chose a valuable carpet from an Armenian, which
+he had put down to his account and sent to his house in Pera. Then when
+it came to paying for it, he promptly set the price twenty pounds lower
+than had been stipulated, and indicated to the Armenian dealer that
+in view of the good understanding between himself (the officer) and
+the Turkish President of police, he would do well not to trouble him
+further in the matter! I only cite this case because I am unfortunately
+compelled to believe in its absolute authenticity.
+
+Shortsighted stupidity, finally, is how I characterised the inactive
+toleration on the part of our Imperial representatives of this policy
+of extermination of the Armenian race. Our Government could not have
+been blind to the breaking flood of Turkish jingoism, and no one with
+any glimmer of foresight could have doubted for a moment since the
+summer of 1915 that Turkey would only go with us so long as she needed
+our military and financial aid, and that we should have no place, not
+even a purely commercial one, in a fully turkified Turkey.
+
+In spite of the lamentations one heard often enough from the mouths
+of officials over this well-recognised and unpalatable fact, we
+tolerated the extermination of a race of over one and a half million
+of people of progressive culture, with the European point of view,
+intellectually adaptable, absolutely free from jingoism and fanaticism,
+and eminently cosmopolitan in feeling; we permitted the disappearance
+of the only conceivable counterbalance to the hopelessly nationalistic,
+anti-foreign Young Turkish element, and through our cowardice and lack
+of conscience have made deadly enemies of the few that will rise from
+the ruins of a race that used to be in thorough sympathy with Germany.
+
+An intelligent German Government would, in face of the increasingly
+evident Young Turkish spirit, have used every means in their power
+to retain the sympathies of the Armenians, and indeed to win them in
+greater numbers. The Armenians waited for us, trembled with impatience
+for us, to give a definite ruling. Their disappointment, their hatred
+of us is unbounded now--and rightly so--and if a German ever again
+wants to take up business in the East he will have to reckon with this
+afflicted people so long as one of them exists.
+
+To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does
+not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy
+for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at
+least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.)
+One only requires to have a feeling for humanity to abhor the way in
+which hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate people were disposed
+of; one only requires to understand the commercial and social needs
+of a vast country like Turkey, so undeveloped and yet so capable of
+development, to place the highest value on the preservation of this
+restless, active, and eminently useful element; one only requires to
+open one's eyes and look at the facts dispassionately to deny utterly
+and absolutely what the Turks have tried to make the world believe
+about the Armenians, in order that they might go on with their work of
+extermination in peace and quiet; one only requires to have a slight
+feeling of one's dignity as a German to refuse to condone the pitiful
+cowardice of our Government over the Armenian question.
+
+The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight
+of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite
+enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking
+man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German
+cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of Pera
+the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation,
+with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social
+development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous
+with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.
+
+In long confidential reports to my paper I made perfectly clear to
+them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions and
+the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them. The
+Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no trace
+of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.
+
+The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that
+paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled her
+denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal debt of
+gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for it is to
+them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This and other works on the subject came to my notice
+for the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in
+Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  The tide of war--Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the
+  Caucasus"--The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople
+  twice hangs in the balance--Nervous tension in international
+  Pera--Bulgaria's attitude--Turkish rancour against her former
+  enemy--German illusions of a separate peace with Russia--King
+  Ferdinand's time-serving--Lack of munitions in the Dardanelles--A
+  mysterious death: a political murder?--The evacuation of
+  Gallipoli--The Turkish version of victory--Constantinople
+  unreleased--Kut-el-Amara--Propaganda for the "Holy War"--A prisoner
+  of repute--Loyalty of Anglo-Indian officers--Turkish communiques and
+  their worth--The fall of Erzerum--Official lies--The treatment of
+  prisoners--Political speculation with prisoners of war--Treatment of
+  enemy subjects--Stagnation and lassitude in the summer of 1916--The
+  Greeks in Turkey--Dread of Greek massacres--Rumania's entry--Terrible
+  disappointment--The three phases of the war for Turkey.
+
+
+It will be necessary to devote a few lines to a review of the principal
+features of the war, so far as it affected the life of the Turkish
+capital, in order to have a military and political background for what
+I saw among the Turks during my twenty months' stay in their country.
+To that I will add a short description of the economic situation.
+
+When I arrived in Constantinople, Turkey had already completed her
+first winter campaign in the Caucasus, and had repelled the attack of
+the Entente fleet on the Dardanelles, culminating in the events of
+March 18th, 1915. But Enver Pasha had completely misjudged the relation
+between the means at his disposal and the task before him when, out of
+pure vanity and a mad desire for expansion, he undertook a personally
+conducted offensive for "the liberation of the Caucasus." The terrible
+defeats inflicted on the Turkish army on this occasion were kept
+from the knowledge of the people by a rigorous censorship and the
+falsification of the communiques. This was particularly the case in the
+enormous Turkish losses sustained at Sarykamish.
+
+Enver had put this great Caucasus offensive in hand out of pure wanton
+folly, thinking by so doing to win laurels for himself and to have
+something tangible to show those Turkish ultra-Nationalists who always
+had an eye on Turkestan and Turan and thought that now was the time
+to carry out their programme of a "Greater Turkey." It was this mad
+undertaking, bound as it was to come to grief, that first showed Enver
+Pasha in his true colours. I shall have something to say about his
+character in another connection, which will show how gravely he has
+been over-estimated in Europe.
+
+From the beginning of March 1915 to the beginning of January 1916 the
+situation was practically entirely commanded by the battles in the
+Dardanelles and Gallipoli. It has now been accepted as a recognised
+fact even in the countries belonging to the Entente that the sacrifice
+of a few more ships on March 18th would have decided the fate of the
+Dardanelles. To their great astonishment the gallant defenders of the
+coast forts found that the attack had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the
+German naval gunners who were manning the batteries of Chanakkale on
+that memorable day told me later that they had quite made up their
+minds the fleet would ultimately win, and that they themselves could
+not have held out much longer. Such an outcome was expected hourly
+in Constantinople, and I was told by influential people that all the
+archives, stores of money, etc., had already been removed to Konia.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that for a second time, in the first days
+of September, the fate of Constantinople was again hanging in the
+balance--a fact which is no longer a secret in England and France.
+The British had extended their line northwards from Ariburnu to
+Anaforta, and a heroic dash by the Anzacs had captured the summit
+of the Koja-Jemen-Dagh, and so given them direct command of the
+whole peninsula of Gallipoli and the insufficiently protected
+Dardanelles forts behind them. It is still a mystery to the people of
+Constantinople why the British troops did not follow up this victory.
+The fact is that this time again the money and archives were hurried
+off from Constantinople to Asia, and a German officer in Constantinople
+gave me the entertaining information that he had really seriously
+thought of hiring a window in the Grand' Rue de Pera, so that he and
+his family might watch the triumphal entry of the Entente troops! It
+would be easier to enjoy the joke of this if it were not overshadowed
+by such fearful tragedy.
+
+I have already indicated the dilemma in which I was placed on my first
+and second visits to the Gallipoli front. I was torn by conflicting
+doubts as to whom my sympathies ought ultimately to turn to--to the
+heroic Turkish defender, who was indeed fighting for the existence of
+his country, although in an unsuccessful and unjust cause, for German
+militarism and the exaggerated jingoism of the Young Turks, or to those
+who were officially my enemies but whom, knowing as I did who was
+responsible for the great crime of the war, I could not regard as such.
+
+In those September days I had already had some experience of Turkish
+politics and their defiance of the laws of humanity, and my sympathies
+were all for those thousands of fine colonial troops--such men as one
+seldom sees--sacrificing their lives in one last colossal attack,
+which if it had been prolonged even for another hour might have sealed
+the fate of the Straits and would have meant the first decisive step
+towards the overthrow of our forces; for the capture of Constantinople
+would have been the beginning of the end. I am not ashamed to confess
+that, German as I am, that was the only feeling I had when I heard of
+the British victory and the subsequent British defeat at Anaforta.
+The Battle of Anaforta was the last desperate attempt to break the
+resistance in the Dardanelles.
+
+While the men of Stamboul and Anatolia--the nucleus of the Ottoman
+Empire--were defending the City of the Caliph at the gate of the
+Dardanelles, with reinforcements from Arab regiments when they were
+utterly exhausted in the autumn, the other half of the metropolis,
+the cosmopolitan Galata-Pera, was trembling for the safety of the
+attacking Entente troops, and lived through the long months in a state
+of continual tension, longing always for the moment of release.
+
+There was a great deal of nervous calculation about the probable
+attitude of Bulgaria among both the Turks and the thousands of
+thoroughly illoyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire composing the
+population of the capital. From lack of information and also as a
+result of Bulgaria's long delay in declaring her attitude, an undue
+optimism ruled right up to the last moment among those who desired the
+overthrow of the Turks.
+
+The Bulgarian question was closely bound up with the question of the
+munitions supply. The Turkish resistance on Gallipoli threatened to
+collapse through lack of munitions, and general interest centred--with
+very varied desires with regard to the outcome--on the rare ammunition
+trains that were brought through Rumania only after an enormous
+expenditure of Turkish powers of persuasion and the application of any
+amount of "palm-oil."
+
+I was present at Sedd-ul-Bahr at the beginning of July, when, owing to
+lack of ammunition, the German-Turkish artillery could only reply with
+one shot to every ten British ones, while the insufficiently equipped
+factories of Top-hane and Zeitun-burnu, under the control of General
+Pieper, Director of Munitions, were turning out as many shells as was
+possible with the inferior material at their disposal, and the Turkish
+fortresses in the Interior had to send their supply of often very
+antiquated ammunition to the Dardanelles. The whole dramatic import of
+the situation, which might any day give rise to epoch-making events,
+was only too evident in Constantinople. It is not to be wondered at
+that everyone looked forward with feverish impatience to Bulgaria's
+entry either on one side or the other.
+
+But, in spite of all this, the Turks could scarcely bear the sight
+of the first Bulgarian soldiers who appeared in autumn 1915 in full
+uniform in the streets of "Carihrad." The necessary surrender of the
+land along the Maritza right to the gates of the holy city of "Edirne"
+(Adrianople) was but little to the liking of the Turkish patriots,
+and even the successful issue of the Dardanelles campaign, only made
+possible by Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers, was not sufficient
+to win the real sympathies of the Turks for their new allies.
+
+It was not until much later that the position was altered as a result
+of the combined fighting in Dobrudja. Practically right up to the end
+of 1916, the real, short-sighted, jingoistic Turk looked askance at
+his new ally and viewed with irritation and distrust the desecration
+of his sacred "Edirne," the symbol of his national renaissance, while
+the ambition of all politicians was to bring Bulgaria one day to a
+surrender of the lost territory and more.
+
+Even in 1916 I found Young Turks, belonging to the Committee, who still
+regarded the Bulgarians as their erstwhile cunning foe and as a set
+of unscrupulous, unsympathetic opportunists who might again become a
+menace to them. They even admitted that the Serbs were "infinitely
+nicer enemies in the Balkan war," and appealed to them very much more
+than the Bulgarians. The late Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, of whose
+tragic death I shall speak later, was always a declared opponent of the
+cession of the Maritza territory.
+
+The possibility of Bulgaria's voluntarily surrendering this territory
+and possibly much more through extending her own possessions westward
+if Greece joined the Entente, had a great deal to do with Turkey's
+attitude during the whole of 1916, and goes far to explain why she
+dallied so long over the idea of alienating Greece, and used all sorts
+of chicanery against the Ottoman and Hellenic Greeks in Turkey. Another
+and much more important factor was, as we shall see, fundamental
+race-hatred and avarice.
+
+As the question as to which side Bulgaria was to join was of decisive
+moment for Turkish politics, I may perhaps be permitted to add a few
+details from personal information. I had an interesting sidelight on
+the German attempts to win over Bulgaria from a well-informed source in
+Sofia. Everyone was much puzzled over the apparent clumsiness of the
+German Ambassador in Sofia, Dr. Michahelles, in his diplomatic mission
+to gain help from Bulgaria. King Ferdinand, of course, made great
+difficulties, and at a very early stage of the proceedings he turned to
+the Prime Minister, Radoslavoff, and said: "Away with your German Jews!
+Why don't you take the good French gold?" (referring, of course, to the
+offered French loan).
+
+The king was cunning enough in his own way, but he was a poor
+politician and utterly vacillating, for he had no sort of ideals to
+live up to and was prompted by a spirit of unworthy opportunism, and
+it needed Radoslavoff's threat of instant resignation to bring him
+to a definite decision. The transference shortly afterwards of the
+German Ambassador to a northern post strengthened the impression in
+confidential circles in Sofia that he had been lacking in diplomacy.
+
+The truth was that he had received most contradictory instructions from
+Berlin, which did not allow him to do his utmost to win Bulgaria for
+the German cause. The Imperial Chancellor seems even then--it was after
+the great German summer offensive against Russia--to have given serious
+consideration to the possibility of a separate peace with Russia, and
+was quite convinced that Russia would never lay down arms without
+having humiliated Bulgaria, should the latter prove a traitor to the
+Slavic cause and turn against Serbia.
+
+In diplomatic circles in Berlin this knowledge and the decision--so
+naive in view of all their boasted _Weltpolitik_--to pursue the quite
+illusory dream of a separate peace with Russia, seemed to outweigh, at
+any rate for some time, anxiety with regard to the state of affairs in
+Gallipoli and the complete lack of munitions shortly to be expected,
+and lamed their initiative in their dealings with Bulgaria.
+
+It is probably not generally known that here again the military party
+assumed the lead in politics, and took the Bulgarian matter in hand
+themselves. In the space of no time at all, Bulgaria's entry on the
+German side was an accomplished fact. It was Colonel von Leipzig, the
+German military attache at the Constantinople Embassy, that clinched
+the matter at the critical moment by a journey to Sofia, and the whole
+thing was arranged in less than a fortnight. But that journey cost him
+his life. On the way back to the Turkish capital Herr von Leipzig--one
+of the nicest and most gentlemanly men that ever wore a field-grey
+uniform--visited the Dardanelles front, and on the little Thracian
+railway-station of Uzunkoeprue he met his death mysteriously. He was
+found shot through the head in the bare little waiting-room of this
+miserable wayside station.
+
+It so happened that on my way to the Dardanelles on that day at the end
+of June 1915, I passed through this little station, and was the sole
+European witness of this tragic event, which increased still further
+the excitement already hanging over Constantinople in these weeks of
+lack of ammunition and terrible onslaughts against Gallipoli, and which
+had already risen to fever-heat over the nervous rumours that were
+going the rounds as to Bulgaria's attitude. The occurrence, of course,
+was used by political intriguers for their own ends.
+
+I wrote a warm and truly heartfelt appreciation of this excellent man
+and good friend, which was published in my paper at the time, and it
+was not till long afterwards, weeks, indeed, after my return, that I
+had any idea that the sudden death of Herr von Leipzig on his return
+from a mission of the highest political importance was looked upon
+by the German anti-English party as the work of English spies in the
+service of Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was formerly at the English Embassy in
+Constantinople.
+
+I was an eye-witness of the occurrence, or rather, I was beside the
+Colonel a minute after I heard the shot, and saw the hole in his
+revolver-holster where the bullet had gone through. I heard the
+frank evidence of all the Turks present, from the policeman who had
+arrived first on the scene to the staff doctor who came later, and I
+immediately telegraphed to my paper from the scene of the accident,
+giving them my impression of the affair.
+
+On my return to Constantinople I was invited to give evidence under
+oath before the German Consulate General, and there one may find the
+written evidence of what I had to say: a pure and absolute accident.
+
+I must not omit to mention here that the German authorities themselves
+in Constantinople were so thoroughly convinced that the idea of murder
+was out of the question, that Colonel von Leipzig's widow, who,
+believing this version of the story, hurried to Turkey, to make her
+own investigations, had the greatest difficulty in being officially
+received by the Embassy and Consulate. I had a long interview with her
+in the "Pera Palace," where she complained bitterly of her treatment in
+this respect. I have tarried a little over this tragic episode as it
+shows all the political ramifications that ran together in the Turkish
+capital and the dramatic excitement that prevailed.
+
+The day came, however, when the Entente troops first evacuated
+Anaforta-Ariburnu, and then, after a long and protracted struggle,
+Sedd-ul-Bahr, and so the entire Gallipoli Peninsula. The Dardanelles
+campaign was at an end.
+
+The impossibility of ever breaking down that solid Turkish resistance,
+the sufferings of the soldiers practically starved to death in the
+trenches during the cold winter storms, the difficulties of obtaining
+supplies of provisions, drinking water, ammunition, etc., with a
+frozen sea and harbourless coast, anxiety about the superior heavy
+artillery that the enemy kept bringing up after the overthrow of
+Serbia--everything combined to strengthen the Entente in their decision
+to put an end to the campaign in Gallipoli.
+
+The Turkish soldiers had now free access to the sea, for all the
+British Dreadnoughts and cruisers had disappeared; the warlike activity
+which had raged for months on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula suddenly
+ceased; Austrian heavy and medium howitzers undertook the coast
+defence, and a garrison of a few thousand Turkish soldiers stayed
+behind in the Narrows for precaution's sake, while the whole huge
+Gallipoli army in an endless train was marched off to the Taurus to
+meet the Russian advance threatening in Armenia.
+
+But Constantinople remained "unrelieved." And from that moment a
+dull resignation, a dreary waiting for one scarcely knew what,
+disappointment, and pessimism took the place of the nervous tension
+that had been so apparent in those who had been longing for the fall of
+the Turkish capital.
+
+But the Turks rejoiced. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they
+tried to construe the failure of the Gallipoli affair as a wonderful
+and dazzling victory for Islam over the combined forces of the
+Great Powers. It is only in line of course with Turkish official
+untruthfulness that, in shameless perversion of facts, they talked
+glibly of the irresistible bayonet attacks of their "ghazi" (heroes)
+and of thousands of Englishmen taken prisoner or chased back into the
+sea, whereas it was a well-known fact even in Pera that the retreat had
+been carried out in a most masterly way with practically no loss of
+life, and that the Turks themselves had been caught napping this time;
+but to lie is human, and the Turks owed it to their prestige to have an
+unmistakable and great military victory to form the basis of that "Holy
+War" that was so long in getting under weigh; and when all is said and
+done, their truly heroic defence really _was_ a victory.
+
+The absurd thing about all these lies was the way they were foisted on
+a public who already knew the true state of affairs and had nothing
+whatever to do with the "Holy War."
+
+The Turks made even more of the second piece of good fortune that fell
+to their lot--the fall of Kut-el-Amara. General Townshend became their
+cherished prisoner, and was provided with a villa on the island of
+Halki in the Sea of Marmora, with a staff of Turkish naval officers to
+act as interpreters.
+
+In the neighbouring and more fashionable _Prinkipo_ he was received
+by practically everyone with open arms, and once even a concert was
+arranged in his honour, which was attended by the elite of Turkish and
+Levantine Society--the Turks because of their vanity and pride in their
+important prisoner of war, the Levantines because of their political
+sympathy with General Townshend, who, although there against his will,
+seemed to bring them a breath of that world they had lost all contact
+with for nearly two years and for which they longed with the most
+ardent and passionate desire.
+
+On the occasion of the Bairam Festival--the highest Musulman
+festival--in 1916, the Turkish Government made a point of sending a
+group of about seventy Anglo-Indian Mohammedan officers, who had been
+taken prisoner at the fall of Kut and were now interned in Eski-Shehir,
+to the "Caliph City of Stamboul," where they were entertained for ten
+days in different Turkish hotels and shown everything that would seem
+to be of value for "Holy War" propaganda purposes.
+
+I had the opportunity of conversing with some of these Indian officers
+in the garden of the "Petit Champs," where their appearance one
+evening made a most tremendous sensation. I had of course to be very
+discreet, for we were surrounded by spies, but I came away firmly
+convinced that, in spite of their good treatment, which was of course
+not without its purpose, and most unceasing and determined efforts to
+influence them, the Turkish propaganda so far as these Indian officers
+was concerned had entirely failed and that their loyalty to England
+remained absolutely unshaken. Will anyone blame me, if, angry and
+disgusted as I was at all these Turkish intrigues--it was shortly
+after that dramatic scene of the tortured Armenian which called forth
+that denunciation of Germany from my wife--I said to a group of these
+Indians--just this and nothing more!--that they should not believe all
+that the Turks told them, and that the result of the war would be very
+different from what the Turks thought? One of the officers thanked me
+with glowing eyes on behalf of his comrades and himself, and told me
+what a comfort my assurance was to them. They had nothing to complain
+of, he said, save being cut off from all news except official Turkish
+reports.
+
+The very most that even the wildest fancy could find in events like
+Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara was brought forward for the benefit of
+the "Holy War," but, despite everything, the propaganda was, as we
+have seen, a hopeless failure. Reverses such as the fall of Erzerum,
+Trebizond, and Ersindjan, on the contrary, which took place between the
+two above-mentioned victories, have never to this day been even so much
+as hinted at in the official war communiques for the Ottoman public.
+For the communiques for home and foreign consumption were always
+radically different.
+
+It was not until very much later, when the Turkish counter-offensive
+against Bitlis seemed to be bearing fruit, that a few mild indications
+of these defeats were made in Parliament, with a careful suppression
+of all names, and the newspapers were empowered to make some mention
+of a "purely temporary retreat of no strategic importance" which had
+then taken place. The usual stereotyped report of 3,000 or 5,000 dead
+that was officially given out after every battle throughout the whole
+course of operations in the Irak scarcely came off in this case,
+however, and, to tell the truth, Erzerum and these countless English
+dead reported in the Irak did more than anything else to undermine
+completely the people's already sadly shaken confidence in the official
+war communiques.
+
+If there was a real victory to be celebrated, the most stringent police
+orders were issued that flags were to be flown everywhere--on every
+building. Surely it is only in a land like Turkey that one could
+see the curious sight I witnessed after the fall of Bucharest--the
+victorious flags of the Central Powers, surmounted by the Turkish
+crescent, flying even from the balconies of Rumanian subjects, because
+there had been a definite police warning issued that, in the case
+of non-compliance with the order, the houses would be immediately
+ransacked and the families inhabiting them sent off to the interior
+of Anatolia. Under the circumstances, refusal to carry out police
+orders was impossible. That was the Turkish idea of the respect due to
+individual liberty.
+
+This gives me an opportunity to say something of the treatment of
+prisoners. I may say in one word that it is, on the whole, good.
+Justice compels me to admit that the Turk, when he does take prisoners,
+treats them kindly and chivalrously; but he takes few prisoners, for he
+knows only too well how to wield his bayonet in those murderous charges
+he makes. Indeed, apart from the few hundred that fell into their hands
+in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-Turkish front, together with the
+crews of a few captured submarines, all the Turkish prisoners of war
+come from Kut-el-Amara.
+
+But the primitive Turk is all too sadly lacking in the comforts of
+life himself to be able to provide them for his prisoners. Without the
+help of the Commission that works under the protection of the American
+Embassy for the relief of the Entente prisoners, and sends piles of
+warm clothing, excellent shoes (which rouse the special envy of the
+Turks), chocolate, cakes, etc., to the Anatolian camps, these men,
+accustomed to European ways of life, would be in a sad plight.
+
+The repeated and humiliating marching of prisoners of war through the
+streets of Constantinople to show them off to the childish gaze of a
+people much influenced by externals, might with advantage be dispensed
+with. And it was certainly not exactly kind to make wounded English
+officers process past the Sultan at the Friday's "Selamlik"; it was
+rather too like slave-driving methods and the abuses of the Middle Ages.
+
+I was an unwilling witness of one most regrettable incident that
+took place shortly before I left Constantinople. In this case the
+sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners of war were cruelly exploited
+for political ends. A whole troup of about 2,000 Rumanians, from
+Dobrudja, were hounded up and down the streets of Pera and Stamboul in
+a purposely destitute and exhausted condition, so that the appearance
+of these poor wretches, who hung their heads dejectedly and had lost
+all trace of military bearing, might give the impression that the Turks
+were dealing with a very inferior foe and would soon be at the end of
+the business. This is how the authorities were going to increase the
+confidence of the doubting population!
+
+The Turkish escort had apparently given these prisoners nothing to
+drink on the way--although the Turk, being a great water-drinker
+himself, knows only too well what a man needs on a dusty journey of
+several days on a transport train--for with my own eyes I saw dozens
+of them simply flinging themselves like animals full length on the
+ground when they reached the Taksim Fountain, and trying to slake their
+terrible thirst. It was with pitiable trickery like this--for which
+no doubt Enver Pasha was responsible, for the simple Turkish soldier
+is much too good-natured not to share his bread and water with his
+prisoners--that attempts were made, at the expense of all feelings of
+humanity, to cheer up the uneducated masses.
+
+The Turkish Government, however, apart from a few cases of reprisals,
+where the prisoners were treated in an even more barbaric and primitive
+manner, did not, as a general rule, go the length of interning
+civilians. This was not without its own good grounds. In the first
+place, a very large part of the trade of the country lay in the hands
+of these Europeans, and they were consequently absolutely indispensable
+to the Turks in their everyday commercial life; secondly, a Government
+that had systematically rooted out the Armenians, hanged Arabian
+notables, and brutally mishandled the Greeks, could scarcely dispense,
+in the eyes of Europe, with the very last pretence of being more or
+less civilised; and, lastly, perhaps the fear of being brought to book
+later on may have had a restraining influence on them--we saw how
+growing anxiety about the Russian advance on the Eastern front led, at
+any rate for a time, to a discontinuance of Armenian persecutions.
+
+Besides all this, hundreds and thousands of Turks were resident in
+enemy countries, and of course the desire was to avoid reprisals. So
+the Government contented itself with threats and subterfuges, after a
+first unsuccessful attempt to expose a large number of French subjects
+to fire from the enemy guns in Gallipoli--a plan which failed entirely,
+owing to the energetic opposition of officials of the American Embassy
+who had accompanied these chosen victims to Gallipoli. Every means
+was used, however, even announcements in the newspapers and a Vote of
+Credit "for the removal of enemy subjects to the interior," to keep the
+sword of Damocles for ever hanging over the heads of all subjects of
+Entente countries, even women and children.
+
+From the fall of Kut-el-Amara up to the time of Rumania's entry into
+the war, there were no important episodes of a military or political
+nature from the particular point of view of Turkey. (The Arabian
+catastrophe I will deal with in another connection.) With the ebb
+and flow of war and constant anxiety about Russia's movements, time
+passed slowly enough. It was well known that the Turkish offensive was
+already considerably weakened and the lack of means of transport was
+an open secret. Starvation and spotted fever raged at the Front as
+well as in the interior and the capital. Asiatic cholera even made its
+appearance in European Pera, but was fortunately successfully combated
+by vaccination.
+
+Further decisive Russian victories on the west and the Gulf of
+Alexandretta were expected after the fall of Ersindjian, for the
+ambition and personal hatred against the Turks of the Grand Duke
+Nicolai Nicolajivitch, commanding the armies in Armenia, would probably
+stop short at nothing less than complete overthrow of the enemy.
+Simple-minded souls, whose geography was not their strong point,
+reckoned how long it would take the Russians to get from Anatolia and
+when the conquest of Constantinople would take place.
+
+The less optimistic among those who were panting for final emancipation
+from the Young Turkish military yoke set their hopes on the entry of
+Rumania. In all circles Rumania's probable attitude was fairly clear,
+and no one ever doubted that she would be drawn into the war.
+
+In consequence of the new operations after Rumania's declaration of
+war, the revival of the offensive in Macedonia, and the events in
+Athens, all eyes were turned again to the ever-doubtful Greece. The
+Greek element, Ottoman and Hellenic combined, in Constantinople alone
+may be reckoned at several hundred thousand. Never were sympathies so
+great for Venizelos, never was the spirit of the Irredenta so outspoken
+as among the Greeks in Turkey, who had been the dupes since 1909 of
+every possible kind of Young Turkish intrigue. In contrast to the
+Armenians, the great mass of whom thought and felt as loyal Ottoman
+citizens right up to the very end when Talaat and Enver's policy of
+extermination set in against them--in contrast to these absolutely
+helpless and therefore all the more easy victims to the Turkish
+national lust of persecution, the attitude of the Greek citizens was
+all the more marked.
+
+Since the Graeco-Turkish war of 1912-13 and the impetus given to
+Pan-Hellenism by the successful issue of the war, there is not
+one single Greek in either country--no matter what his social
+standing--that has not ardently looked forward to and desired the
+overthrow of Turkey. But the Greek is much too clever to let his
+feelings be seen; and he is not so unprotected as the Armenian. And
+so up to the present time the Turk has confined himself more to
+small intrigues against the Greek population, except in a few remote
+districts--more especially the shores of the Black Sea--where massacres
+like those organised among the Armenians have been carried out, but on
+a very much smaller scale.
+
+Sympathy with Venizelos and the Irredentistic desire for Greece to
+throw in her lot with the Entente are counterbalanced, however, in
+the case of the Greeks living in Turkey, by grave anxiety as to their
+own welfare if it came to a break between the two countries. Turkish
+hatred of the Greeks knows no bounds, and it was no idle fear that made
+the Greeks in Constantinople tremble, in spite of their satisfaction
+politically, when the rumours were afloat in autumn 1916 of King
+Constantine's abdication and Greece's entry on the side of the Entente.
+
+But the ideas as to how the Turks would act towards them in such a
+case were diametrically opposed even among those who had lived in the
+country a long time and knew the Turkish mind exactly. Many expected
+immediate Greek massacres on the largest scale; others, again, expected
+only brutal intrigues and chicanery, economic ruin; still others
+thought that nothing at all would happen, that the Turks were already
+too demoralised, and that at any rate in Pera the far superior Greek
+element would completely command the situation. This last I considered
+mere megalomaniac optimism in view of the fact that Turkey was still
+unbroken so far as things military were concerned, and I believe that
+those people were right who believed that Greece's entry on the side
+of the Entente would be the signal for the carrying out of atrocities
+against all Greeks, at any rate in the commercial world.
+
+It would be interesting to know which idea the German authorities
+favoured. That the event would pass off without damage being done, they
+apparently did not believe, for in those days when Greece's decision
+seemed to be imminent, the former _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_, which had
+been lying at Stenia on the Bosporus, were brought up with all speed
+and anchored just off the coast with their guns turned on Pera, and
+the German garrison, as I knew from different officers, had orders to
+be prepared for an alarm.
+
+Did the Germans think they were going to have to protect Turks or
+Greeks in the case of definite news from Athens? Was it Germany's
+intention to protect the European population, who had nothing to do
+with the impending political decision, although they might sympathise
+with it--was it Germany's intention to protect them, at any rate in
+this instance, from the Turkish lust of extermination? Had these two
+ships, now known as the _Jawuz Sultan Selim_ and the _Midilli_, not
+belonged for a long time to the Imperial Ottoman Navy?
+
+When Rumania flung off her shackles, there was great rejoicing in Pera,
+and even the greatest pessimists believed that relief was near and
+would be accomplished within two months at latest. But another and more
+terrible reverse absolutely destroyed the last shred of anti-Turkish
+hope, and the victories in Rumania, especially the fall of Bucharest,
+combined with the speech of the Russian minister Trepoff, had the
+effect of sending over solid to the side of the Government even the few
+who had hitherto, at least in theory, formed an opposition, although a
+powerless one.
+
+Victories shared with the Bulgarians, too, did away with the last
+remains of unfriendly feelings towards that people and consolidated the
+Turko-Bulgarian Alliance. Indeed, one may say that for Turkey the third
+great phase of the war began with the removal of all danger of the fall
+of Constantinople through the collapse of the Rumanian forces.
+
+The first comprised the time of the powerful attacks directed at the
+very heart of the Empire, its most vulnerable point, and ended with
+the English-French evacuation of Gallipoli. The second was the period
+of alternate successes and reverses, almost a time of stagnation,
+when practically all interest was centred on the Russian menace in
+Asia Minor and the efforts made to withstand it. It ended equally
+successfully with the removal of the Russian menace from the Balkans.
+The third will be the phase of increasing internal weakness, of the
+dissipation of strength through the sending of troops to Europe, of
+the successful renewal of the English offensive in Mesopotamia,
+perhaps even of an English-French offensive against Syria and of the
+final revolt of all the Arabian lands, ushered in by the events in the
+Hedjaz and the founding of a purely Arabian Caliphate. The third phase
+_cannot_ last longer than the year 1917; it will mean the decision of
+the whole European war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  The economic situation--Exaggerated Entente hopes--Hunger and
+  suffering among the civil population--The system of requisitioning
+  and the semi-official monopolists--Profiteering on the part of
+  the Government clique--Frivolity and cynicism--The "Djemiet"--The
+  delegates of the German _Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_ (Central
+  Purchases Commission)--A hard battle between German and
+  Turkish intrigue--Reform of the coinage--Paper money and its
+  depreciation--The hoarding of bullion--The Russian rouble the best
+  investment.
+
+
+During the entire course of the war as I have briefly sketched it
+in the foregoing pages, the economic situation in the whole country
+and particularly in the capital became more and more serious. But,
+let me just say here, in anticipation, that Turkey, being a purely
+agricultural country with a very modest population, can never be
+brought to sue for peace through starvation, nor, with Germany backing
+and financing her, through any general exhaustion of commercial
+resources, until Germany herself is brought to her knees. Any victory
+must be a purely military and political one. The whole crux of the
+food problem in Turkey is that the people suffer, suffer cruelly, but
+not enough for hunger to have any results in the shape of an earlier
+conclusion of peace. This is the case also with the Central Powers, as
+the Entente have unfortunately only too surely convinced themselves now
+after their first illusions to the contrary.
+
+There is another element in the Turkish question too--the large
+majority of the population are a heterogeneous mass of enslaved and
+degenerate beings, outcasts of society, plunged in the lowest social
+and commercial depths, entirely lacking in all initiative, who can
+never become a factor in any political upheaval, for in Turkey this can
+only be looked for from the military or the educated classes. If the
+Entente Powers ever counted on Turkey's chronic state of starvation
+and lack of supplies coming to their aid in this war, they have made
+a sad mistake. Therefore in attempting to sketch in a few pages the
+conditions of life and the economic situation in Turkey, my aim is
+solely to bring to light the underlying Turkish methods, and the ethics
+and spirit of the Young Turkish Government.
+
+During the periods of the very acute bread crises, which occurred
+more than once, but notably in the beginning of 1916, some dozen men
+literally died of hunger daily in Constantinople alone. With my own
+eyes I have repeatedly seen women collapsing from exhaustion in the
+streets. From many parts of the interior, particularly Syria, there
+were reliable reports of a still worse state of affairs. But even in
+more normal times there was always a difficulty in obtaining bread, for
+the means of communication in that vast and primitive land of Turkey
+are precarious at best, and it was no easy matter to get the grain
+transported to the centres of consumption.
+
+Then in Constantinople there was a shortage not only of skilled labour,
+but of coal for milling purposes. The result was that the townspeople
+only received a daily ration of a quarter of a kilogramme (about 8
+oz.--not a quarter of an oka, which would be about 10 oz.) of bread,
+which was mostly of an indigestible and occasionally very doubtful
+quality--utterly uneatable by Europeans--although occasionally it was
+quite good though coarse. If the poor people in Constantinople wanted
+to supplement this very insufficient allowance, they could do so when
+things were in a flourishing condition at the price of about 2-1/2 or
+3 piastres (1 piastre = about 2-1/4_d._) the English pound, and later
+4 or 5 piastres. Even this was for the most part only procurable by
+clandestine means from soldiers who were usually willing to turn part
+of their bread ration into money.
+
+This is about all that can be said about the feeding of the people, for
+bread is by far the most important food of the Oriental, and the prices
+of the other foodstuffs soon reached exorbitant heights. What were the
+poor to feed on when rice, reckoned in English coinage, cost roughly
+from 3_s._ 2_d._ to 4_s._ 4_d._ an oka (about 2-1/2 lb.), beans 2_s._
+4_d._ the oka, meat 3_s._ to 4_s._, and the cheapest sheep's cheese and
+olives, hitherto the most common Turkish condiment to eat with bread,
+rose to 3_s._ and 1_s._ 8_d._ the oka?
+
+Wages, on the other hand, were ludicrously low. We may obtain some
+idea of the standard of living from the fact that the Government, who
+always favoured the soldiers, did not pay more than 5 piastres (about
+1_s._) a day to the families of soldiers on active service. I have
+often wondered what the people really did eat, and I was never able to
+come to any satisfactory conclusion, although I often went to market
+myself to buy and see what other people bought. It is significant
+enough that just shortly before I left Constantinople--that is, a few
+weeks after the Turko-Bulgarian-German victories in Rumania and the
+fall of Bucharest--the price of bread in the Turkish capital, in spite
+of the widely advertised "enormous supplies" taken in Rumania, rose
+still higher.
+
+I cannot speak from personal experience of what happened after
+Christmas 1916 in this connection, but everyone was quite convinced,
+in spite of the official report, that the harvest of 1916, despite the
+tremendous and praiseworthy efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture
+and the military authorities, would show a very marked decrease as a
+result of the mobilisation of agricultural labour, the requisitioning
+of implements, and the shortage of buffaloes, which, instead of
+ploughing fields, were pulling guns over the snow-covered uplands of
+Armenia. There was a very general idea that the harvest of 1917 would
+be a horrible catastrophe. And yet I am fully convinced, and I must
+emphasise it again, that, in spite of agricultural disaster, Turkey
+will still go on as a military power.
+
+And now let us see what the Government did in connection with the
+food problem. At a comparatively early stage they followed Germany's
+example and introduced bread tickets, which were quite successful
+so long as the flour lasted. In the autumn of 1915 they took the
+organisation of the bread supply for large towns out of the hands
+of the municipalities, and gave it over to the War Office. They got
+Parliament to vote a large fund to buy up all available supplies of
+flour, and in view of the immense importance of bread as the chief
+means of nourishment of the masses, they decided to sell it at a very
+considerable loss to themselves, so that the price of the daily ration
+(though not of the supplementary ration) remained very much as it
+had been in peace time. The Government always favoured the purely
+Mohammedan quarters of the town so far as bread supply was concerned,
+and the people living in Fatih and other parts of Stamboul were very
+much better off than the inhabitants of Graeco-European Pera.
+
+Then Talaat made speeches in the House on the food question in which
+he did all in his power to throw dust in the eyes of the starving
+population, but he did not really succeed in blinding anyone as to the
+true state of affairs. In February 1916, when there was practically a
+famine in the land, he even went so far as to declare in Parliament
+that the food supplies for the whole of Turkey had been so increased by
+enormous purchases in Rumania, that they were now fully assured for two
+years.
+
+It was no doubt with cynical enjoyment that the "Committee" of
+the Young Turks enlarged on the privations of the people in such
+publications as the semi-official _Tanin_, in which the following
+wonderful sentiment appeared: "One can pass the night in relative
+brightness without oil in one's lamp if one thinks of the bright and
+glorious future that this war is preparing for Turkey!"
+
+One could have forgiven such cheap phrases if they had been a true,
+though possibly misguided, attempt to provide comfort in face of real
+want; but at the same time as such paragraphs were appearing in the
+_Tanin_ and thousands of poor Turkish households had to spend the
+long winter nights without the slightest light, thousands of tons of
+oil were lying in Constantinople alone in the stores of the official
+_accapareurs_.
+
+This brings me to the second series of measures taken by the Turkish
+Government to relieve the economic situation--those of a negative
+nature. Their positive measures are pretty well exhausted when one has
+mentioned their treatment of the bread crisis.
+
+The question of _requisitioning_ is one of the most important in
+Turkish life in war-time, and is not without its ludicrous side.
+In imitation of German war-time methods, either wrongly understood
+or wittingly misapplied by Oriental greed, the Turkish Government
+requisitioned pretty well everything in the food line or in the
+shape of articles of daily use that were sure to be scarce and would
+necessarily rise in price. But while in the civilised countries of
+Central Europe the supplies so requisitioned were sagely applied to
+the general good, the members of the "Committee of Union and Progress"
+looked with fine contempt and the grim cynicism of arch-dictators on
+the privations and sufferings of the people so long as they did not
+actually starve, and used the supplies requisitioned for the personal
+enrichment of their clique.
+
+When I speak of requisitioning, I do not mean the necessary military
+carrying off of grain, cattle, vehicles, buffaloes, and horses, general
+equipment, and so on, in exchange for a scrap of paper to be redeemed
+after the war (of very doubtful value in view of Turkey's position)--I
+do not mean that, even though the way it was accomplished bled the
+country far more than was necessary, falling as it did in the country
+districts into the hands of ignorant, brutal, and fanatical underlings,
+and in the town being carried out with every kind of refinement
+by the central authorities. Too often it was a means of violent
+"nationalisation" and deprivation of property and rights exercised
+especially against Armenians, Greeks, and subjects of other Entente
+countries. If there was a particularly nice villa or handsome estate
+belonging to someone who was not a Turk, soldiers were immediately
+billeted there under some pretext or other, and it was not long before
+these rough Anatolians had reduced everything to rack and ruin.
+
+I do not mean either the terrible damage to commercial life brought
+about by the way the military authorities, in complete disregard of
+agricultural interests, were always seizing railway waggons, and so
+completely laming all initiative on the part of farmers and merchants,
+whose goods were usually simply emptied out on the spot, exposed to
+ruin, or disposed of without any kind of compensation being given.
+
+What I do mean is the huge semi-official cornering of food, which must
+be regarded as typical of the Young Turks' idea of their official
+responsibility towards those for whom they exercised stewardship.
+
+The "Bakal Clique" ("provision merchants," "grocers") was known through
+the whole of Constantinople, and was keenly criticised by the much
+injured public. It was, first of all, under the official patronage of
+the city prefect, Ismet Bey, a creature of the Committee; but later
+on, when they realised that dire necessity made a continuance of this
+system of cornering quite unthinkable, he was made the scapegoat, and
+his dismissal from office was freely commented on in the Committee
+newspapers as "an act of deliverance." The Committee thought that
+they would thus throw dust in the eyes of the sorely-tried people
+of Constantinople. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish pounds were
+turned into cash in the shortest possible time by this semi-official
+syndicate, at the expense of the starving population, and found their
+way into the pockets of the administrators.
+
+That was how the Young Turkish parvenus were able to fulfil their one
+desire and wriggle their way into the best clubs, where they gambled
+away huge sums of money. The method was simple enough: whatever was
+eatable or useable, but could only be obtained by import from abroad,
+was "taken charge of," and starvation rations, which were simply
+ludicrously inadequate and quite insufficient for the needs of even the
+poorest household, were doled out by "_vesikas_" (the ticket system).
+
+The great stock of goods, however, was sold secretly at exorbitant
+prices by the creatures of the "Bakal Clique," who simply cornered the
+market. That is how it happened that in Constantinople, cut off as it
+was from the outer world and without imports, even at the end of 1916,
+with a population of well over a million, there were still unlimited
+stores of everything available for those who could pay fancy prices,
+while by the beginning of 1915 those less well endowed with worldly
+goods had quite forgotten the meaning of comfort and the poor were
+starving with ample stores of everything still available.
+
+In businesses belonging to enemy subjects the system of requisitioning,
+of course, reached a climax, stores of all kinds worth thousands of
+pounds simply disappearing, without any reason being given for carrying
+them off, and nothing offered in exchange, but one of these famous
+"scraps of paper." Cases have been verified and were freely discussed
+in Pera of ladies' shoes and ladies' clothing even being requisitioned
+and turned into large sums of cash by the consequent rise in price.
+
+The profiteering of Ismet and company, who chose the specially
+productive centre of the capital for their system of usury, was not,
+however, by any means an isolated case of administrative corruption,
+for exactly the same system of requisitioning, holding up and then
+reselling under private management at as great a profit as possible,
+underlay and underlies the great semi-official Young Turkish commercial
+organisation, with branches throughout the whole country, known as the
+"Djemiet" and under the distinguished patronage of Talaat himself.
+
+After Ismet Bey's fall, the "Djemiet" took over the supplying of the
+capital as well (with the exception of bread). We will speak elsewhere
+of this great organisation, which is established not only for war
+purposes, but serves towards the nationalisation of economic life. So
+far as the system of requisitioning is concerned, it comes into the
+picture through its firm opposition to German merchants who were trying
+to buy up stores of food and raw materials from their ally Turkey.
+The intrigues and counter-intrigues on both sides sometimes had most
+remarkable results.
+
+One of the really bright sides of life in Constantinople in war-time
+was the amusement one extracted from the silent and desperate war
+continually being waged by the many well-fed gentlemen of the "Z.E.G."
+("_Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft_," "Central Purchasing Commission") and
+their minions who tried to rob Turkey of foodstuffs and raw material
+for the benefit of Germany, against the "Djemiet" and more particularly
+the Quartermaster-General, Ismail Hakki Pasha, that wooden-legged,
+enormously wealthy representative of the neo-Turkish spirit--he was the
+most perfect blend of Oriental politeness and narrow-minded decision
+to do exactly the opposite of what he had promised. On the Turkish
+side, the determination to safeguard the interests of the Army, and in
+the case of the "Djemiet" the effort not to let any foodstuffs out of
+Germany--a standpoint that has at last found expression in a formal
+prohibition of all export--then the quest of personal enrichment on the
+part of the great "Clique"; on the German side, the insatiable hunger
+for everything Turkey could provide that had been lacking for a long
+time in Germany: the whole thing was a wonderfully variegated picture
+of mutual intrigue.
+
+The gentlemen of the "Z.E.G.," after months of inactivity spent in
+reviling the Turks and studying Young Turkish and other morals and
+manners by frequenting all the pleasure resorts in the place, managed
+at last to get the exports of raw materials set on the right road, and
+so it came about that the fabulous sums in German money that had to be
+put into circulation in payment of these goods, in spite of Turkey's
+indebtedness to Germany, led to a very considerable depreciation in the
+value of the Mark even in Turkey for some time.
+
+But until the understanding as to exports was finally arrived at, there
+were many dramatic events in Constantinople, culminating in the Turks
+re-requisitioning, with the help of armed detachments, stores already
+paid for by Germany and lying in the warehouses of the "Z.E.G." and the
+German Bank!
+
+On the financial side, apart from Turkey's enormous debt to Germany,
+the wonderful attempt at a reform and standardisation of the coinage in
+the middle of May 1916 is worthy of mention. The reform, which was a
+simplification of huge economic value of the tremendously complicated
+money system and introducing a theoretical gold unit, must be regarded
+chiefly as a war measure to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkish
+paper money.
+
+This last attempt, as was obvious after a few months' trial, was
+entirely unsuccessful, and even hastened the fall of paper money, for
+the population soon discovered at the back of these drastic measures
+the thinly veiled anxiety of the Government lest there should be a
+further deterioration. Dire punishments, such as the closing down of
+money-changers' businesses and arraignment before a military court
+for the slightest offence, were meted out to anyone found guilty of
+changing gold or even silver for paper.
+
+In November 1916, however, it was an open secret that, in spite of all
+these prohibitions, there was no difficulty in the inland provinces
+and in Syria and Palestine in changing a gold pound for two or more
+paper pounds. In still more unfrequented spots no paper money would
+be accepted, so that the whole trade of the country simply came to a
+standstill. Even in Constantinople at the beginning of December 1916,
+paper stood to gold as 100 to 175.
+
+The Anatolian population still went gaily on, burying all the available
+silver _medjidiehs_ and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in the
+ground, because being simple country folk they could not understand,
+as the Government with all its prayers and threats were so anxious
+they should, that throughout Turkey and in the greater and mightier
+and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed paper money was really
+much better than actual coins, and was just as valuable as gold! The
+people, too, could not but remember what had happened with the "Kaime"
+after the Turko-Russian war, when thousands who had believed in the
+assurances of the Government suddenly found themselves penniless. In
+Constantinople it was a favourite joke to take one of the new pound,
+half-pound, or quarter-pound notes issued under German paper, not gold,
+guarantee and printed only on one side and say, "This [pointing to the
+right side] is the present value, and that [blank side] will be the
+value on the conclusion of peace."
+
+Even those who were better informed, however, and sat at the receipt of
+custom, did exactly the same as these stupid Anatolian country-people;
+no idea of patriotism prevented them from collecting everything metal
+they could lay their hands on, and, in spite of all threats of
+punishment--which could never overtake them!--paying the highest price
+in paper money for every gold piece they could get. Their argument was:
+"One must of course have something to live on in the time directly
+following the conclusion of peace." In ordinary trade and commerce,
+filthy, torn paper notes, down to a paper piastre, came more and more
+to be practically the only exchange.
+
+A discerning Turk said to me once: "It would be a very good plan
+sometime to have the police search these great men for bullion every
+evening on their return from the official exchanges. That would be more
+to the point than any reform in the coinage!"
+
+Those who could not get gold, bought roubles, which were regarded as
+one of the very best speculations going, until one day the Turkish
+Government, in their annoyance at some Russian victory, suddenly
+deported to Anatolia a rich Greek banker of the name of Vlasdari, who
+was accused of having speculated in roubles, which of course gave them
+the double benefit of getting rid of a Greek and seizing his beautiful
+estate in Pera.
+
+Only the greatest optimists were deceived into believing that it was a
+profitable transaction to buy Austrian paper money at the fabulously
+low price the Austrian _Krone_ had reached against the Turkish pound,
+which was really neither politically nor financially in any better a
+state. The members of the "Committee of Union and Progress" had of
+course shipped their gold off to Switzerland long ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  German propaganda and ethics--The unsuccessful "Holy War" and the
+  German Government--"The Holy War" a crime against civilisation, a
+  chimera, a farce--Underhand dealings--The German Embassy the dupe
+  of adventurers--The morality of German Press representatives--A
+  trusty servant of the German Embassy--Fine official distinctions of
+  morality--The German conception of the rights of individuals.
+
+
+Now that we have given a rough sketch of the main events of the war
+as it affected the economic life of the people, and have devoted a
+chapter to that sinister crime, the Armenian persecutions, we shall
+leave the Young Turks for a moment and turn to an examination of German
+propaganda methods.
+
+It is a very painful task for a German who does not profess to
+be a "World Politician," but really thinks in terms of true
+"world-politics," to deal with the many intrigues and machinations of
+our Government in their relation to the so-called "Holy War" (Arab.
+_Djihad_), where in their quest of a vain illusion they stooped to
+the very lowest means. Practically all their hopes in that direction
+have been sadly shattered. Their costly, unscrupulous, thoroughly
+unmoral efforts against European civilisation in Mohammedan countries
+have resulted in the terrific counter-stroke of the defection of the
+Arabs and the foundation of a purely Arabian Chaliphate under English
+protection. Thus England has already won a brilliant victory against
+Germany and Turkey in spite of Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara, although
+it seems probable that even these will be wiped out by greater deeds
+on the part of the Entente before long. One could not have a better
+example of Germany's total inability to succeed in the sphere of
+world-politics.
+
+The so-called "Holy War," if it had succeeded, would have been one
+of the greatest crimes against human civilisation that even Germany
+has on her conscience, remembering as we do her recent ruthless
+"frightfulness" at sea, and her attempt to set Mexico and the Japanese
+against the land of most modern civilisation and of greatest liberty.
+A successful "Djihad" spreading to all the lands of Islam would have
+set back by years all that civilisation so patiently and so painfully
+won; it would not have been at all comparable with the Entente's use
+of coloured troops in Europe which Germany deprecated so loudly, for
+in the Holy War it would have been a case of letting the wildest
+fanaticism loose against the armies of law and order and civilisation;
+in the case of the Entente it was part of a purely military action
+on the part of England and France, who held under their sway all the
+inhabitants, coloured and otherwise, of those Colonial regions from
+which troops were sent to Europe and to which they will return.
+
+But the attempt against colonial civilisation did not succeed. The
+"Djihad," proclaimed as it was by the Turanian pseudo-Chaliph and
+violently anti-Entente, was doomed to failure from the very start
+from its obvious artificiality. It was a miserable farce, or rather a
+tragicomedy, the present ending of which, namely the defection of the
+Arabian Chaliphate, is the direct contrary of what had been aimed at
+with such fanatical urgency and the use of such immoral propaganda.
+
+The attempt to "unloose" the Holy War was due primarily to the most
+absurd illusions. It would seem that in Germany, the land of science,
+the home of so many eminent doctors of research, even the scholars
+have been attacked by that disease of being dazzled by wild political
+illusions, or surely, knowing the countries of Islam outside-in as they
+must, they would long ago have raised their voices against such arrant
+folly. It would seem that all her inherent knowledge, all her studies,
+have been of little or no avail to Germany, so that mistake after
+mistake has been committed in the realm of world politics. It may be
+said that Germany, even if she were doubtful of the issue, should still
+not have left untried this means of crippling her opponents. To that
+I can only reply by pointing to the actual position of affairs, well
+known to Germany, not only in English, but also in French and Russian
+Islamic colonial territory, which should have rendered the "Djihad"
+entirely and absolutely out of the question.
+
+Let us take for example Egypt, French North-West Africa, and Russian
+Turkestan, not to speak of the masterly English colonial rule in
+India, which has now been tested and tried for centuries. Anyone who
+has ever seen Egypt with the area under culture practically doubled
+under modern English rule by the help of every kind of technical
+contrivance for the betterment of existing conditions, and the skilful
+utilisation of all available means at an expense of millions of pounds,
+with its needy population given an opportunity to earn a living wage
+and even wealth through a lucrative cultivation of the land under
+conditions that are a paradise compared with what they were under the
+Turkish rule of extortion and despotism--anyone who has seen that
+must have looked from the very beginning with a very doubtful eye on
+Germany's and Turkey's illusions of stirring up these well-doing people
+against their rulers.
+
+The same thing occurs again in the extended territory of North-West
+Africa from the Atlas lands to the Guinea coast and Lake Chad, where
+France, as I know from personal experience, stands on a high level
+of colonial excellence, developing all the resources of the country
+with consummate skill, shaping her "_empire colonial_" more and more
+into a shining gem in the crown of colonial endeavour, and, as I
+can testify from my own observations in Morocco, Senegal, the Niger,
+and the Interior of the Guinea territories of the "A.O.F." (Afrique
+Occidentale Francaise), capturing the hearts of the whole population by
+her essential culture, and, last but not least, winning the Mohammedans
+by her clever Islam policy.
+
+That, finally, Russia, at any rate from the psychological standpoint,
+is perhaps the best coloniser of Further Asia, even German textbooks
+on colonial policy admit unreservedly, and the glowing conditions that
+she has brought about especially in the basin of Ferghana in Turkestan
+by the introduction of the flourishing and lucrative business of
+cotton-growing are known to everyone. Only politicians of the most
+wildly fantastic type, who see everywhere what they want to see, could
+believe that in this war the Turkish "Turanistic" bait would ever have
+any effect in Russian Central Asia, or make its inhabitants now living
+in security, peace, and well-being wish back again the conditions
+which prevailed under the Emirs of Samarkand, Khiva, and Bokhara. But
+Germany, who should have been well informed if anyone was, believed
+all these fantastic impossibilities.
+
+One could let it pass with a slight feeling of irritation against
+Germany if it were merely a case of the failure of the "Djihad."
+But unfortunately the propaganda, as stupid as it was unsuccessful,
+exercised in this connection, will be written down for all time as one
+of the blackest and most despicable marks against Germany's account in
+this war. In Turkey alone, the underhand manipulation for the unloosing
+of the "Holy War" and the German Press propaganda so closely allied
+with it, indeed the whole way in which the German cause in the East
+was represented journalistically throughout the war, are subjects full
+of the saddest, most biting irony, to sympathise with which must lower
+every German who has lived in the Turkish capital in the eyes of the
+whole civilised world.
+
+In order to demonstrate the role played in this affair by the German
+Embassy at Constantinople I will not make an exhaustive survey but
+simply confine myself to a few episodes and outstanding features. An
+eminent German Red Cross doctor, clear-sighted and reliable, who had
+many tales to tell of what he had seen in the "Caucasus" campaign,
+said to me one evening, as we sat together at a promenade concert:
+"Do you see that man in Prussian major's uniform going past? I met
+him twice in Erzerum last winter. The man was nothing but an employee
+in a merchant's business in Baku, and had learnt Russian there. He
+has never done military service. When war broke out, he hurried to
+the Embassy in Pera and offered his services to stir up the Georgians
+and other peoples of the Caucasus against Russia. Of course he got
+full powers to do what he wanted, and guns and ammunition and piles
+of propaganda pamphlets were placed at his disposal so that he might
+carry on his work from the frontier of the then still neutral Turkey.
+Whole chests full of good gold coins were sent to him to be distributed
+confidentially for propaganda purposes; of course he was his own most
+confidential friend! He went back to Erzerum without having won a
+single soul for the cause of the 'Djihad.' That has not prevented his
+living as a 'grand seigneur,' for the Embassy are not yet daunted,
+and now the fellow struts about in a major's uniform, lent to him,
+although he has never been a soldier, so that the cause may gain still
+more prestige."
+
+Numerous examples of similar measures might be cited, and instances
+without number given, of the German Embassy being made the dupe of
+greedy adventurers who treated them as an inexhaustible source of gold.
+First one would appear on the scene who announced himself as the one
+man to cope with Afghanistan, then another would come along on his way
+to Persia and play the great man "on a special mission" for a time in
+Pera while money belonging to the German Empire would find its way into
+all sorts of low haunts. And so things went on for two years until,
+with the Arabian catastrophe, even the eyes of the great diplomatic
+optimists of Ayas-Pasha might have been opened.
+
+I will only mention here how even a _bona fide_ connoisseur of the East
+like Baron von Oppenheim, who had already made tours of considerable
+value for research purposes right across the Arabian Peninsula, and so
+should have known better than to share these false illusions, doled
+out thousands of marks from his own pocket--and millions from the
+Treasury!--to stir up the tribes to take part in the "Djihad," and how
+he returned to Pera from his propaganda tour with a real Bedouin beard,
+and, still unabashed, took over the control of the German Embassy's
+"News Bureau," which kept up these much-derided war telegraph and
+picture offices known in Pera and elsewhere by the non-German populace
+as _sacs de mensonges_, and which flooded the whole of the East with
+waggon loads of pamphlets in every conceivable tongue--in fact these,
+with guns and ammunition, formed the chief load of the bi-weekly
+"culture-bringing" Balkan train!
+
+I will only cite the one example of the far-famed Mario Passarge--a
+real _Apache_ to look at. With his friend Frobenius, the ethnographer
+and German agent, well known to me personally from French West
+Africa for his liking for absinthe and negro women and his Teutonic
+brusqueness emphasised in comparison with the kindly, helpful French
+officials, as well as by hearsay from many scandalous tales, Passarge
+undertook that disastrous expedition to the Abyssinians which failed
+so lamentably owing to the Italians, and then after its collapse
+came to Turkey as special correspondent of the _Vossische Zeitung_
+and managed to swindle his way through Macedonia with a false Italian
+passport to Greece, where he wrote sensational reports for his
+wonderful newspaper about the atrocities and low morale of Sarrail's
+army--the same newspaper that had made itself the laughing-stock of the
+whole of Europe, and at the same time had managed to get the German
+Government to pursue for two years the shadow of a separate peace with
+Russia, by publishing a marvellous series of "Special Reports via
+Stockholm," on conditions in Russia that were nothing but a tissue of
+lies inspired by blind Jewish hate; if a tithe of them had been true,
+Russia would have gone under long ago.
+
+I need not repeat my own opinion on all the machinations of the German
+Embassy, but I will simply give you word for word what a German Press
+agent in Constantinople (I will mention no names) once said to me:
+"It is unbelievable," he declared, "what a mob of low characters
+frequent the German Embassy now. The scum of the earth, people who
+would never have dared before the war to have been seen on the
+pavements of Ayas-Pasha, have now free entry. Any day you can see
+some doubtful-looking character accosting the porter at the Embassy,
+whispering something in his ear, and then being ushered down the steps
+to where the propaganda department, the news bureau, has its quarters.
+There he gives wonderful assurances of what he can do, and promises to
+stir up some Mohammedan people for the "Djihad." Then he waits a while
+in the ante-room, and is finally received by the authorities; but the
+next time he comes to the Embassy he walks in through the well-carpeted
+main entrance, and requests an audience with the Ambassador or other
+high official, and we soon find him comfortably equipped and setting
+off on a 'special mission' as the confidential servant of the German
+Embassy." But even the recognition of these truths has not prevented
+this journalist from eating from the crib of the German Embassy!
+
+I cannot leave this disagreeable subject without making some mention
+of a type that does more than anything to throw light on the morale of
+this German propaganda. Everyone in Constantinople knows--or rather
+knew, for he has now feathered his nest comfortably and departed to
+Germany with his money--Mehmed Zekki "Bey," the publisher and chief
+editor of the military paper _Die Nationalverteidigung_ and its
+counterpart _La Defense_, published daily in French but representative
+of Young Turkish-German interests. Hundreds of those who know Zekki
+also know that he used to be called "Capitaine Nelken y Waldberg."
+Fewer know that "Nelken" alone would have been more in accordance with
+fact.
+
+I will relate the history of this individual, as I know it from the
+mouths of reliable informants--the members of the Embassy and the
+Consulate. Nelken, a Roumanian Jew, a shopkeeper by trade, had been
+several times in prison for bankruptcy and fraud, and at last fled from
+Roumania. He took refuge in the Turkish capital, where he continued
+his business and married a Greek wife. Here again he became bankrupt,
+as is only too clear from the public notice of restoration in the
+Constantinople newspapers, when his lucrative political activity as the
+champion of Krupp's, of the German cause and "the holy German war,"
+as much a purely pan-Germanic as Islamic affair, provided him with the
+wherewithal to pay off his former disreputable debts.
+
+To go back to his history--with money won by fraud in his pocket, he
+deserted his wife and went off, no doubt having made a thorough and
+most professional study of the subject in the low haunts of Pera,
+as a white-slave trader to the Argentine, and then--I rely for my
+information on an official of the German Consulate in Pera--set up as
+proprietor of a brothel in Buenos Ayres. Then, as often happens, the
+Argentine special police took him into their service, thinking, on the
+principle of "setting a thief to catch a thief," that he would have
+special experience for the post. Grounds enough there for him to add
+on the second name of his falsified passport "Nelken y Waldberg" and
+to call himself in Europe a "Capitaine de la Gendarmerie" from the
+Argentine.
+
+From there he went to Cairo and edited a little private paper called
+_Les Petites Nouvelles Egyptiennes_. For repeated extortion he was
+sentenced to one year's imprisonment, but unfortunately only _in
+contumaciam_, for he had already fled the country, not, however,
+before he had been publicly smacked on the face in the "Flasch"
+beer garden without offering satisfaction as an "Argentine General"
+should--a performance that was later repeated in every detail in
+Toklian's Restaurant in Constantinople.
+
+He told me once that he had been sentenced in this way because, on
+an understanding with the then German Diplomatic Agent in Cairo, von
+Miquel, he had attacked Lord Cromer's policy sharply, and that his
+patron von Miquel had given him the timely hint to leave Egypt. I
+will leave it to one's imagination to discover how much truth there
+was in this former brothel-keeper's connection with official German
+"world-politics" and high diplomacy. From what I have seen personally
+since, I believe that Zekki, alias Nelken, was probably speaking the
+truth in this case, although it is certainly a fact that in German
+circles in Cairo at that time ordinary extortion was recognised as
+being punishable by imprisonment for a considerable length of time.
+
+Nelken then returned to Constantinople and devoted himself with
+unflagging energy to his previous business of agent. He turned to
+the Islamic faith and became a citizen of the Ottoman Empire because
+he found it more profitable so to do, and could thus escape from his
+former liabilities. Then in spite of lack of means, he managed to found
+a military newspaper, which, however, soon petered out. Nelken became
+Mehmed Zekki and a journalist, and of course called himself "Bey."
+
+Up to this point the history of this individual is nothing but a
+characteristic extract from life as it is lived by hundreds of rogues
+in the East. But now we come to something which is almost unbelievable
+and which leads me to give credence to his version of his relations
+with von Miquel, which after all only shows more clearly than ever that
+German "world-politics" are not above making use of the scum of the
+earth for their intrigues. In full knowledge of this man's whole black
+past--as Dr. Weber of the German Embassy himself told me--the German
+Embassy with the sanction of the Imperial Government (this I know from
+letters Zekki showed me in great glee from the Foreign Office and the
+War Office) appointed this fellow, whom all Pera said they would not
+touch with gloves on or with the tongs, to be their confidential agent
+with a large monthly honorarium and to become a pillar of "the German
+cause" in the East. And it could not even be said in extenuation that
+the man had any great desire or any wonderful vocation to represent
+Germany, for--as the Embassy official said to me--"We knew that Zekki
+was a dangerous character and rather inclined to the Entente at the
+outbreak of war, so we decided to win him over by giving him a salary
+rather than drive him into the enemy's camp." So it simply comes to
+this, that Germany buys a bankrupt, a blackmailer, a procurer, a
+brothel-keeper with cash to fight her "Holy War" for her!
+
+As publisher of the _Defense_ Zekki received a large salary from
+Germany, one from Austria, afterwards cut down not from any excess of
+moral sense, but simply from excess of economy, and a very considerable
+sum from Krupp's. As representative of German interests he did all he
+could to propitiate the Young Turks by the most fulsome flattery, and
+more recently he was pushing hard to get on the Committee of Union and
+Progress. But the Turks jibbed at what the German Embassy had brought
+on themselves--seeing Zekki "Bey" moving about their sacred halls with
+the most imposing nonchalance and condescension. Zekki himself once
+complained to me bitterly that in spite of his having presented Enver
+Pasha with a valuable clock worth eighty Turkish pounds which Enver
+had accepted with pleasure, he would not even answer a written request
+from Zekki craving an audience with him. (This, incidentally, is a most
+excellent example of the working of Enver's mind, a megalomaniac as
+greedy as he was proud.)
+
+The military director of the Turkish Press said to me once: "We
+are only waiting for the first 'gaffe' in his paper to get this
+filthy creature hunted out of his lair," and one day when through
+carelessness a small uncensored and really quite harmless military
+notice appeared in print (everything is submitted to the censor),
+the Turkish Government gave it short shrift indeed, and banned _sine
+die_ this "Ottoman" paper which lived by Krupp and the German trade
+advertisements, and had become an advocate of the German Embassy,
+because it was paid in good solid cash for it. The paper was replaced
+by a new one in Turkish hands, called _Le Soir_.
+
+I could go on talking for ages from most intimate personal knowledge
+about this man, superb in his own way. His doings were not without
+a certain comic side which amused while it aggravated one. I could
+mention, for example, his great lawsuit in Germany in 1916, in which he
+brought an accusation of libel against some German who had called him a
+blackmailer and a criminal who had been repeatedly punished. He managed
+to win the lawsuit--that is, the defenders had to pay a fine of twenty
+marks, because the evidence brought against Zekki could not be followed
+up to Egypt on account of England's supremacy on the sea, and also no
+doubt because the interests of Krupp and the German Embassy could not
+have this cherished blossom of German propaganda disturbed! So for him
+at any rate the lack of "freedom of the seas" he had so often raged
+about in his leading articles was a very appreciable advantage.
+
+The last time I remember seeing the man he was engaged in an earnest
+_tete-a-tete_ about the propagation of German political interests by
+means of arms with the Nationalist Reichstag deputy, Dr. Streesemann, a
+representative of the German heavy goods trade and of German jingoism
+who had hastened to Constantinople for the furtherance of German
+culture. Most significantly, no doubt in remembrance of his days in
+Buenos Ayres, Zekki had chosen for this interview the most private room
+of the Hotel Moderne, a pension with a bar where sect could be had;
+and the worthy representative of the German people, probably nothing
+loth to have a change from his eternal "Pan-German" diet, accepted his
+invitation with alacrity. I followed the two gentlemen to make my own
+investigations, and I certainly got as much amusement, although in a
+different sense, as one usually does in such haunts. It was really
+most entertaining to watch Nelken the ex-Jew and Young Turk, with his
+fez on his head, nodding jovially to all the German officers at the
+neighbouring tables, and settling the affairs of the realm with this
+Pan-German representative of the people.
+
+I trust my readers will forgive me if, in spite of the distaste I
+feel at having to write this unsavoury chapter about German Press
+representatives and those in high diplomatic authority who commission
+them, I relate one more episode of a like character before I close.
+One of these writers employed in the service of the German Embassy had
+done one of his female employees an injury which cannot be repeated
+here. His colleague--out of professional jealousy, the other said--gave
+evidence against him under oath at the German Consulate, and the other
+brought a charge of perjury against him. The German Consulate, in order
+not to lose such a trusty champion of the German cause for a trifle
+like the wounded honour of a mere woman--an Armenian to boot!--simply
+suppressed the whole case, although all Pera was speaking about it.
+
+Against this we have the case later on of a German journalist, most
+jealous of German interests, who had a highly important document
+stolen out of his desk with false keys by one of his clerks in the pay
+of the Young Turkish Committee. The document was the copy of a very
+confidential report addressed to high official quarters in Germany, in
+which there were some rather more uncomplimentary remarks about Enver
+and Talaat than appeared in the version for public consumption. An
+Embassy less notoriously cowardly than the German one would simply have
+shielded their man in consideration of the fact that the report was
+never meant for publication and of the reprehensible way it had been
+stolen and made public. But our chicken-hearted diplomats allowed him
+to be dismissed in disgrace by the Turks, and so practically gave their
+official sanction to the meanest Oriental methods of espionage.
+
+I have, however, now come to the conclusion from information I have
+received that German cowardice in this case probably had a background
+of hypocrisy and malice, for this same journalist had spoken with
+remarkable freedom, not indeed as a pro-Englander, but in contrast
+to German and Turkish narrow-mindedness, of how well he had been
+treated by the English authorities, and particularly General Maxwell
+in the exercise of his profession in Cairo, where he had been allowed
+for fully five weeks, after the outbreak of war, to edit a German
+newspaper. (I have seen the numbers myself and wondered at the almost
+incredible liberality of the English censorship.) Instead of being sent
+to Malta he had been treated most fairly and kindly and given every
+opportunity to get away safely to Syria. Of course the narration of
+events like these were rather out of place in our "God Punish England"
+time, and it was no doubt on account of this, apart from all cowardice,
+that the German Embassy made their fine distinctions between personal
+and political morality in the case of their Press representative.
+
+We have spoken of German propaganda for the "Holy War," as carried
+out by individuals as well as by pamphlets and the Press. The Turkish
+capital saw a very appreciable amount of this in the shape of wandering
+adventurers and printed paper. Several thousand Algerian, Tunisian,
+French West African, Russian Tartar, and Turkestan prisoners of war
+of Mohammedan religion from the German internment camps were kept for
+weeks in Pera and urged by the German Government in defiance of all the
+laws of the peoples to join the "Djihad" against their own rulers.
+
+They were told that they would have the great honour of being
+presented to the Caliph in Stamboul; as devout Mohammedans they could
+of course not find much to object to in that. A wonderfully attractive
+picture was painted for them of the delights of settling in the
+flourishing lands of the East, and living free of expense instead of
+starving in prison under the rod of German non-commissioned officers
+till the far-distant conclusion of peace. One can well imagine how such
+marvellous conjuring tricks would appeal to these poor fellows.
+
+They have repeatedly told me that they had been promised to be allowed
+to settle in Turkey without any mention being made of using them
+again as soldiers. But once on the way to Constantinople there was no
+further question of asking them what their opinion was of what was
+being done to them. They were simply treated as Turkish voluntary
+soldiers and sent off to the Front, to Armenia, and the Irak. How far
+they were used as real front-line soldiers or in service behind the
+lines I do not know; what I do know is that they left Constantinople
+in as great numbers as they came from Germany, armed with rifles and
+fully equipped for service in the field. One can therefore guess how
+many of them became "settlers" as they had been promised. Several days
+running in the early summer of 1916 I saw them being marched off in
+the direction of the Haidar-Pasha station on the Anatolian Railway.
+They were headed by a Turkish band, but on not one single face of all
+these serried ranks did I see the slightest spark of enthusiasm, and
+the German soldiers and officers escorting each separate section were
+not exactly calculated to leave the impression with the public that
+these were zealots fighting voluntarily for their faith who could not
+get fast enough out to the Front to be shot or hanged by their former
+masters!
+
+In her system of recruiting in the newly founded kingdom of Poland,
+Germany demonstrated even more clearly of what she was capable in this
+direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  Young Turkish nationalism--One-sided abolition of
+  capitulations--Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation--Abolition of
+  foreign languages--German simplicity--The Turkification of commercial
+  life--Unmistakable intellectual improvement as a result of the
+  war--Trade policy and customs tariff--National production--The
+  founding of new businesses in Turkey--Germany supplanted--German
+  starvation--Capitulations or full European control?--The colonisation
+  and forcible Turkification of Anatolia--"The properties of people who
+  have been dispatched elsewhere"--The "Mohadjirs"--Greek persecutions
+  just before the Great War--The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus
+  of the Ottoman Empire--Turkey finds herself at last--Anatolian
+  dirt and decay--The "Greater Turkey" and the purely Turkish
+  Turkey--Cleavage or concentration?
+
+
+From the Germans we now turn again to the Turks, to try to fathom
+the exact mentality of the Young Turks during the great war, and
+to discover what were the intellectual sources for their various
+activities.
+
+To give a better idea of the whole position I will just preface my
+remarks by stating a few of the outstanding features of the present
+Young Turkish Government and their dependents. Their first and chief
+characteristic is _hostility to foreigners_, but this does not prevent
+them from making every possible use of their ally Germany, or from
+appropriating in every walk of life anything European, be it a matter
+of technical skill, government, civilisation, that they consider might
+be profitable. Secondly they are possessed of an unbounded store of
+_jingoism_, which has its origin in _Pan-Turkism_ with its ruling idea
+of "Turanism." Pan-Turkism, which seems to be the governing passion of
+all the leading men of the day, finds expression in two directions.
+Outwardly it is a constant striving for a "Greater Turkey," a movement
+that for a large part in its essence, and certainly in its territorial
+aims, runs parallel with the "Holy War"; inwardly it is a fanatical
+desire for a general Turkification which finds outlet in political
+nationalistic measures, some of criminal barbarity, others partaking of
+the nature of modern reforms, beginning with the language regulations
+and "internal colonisation" and ending in the Armenian persecutions.
+
+It is worthy of note that of the two intellectual sources of the "Holy
+War," namely Turanism--which one might reverse and call an extended
+form of Old-Turkism--and Pan-Islamism, the men of the "Committee for
+Unity and Progress" have only made logical though unsuccessful use
+of the former, although theoretically speaking they recognise the
+value of the latter as well. While Turkish race-fanaticism, which
+finds practical outlet in Turanistic ideas, is still the intellectual
+backbone of official Turkey to-day and has to be broken by the present
+war, the Young Turkish Islam policy is already completely bankrupt and
+can therefore be studied here dispassionately in all its aspects. We
+propose to treat the matter in some detail.
+
+All New-Turkish Nationalistic efforts at emancipation had as first
+principle the abolition of Capitulations. The whole Young Turkish
+period we have here under review is therefore to be dated from that
+day, shortly before Turkey's entry into the war, when that injunction
+was flung overboard which Europe had anxiously placed for the
+protection of the interests of Europeans on a State but too little
+civilised. It was Turkey herself that did this after having curtly
+refused the Entente offer to remove the Capitulations as a reward for
+Turkey's remaining neutral. Germany, who was equally interested in
+the existence or non-existence of Capitulations, never mentioned this
+painful subject to her ally for a very long time, and it was 1916
+before she formally recognised the abolition of Capitulations, long
+after she had lost all hold on Turkey in that direction.
+
+As early as summer 1915 there were clear outward indications in the
+streets of Constantinople of a smouldering Nationalism ready to break
+out at any moment. Turkey, under the leadership of Talaat Bey, pursued
+her course along the well-trodden paths, and the first sphere in which
+there was evidence of an attempt at forcible Turkification was the
+language. Somewhere toward the end of 1915 Talaat suddenly ordered the
+removal of all French and English inscriptions, shop signs, etc., even
+in the middle of European Pera. In tramcars and at stopping-places the
+French text was blocked out; boards with public police warnings in
+French were either removed altogether or replaced by unreadable Turkish
+scrawls; the street indications were simply abolished. The authorities
+apparently thought it preferable that the Levantine public should get
+into the wrong tramcar, should break their legs getting out, pick
+flowers in the parks and wander round helplessly in a maze of unnamed
+streets rather than that the spirit of forcible Turkification should
+make even the least sacrifice to comfort.
+
+Of the thousand inhabitants of Pera, not ten can read Turkish; but
+under the pressure of the official order and for fear of brutal assault
+or some kind of underhand treatment in case of non-compliance, the
+inhabitants really surpassed themselves, and before one could turn,
+all the names over the shops had been painted over and replaced by
+wonderful Turkish characters that looked like decorative shields or
+something of the kind painted in the red and white of the national
+colours. If one had not noted the entrance to the shop and the look of
+the window very carefully, one might wander helplessly up and down the
+Grand Rue de Pera if one wanted to buy something in a particular shop.
+
+But the German, as simple-minded as ever where political matters
+were concerned, was highly delighted in spite of the extraordinary
+difficulty of communal life. "Away with French and English," he would
+shout. "God punish England; hurrah, our Turkish brothers are helping us
+and favouring the extension of the German language!"
+
+The answer to these pan-German expansion politicians and language
+fanatics, whose spiritual home was round the beer-tables of the
+"Teutonia," was provided by a second decree of Talaat's some weeks
+later when all German notices had to disappear. A few, who would not
+believe the order, held out obstinately, and the signs remained in
+German till they were either supplemented in 1916, on a very clear
+hint from Stamboul, by the obligatory Turkish language or later
+quite supplanted. It was not till some time after the German had
+disappeared--and this is worthy of note--that the Greek signs ceased to
+exist. Greek had been up to that time the most used tongue and was the
+commercial language of the Armenians.
+
+Then came the famous language regulations, which even went so far--with
+a year of grace granted owing to the extraordinary difficulties of
+the Turkish script--as to decree that in the offices of all trade
+undertakings of any public interest whatsoever, such as banks,
+newspapers, transport agencies, etc., the Turkish language should be
+used exclusively for book-keeping and any written communication with
+customers. One can imagine the "Osmanic Lloyd" and the "German Bank"
+with Turkish book-keeping and Turkish letters written to an exclusively
+European clientele! Old and trusty employees suddenly found themselves
+faced with the choice of learning the difficult Turkish script or being
+turned out in a year's time. The possibility--indeed, the necessity--of
+employing Turkish hands in European businesses suddenly came within
+the range of practical politics--and that was exactly what the Turkish
+Government wanted.
+
+The arrangement had not yet come into operation when I left
+Constantinople, but it was hanging like the sword of Damocles over
+commercial undertakings that had hitherto been purely German. Optimists
+still hoped it never would come to this pass and would have welcomed
+any political-military blow that would put a damper on Turkey's
+arrogance. Others, believing firmly in a final Turkish victory, began
+to learn Turkish feverishly. Be that as it may, the new arrangements
+were hung up on the walls of all offices in the summer of 1916 and
+created confusion enough.
+
+Many other measures for the systematic Turkification of commercial life
+and public intercourse followed hard on this first bold step, which I
+need scarcely mention here. And in spite of the ever-growing number of
+German officials in the different ministries, partly foisted on the
+Turkish Government by the German authorities, partly gladly accepted
+for the moment because the Turks had still much to learn from German
+organisation and could profit from employing Germans, in spite of the
+appointment of a number of German professors to the Turkish University
+of Stamboul (who, however, as a matter of fact, like the German
+Government officials, had to wear the fez and learn Turkish within a
+year, and besides roused most unfavourable and anti-German comment
+in the newspapers), it was soon perfectly evident to every unbiased
+witness that Germany would find no place in a victorious Turkey after
+the war if the "Committee for Union and Progress" did not need her.
+Some sort of light must surely have broken over the last blind optimism
+of the Germans in the course of the summer of 1916.
+
+Hand in hand with the nationalistic attempt to coerce European
+businesses into using the Turkish language there went more practical
+attempts to turkify all the important branches of commerce by the
+founding of indigenous organisations and the introduction of reforms
+of more material content than those language decrees. These efforts,
+in spite of the enormous absorption of all intellectual capabilities
+and energies in war and the clash of arms, were expressed with a truly
+marvellous directness of aim, and, from the national standpoint, a
+truly commendable magnificence of conception.
+
+This latter has indeed never been lacking as a progressive ethnic
+factor in Turkish politics. The Turks have a wonderful understanding,
+too, of the importance of social problems, or at least, as a sovereign
+people, they feel instinctively what in a social connection will
+further their sovereignty. The war with its enormous intellectual
+activity has certainly brought all the political and economic resources
+of the Turks--including the Young Turkish Government--to the highest
+possible stage of development, and we ought not to be surprised if
+we often find that measures, whether of a beneficent or injurious
+character, are not lacking in modern exactness, clever technicality,
+and thoroughness of conception. Without anticipating, I should just
+like to note here how this change appears to affect the war. No one
+can doubt that it will enormously intensify zeal in the fight for
+the existence of the Turkey of the future, freed from its jingoistic
+outgrowths, once more come to its senses and confined to its own proper
+sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of the Empire. But, on the other
+hand, iron might and determined warfare against this misguided State
+are needed to root out false and harmful ideas.
+
+If, after this slight digression, we glance for a moment at the
+practical measures for a complete Turkification of Turkey, the
+economic efforts at emancipation and the civic reforms carried
+through, we find first of all that the new Turkey, when she had thrown
+the Capitulations overboard, then proceeded to emancipate herself
+completely from European supervision in the realm of trade and commerce.
+
+A very considerable step in advance in the way of Turkish sovereignty
+and Turkish economic patriotism was the organisation and--since
+September 1916--execution of the neo-Turkish autonomic customs tariff,
+which with one blow gives Turkish finances what the Government formerly
+managed to extract painfully from the Great Powers bit by bit, by
+fair means or foul, at intervals of many years, and which with its
+hard-and-fast scale of taxes--which there appears to be no inclination
+in political circles at the moment to modify by trade treaties!--means
+an exceedingly adequate protection of Turkey's national productions,
+without any reference whatever to the export interests of her allies,
+and is a very strong inducement to the renaissance of at any rate the
+most important national industries. The far-flung net of the "Djemiet"
+(whose acquaintance we have already made in another connection),
+that purely Turkish commercial undertaking with Talaat Bey at its
+head, regulating everything as it did, taking everything into its own
+hands, from the realising of the products of the Anatolian farmers
+(and incidentally bringing it about that their ally Germany had to pay
+heavily and always in cash, even although the Government itself owed
+millions, to Germany and got everything on credit from flour out of
+Roumania to paper for their journals) to the most difficult rationing
+of towns, forms a foundation for the nationalising of economic life of
+the very greatest importance.
+
+The establishment of purely Turkish trade and transport companies,
+often with pensioned Ministers as directors and principal shareholders,
+and the new language regulations and other privileges will soon cut the
+ground away from under the feet of European concerns. Able assistance
+is given in this direction by the _Tanin_ and the _Hilal_ (the
+"Crescent"), the newly founded "Committee" paper in the French language
+(when it is a question of the official influencing of public opinion
+in European and Levantine quarters, exceptions can be made even in
+language fanaticism!) in which a series of articles invariably appear
+at the founding of each new company praising the patriotic zeal of the
+founders.
+
+Then again there are the increasingly thinly veiled efforts to
+establish a purely Turkish national banking system. Quite lately there
+has been a movement in favour of founding a Turkish National Bank with
+the object of supplanting the much-hated "Deutsche Bank" in spite of
+the credit it always gives, and that international and preponderatingly
+French institution, the "Banque Imperiale Ottomane," which had already
+simply been sequestrated without more ado.
+
+The Turks have decided, too, that the mines are to be nationalised, and
+Turkish companies have already been formed, without capital it is true,
+to work the mines after the war. The same applies to the railways--in
+spite of the fine German plans for the Baghdad Railway.
+
+All these wonderful efforts at emancipation are perfectly justified
+from the patriotic point of view, and are so many blows dealt at
+Germany, who, quite apart from Rohrbach's _Welt_-_politik_, had at
+least hoped to find a lucrative field of privileged commercial activity
+in the country of her close and devoted allies the Turks. It is of
+supreme significance that while the war is still at its height, while
+the Empire of the Sultan is defending its very existence at the gates
+of the capital with German arms and German money, there is manifested
+with the most startling clearness the failure of German policy, the
+endangering of all these German "vital interests" in Turkey which
+according to Pan-German and Imperialistic views were one of the most
+important stakes to be won by wantonly letting loose this criminal war
+on Europe.
+
+No doubt many a German was only too well aware of the fact that in
+this Turkey suddenly roused by the war all the ground had been lost
+that he had built on with such profit before, and many an anxious face
+did one see in German circles in Constantinople. I need not tarry here
+over the drastic comments I heard from so many German merchants on
+this subject. They show a most curious state of mind on the part of
+those who had formerly, in their quest for gain and nothing but gain,
+profited in true parasitical fashion from the financial benefits of
+the Capitulations and had seen nothing but the money side of this
+arrangement which was, after all, entered into for other purposes. It
+was no rare thing and no paradox to find a German company director say,
+as I heard one say: "If things went against Turkey to-day, I would
+willingly shoulder my gun, old man as I am."
+
+No thinking man will expend too much grief over the ruthless abolition
+of the Capitulations, for they were unmoral and gave too much
+opportunity to parasites and rogues, while they were quite inadequate
+to protect the interests of civilisation. They may have sufficed in
+the time of Abdul-Hamid, who was easily frightened off and was always
+sensible and polite in his dealings with Europe. For the Turkey of
+Enver and Talaat quite other measures are needed. One must, according
+to one's political standpoint, either recognise and accept their
+nationalistic programme of emancipation or combat it forcibly by
+introducing full European control. And however willing one may be
+to let foreign nations develop in their own particular way and work
+out their own salvation, one's standpoint with regard to a State so
+behindhand, so fanatical, so misguided as Turkey can be but one: the
+introduction and continuation at all costs of whatever guarantees
+the best protection to European civilisation in this land of such
+importance culturally and historically.
+
+Not only were Europeans, but the natives themselves, affected by the
+series of measures that one might class together under the heading of
+Turkish Internal Colonisation and the Nationalising of Anatolia. The
+programme of the Young Turks was not only a "Greater Turkey," but above
+all a purely Turkish Turkey; and if the former showed signs of failing
+because they had over-estimated their powers and their chances in the
+war or had employed wrong methods, there was nothing at all to hinder
+a sovereign Government from striving all the more ruthlessly to gain
+their second point.
+
+The way this Turkification of Anatolia was carried on was certainly
+not lacking in thoroughness, like all their nationalistic efforts. The
+best means that lay to hand were the frightful Armenian persecutions
+which affected a wonderful clearance among the population. "The
+properties of persons who have been dispatched elsewhere" within the
+meaning of the Provisory Bill were either distributed free or sold
+for a mere song to anyone who applied to the Committee for them and
+proved themselves of the same political persuasion or of pure Turkish
+or preponderatingly Turkish nationality. The rent was often fixed
+as low as 30 piastres a month (about 5_s._ 8_d._) for officials and
+retired military men. In the case of the latter, Enver Pasha thought
+this an excellent opportunity for getting rid, through the medium of a
+kindly invitation to settle in the Interior, of those who worried him
+by their dissatisfaction with his system and who might have prepared
+difficulties for him. This "settling" was carried out with the greatest
+zeal in the exceptionally flourishing and fruitful districts of Brussa,
+Smyrna-Aidin, Eskishehir, Adabazar, Angora, and Adana, where Armenians
+and Greeks had played such a great, and, to the Turks, unpopular part
+as pioneers of civilisation.
+
+The semi-official articles in the _Tanin_ were perfectly right in
+praising the local authorities who in contrast with their former
+indifference and ignorance "had now fully recognised the great national
+importance of internal colonisation and the settling of Mohadjirs
+(emigrants from the lost Turkish territory in Bosnia, Macedonia,
+Thrace, etc.) in the country." There is nothing to be said in favour
+of the stupid, unprogressive character of the Anatolian as contrasted
+with the strength, physical endurance, intelligence, and mobility of
+these emigrants. The latter had also, generally speaking, lived in more
+highly developed districts.
+
+The great drawback of the Mohadjirs, however, is their instability,
+their idleness and love of wandering, their frivolity, and their
+extraordinary fanaticism. As faithful Mohammedans following the
+standard of their Padishah and leaving the parts of the country
+that had fallen under Christian rule, they seemed to think they
+were justified in behaving like spoilt children towards the native
+population. They treated them with ruthless disregard, they were
+bumptious, and, if their new neighbours were Greek or Armenian, they
+inclined to use force, a proceeding which was always possible because
+the Government did not take away _their_ firearms and were even known
+to have doled them out to stir up unrest. It has occurred more than
+once that Mohadjirs have crossed swords even with Turkish Anatolians
+living peacefully in their own villages. One can then easily imagine
+how much more the heretic _giaurs_ ("Christian dogs," "unclean men")
+had to suffer at their hands.
+
+I should like to say a word here about these Greek persecutions in
+Thrace and Western Anatolia that have become notorious throughout the
+whole of Europe. They took place just before the outbreak of war, and
+cost thousands of peaceful Greeks--men, women, and children-their
+lives, and reduced to ashes dozens of flourishing villages and towns.
+At the time of the murder of Sarajevo, I happened to be staying in
+the vilajet of Aidin, in Smyrna and the _Hinterland_, and saw with
+my own eyes such shameful deeds as must infuriate anyone against the
+Turkish Government that aids and abets such barbarity--from old women
+being driven along by a dozen Mohadjirs and dissipated soldiers to the
+smoking ruins of Phocaea.
+
+Everyone at that time, at any rate in Smyrna, expected the immediate
+outbreak of a new Graeco-Turkish war, and perhaps the only thing
+that prevented it was the method of procrastination adopted by both
+sides, for both were waiting for the Dreadnoughts they had ordered,
+until finally these smaller clouds were swallowed up in the mighty
+thunder-cloud gathering on the European horizon. Only the extreme speed
+with which one dramatic event followed another, and my own mobilisation
+which precluded my writing anything of a political nature, prevented me
+on that occasion from giving my sinister impressions of Young Turkish
+jingoism and Mohadjir brutality. Even if I had been able to write what
+I thought it is extremely doubtful if it would ever have seen the
+light of day, for the German papers were but little inclined, as I had
+opportunity of discovering personally, to say anything unpleasant about
+the Young Turkish Government, whose help they were already reckoning
+on, and preferred rather to behave in a most un-neutral manner and keep
+absolutely silent about all the ill-treatment and abuse that had been
+meted out to Greece. But I remembered these scenes most opportunely
+later, and that visit of mine to Western Anatolia was certainly most
+useful in increasing my knowledge of Young Turkish methods of "internal
+colonisation."
+
+But all the methods used are by no means forcible. Attempts are now
+being made--and this again is most significant for the spirit of the
+newest Young Turkish era--to gain a footing in the world of science
+as opposed to force, and so to be able to carry out their measures
+more systematically and give them the appearance of beneficent modern
+social reforms. So it comes about that the Turkish idea of penetrating
+and "cleaning-up" Anatolia finds practical expression on the one hand
+in exterminating and robbing the Christian population, while on the
+other it inclines to efforts which in time may work out to be a real
+blessing. The common principle underlying both is Nationalism.
+
+Anatolia was suddenly "discovered." At long length the Young Turkish
+Government, roused intellectually and patriotically by the war and
+brought to their senses by the terrible loss of human life entailed,
+suddenly realised the enormous national importance of Anatolia, that
+hitherto much-neglected nucleus of the Ottoman Empire. Under the
+spiritual inspiration of Mehmed Emin, the national poet of Anatolian
+birth whose poems with their sympathy of outlook and noble simplicity
+of form make such a warm-hearted and successful appeal to the best
+kind of patriotism, men have begun since 1916, even in the circles of
+the arrogant "Stambul Effendi," to take an interest in the _kaba tuerk_
+(uncouth Turk), the Anatolian peasant, his needs and his standard of
+civilisation. The real, needy, primitive Turk of the Interior has
+suddenly become the general favourite.
+
+A whole series of most remarkable lectures was delivered publicly in
+the _Tuerk Odjaghi_, under the auspices of the Committee, by doctors,
+social politicians, and political economists, and these were reported
+and discussed at great length in all the Turkish newspapers. Their
+subject was the incredible destitution in Anatolia, the devastation
+wrought by syphilis, malaria, and other terrible dirt diseases,
+abortions as a result of hopeless poverty, the lack of men as a result
+of constant military service in many wars, and they called for
+immediate and drastic reforms.
+
+It is with the greatest pleasure that I acknowledge that this first
+late step on the way of improvement, this self-knowledge, which
+appeals to me more thoroughly than anything else I saw in Turkey, is
+probably really the beginning of a happier era for that beautiful land
+of Anatolia, so capable of development but so cruelly neglected. For
+one can no longer doubt that the Government has the real intention of
+carrying out actual reforms, for they must be only too well aware that
+the strengthening and healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Turkish
+race, is absolutely essential for any Turkish mastery, and is the very
+first necessity for the successful carrying out of more far-reaching
+national exertions. With truly modern realisation of the needs of
+the case, directly after Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey's first compelling
+lecture, different local government officials, especially the Vali
+of the Vilajet of Kastamuni, which was notorious for its syphilis
+epidemics, made unprecedented efforts to improve the terrible hygienic
+conditions then reigning. Let us hope that such efforts will bear
+fruit. But this will probably only be the case to any measurable extent
+later, after the war, when Turkey will find herself really confined to
+Anatolia, and will have time and strength for positive social work.
+
+In the meantime I cannot get rid of the uneasy impression that this
+"discovery" of Anatolia and zealous Turkish social politics are no more
+than a cleverly worked excuse on the part of the Government for further
+measures of Turkification, and the cloven hoof is unfortunately only
+too apparent in all this seemingly noble effort on the part of the
+Committee. One hears and sees daily the methods that go hand in hand
+with this official pushing into the foreground of the great importance
+of the purely Turkish elements in Anatolia--Armenian persecutions,
+trickery, expropriations carried out against Greeks, the yielding up
+of flourishing districts to quarrelsome Mohadjirs. So long as the
+Turkish Government fancy themselves conquerors in the great war, so
+long as they pursue the shadow of a "Greater Turkey," so long as Turkey
+continues to dissipate her forces she will not accomplish much for
+Anatolia, in spite of her awakening and her real desire for reform.
+
+Finally, in this discovery of Anatolia, in this desire to put an end to
+traditional destitution, this recognition of the real import of even
+the poorest, most primitive, dullest peasant peoples in the undeveloped
+Interior, so long as they are of Turkish race, in this sudden flood
+of learned eloquence over the needs and the true inner worth of these
+miserable neglected Turkish peasants, in this pressing demand for
+thorough reforms for the economic and social strengthening of this
+element--measures which with the present ruling spirit of jingoism
+in the Government threaten to be carried through only at the expense
+of the non-Turkish population of Anatolia--we see very clear proof
+that the neo-Turkish movement is a pure race movement, is nothing but
+Pan-Turkism both outwardly and inwardly, and has very little indeed to
+do with religious questions or with Islam. The idea of Islam, or rather
+Pan-Islamism, is a complete failure. This we shall try to show in the
+following chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Religion and race--The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of the Young
+  Turks--Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political principles--Turanism
+  and the Quadruple Alliance--Greed and race-fanaticism--Religious
+  traditions and modern reforms--Reform in the law--A modern
+  Sheikh-ul-Islam--Reform and nationalisation--The Armenian and
+  Greek Patriarchates--The failure of Pan-Islamism--The alienation
+  of the Arabs--Djemal Pasha's "hangman's policy" in Syria--Djemal
+  as a "Pro-French"--Djemal and Enver--Djemal and Germany--His true
+  character--The attempt against the Suez Canal--Djemal's murderous
+  work nears completion--The great Arabian and Syrian Separatist
+  movement--The defection of the Emir of Mecca and the great Arabian
+  catastrophe.
+
+
+In little-informed circles in Europe people are still under the
+false impression that the Young Turks of to-day, the intellectual
+and political leaders of Turkey in this war, are authentic, zealous,
+and even fanatical Mohammedans, and superficial observers explain
+all unpleasant occurrences and outbreaks of Young Turkish jingoism
+on Pan-Islamic grounds, especially as Turkey has not been slow in
+proclaiming her "Holy War." But this conception is entirely wrong.
+The artificial character of the "Djihad," which was only set in
+motion against a portion of the "unbelievers," while the others
+became more and more the ruling body in Turkey, is the best proof
+of the untenability of this theory. The truth is that the present
+political regime is the complete denial of the Pan-Islamic idea and the
+substitution of the Pan-Turkish idea of race.
+
+Abdul-Hamid, that much-maligned and dethroned Sultan, who, however,
+towers head and shoulders above all the Young Turks put together in
+practical intelligence and statesmanly skill, and would never have
+committed the unpardonable error of throwing in his lot with Germany
+in the war and so bringing about the certain downfall of Turkey, was
+the last ruler of Turkey that knew how to make use of Pan-Islamism as a
+successful instrument of authority.
+
+Enver and Talaat and all that breed of jingoists on the _Ittahad_
+(Committee for Union and Progress) were upstarts without any schooling
+in political history, and so all the more inclined to the doctrinal
+revolutionism and short-sighted fanaticism of the successful
+adventurer, and were much too limited to recognise the tremendous
+political import of Pan-Islamism. Naturally once they had conceived
+the idea of the "Djihad," they tried to make theoretical use of
+Pan-Islamism; but practically, far from extending Turkey's influence
+to distant Arabian lands, to the Soudan and India, they simply let
+Turkey go to ruin through their Pan-Turkish illusions and their
+race-fanaticism.
+
+Abdul-Hamid with his clever diplomacy managed to maintain, if not the
+real sympathies, at any rate the formal loyalty of the Arabs and their
+solidarity with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. It was he who conceived
+the idea of that undertaking of eminent political importance, the
+Hedjaz Railway, which facilitates pilgrimages to the holy cities of
+Mecca and Medina and links up the Arabian territory with the Turkish,
+and he was always able to quell any disturbances in these outlying
+parts of the Empire with very few troops indeed. Nowadays the Young
+Turkish Government, even if they had the troops to spare, might send
+a whole army to the Hedjaz and they would be like an island of sand
+in the midst of that stormy Arab sea. The Arabs, intellectually far
+superior to the Turks, have at last made up their minds to defy their
+oppressors, and all the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire may
+be taken as already lost, no matter what the final result of the great
+war may be.
+
+The Young Turks had scarcely come into power when they began with
+incredible lack of tact to treat the Arabs in a most supercilious
+manner, although as a matter of fact the Arabs far surpassed them in
+intellect and culture. They inaugurated a most un-modern campaign of
+shameless blood-sucking, cheated them of their rights, treated them
+in a bureaucratic manner, and generally acted in such an unskilful
+way that they finally alienated for ever the Arab element as they
+had already done in the case of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the
+Albanians.
+
+The ever-recurring disturbances in Yemen, finally somewhat
+inadequately quelled by Izzet Pasha, are still in the memory of all.
+And later, directly after the reconquering of Adrianople during the
+Second Balkan war, there was another moment of real national rebirth
+when a reconciliation might have been effected. The visit of a great
+Syrian and Arabian deputation to the Sultan to congratulate him over
+this auspicious event should have provided an excellent opportunity.
+I was staying some months then in Constantinople on my way back from
+Africa, and I certainly thought that the half-broken threads might have
+been knotted together again then if the Young Turks had only approached
+the Arabs in the right way. Even the great Franco-British attack on
+Stamboul might have been calculated to rouse a feeling of solidarity
+among the Mohammedans living under the Ottoman flag, and in the autumn
+and winter of 1915-1916 Arab troops actually did defend the entrance
+to the Dardanelles with great courage and skill. But Arab loyalty
+could not withstand for ever the mighty flood of race-selfishness that
+possessed the Young Turks right from the moment of their entry into the
+war. The enthusiasm of the Arabs soon disappeared when Pan-Turkish
+ideas were proclaimed all too clearly even to the inhabitants of their
+own land, when an era of systematic enmity towards the non-Turkish
+parts of the population was introduced and the heavy fist of the
+Central Committee was laid on the southern parts of the Empire as well.
+
+An attempt was made to bring the ethnic principle of "Turanism" within
+the region of practical politics, but it simply degenerated into
+complete race-partiality and was not calculated to further the ideas
+of Pan-Islamism and the Turko-Arabian alliance which were both of such
+importance in the present war. It is this idea of Turanism that lies
+at the back of the efforts being made towards a purely Turkish Turkey,
+and that of course makes it clear at once that it must to a very large
+extent oppose the idea of Pan-Islamism. It is true that both principles
+may be made use of side by side as sources of propaganda for the idea
+of expansion and the policy of a "Greater Turkey." Turanists peep over
+the crest of the Caucasus down into the Steppes of the Volga, where the
+Russian Tartars live, and to the borders of Western Siberia and Inner
+China where in Russian Turkestan a race of people of very close kinship
+live and where very probably the Ottoman people had their cradle. The
+Pan-Islamists want the alliance of these Russian parts as well, but
+from another point of view, and, above all, they aim at the expansion
+of Ottoman rule to the farthest corners of Africa and South-West Asia,
+to the borders of negro territory, and through Persia, Afghanistan, and
+Baluchistan to the foot of the Himalayas, while on grounds of practical
+politics they strive to abolish the old, seemingly insurmountable
+antithesis between Sonnites and Shiites within the sanctuary of Islam.
+
+The programme of the so-called "Djihad" works on this principle, but
+goes much farther. As well as stirring up against their present rulers
+those parts of Egypt and Tripoli which once owned allegiance to the
+Sultan and the Atlas lands, which are at any rate spiritually dependent
+on the Caliph in Stamboul, the "Djihad" aims at introducing the spirit
+of independence into all English, French, Italian, and Russian Colonial
+territory by rousing the Mohammedans and so doing infinite harm to
+the enemies of Turkey. It is most important, therefore, always to
+differentiate between this "Holy War" "stirring-up" propaganda from
+Senegal to Turkestan and British India, and the more territorial
+Pan-Islamism of the present war, which goes hand in hand with the
+efforts being made towards a "Greater Turkey."
+
+Instead of uniting all these principles skilfully for the realisation
+of a great end, making sure of the Arab element by wisely restraining
+their selfish and exaggeratedly pro-Turkish instincts and their
+despotic lust for power, and so giving their programme of expansion
+southwards some prospect of succeeding, the Turks gave way right from
+the beginning of the war to such a flood of brutal, narrow-minded
+race-fanaticism and desire to enrich the Turkish element at the cost
+of the other inhabitants of the country, that no one can really be
+surprised at the pitiable result of the efforts to secure a Greater
+Turkey.
+
+I should just like to give one small example of the fanatical hatred
+that exists even in high official circles against the non-Turkish
+element in this country of mixed race. The following anecdote will
+give a clear enough idea of the ruling spirit of fanaticism and
+greed. I was house-hunting in Pera once and could not find anything
+suitable. I approached a member of the Committee and he said in solemn
+earnest: "Oh, just wait a few weeks. We are all hoping that Greece
+will declare war on us before long, and then _all_ the Greeks will
+be treated as the Armenians have been. I can let you have the nicest
+villa on the Bosporus. But then," he added with gleaming eyes, "we
+won't be so stupid as merely to turn them out. These Greek dogs (_koepek
+rum_) will have the pleasure of seeing us take everything away from
+them--_everything_--and compelling them to give up their own property
+by formal contract."
+
+I can guarantee that this is practically a word-for-word rendering of
+this extraordinary outburst of fanaticism and greed on the part of
+an otherwise harmless and decent man. I could not help shuddering at
+such opinions. Apparently it was not enough that Turkey was already at
+war with three Great Powers; she must needs seek armed conflict with
+Greece, so that, as was the outspoken, the open, and freely-admitted
+intention of official persons, she might then deal with four and a
+half millions of Ottoman Greeks, practically her own countrymen, as she
+had done with the unfortunate Armenians. In face of such opinions one
+cannot but realise how unsure the existence of the Young Turkish State
+has become by its entry into the war, and cannot but foresee that this
+race-fanaticism will lead the nation to political and social suicide.
+Can one imagine a purely Turkish Turkey, when even the notion of a
+Greater Turkey failed?
+
+Pessimists have often said of the Turkish question that the Turks'
+principal aim in determining on a complete Turkification of Anatolia
+by any, even the most brutal, means, is that at the conclusion of
+war they can at least say with justification: "Anatolia is a purely
+Turkish country and must therefore be left to us." What they propose to
+bequeath to the victorious Russians is an Armenia without Armenians!
+
+The idea of "Turanism" is a most interesting one, and as a widespread
+nationalistic principle has given much food for thought to Turkey's
+ally, Germany. Turanism is the realisation, reawakened by neo-Turkish
+efforts at political and territorial expansion, of the original
+race-kinship existing between the Turks and the many peoples inhabiting
+the regions north of the Caucasus, between the Volga and the borders of
+Inner China, and particularly in Russian Central Asia. Ethnographically
+this idea was perfectly justified, but politically it entails a
+tremendous dissipation of strength which must in the end lead to grave
+disappointment and failure. All the Turkish attempts to rouse up the
+population of the Caucasus either fell on unfruitful ground or went
+to pieces against the strong Russian power reigning there. Enver's
+marvellous conception of an offensive against Russian Transcaucasia led
+right at the beginning of the war to terrible bloodshed and defeat.
+
+People in neutral countries have had plenty of opportunity of judging
+of the value of those arguments advanced by Tatar professors and
+journalists of Russian citizenship for the "Greater-Turkish" solution
+of the race questions of the Russian Tatars and Turkestan, for these
+refugees from Baku and the Caucasus, paid by the Stamboul Committee,
+journeyed half over Europe on their propaganda tour. The idea of
+Turanism has been taken up with such enthusiasm by the men of the
+Young Turkish Committee, and utilised with such effect for purposes of
+propaganda and to form a scientific basis for their neo-Turkish aims
+and aspirations, that a stream of feeling in favour of the Magyars has
+set in in Turkey, which has not failed to demolish to a still greater
+extent their already weakened enthusiasm for their German allies. And
+it is not confined to purely intellectual and cultural spheres, but
+takes practical form by the Turks declaring, as they have so often done
+in their papers in almost anti-German articles about Turanism, that
+what they really require in the way of European technique or European
+help they much prefer to accept from their kinsmen the Hungarians
+rather than from the Germans.
+
+To the great annoyance of Germany, who would like to keep her heavy
+hand laid on the ally whom she has so far guided and for whom she pays,
+the practical results of the idea of Turanism are already noticeable
+in many branches of economic and commercial life. The Hungarians are
+closely allied to the Turks not only by blood but in general outlook,
+and form a marked contrast to Germany's cold and methodical calculation
+in worming her way into Turkish commercial life. After the war when
+Turkey is seeking for stimulation, it will be easy enough to make use
+of Hungarian influence to the detriment of Germany. Turanistic ideas
+have even been brought into play to establish still more firmly the
+union between Turkey and her former enemy Bulgaria, and the people of
+Turkey are reminded that the Bulgars are not really Slavs but Slavic
+Fino-Tartars.
+
+In proportion as the Young Turks have brought racial politics to a
+fine art, so they have neglected the other, the religious side. More
+and more, Islam, the rock of Empire, has been sacrificed to the needs
+of race-politics. Those who look upon Enver and Talaat and their
+consorts to-day as a freemasonry of time-serving opportunists rather
+than as good Mohammedans come far nearer the truth than those who
+believe the idea spread by ignorant globe-trotters that every Turk is
+a zealous follower of Islam. It was not for nothing that Enver Pasha,
+the adventurer and revolutionary, went so far even in externals as
+to arouse the stern disapproval of a wide circle of his people. With
+true time-serving adaptability to all modern progress-and who will
+blame him?--he even finally sacrificed the Turkish soldier's hallowed
+traditional headgear, the fez. While the _kalpak_, even in its laced
+variety, could still be called a kind of field-grey or variegated
+or fur edition of the fez, the ragged-looking _kabalak_, called the
+"Enveriak" to distinguish it from other varieties, is certainly on the
+way towards being a real sun helmet. Still more recently (summer 1916)
+a black-and-white cap that looks absolutely European was introduced
+into the Ottoman Navy. The simple, devout Mohammedan folk were most
+unwilling to accept these changes which flew direct in the face of all
+tradition. They may be externals of but little importance, but in spite
+of their insignificance they show clearly the ruling spirit in official
+Young Turkish spheres.
+
+This is in the harmless realm of fashion, or at any rate military
+fashion, exactly the same spirit as has caused the Turkish Government
+to undertake since 1916 radical changes in the very much more
+important field of private and public law. Special commissions
+consisting of eminent Turkish lawyers have been formed to carry through
+this reform of law and justice, and they have been hard at work ever
+since their formation. What is characteristic and modern about the
+reform is that the preponderating role hitherto played by the Sheriat
+Law, founded on the Koran and at any rate semi-religious, is to be
+drastically curtailed in favour of a system of purely Civil law, which
+has been strung together from the most varied sources, even European
+law being brought under contribution, and the "Code Napoleon," which
+has hitherto only been used in Commercial law. This of course leads to
+a great curtailment of the activity and influence of the _kadis_ and
+_muftis_, the semi-religious judges, who have now to yield place to a
+more mundane system. The first inexorable consequence of the reform
+was that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the highest authority of Islam in the
+whole Ottoman Empire, had to give up a large part of his powers, and
+incidentally of his income.
+
+The changes made were so far-reaching, and the spirit of the reform
+so modern, that, in spite of the unshakable power of Talaat's truly
+dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed, a concession had to be made
+to the public opinion roused against the measure. The form was kept as
+it was, but the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Hairi Effendi, refused ostensibly to
+sign the decree and gave in his resignation. Not only, however, was an
+immediate successor found for him (Mussa Kiazim Effendi), who gave his
+signature and even began to work hard for the reform, but--and this
+is most significant for the relationship of the Young Turks towards
+Islam--Hairi Effendi, the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had proclaimed
+the _Fetwa_ for the "Holy War," gave up his post without a murmur, and
+in the most peaceable way, and remained one of the principal pillars of
+the "Committee for Union and Progress."
+
+His resignation was nothing but a farce to throw dust in the eyes of
+the all-too-trusting lower classes. After he had succeeded by this
+manoeuvre in getting the reform of the law (which as a measure of
+Turkification was of more consequence to him now than his own sadly
+curtailed juristic functions) accepted at a pinch by the conservative
+population who still clung firmly to Islam, he went on to play his
+great role in the programme of jingoism. A "measure of Turkification"
+we called it, for that is what it amounts to practically, like
+everything else the men of the "Ittihad" take in hand.
+
+I tried to give some hint of this within the limits of the censorship
+as long ago as the summer of 1916 in a series of articles I wrote for
+the _Koelnische Zeitung_. Here I should like just to confine myself
+to one point. Naturally the reform of the law aimed principally at
+substituting these newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for the
+Arabian legal ideas that had been the only thing available hitherto.
+(Everything that this victorious Turkey had absorbed and worked up
+in the way of civilised notions was either Arabian or Persian or of
+European origin.) It set to work now in the sphere of family law,
+which hitherto had been specially sacrosanct and only subordinate to
+the religious _Sheria_, and where tradition was strongest--not like
+commercial and maritime law which had been quite modern for a long time.
+
+The reform went so far that it even tried to introduce a kind of civil
+marriage, whereas up till now all marriages, divorces, and everything
+to do with inheritance had taken place exclusively before religious
+officials. I may just add that these newest reforms give women no
+wider rights than they had before. Perhaps this may be taken as an
+indication that they have been conceived far less from a social than
+from a political point of view. What induced the Turkish Government to
+introduce anything so entirely modern as civil marriage in defiance
+of age-old custom was more than likely the desire to put an end to
+non-Turkish Ottomans contracting marriages and making arrangements
+about inheritance, etc., before their own privileged, ethnically
+independent organisations, and so to deal the final death-blow to the
+Armenian and Greek Patriarchates. If Family Law was modernised in
+this way, there would not be the faintest shadow of excuse left for
+the existence of these institutions which enjoyed a far-reaching and
+influential autonomy.
+
+The Armenian Patriarchate got short shrift indeed. By dissolving the
+Patriarchate in the Capital, breaking off all relations with the
+Armenian headquarters in Etzmiadjin and allowing only a very small
+remainder of Patriarchate to be sent up in Jerusalem under special
+State supervision, the Turks, as a logical sequence to the Armenian
+atrocities, simply dealt the death-blow in the summer of 1916 to this
+important social institution.
+
+The Greek organisation, however, conducted by a more numerous and,
+outwardly at any rate, better protected people, offered far more
+resistance, and could not be simply wiped out with a stroke of the pen.
+A direct attempt to suppress it was made as early as 1910, but broke
+down entirely in face of the firm attitude of the Greek Patriarch in
+Constantinople. Now the Young Turks seem to have come to the conclusion
+that less drastic methods, beginning on a juristic basis, may have a
+better effect.
+
+We have taken this one example in order to get at the whole neo-Turkish
+method of procedure. It consists in pushing forward, if need be with
+greater delicacy than before and on the round-about road of real modern
+reforms, towards the one immovable goal: the complete Turkification of
+Turkey. The reform of the law, which we have treated more exhaustively
+as an example of the first rank, is typical of the Young Turkish
+national tendency. Naturally it has its use, too, as a means of further
+throwing off the foreign political yoke. Through the modernising
+of the whole Turkish legal system, Europe is to be shown that the
+Capitulations can be dispensed with.
+
+The reform throws a vivid light, too, on the inner relationship
+of the jingoistic, pure Pan-Turkish leaders of present-day Turkey
+towards religion. And it is perhaps not generally known that at all
+the deliberations of the "Committee" where the will of Talaat, the
+uncrowned king of Turkey, is alone decisive, the opinion of the Grand
+Master of the Turkish Freemasons is always listened to, and that he is
+one of the most willing tools of the "Ittihad."
+
+No, the members of the "Committee for Union and Progress" have
+for a very long time simply snapped their fingers at Islam if it
+hindered them making use of and profiting from their own subjects.
+They know very well how to retain at least the outward semblance of
+friendliness so long as Islam does not directly cross the path of
+Pan-Turkism. But the Armenian atrocities, instigated by Talaat, have
+as little to do with religion, they are as exclusively the result
+of pure race-fanaticism, professional jealousy, and greed, as the
+hostile, devil-may-care attitude towards Greece, and the millions of
+well-to-do Ottoman Greeks who are the next troublesome competitors
+and suitable victims of aggrandisement to be disposed of after the
+Armenians, or as the terrible persecutions against the highest class
+of Syrians and Arabs pictured in Djemal Pasha's famous paper. They
+are Turks, pure Turks with the most narrow-minded jingoistic point of
+view, and not broad-minded Mohammedans, that sit on the Committee in
+"Nur-el-Osmanieh" in Stamboul and make all these wonderful political
+plans, from internal reforms and measures of government which attempt
+to adapt themselves to European technique by sacrificing ancient
+traditions, to the hangman's tactics employed against their own
+subjects.
+
+Take the case of the Syrians and the Arabs. The "Ittihad" clique,
+weltering in a fog of Pan-Turkish illusion, were yet not without
+anxiety with regard to the intellectual and social superiority, to
+say nothing of the political sharpness, of these peoples compared with
+the Turks. They had yielded entirely to their brutal instincts of
+extermination and suppression towards foreign races, and the Germans
+had made no attempt to curb them. They were political parvenus suddenly
+freed from the control of the civilised Great Powers, and they did not
+know how to make use of that freedom. Perhaps they felt themselves
+already on the edge of an abyss and were constrained to snatch what
+they could while there was yet time.
+
+Is it any wonder, then, that the Turks should throw over all trace of
+decency towards the Syrians and the Arabs once they were sure that
+these peoples, who regarded their oppressors with most justifiable
+hatred, would refuse to have anything to do with the "Holy War" of the
+Turanian Pseudo-Caliph?
+
+The last remnants of the traditional Pan-Islamic esteem of their Arab
+neighbours, already sadly shattered by the Young Turks' ruthless policy
+towards them since 1909, were flung light-heartedly overboard by a
+Government that knew they were to blame for the Arab defection but
+thought they had found a substitute that appealed more to their true
+Asiatic character in these Turanistic dreams of expansion and measures
+of Turkification. And while fanatical adventurers and money-grubbing
+deputies paid by the easily duped German Embassy were preaching a
+perfectly useless "Holy War" on the confines of the Arabian territory
+of the Turkish Empire, towards the part occupied by the English, while
+Enver Pasha continued to visit the holy places of Islam, where he got
+a frosty enough reception, although the wonderfully worded communiques
+on the subject succeeded in blinding the population to the true state
+of affairs, "the hangman's policy" of Djemal Pasha, the Commander of
+the Fourth Osmanic Army, and Naval Minister, had been for a long time
+in full swing in the old civilised land of Syria against the best
+families among the Mohammedan as well as the Christian population. The
+whole civilised world is laying up a store of accusations of this kind
+against the Turks, and it is to be hoped that a public sentence will be
+passed on these gentlemen of the "Ittihad" on the conclusion of peace
+by a combined court of Europeans and Americans.
+
+Here again the Young Turkish Government assumed the existence of a
+widespread conspiracy and a Syrian and Arabian Separatist movement
+towards autonomy, which was to free these lands from Turkish rule and
+to be established under Anglo-French protection. At the time of the
+Armenian persecutions the Committee had managed most cunningly to
+turn the whole Armenian question to their own account by publishing
+false official reports by the thousand, accompanied by any number of
+photographs of "bands of conspirators," the authenticity of which never
+has been proved and never will be; indeed one can only wonder where the
+Turkish Government got them from.
+
+In this case again there was no lack of official printed commentaries
+on Djemal Pasha's "hanging list," and any reader of the _Journal de
+Beyrouth_ in war-time would have had no difficulty in compiling it. It
+is certainly not my intention to question the existence of a Separatist
+movement towards autonomy in Syria, but it was a sporadic tendency
+only, and ought never to have been made the excuse for the wholesale
+execution of highly respected and well-born citizens who had nothing
+whatever to do with the matter.
+
+In the Young Turkish memorandum on this act of spying and bloodshed,
+the passages most underlined and printed in the boldest characters, the
+passages which, according to official intention, were to justify these
+frightful reprisals, form the most terrible indictment ever brought
+against Turkish despotism, and provide the most complete proof of the
+truth of all the accusations made against the Turkish Government by
+the ill-treated and oppressed Syrians and Arabians. On anyone who does
+not read with Young Turkish eyes the memorandum makes directly the
+opposite impression to what was intended. And even if the Separatist
+movement had existed in any greater extent--which was quite out of the
+question owing to lack of weapons, conflicting interests, the contrasts
+in the people themselves, some of them Mohammedan, some Christian,
+some sectarian, and the impossibility of any kind of organisation
+under the stern discipline of Turkish rule--the Turks would have most
+richly deserved it and it would have been justified by the thousands
+of brutalities inflicted by the Old and Young Turkish regimes on the
+highly civilised Arabian people and their industrious and commercial
+neighbours the Syrians, who had always been much influenced by European
+culture. Anyone who has once watched how the Committee in Stamboul
+made a pretext of events on the borders of Caucasia to exterminate a
+whole people, including women and children, even in Western and Central
+Anatolia and the Capital, can no longer be in the least doubt as to the
+methods employed by Djemal Pasha, the "hangman" of Syrians and Arabs,
+how grossly he must have exaggerated and misstated the facts to find
+enough victims so that he could look on for a year and a half with a
+cigar in his mouth--as he himself boasted--while the flower of Syrian
+and Arabian youth, the elite of society, and the aged heads of the best
+families in the land were either hanged or shot.
+
+I should like to take the opportunity here of giving a short
+description of Djemal Pasha, this man who, according to Turkish ideas,
+is destined still to play a great part in Turkish politics. I should
+also like to clear up a misunderstanding that seems to exist in
+civilised Europe with regard to him. There is still an idea abroad
+that Djemal Pasha is pro-French, this man who set out on his adventure
+against the Suez Canal as "Vice-king of Egypt," and, after he had been
+beaten there, settled in Syria as dictator with unlimited power--even
+openly defying the Central Government in Constantinople when he felt
+piqued--so that as commander of the Fourth Army he could support
+the attempt against Egypt, but principally to satisfy his murderous
+instincts. Anyone who has seen this man close at hand (whom a German
+journalist belonging to the _Berliner Tageblatt_ with the most fulsome
+flattery once called one of the handsomest men in Turkey) knows enough.
+Small, thickset, a beard and a pair of cunning cruel eyes are the
+most prominent features of this face from which everyone must turn in
+disgust who remembers the "hangman's" part played by the man.
+
+It is extraordinary that he should still pass as Pro-French in many
+quarters, and perhaps it is part of his slyness to preserve this role.
+Djemal is not Pro-French; he is only the most calculating of all the
+leading men of Turkey. He certainly had pro-French tendencies, in
+the current meaning of the word, before the war; that is, he thought
+the interests of his country would be best safeguarded against German
+machinations for winning over the Young Turks by taking advantage
+of Turkey's traditional friendship for France. He was also against
+Turkey's participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers,
+and he was furiously angry when the fleet which was supposed to be
+under his control appeared against his will under the direction of the
+German Admiral of the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ in the Black Sea.
+
+But when the war actually broke out, he very soon accommodated himself
+to the new state of affairs. Instead of handing in his resignation,
+he added to his naval duties the chief command of the army operating
+against Egypt, for Djemal's chief characteristics were characterless
+opportunism and inordinate ambition. Suiting his opinions to the facts
+of the case, he was not long in advertising his Pro-French feelings
+again so that he might be popular with the people of Syria. That of
+course did not prevent him later on from carrying out his "hangman's
+policy" against the Syrians who were bound by so many social ties to
+France. From that it is not difficult to judge just how genuine his
+Pro-French feelings are!
+
+The only genuine thing in his whole attitude is his admitted deep
+hatred of Germany and his personal animosity towards the pro-German
+Enver Pasha, arising partly from jealousy, partly from a feeling of
+being slighted, and only concealed for appearance' sake. During the
+war he has often enough made very plain utterances of his hatred of
+Germany, and it would certainly betoken ill for German politics in
+Turkey if Djemal Pasha succeeded in obtaining a more active role in the
+Central Government. So far the Minister for War has managed to hold him
+at arm's length, and Djemal has no doubt found it of advantage to wait
+for a later moment, and content himself for the present with his actual
+powerful position.
+
+From his own repeated anti-German speeches it has, however, been only
+too easy to glean that his anti-German opinions and actions are not
+the result of his being Pro-French, but of his being a jingoistic
+Pan-Turk. He may simulate Pro-French feelings again and play them as
+the trump card in his surely approaching decisive struggle with Enver
+Pasha, when Enver's system has failed; Djemal will no doubt maintain
+then that he foresaw everything, and that he has always been for France
+and the Entente. Everyone who knows his character is at any rate sure
+of one thing, and that is that he will stop at nothing, even a rising
+against the Central Government, if his ambitious opportunism should
+so dictate it. It is to be hoped, however, that public opinion among
+the Entente will not be deceived as to his true character, and will
+recognise that he is nothing more than a jingoistic, greedy, raging
+Young Turkish fanatic and one of the most cunning at that. It would
+really be doing too much honour to a man with a murderer's face and a
+murderer's instinct to credit him with honest sympathies for France.
+
+Djemal's work is nearing fruition. His cruel executions, his cynical
+breaking of promises in Syria, have at any rate contributed, along with
+other politically more important tendencies which have been cleverly
+utilised by England for the establishment of an Arabian Caliphate,
+towards the decisive result that the Emir of Mecca has revolted
+against the Turks. The Emir's son and his great Arabian suite had to
+pay a prolonged visit to Djemal at one time, and it is evident that
+the brutal execution of Arabian notables that he saw then directly
+influenced his father's attitude. The movement is bound to spread,
+and slowly and surely it will roll on till it ends in the full and
+perfect separation from Turkey of all Arabic-speaking districts as far
+as Northern Syria and the borders of Southern Kurdistan. The so-called
+Separatist movement, that Djemal tried to drown in a sea of blood
+before it was well begun, is now an actual fact.
+
+In Egypt England has been seeing for quite a long time the practical
+and favourable results of her success in founding the Arabian
+Caliphate. She has now gained practically absolute security for her
+rule on the Nile, and she has even been able to remove troops and
+artillery from the Suez Canal to other fronts. The German dream of an
+offensive against Egypt vanished long ago; now even the last trace
+of a German-Turkish attempt against the Canal has ceased, and the
+English troops have moved the scene of their operations to Southern
+Palestine. While I write these lines, there comes from the other side,
+from Arabian Mesopotamia, the news of the recapture of Kut-el-Amara by
+British troops. I should not like to prophesy what moral or political
+results the fall of Baghdad, Medina, and Jerusalem will have for
+Turkish rule; possibly, nay probably, iron necessity, the impossibility
+of returning, the constraint imposed by their German Allies--for Turkey
+is fully under German military rule--may weaken the direct results
+of even such catastrophes as these. But the hearts which beat to-day
+with high hopes for the freedom of Great Arabia and autonomy for Syria
+under Franco-English protection will flame with new rapture, and in the
+Turkish capital all grades of society will realise that Osmanic power
+is on the decline.
+
+Meantime Djemal Pasha is still occupied in Syria raking in the property
+of the murdered citizens and dividing it up among his minions, the
+least very often being given over to commissions consisting of
+individuals of extremely doubtful reputation. When he is not thus
+busily engaged, he spends his time round the green table playing poker.
+It is to be ardently hoped that even this great organiser will soon be
+at the end of his tether in Syria and have to leave the country where
+he has kinged in royally for two years. Then, perhaps, the moment may
+come when things are going so badly for the whole of Turkey that Djemal
+will at last have the opportunity, in spite of the failure of his
+policy in Syria, of measuring his military strength against his hated
+enemy Enver in Stamboul. That would be the beginning of the last stage
+before the complete collapse of Turkey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks--Turkish pessimism
+  about the war--How would Abdul-Hamid have acted?--A war of prevention
+  against Russia--Russia and a neutral Turkey--The agreement about the
+  Dardanelles--A peaceful solution scorned--Alleged criminal intentions
+  on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece and Salonika--To be
+  or not to be?--German influence--Turkey stakes on the wrong card--The
+  results.
+
+
+There has been no lack of cross currents _against_ the war policy of
+the Young Turkish Government. Ever since the entry of Turkey into the
+war, there has been a deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction among
+all kinds and conditions of men, even in the circles of the Pashas and
+the Court--the people of Turkey take too little interest in politics
+and are composed of far too heterogeneous elements for there to be
+anything in the nature of what we call "public opinion"--that Turkey's
+alliance with the Central Powers was a complete mistake and that it
+can lead to no good. It is of course known that since the outbreak of
+war Turkey has not only been under martial law and in a state of siege,
+but that under the regime of a brutal military dictatorship, with its
+system of espionage, personal liberty has been practically null and
+void. Any expressions of disapproval, therefore, or agitations against
+the "Committee" are naturally only possible in most intimate circles,
+and that with all secrecy. Little or nothing of the true opinions of
+this or that personage ever trickles through to publicity, and so it
+is utterly impossible, except from quite detached symptoms, to get
+any proper idea of what are the real thoughts and feelings of those
+cultured Turks who do not belong to the "Ittihad" and have no part in
+their system of pillage and aggrandisement.
+
+In spite of the limited information available it will be worth while,
+I think, to go into these counter-streams a little more fully. In
+pretty well every grade of society and among all nationalities in
+Turkey, there is the conviction that the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid would
+never have committed the fateful error of declaring war against the
+Entente and binding himself hand and foot to Germany. In the case of
+Turkey's remaining neutral, the Entente had formally promised her
+territorial integrity; Turkey refused. She felt herself driven to a war
+of prevention, principally through fear of the power of Russia. The
+statements made by those who agreed with Enver and Pasha and pushed
+for the war, that Turkey in the case of non-participation would be
+completely thrown on the mercy of a victorious Russia and that Russia's
+true aim in the war was the Dardanelles and Constantinople, have never
+been authenticated. There are still Turks, anti-Russian Turks, who even
+admitted this possibility, and yet believed the word of the Entente--at
+any rate of the Western Powers--and trusted to England's throwing her
+weight into the scale against Russia's plans of conquest, if Turkey
+remained neutral. They saw and still see no necessity for the Turkish
+Government to have entered on a war of prevention.
+
+Russia's aim was the Straits and Constantinople--well and good. But
+Russia would by hook or by crook have had to come to a friendly
+agreement with Turkey and could not have simply broken a definite
+promise given by the combined Entente to Turkey. It would have been
+quite different if Russia had demanded Constantinople from the Western
+Powers as the price of her participation in the war against Germany;
+then, but only then, the Entente would perhaps have had to come to an
+agreement satisfying Russia on this head. But Russia had quite other
+ideas, and long before Turkey's entry into the war and without any
+prospects of getting Constantinople, she flung her whole weight against
+Germany and Austria right at the beginning of the war.
+
+The treaty with regard to Constantinople between the Western Powers
+and Russia was not signed till six months after Turkey declared war,
+and England would certainly never have allowed Russia to encroach on a
+really neutral or sympathetically neutral Turkey. Then, but only then,
+there might have been some foundation in fact for the ideas one heard
+advanced by German-Turkish illusionists who would still have liked to
+believe that there was continual dissension within the Entente, even
+long after the official notification of the Anglo-Russian treaty
+with regard to the Straits, and by some even after the speech of the
+Russian minister Trepoff, that the English occupation of the islands
+at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which could be made into a second
+Gibraltar, aimed chiefly at blocking the Straits and preventing Russia
+from gaining undisturbed possession of Constantinople. Specially
+optimistic people even look to that chimerical antagonism between
+Russia and England for the salvation of Turkey, should Germany be
+finally overcome.
+
+Whether she liked it or not, then, Russia would have had to come to
+a friendly agreement with Turkey, had the latter remained neutral,
+in order to gain the desired goal. And this goal would have been
+necessarily limited, by the fact of Turkey's non-entry on the enemy
+side, rather to the stoppage of German Berlin-Baghdad efforts at
+expansion, the prevention of any strangulation of the enormous Russian
+trade in the south and desperate opposition to any attempt to keep
+Russia away from the Mediterranean, than to an attack on Turkey and
+her vital interests. And who knows whether under such an agreement,
+bound as it was to give Russia certain liberties and privileges in the
+Straits, Turkey also might not have got much in exchange, at any rate
+on financial lines, and might not also have obtained permission at last
+to develop Armenia by that west-to-east railway so long desired by the
+Turks and so strongly opposed by the Russians?
+
+Would the terrible bloodshed in the present war, the complete economic
+exhaustion entailed, and the risk of a doubtful outcome of the fight
+for existence or non-existence not have been far outweighed by the
+prospect, in the case of a friendly agreement with Russia, of seeing
+the orthodox cross again planted on the Hagia Sophia, an international
+regime established in Constantinople--with certain Russian privileges
+and the satisfaction of certain Russian moral demands, it is true,
+but otherwise nothing to disturb Turkish life in Stamboul or in any
+way prejudice Turkish prestige? Even the prospect of having to raze
+the forts on the Straits to the ground in order to give free access
+from the Mediterranean, or the necessity of having to inaugurate a
+more humane and beneficent policy in Armenia, perhaps with European
+supervision over the carrying out of the reforms would surely have
+been preferable to the present state of affairs. These would all
+have ensured for Turkey a long period of peace, capital wealth and
+intellectual and social improvement, perhaps at the expense of a
+momentary hurt to her feelings,--but these had been far more severely
+wounded already, as, for example, when she had to look on helplessly
+while bit after bit of her Empire was torn from her. It would have
+been impossible for Russia to get more than this from Turkey had she
+remained neutral. Her sovereignty and territorial integrity would have
+been completely guaranteed.
+
+But Turkey thought she had to stake all, her whole existence, on
+one card, and she staked on the wrong one, as is recognised now by
+thousands of intelligent Turks. Believers in the war policy followed
+by the Government make themselves hoarse maintaining that if Russia
+had not gradually overpowered a neutral Turkey to win Constantinople
+completely, at any rate the Entente would have finally forced her to
+join their side; in either case, therefore, war was inevitable. They
+point to Salonika, and, in face of all reason, maintain that the
+Entente Powers would in all probability have treated Turkey exactly
+as they treated Greece. They forget that their geographical position
+is entirely different, and would have a very different effect on
+military tactics. If Turkey had remained a sympathetic neutral, so
+would Bulgaria; or else the whole of the Balkan States, from Roumania
+and Bulgaria to Greece, would have joined the Entente right at the
+beginning. In either case there would have been no necessity at all for
+Turkey to join, for what military obligations had she to fulfil? The
+Entente would certainly never have driven Turkey to fight, simply to
+get the benefit of the Turkish soldiers available; there is no truth
+whatever in the statements circulated about unscrupulous compulsion
+with this end in view.
+
+The benefit for the Entente of Turkey's sympathetic neutrality would
+have been so enormous that they would most certainly have been content
+with that. Neither in Germany nor in Turkey is there any doubt whatever
+in military circles that it was Turkey's entry into the war on the
+German side and her blocking of the Straits, and so preventing Russia
+from obtaining supplies of ammunition and other war material, that has
+so far saved the Central Powers. Had Turkey remained neutral, constant
+streams of ammunition would have poured into Russia, Mackensen's
+offensive would have had no prospect at all of success, and Germany
+would have been beaten to all intents and purposes in 1915. The Turks
+do not scruple to let Germany feel that this is so on every suitable or
+unsuitable occasion.
+
+The Entente would certainly never have moved a finger to disturb
+Turkey's sympathetic neutrality and drive her into war. There would
+have been tremendous material advantages for Turkey in such a
+neutrality. Instead of being impoverished, bankrupt, utterly exhausted,
+wholly lost, as she now is, she might have been far richer than
+Roumania has ever been. There is one thing quite certain, and that is
+that Abdul-Hamid would never have let this golden opportunity slide of
+having a stream of money pouring in on himself and his country. And
+certainly Turkey would not have lacked moral justification had she so
+acted.
+
+These considerations I have put forward rather from the Turkish
+anti-war point of view than from my own. They are opinions expressed
+hundreds of times by thoroughly patriotic and intelligent Turks
+who saw how the ever more intensive propaganda work of the German
+Ambassadors, first Marschall von Bieberstein, then Freiherr von
+Wangenheim, gradually wormed its way through opposition and prejudice,
+how the German Military Mission in Constantinople tried to turn the
+Russian hatred of Germany against Turkey instead, how, finally, those
+optimists and jingoists on the "Committee," who knew as little about
+the true position of affairs throughout the world as they did of the
+intentions of the Entente or the means at their own disposal, proceeded
+to guide the ship of State more and more into German waters, without
+any reference to their own people, in return for promises won from
+Germany of personal power and material advantage. These were those days
+of excitement and smouldering unrest when Admiral von Souchon of the
+_Goeben_ and the _Breslau_, with complete lack of discipline towards
+his superior, Djemal Pasha, arranged with the German Government to
+pull off a coup without Djemal's knowledge--chiefly because he was
+itching to possess the "Pour le Merite" order--and sailed off with the
+Turkish Fleet to the Black Sea. (I have my information from the former
+American Ambassador in Constantinople, Mr. Morgenthau, who was furious
+at the whole affair.)[2]
+
+These were the days when Enver and Talaat threw all their cards on the
+table in that fateful game of To Be or Not to Be, and brought on their
+country, scarcely yet recovered from the bloodshed of the Balkan War,
+a new and more terrible sacrifice of her manhood in a war extending
+over four, and later five, fronts. The whole result of this struggle
+for existence depended on final victory for Germany and that was
+becoming daily more doubtful; in fact, Ottoman troops had at last to be
+dispatched by German orders to the Balkans and Galicia.
+
+Turkey had, too, to submit to the ignominy of making friends with
+her very recent enemy and preventing imminent military catastrophe
+by handing over the country along the Maritza, right up to the gates
+of the sacred city of Adrianople, to the Bulgarians. She had to look
+on while Armenia was conquered by the Russians; while Mesopotamia
+and Syria, in spite of initial successes, were threatened by
+English troops; while the "Holy War" came to an untimely end, the
+most consecrated of all Islam's holy places, Mecca, fell away from
+Turkey, the Arabs revolted and the Caliphate was shattered; while her
+population in the Interior endured the most terrible sufferings, and
+economic and financial life tended slowly and surely towards complete
+and hopeless collapse.
+
+Not even yet, indeed now less than ever, is there any general
+acceptance among the people of the views held by Enver and Talaat
+and their acolytes. Not yet do intelligent, independent men believe
+the fine phrases of these minions of the "Committee," who are held
+in leading strings by these dictators partly through gifts of money,
+office, or the opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the
+people, partly through fear of the consequences should they revolt, or
+of those domestic servants who call themselves deputies and senators.
+On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say that three-quarters of
+the intelligent out-and-out Turkish male population--quite apart from
+Levantines, Greeks, and Armenians--and practically the entire female
+population, who are more sensitive about the war and whose hearts are
+touched more deeply by its immeasurable suffering, have either remained
+perfectly friendly to England and France or have become so again
+through terrible want and suffering.
+
+The consciousness that Turkey has committed an unbounded folly has long
+ago been borne in upon wide circles of Turks in spite of falsified
+reports and a stringent censorship. There would be no risk at all
+in taking on a wager that in private conversation with ten separate
+Turks, in no way connected with the "Committee," nine of them will
+admit, as soon as they know there is no chance of betrayal, that they
+do not believe Turkey will win, and that, with the exception of the
+much-feared Russia, they still feel as friendly as ever towards their
+present enemies. "_Quoi qu'il arrive, c'est toujours la pauvre Turquie
+qui va payer le pot casse._" ("Whatever happens, it's always poor
+Turkey that'll have to pay the piper") and "_Nous avons fait une grande
+gaffe_" ("We _have_ put our foot in it") were the kind of remarks made
+in every single political discussion I ever had in Constantinople--even
+with Turks.
+
+So much for the men, who judge with their reason. What of the women?
+The one sigh of cultured Turkish women, up to the highest in the
+land--who should have a golden book written in their honour for their
+readiness to help, their sympathy, and humanity in this war--is: "When
+shall we get rid of the Boches; when will our good old friends, the
+English and the French, come back to us?" Nice results, these, of
+German propaganda, German culture, German brotherhood of arms! What
+a sad and shameful story for a German to have to tell! Naturally the
+drastic system of the military dictatorship precludes the public
+expression of such feelings, but one needs only have seen with one's
+own eyes the looks so often cast by even real Turkish cultured society
+at the German _Feldgrauen_ who often marched in close formation through
+the streets of Constantinople--for a time they used to sing German
+soldiers' songs, until that was prohibited at the express wish of the
+Turkish Government to see how the land lies.
+
+There was a marked and ill-concealed contrast in the coldness shown
+to Imperial German officers and the lavish affection showered on the
+Austrians and Hungarians who used for a time often to pass through
+Constantinople on their way to the Dardanelles or Anatolia with their
+heavy artillery. They were a great deal more sociable than their
+German comrades, and one could not fail to note the significance of
+such freely voiced comments as "_N'est-ce pas, ils sont charmants les
+Autrichiens?_" ("The Austrians _are_ delightful, aren't they?") The
+sight of us Germans, especially the very considerable German garrison
+stationed for a time in the Capital, awakened in the Turks, however
+much they might recognise the military necessity for their presence,
+remarkable ideas about the future "German Egyptising of Turkey," and
+everyone blamed Enver Pasha as the man responsible for Germany's
+penetrating thus far.
+
+A Turk in a high official position--whose name I shall naturally not
+divulge--even went so far as to say to me in an intimate personal
+discussion we were having one day between friend and friend: "We
+Turks are and will always remain, in spite of the war, pro-English
+and pro-French so far as social and intellectual life is concerned;
+and it would need twenty years of hard propaganda work on Germany's
+part, quite different from her present methods, to change this point
+of view, if it ever could be changed." He went on to recall the time
+of the pro-English era, and the enthusiastic demonstrations that had
+taken place at the Sirkedji station when the horses were taken out of
+the English Ambassador's carriage. "I was there myself," he said, "and
+believe me, apart from the war, heaps of us are at bottom still of the
+same mind." And, growing heated, he added: "What is your Embassy, tell
+me? Is it really an Embassy? No representation, no intimate intercourse
+with us, or at best only with your political agents, no personal charm,
+nothing but brusque demands and a most humiliating economic neglect
+of the Turkish population. The English and the French and even the
+Russians would treat us quite differently."
+
+This man is no exception in his ideas. He is a thorough Young Turk, who
+holds with the "Committee" through thick and thin and has to thank them
+for a very pleasant billet, but he is, besides, a youngish man with a
+modern European education. He is thoroughly imbued, as are all of his
+kind, with modern French ideas, and even the war cannot alter that.
+It only needs the final collapse of the Central Powers, and then the
+break-down of the whole political system under the direction of these
+jingoistic emancipationists who think they can get on without Europe,
+and the Turks will all, every one of them, be as thoroughly pro-English
+and pro-French as they ever were and will hate Germany and everything
+German with fanatical hatred.
+
+Towards Hungary, their blood relation, they will probably retain some
+friendliness in memory of their alliance in the Great War and the cause
+of Turanism; they will be quite indifferent to Bulgaria; they will lose
+their fear of Russia and come to an agreement with her; but after the
+war there will be no bridging the gulf between Turkey and Germany, and
+if Germany, on the conclusion of peace, is allotted any part of smaller
+Turkey by the rest of the European Powers, she will have to reckon
+for many a long year with the very chilly relations that will exist
+between Germans and Turks. Even those who went heart and soul into the
+war as a war of defence against Turkey's powerful northern neighbour
+foresee that when peace is declared Turkey will, so far as her enormous
+indebtedness to Germany permits, rather throw herself on the mercy
+of England and France and America and beg from them the capital
+necessary for reconstruction and for freeing them from the hated
+German influence--an aversion which is already evident in hundreds of
+different ways. Even Germany is beginning to recognise the existence
+of this tendency, which, hand in hand with the jingoistic attempt to
+turkify commercial life, bodes ill for German activity in Turkey after
+the war.
+
+These are the opinions of the educated classes. The people, however,
+the poor, ignorant Turkish people, were ready long ago to accept any
+solution that would liberate them from their terrible sufferings.
+The Turkish people have not the mental calibre of our German people
+which will perhaps make them fight on, just for the sake of leaving no
+stone unturned, even after it is quite evident that they are tending
+towards final collapse. The stake for which they are fighting is not
+so valuable to this agricultural people, who with an inferior and
+extortionate set of rulers have never been able really to enjoy life,
+as it is to the population of a modern industrial country like Germany,
+where every political gain or loss has a direct result on their own
+pockets; defeat will certainly have much less effect on the Oriental.
+One can therefore speak with confidence of a general longing for
+the end of the war at any price. The Turks have had quite enough of
+suffering, and there are limits to what even these willing and mutely
+resigned victims can bear.
+
+Nevertheless it is quite certain that the courageous Turkish soldier,
+in obedience to iron discipline and in unconditional submission to his
+Padishah, will continue to defend his lost cause to the very last
+drop of his blood, with an unquestioning resignation that absolutely
+precludes the idea of any defection within the army. Only a purely
+political military revolution, originating with the better-informed
+officers, who now really no longer believe in ultimate victory, is
+within the bounds of possibility.
+
+But the most confiding endurance on the part of the Turkish soldier,
+even when the military cause has long been lost, will not hinder this
+same soldier, when he is once more back in his own home as a peasant,
+from realising that European influence and European civilisation
+are a very competent protection against the miserably retrogressive
+Turkish rule, and that he has drawn more material profit from that
+single example of European activity, the Baghdad Railway, than from
+all Turkish official reforms put together, and so would willingly see
+Europe exercising a powerful control in his country. He would accept
+the military collapse of his country which he had so long and so
+bravely defended, and the dramatic political changes, with a quietly
+submissive "_Inshallah_." And although, deprived as he is of every
+kind of information and without even the beginnings of knowledge, he
+perhaps still believes in ultimate victory for the Padishah, he will
+probably heave a sigh of relief when the unexpected collapse comes, and
+he will not take long to understand what it means for him: freedom and
+happiness and an undreamt-of material well-being under strong European
+influence.
+
+The late successor to the throne, Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, was
+the highest of those in high authority who openly represented the
+pessimistic anti-war tendency. It was for this that he was murdered
+or perhaps made to commit suicide by Enver Pasha. The whole truth
+about this tragic occurrence can only be sifted to the bottom when the
+dictators of the "Committee" are no longer in their place and light
+finally breaks on Turkey. Whether it was murder or suicide, the death
+of the successor to the throne is one of the most dramatic scandals of
+Turkish history, and Enver Pasha has his blood, as well as the blood
+of so many others, on his head. As far as is possible during the war,
+Europe has already collected all the information available on the
+subject. I myself was in Constantinople when the tragic occurrence
+took place, and I can speak so far from personal experience.
+
+In connection with this sensational event, the world has already heard
+how Yussuf Izzedin was kept for years under the despotic Abdul-Hamid
+shut off from the world as a semi-prisoner in his beautiful _Konak of
+Sindjirlikuyu_, just outside the gates of Constantinople, where he
+became a sufferer from acute neurasthenia. In recent years, however,
+his health had improved and, although latently hostile to the men
+of the "Committee" and their politics, he had come more into the
+foreground, especially after the recapture of Adrianople, which he
+visited with full pomp and ceremony as Crown Prince of the Turkish
+Empire. While the Gallipoli campaign was going on, he even made a
+journey to the Front to greet his soldiers. Early one morning he was
+found lying dead in a pool of his own blood with a severed artery. He
+had received his death wound in exactly the same place and exactly
+the same way as his father, Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who fell a victim to
+Abdul-Hamid's hatred. The political significance of Yussuf Izzedin's
+death is perfectly clear. What we want to do now is to demonstrate
+Enver Pasha's moral culpability in the matter and to show how he was
+more or less directly the murderer of this quiet, cultured, highly
+respected, and thoroughly patriotic man, who was some day to ascend the
+throne of Turkey.
+
+So much at least seems to be clear, that Prince Izzedin, who was
+naturally interested in retaining his accession to the throne
+undisturbed and who in spite of his neurasthenia was man enough to
+stand up for his own rights, foresaw ruin for his kingdom by Turkey's
+entry into the war on the side of Germany. He was more far-seeing than
+the careless adventurers and narrow-minded fanatics of the "Committee"
+and recognised that the letting-go of the treasured Pan-Islamic
+traditions of old Sultan Hamid was a grave mistake which would lead
+to the alienation of the Arabs, and which endangered both the Ottoman
+Caliphate and Ottoman rule in the southern parts of the Empire. He
+could not console himself for the evacuation of the territory round
+Adrianople, right up to the gates of the sacred city, which meant much
+to him as the symbol of national enlightenment. He had a real personal
+dislike for upstarts of the stamp of Enver and Talaat. Apart from
+these differences of opinion and personal sympathies and antipathies,
+deep-rooted though these undoubtedly were, Yussuf Izzedin was and
+always would have been a thorough "Osmanli" with fiery nationalistic
+feelings, who wished for nothing but the good of his Empire and his
+country. And yet he was got rid of.
+
+It would be difficult for the present Turkish Government to prove that
+the successor to the throne, apart from his feeling of sorrow that
+his country had been drawn into the war, apart from his readiness to
+conclude an honourable separate peace at the first possible moment,
+did anything which might have caused them trouble. The officials of
+the Turkish Government had themselves made repeated efforts through
+their Swiss Ambassadors to find out how the land lay, and whether they
+could conclude a separate peace; so they had no grounds at all for
+reproaching Prince Yussuf Izzedin, who, as a leader of this movement,
+naturally let no opportunity of this kind slide. But he was far too
+clever not to know that any attempt in this direction behind the backs
+of the present Government would have no chance of success so long as
+Turkey was held under the iron fist of Germany.
+
+Perhaps the "Committee" had something to fear for the future, when the
+time came for the reverses now regarded as inevitable. Yussuf would
+then make use of his powerful influence in many circles--notably among
+the discontented retired military men--to demand redress from the
+"Committee." Enver, true to his unscrupulous character, quite hardened
+to the sight of Turkish blood, and determined to stick to his post
+at all costs--for it was not only lucrative, but flattering to his
+vanity--was not the man to stick at trifles with a poor neurasthenic,
+who under the present military dictatorship was absolutely at his
+mercy. He therefore decided on cold-blooded murder.
+
+The Prince, well aware of the danger that threatened him, tried at
+the last moment to leave the country and flee to safety. He had even
+taken his ticket, and intended to start by the midday Balkan train next
+day to travel to Switzerland via Germany. He was forbidden to travel.
+Whether, feeling himself thus driven into a corner and nothing but
+death at the hand of Enver's creatures staring him in the face, he
+killed himself in desperation, or whether, as thousands of people in
+Constantinople firmly believe, and as would seem to be corroborated by
+the generally accepted, although of course not actually verified, tale
+of a bloody encounter between the murderers and the Prince's bodyguard,
+with victims on both sides, he was actually assassinated, is not yet
+settled, and it is really not a matter of vast importance.
+
+One thing is clear, and that is that Izzedin Effendi did not pay
+with his life for any illoyal act, but merely for his personal and
+political opposition to Enver. He is but one on this murderer's long
+list of victims. The numerous doctors, all well known creatures of the
+"Committee" or easily won over by intimidation, who set their names
+as witnesses to this "suicide as a result of severe neurasthenia"--a
+most striking and suspicious similarity to the case of Abdul-Aziz--have
+not prevented one single thinking man in Constantinople from forming a
+correct opinion on the matter. The wily Turkish Government evidently
+chose this kind of death, just like his father's, so that they could
+diagnose the symptoms as those of incurable neurasthenia. History
+has already formed its own opinion as to how much free-will there was
+in Abdul-Aziz' death! The opinions of different people about Prince
+Yussuf's death only differ as to whether he was murdered or compelled
+to commit suicide. "_On l'a suicide_," was the ironical and frank
+comment of one clever Old Turk. We will leave it at that.
+
+The funeral of the successor to the throne was a most interesting
+sight. I sent an article on it to my paper at the time, which of
+course had only very, very slight allusions to anything of a sinister
+character; but it did not find favour with the censor at the Berlin
+Foreign Office. The editorial staff of the paper evidently saw what I
+was driving at, and wrote to me: "We have revised and touched up your
+report so as at least to save the most essential part of it;" but even
+the altered version did not pass the censor's blue pencil. But I had at
+any rate the moral satisfaction of knowing that of all the papers with
+correspondents in the Turkish capital, mine, the _Koelnische Zeitung_,
+was the only one that could publish nothing, not a single line, about
+this important and highly sensational occurrence, for I simply wrote
+nothing more. That was surely clear enough!
+
+When in 1913, after the unsuccessful counter-revolution, Mahmud Shevket
+Pasha was assassinated and was going to be buried in Constantinople,
+the "Committee" issued invitations days beforehand to all foreign
+personages. This time nothing of the sort happened; and even the Press
+representatives were not invited to be present. On the former occasion
+everything possible was done, by putting off the interment as long as
+possible and repeatedly publishing the date, by lengthening the route
+of the funeral procession, to give several thousands of people an
+opportunity of taking part in the ceremony.
+
+This time, however, the authorities arranged the burial with all speed,
+and the very next day after the sensational occurrence the body was
+hurried by the shortest way, through the Guelhane Park, to the Mausoleum
+of Sultan Mahmud-Moshee. The coffin had been quietly brought in the
+twilight the evening before from the Kiosk of Sindjirlikuyu on the
+other side of Pera on the Maslak Hill, to the top of the Serail. Along
+the whole route, however, wherever the public had access, there were
+lines of police and soldiers; and the bright uniforms of the police
+who were inserted in groups of twenty between every single row of the
+procession of Ministers, members of the "Committee" and delegaters who
+walked behind the coffin, were really the most conspicuous thing in the
+whole ceremony. Enver Pasha passed quite close to me, and neither I,
+nor my companions, could fail to note the ill-concealed expression of
+satisfaction on his face.
+
+The most beautiful thing about this whole funeral, however, was the
+visit paid me by the Secretary-General of the Senate, the minute
+after I had reached home (and I had driven by the shortest way). With
+a zeal that might have surprised even the simplest minded of men,
+he offered to tell me about the Prince's life, lingering long and
+going into exhaustive detail over the well-known facts of his nervous
+ailment. Then, blushing at his own awkwardness and importunity, he
+begged me most earnestly to publish his version of all the details and
+circumstances of this tragic occurrence, "which no other paper will be
+in a position to publish." Naturally it was never written.
+
+So, once more, in the late summer of 1916, Enver Pasha, who was so fond
+of discovering conspiracies and political movements in order to get rid
+of his enemies, and go scot free himself, had a fresh opportunity of
+reflecting, with even more foundation than usual, on the firmness of
+his position and the security of his own life.
+
+It is perhaps time now to give a more comprehensive description of this
+man. We have already mentioned in connection with the failure of his
+Caucasus offensive that Enver has been extraordinarily over-estimated
+in Europe. The famous Enver is neither a prominent intellectual leader
+nor a good organiser--in this direction he is far surpassed by Djemal
+Pasha--nor an important strategist. In military matters his positive
+qualities are personal courage, optimism, and, consequently, initiative
+which is never daunted by fear of consequences, also cold-bloodedness
+and determination; but he is entirely lacking in judgment, power of
+discrimination, and largeness of conception. From the German point
+of view he is particularly valuable for his unquestioning and
+unconditional association with the Central Powers, his readiness to do
+anything that will further their cause, his pliability and his zeal in
+accommodating himself even to the most trenchant reforms. But it is
+just these qualities that make enemies for him among retired military
+men and among the people.
+
+Regarded from a purely personal point of view, Enver Pasha is, in spite
+of the fulsome praise showered on him by Germans inspired by that
+most pliant implement, German militarism, one of the most repugnant
+subjects ever produced by Turkey. Even from a purely external point of
+view his appearance does not at all correspond with the picture of him
+generally accepted in Germany from flattering reports and falsified
+photographs. Small of stature, with quite an ordinary face, he looks
+rather, as one of my journalistic colleagues said, like a "gardener's
+boy" than a Vice-General and War Minister, and anyone who ever has the
+opportunity I have so often had, of looking really closely at him, will
+certainly be repelled by his look of vanity and cunning. It was really
+most painful to have to listen to him (he has always been a bad and
+monotonous speaker) in the Senate and the Lower House at the conclusion
+of the Dardanelles campaign reading his report in a weak, halting
+voice, but with the disdainful tone of a dictator. Every third word was
+an "I." Even the Turkish Press accorded this parliamentary speech a
+fairly frosty reception.
+
+Besides this, Enver is one of the most cold-blooded liars imaginable.
+Time and again there has been no necessity for him to say certain
+things in Parliament, or to make certain promises, but apparently he
+found cynical enjoyment in making the people and Parliament feel their
+whole inferiority in his eyes. What can one think, for example, of such
+performances as this? At the end of 1916 when the discussion about
+military service for those who had paid the exemption tax (_bedel_) was
+going on, he gave an unsolicited and solemn assurance before the whole
+House that he had no intention whatever of calling up certain classes
+until the Bill had been finally passed and that it would show that he
+was really desirous of sparing commercial life as far as possible in
+the calling up of men. Exactly two hours after this speech the drum
+resounded through all the streets of Stamboul and Pera, calling up all
+those classes over which Enver had as yet no power of jurisdiction, and
+which he said he wanted to keep back because to tear them away from
+their employment would mean the complete disorganisation of the already
+sadly disordered commercial life of the country.
+
+This was Talaat's opinion, too, and he offered a firm resistance to
+Enver's plan, which it appears had been introduced by command of the
+German Government. In this case, however, resistance was useless, and
+had to give way to military necessity. If Enver said something in
+Parliament--this at any rate was the general conclusion--one might be
+quite certain that exactly the opposite would take place. He has now
+gained for himself the reputation of being a liar and a murderer among
+all those who are not followers of the "Committee."
+
+In contrast to Talaat, who is at least intelligent enough to keep up
+appearances and cunning enough to hold himself well in the background,
+Enver's personal lack of integrity in money matters is a subject of
+most shameful knowledge in Constantinople. It is pretty well generally
+known how he has made use of his position as Military Dictator to gain
+possession for himself of property worth thousands of pounds, and how
+in his financial dealings with Germany hundreds have found their way
+into his own pocket--up till the winter of 1915-1916, according to an
+estimate from confidential Turkish circles and from German sources I
+will not name, he had already managed to collect something like two
+million pounds, reckoned in English money. This son of a former lowly
+_conducteur_ in the service of the Roads and Bridges Board, whose
+mother, as I have been assured by Turks is the case, plied in Stamboul
+the much-despised trade of "layer-out" of corpses, now lives in his
+Konak in more than princely luxury, with flowers and silver and gold on
+his table, having married, out of pure ambition, a very plain-looking
+princess. That is the true portrait of this much-coddled darling of
+the Young Turks, and latterly of the German people as well. This is
+the idol of so many admiring German women, who are bewitched by his
+more than adventurous career and the halo surrounding him which he has
+enhanced by every known and unknown means of self-advertisement.
+
+Enver's character won for him in "Committee" circles personal dislike
+and bitter, though veiled, enmity even from his colleagues who were
+of exactly the same political persuasion as himself. Of his relations
+towards the infinitely more important Djemal Pasha we have already
+spoken; we shall speak in a moment of his relations to Talaat. In the
+world of the retired military men, however, who had been badgered about
+by Enver, neglected and simply forcibly pensioned off by hundreds
+before the war because of their divergent political opinions, and even
+thrown into the street, the War Minister was heartily hated. A very
+large part of them were of the same political views as the murdered
+successor to the throne, and their opinion of the Great War was as
+we have already indicated. They pointed bitterly to Enver as the
+all-too-pliable servant of Germany, who was only too ready to sacrifice
+the flower of Ottoman youth on those far battlefields of Galicia at
+a sign from the German Staff, and open door after door to German
+influence in the Interior without even attempting to protect the land
+of his fathers from invasion and decay.
+
+As we have said, political revolutions in Turkey usually start in
+military circles, not among the people, and there was an actual attempt
+in this direction in the autumn of 1916. Either by chance or by
+someone's betraying the plot, it was discovered by Enver in time, and
+the number of military men and Old Turkish personages associated with
+them, imprisoned in Constantinople alone, reached six hundred. At the
+head of the movement stood Major Yakub Djemil Bey.
+
+During the whole of the summer of 1916 Enver's position had been looked
+upon as quite insecure. The knowledge of his greed in money matters,
+his tactless pushing, and his ruthless brutality had totally alienated
+a wide circle of people, and many believed that he would soon have to
+resign.
+
+In addition to this, a deep inward antagonism reigned between him and
+Talaat, the real leader and by far the most important statesman of
+Turkey, which was far more than a cleverly veiled personal dislike.
+There was a constant struggle for power going on between the two men.
+By the end of May the crisis had become pretty acute, although outward
+appearances were still preserved and only well-informed circles knew
+anything at all about the matter. Enver had at that time to hurry back
+from the Irak, where he was on a visit of inspection with the German
+Chief of Staff and the Military Attache, in order to safeguard his
+post. In confidential circles, the outbreak of open enmity between the
+two was fully expected; but this time again Talaat was the cleverer.
+He felt that, in spite of his own greater influence and following, in
+spite of his real superiority to Enver, he might perhaps, if he tried
+conclusions with him while he was still in command of the army, find
+himself the loser and, in view of Enver's murderous habits, pay for his
+rashness with his life. So he decided not to risk a decisive battle
+just yet. He was too patriotic, also, to let things come to an open
+break during the difficult time of war. Talaat disappeared for a short
+time on a visit of inspection to Angora, and things settled down to
+their old way again.
+
+There is still internal conflict going on. But Enver, with boundless
+ambition and no fine feelings of honour, clings to his post, and
+has shown by the way he dealt with the instigators of the conspiracy
+mentioned above that nothing but force will move him from his post,
+and that he will never yield to public opinion or the criticism of
+his colleagues. He was troubled by no qualms, in spite of the widely
+circulated opinion that he would certainly jeopardise his life if he
+went on in the same ruthless way towards the retired military men. He
+simply had the leader, Yakub Djemil Bey, hanged like a common criminal,
+and the whole of his followers, for the most part superior officers and
+highly respected persons, turned into soldiers of the second class, and
+put in the front-line trenches.
+
+Enver's removal would not alter the whole Young Turkish regime much,
+but it would take from it much of its ruthless barbarity, and its most
+repugnant representative would vanish from the picture. It would also
+be a severe blow for Germany and her militaristic policy of driving
+Turkey mercilessly to suicide. It would be a godsend to the anti-German
+Djemal Pasha. From a political point of view it would mean, far more
+than Talaat's appointment as Grand Vizier, the absolute supremacy of
+that statesman.
+
+At bottom probably less ruthless than Enver and certainly cleverer,
+there is no doubt but that he would pursue his jingoistic ideas in the
+realm of race-politics, but at any rate he would not want any military
+system of frightfulness. Enver's removal from office will come within
+the range of near possibility as soon as the new British operations
+against Southern Palestine and Mesopotamia have produced a real
+victory. Turkey is not in a good enough military position to prevent
+this, and the whole world will soon recognise that it is this servant
+of Germany, this careless optimist and very mediocre strategist who is
+to blame for the inexorable breaking-up of the Ottoman Empire.
+
+The contrast I have noted between Enver and Talaat provides the
+opportunity for saying a few words about Talaat, now Pasha and
+Grand Vizier, and by far the most important man of New Turkey.
+As Minister of the Interior, he has guided the whole fate of his
+country, except in purely military matters, as uncrowned king. It is
+he more than anyone else who is the originator of the whole system
+of home politics. Solidity of character, earnestness, freedom from
+careless optimism, and conspicuous power of judgment distinguish him
+most favourably from Enver, who possesses the opposite of all these
+qualities. A high degree of intelligence, an enormous knowledge of
+men, an exceptional gift of organisation and tireless energy combined
+with great personal authority, prudence and reserve, calm weighing
+of the actual possibilities--in a word, all the qualities of the
+real statesman--raise him head and shoulders above the whole of his
+colleagues and co-workers. It would be unjust to doubt his ardent
+patriotism or the honesty of his ideas and intentions. Talaat's
+character is so impressive that one often hears even Armenians, the
+victims of his own original policy of persecution, speak of him with
+respect, and I have even heard the opinion expressed that had it not
+been for Talaat's cleverness, the Committee would have gone much
+further with their mischievous policy.
+
+But his high intellectual abilities do not prevent him from suffering
+from that same plague of narrow-minded, jingoistic illusion peculiar
+to the Pan-Turks. He is as if intoxicated with a race-fanaticism that
+stifles all nobler emotions. Talaat is too methodical and clever not to
+avoid all intentional ruthlessness, but in practice his system, which
+he follows out with inflexible logic to the bitter end, turns out to
+be just as brutal as Enver's intrinsically more brutal policy. And
+although he accommodates himself outwardly to modern European methods
+and knows how to utilise them, the ethics of his system are out-and-out
+Asiatic. When Talaat speaks in the "Committee," there is very rarely
+the slightest opposition. He has usually prepared and coached the
+"Committee" so well beforehand that he can to all appearance keep in
+the background and only follow the majority. With the exception of a
+few military affairs, everything has always taken place that he has
+proposed in Parliament.
+
+Beside this man, whose sparkling eyes, massive shoulders, broad chest,
+clean-cut profile and exuberant health denote the whole unbounded
+energy of the dictator, the good-natured, degenerate, and epileptically
+inclined Sultan, Mehmed V, "El Ghazi" ("the hero"), is but a weak
+shadow. But if we fully recognise Talaat's high intellectual qualities,
+we should like all the more to emphasise that he must be held
+personally responsible more than all the others for everything that is
+now happening in Turkey, so far as it is not of a military character.
+The spirit reigning in Turkey to-day, the spirit of Pan-Turkish
+jingoism, is Talaat's spirit. The Armenian persecutions are his very
+own work. And when the day of reckoning comes for the Turkey of the
+"Committee of Union and Progress," it is to be hoped that Europe as
+judge and chastiser and avenger of an outraged civilisation, will lay
+the chief blame on Talaat Pasha rather than on his far weaker colleague
+Enver.
+
+All his eminent qualities, however, do not prevent this intellectual
+leader of Turkey, the most important man, beside the Sultan, in the
+land, from showing signs of something that is typical of the whole
+"Committee" clique with their dictatorial power, and which we may
+perhaps be allowed to call _parvenuishness_. At all points we see
+the characteristics of the parvenu in this statesman and one-time
+adventurer and in these creatures of the "Committee" who have recently
+become wealthy by certain abuses--I would remind you only of the
+Requisitions--and by a lucrative adherence to the ruling clique. There
+are of course individual cases of distinguished men of good birth
+throwing in their lot with the "Committee," but they are extremely
+rare, and they only help to give an even worse impression of the
+average Young Turk belonging to the Government. Their past is usually
+extremely doubtful, and their careers have been somewhat varied.
+
+No one of course would ever think of setting it down as a black mark
+against Talaat, for example, that he had to work his way up to his
+present supreme position from the very modest occupation of postman
+and postal coach conductor on the Adrianople road, via telegraph
+assistant and other branches of the Post Office; on the contrary, such
+intelligence and energy are worthy of the highest praise. But Talaat's
+case is a comparatively good one, and it is not so much their low
+social origin that is a drawback to these political leaders of Turkey,
+as their complete lack of education in statesmanship and history,
+which unfits them for the high role they are called upon to fill.
+Naturally it is not exactly pleasant when a man like Herr Paul Weitz,
+the correspondent of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, and a political agent,
+can boast with a certain amount of justification that he has given tips
+of money to many of the present members of the "Committee"--in the real
+sense of the word, not in the political meaning of _backshish_! It is
+no wonder, then, that German influence won its way through so easily!
+
+Even yet Talaat's lowly origin is a drawback to him socially, and,
+in spite of his jovial manner and his complete confidence in his own
+powers, he sometimes feels himself so unsure that he rather avoids
+social duties. Probably one of the reasons of his long delay in
+accepting the post of Grand Vizier--he was already definitely marked
+out for it in the summer of 1915--was his own inner consciousness
+that his whole past life unfitted him socially for the duties of such
+an office. That he has now decided to accept it, is only the logical
+sequence of the system of absolute Turkification, which, with its plan
+of muzzling and supplanting all non-Turkish elements, had of course
+to get rid of the Egyptian element in the Government, represented by
+Prince Halim Said, the late Grand Vizier, and his brother, the late
+Minister of Public Works.
+
+There are far more outstanding cases of incompatibility between social
+upbringing and present activity among the "Committee." I will simply
+take the single example of the Director General of the Press, Hikmet
+Bey. Mischievous Pera still gives him the nick-name of "_Suetdji_"
+("milkman"), because--although it is no reproach to him any more than
+in Talaat's case--he still kept his father's milk shop in the Rue
+Tepe Bashi in Pera before he managed to get himself launched on a
+political career by close adherence to the Committee. Sometimes, of
+course, one inherits from a low social origin far worse things than
+social inferiority. Perhaps Djemal Pasha's murderous instincts are to
+be traced to the fact that his grandfather was the official hangman in
+the service of Sultan Mahmud, and that his father still retained the
+nick-name of "hangman" among the people.
+
+One only needs to cast a glance at the Young Turks who are the
+leaders of fashion in the "Club de Constantinople"--after the English
+and French members are absent--with German officers who have been
+admitted as temporary members at a reduced subscription, and one will
+find there, as in the more exclusive "Cercle d'Orient," and in the
+"Yachting Club" in Prinkipo in the summer-time, individuals belonging
+to the "Committee" whose lowly origin and bad manners are evident at
+the first glance. Talaat, who is himself President of the Club, knows
+exactly how to get his adherents elected as members without one of them
+being blackballed. People who used not to know what an International
+Club was, and who perhaps, in accordance with their former social
+status, got as far as the vestibule to speak to the Concierge, are
+now great "club men" and can afford, with the money they have amassed
+in "clique" trade and by the famous system of Requisitions, to play
+poker every evening for stakes of hundreds of Turkish pounds. One
+single kaleidoscopic glance into the perpetual whirl of any one of
+these clubs, which used to be places of friendly social intercourse
+for the best European circles, is quite sufficient to see the class
+of degenerate, greedy parvenus that rule poor, bleeding, helpless,
+exhausted Turkey. One cannot but be filled with a deep sympathy for
+this unfortunate land.
+
+The Turks of decent birth are disgusted at these parvenus. I have had
+conversations with many an old Pasha and Senator, true representatives
+of the refined and kindly Old Turkish aristocracy, and heard many a
+word of stern disapproval of the "Committee" quite apart from their
+divergent political opinions. There is a whole distinguished Turkish
+world in Constantinople who completely boycott Enver and his consorts
+socially, although they have to put up with their caprices politically.
+"I don't know Enver at all," or "_Je ne connais pas ces gens-la_"
+("I don't know these people"), are phrases that one very often hears
+repeated with infinite disdain. In all these cases it is the purely
+personal side--birth and manners--that repels them.
+
+Socially the cleft between the two camps is far deeper than it is
+politically, for many of these same people accommodate themselves,
+though with reluctance in their heart, to sharing at least formally
+as Senators in the responsibility for the present Young Turkish
+policy. They have to do so, for otherwise they would simply be flung
+mercilessly by Enver's Clique on to the streets to beg for bread.
+This is how it comes about to-day that, with very few exceptions, the
+Senators, who, to tell the truth, have as little practical say as the
+members of the Lower House, are all outwardly complaisant followers
+of the "Committee." The more doctrinal, but at any rate courageous
+and honourable opposition of Ahmed Riza is likewise of very little
+significance. Once, about the middle of December, 1916, Enver even went
+so far as to hurl the epithet "shameless dog" at Ahmed Riza in the
+Senate without being called to order by the President.
+
+The Deputies are also, with even fewer exceptions than the
+Senators--only one or two are reasonable men--all slaves pure and
+simple of Enver and Talaat. The Lower House is nothing but a set of
+employees paid by the Clique. In other countries now at war the Lower
+House may have sunk to the level of a laughing-stock; in Turkey it
+has become the instrument of crime. And it is these same toadies
+and parasites, who daily carry out this military dictator's will in
+Parliament, that he daily treats with scarcely veiled irony and open
+and complete disdain. These are the "representatives of the people" in
+Turkey in war-time!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Djemal Pasha learnt the news that Admiral von Souchon had
+bombarded Russian ports, and so made war inevitable, one evening at the
+Club. Pale with rage, he sprang up and said: "So be it; but if things
+go wrong, Souchon will be the first to be hanged."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting Germany--The
+  Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The social necessity for this
+  deliverance--Anatolia, the new Turkey after the war--Forecasts about
+  the Turkish race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia
+  and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany, at peace,
+  benefits too--Farewell to the German "World-politicians"--German
+  interests in a victorious and in an amputated Turkey--The
+  German-Turkish treaty--A paradise on earth--The Russian commercial
+  impetus--The new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
+  civilization--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation of Germany.
+
+
+We have come to the end of our sketches. The question before us now is:
+What will become of Turkey? The Entente has pronounced formal sentence
+of death on the Empire of the Sultan, and neither the slowly fading
+military power of Turkey, nor the help of Germany, who is herself
+already virtually conquered, will be able to arrest her fate.
+
+On the high frost-bound uplands of Armenia the Russians hold a
+strategic position from which it is impossible to dislodge them, and
+which will probably very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexandretta. In
+Mesopotamia, after that enormously important political event, the Fall
+of Baghdad, the union was effected between the British troops and
+the Russians, advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez Canal is now
+no longer threatened, and the British troops have been removed from
+there for a counter-offensive in Southern Palestine, and probably,
+when the psychological moment arrives, an offensive against Syria,
+now so sadly shattered politically. It is quite within the bounds of
+possibility, too, that during this war a big new Front may be formed
+in Western Anatolia, already completely broken up by the Pan-Hellenic
+Irredenta, and the Turks will be hard put to it to find troops to meet
+the new offensive. Arabia is finally and absolutely lost, and England,
+by establishing an Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war against
+Turkey. Meantime, on the far battlefields of Galicia and the Balkans,
+whole Ottoman divisions are pouring out their life-blood, fighting for
+that elusive German victory that never comes any nearer, while in every
+nook and corner of their own land there is a terrible lack of troops.
+Enver Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attempted to recall them, but
+in vain.
+
+That is a short resume of the military situation. This is how the
+Turkey of Enver and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has placed in
+Germany.
+
+To a German journalist who went out two years ago to a great Turkey,
+striving for a "Greater Turkey," it does indeed seem a bitter irony of
+fate to see his sphere of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The fall
+of Turkey is the greatest blow that could have been dealt to German
+"world-politics"; it is a disappointment that will have the gravest
+consequences. But from the standpoint of culture, human civilisation,
+ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice, historical progress,
+the economic development of wide tracts of land of the greatest
+importance from their geographical position, it is one of the most
+brilliant results of the war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy.
+When I look back on how wonderfully things have shaped in the last two
+and a half years I am bound to admit that I am happy things have turned
+out as they have. If perchance any Turk who knows me happens to read
+these lines, I beg him not to think that my ideas are saturated with
+hatred of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the country and the Turkish
+race with those many attractive qualities that rightly appealed to a
+poet like Loti.
+
+I have asked myself thousands of times what would be the best political
+solution of the problem, how to help this people--and the other races
+inhabiting their country--to true and lasting happiness. From my many
+journeys in tropical lands, I have grown accustomed to the sight of
+autochthonous civilisations and semi-civilised peoples, and am as
+interested in them as in the most perfectly civilised nations of
+Europe. I have therefore, I think, been able to set aside entirely in
+my own mind the territorial interests of the West in the development
+of the Near East, and give my whole attention to Turkey's own good and
+Turkey's own needs. But even then I have been obliged to subscribe
+to the sentence of death passed on the Turkey of the Young Turks
+and the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It is with the fullest
+consciousness of what I am doing that I agree to the only seemingly
+cruel amputation of this State. It is merely the outer shell covering
+a number of peoples who suffer cruelly under an unjust system, chief
+among them the brave Turkish people who have been led by a criminal
+Government to take the last step on the road to ruin. The point of view
+I have adopted does not in any way detract from my personal sympathies,
+and I still have hopes that the many personal friendships I made
+in Constantinople will not be broken by the hard words I have been
+obliged to utter in the cause of truth, in the interests of outraged
+civilisation, and in the interests of a happier future for the Ottoman
+people themselves.
+
+The amputation of Turkey is a stern social necessity. Someone has
+said: "The greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I have too much love
+for the Turkish people, too much sympathy for them, to adopt this
+pessimistic attitude without great inward opposition; but unfortunately
+it is only too true. We have seen how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat
+has reacted sharply against the Western-minded, liberal era of the
+1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has turned again to Asia and her newly
+discovered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of to-day, European culture
+and civilisation are at best but a technical means; they are no longer
+an end in themselves. Their dream is no longer Western Europe, but a
+nationally awakened and strengthened Asiatentum.
+
+In face of this intellectual development, how can we hope that in the
+new Turkey there will be a radical alteration of what, in the whole
+course of Ottoman history, has always been the one characteristic,
+unchangeable, momentous fact, of what has always shattered the most
+honest efforts at reform, and always will shatter every attempt at
+improvement within a sovereign Turkey--I refer to the relationship
+of the Turk to the "_Rajah_" (the "herd"), the Christian subjects of
+the Padishah. The Ottoman, the Mohammedan conqueror, lives by the
+"herd" he has found in the land he has conquered; the "herd" are the
+"unbelievers," and rooted deep in the mind of this sovereign people,
+who have never quite lost their nomadic instincts, is the conviction
+that they have the right to live by the sweat of the brow of their
+Christian subjects and on the fruits of their labour. That we
+Europeans think this unjust the Turk will never be able to grasp.
+
+A Wali of Erzerum once said: "The Turkish Government and the Armenian
+people stand in the relationship of man and wife, and any third persons
+who feel sympathy for the wife and anger at the wife-beating husband
+will do better not to meddle in this domestic strife." This quotation
+has become famous, for it exactly characterises the relationship of
+the Turk to the "Rajah," not to the Armenians. In this phrase alone
+there lies, quite apart from all the crimes committed by the present
+Turkish Government, a sufficient moral and political foundation for
+the sentence of death passed on the sovereignty of the present Turkish
+State. For so long as the Turks cling to Islam, from which springs that
+opposition between Moslem rulers and "Giaur" subjects so detrimental
+to all social progress, it is Europe's sacred duty not to give Turkey
+sovereignty over any territory with a strong Christian element. That
+is why Turkey must at all costs be confined to Inner Anatolia; that is
+why complete amputation is necessary; and why the outlying districts
+of Turkey, the Straits, the Anatolian coast, the whole of Armenia must
+be rescued and, part of it at any rate, placed under formal European
+protection.
+
+Even in Inner Anatolia, which will probably still be left to the
+Ottomans after the war, the strongest European influence must be
+brought to bear--which will probably not be difficult in view of
+Turkey's financial bankruptcy; European customs and civilisation must
+be introduced; in a word, Europe must exercise sufficient control
+to be in a position to prevent the numerous non-Turks resident even
+in Anatolia from being exposed to the old system of exploiting the
+"Rajah." Discerning Turks themselves have admitted that it would be
+best for Europe to put the whole of Turkey for a generation under
+curatorship and general European supervision.
+
+I, personally, should not be satisfied with this system for the
+districts occupied more by non-Turks than by Turks; but, on the other
+hand, I should not go so far in the case of Inner Anatolia. I trust
+that strong European influence will make it possible to make Inner
+Anatolia a sovereign territory. I have pinned my faith on the Ottoman
+race being given another and final opportunity on her own ground of
+showing how she will develop now after the wonderful intellectual
+improvement that has taken place during the war. I hope at the same
+time that even in a sovereign Turkish Inner Anatolia Europe will have
+enough say to prevent any outgrowths of the "Rajah principle."
+
+The Turks must not be deprived of the opportunity to bring their
+new-found abilities, which even we must praise, to bear on the
+production of a new, modern, but thoroughly Turkish civilisation
+of their own on their own ground. Anatolia, beautiful and capable
+of development, is, even if we confine it to those interior parts
+chiefly inhabited by Ottomans, still quite a big enough field for the
+production of such a civilisation; it is quite big enough too for the
+terribly reduced numbers now belonging to the Osmanic race.
+
+The amputation and limitation of Turkey, even if they do not succeed
+in altering the real Turkish point of view--and this, so far as the
+relationship to the Christians is concerned, is the same, from the
+Pasha down to the poorest Anatolian peasant--will at least have a
+tremendously beneficial effect. The possibilities in the Turkish race
+will come to flower. "The worst patriots," I once dared to say in one
+of my articles in spite of the censorship, "are not those who look for
+the future of the nation in concentrated cultural work in the Turkish
+nucleus-land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the Caucasus and down
+into the sands of the African desert in their search for a 'Greater
+Turkey.'" And in connection with the series of lectures I have already
+mentioned about Anatolian hygiene and social politics, I said, with
+quite unmistakable meaning: "Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity
+on her own original ground, in the nucleus-land of the Ottomans, of
+proving her capability and showing that she has become a really modern,
+civilised State."
+
+My earnest wish is that all the Turks' high intellectual abilities,
+brought to the front by this war, may be concentrated on this beautiful
+and repaying task. Intensive labour and the concentration of all forces
+on positive work in the direction of civilisation will have to take the
+place of corrupt rule, boundless neglect, waste, the strangulation of
+all progressive movements, political illusions, the unquenchable desire
+for conquest and oppression. This is what we pray for for Anatolia,
+the real New Turkey after the war. In other districts, also, now fully
+under European control, the pure Turkish element will flourish much
+more exceedingly than ever before under the beneficent protection of
+modern, civilised Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turkish Power has
+vanished. But new life springs out of ruin and decay; the history of
+mankind is a continual change.
+
+Russia, too, after war, will no longer be what she seemed to terrified
+Turkish eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled by "world-politics": a
+colossal creature, stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow up her
+smaller neighbours; a country ruled by a dull, unthinking despotism.
+
+From the standpoint of universal civilisation it is to be hoped that
+the solution of the problem of the Near East will be to transform
+the Straits between the Black Sea and Aegea, together with the city
+of Constantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into a completely
+international stretch with open harbours. Then we need no longer oppose
+Russian aspirations. If England, the stronghold of Free Trade and of
+all principles of freedom of intercourse, and France, the land of
+culture, interested in Turkey to the extent of millions, were content
+to leave Russia a free hand in the Straits; if Roumania, shut in in
+the Black Sea, did not fear for her trade, but was willing to become
+an ally of Russia in full knowledge of the Entente agreement about
+the Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident what guarantee
+with regard to international freedom modern Russia will have to give
+after the war, and even the Germans have nothing to fear. Of course
+the German anti-European "Antwerp-Baghdad" dream will be shattered.
+But once Germany is at peace, she will probably find that even the
+Russian solution of the Straits question benefits her not a little. The
+final realisation of Russia's efforts, justifiable both historically
+and geographically, to reach the Mediterranean at this one eminently
+suitable spot, will certainly contribute in an extraordinary degree to
+remove the unbearable political pressure from Europe and ensure peace
+for the world.
+
+Just a few parting words to the German "World-politicians." Very often,
+as I have said, I heard during my stay in Constantinople expressions
+of anxiety on the part of Germans that all German interests, even
+purely commercial ones, would be gravely endangered in the victorious
+New Turkey, which would spring to life again with renewed jingoistic
+passions and renewed efforts at emancipation. And more than once--all
+honour to the feelings of justice and the sound common sense of those
+who dared to utter such opinions--I was told by Germans, in the middle
+of the war, and with no attempt at concealment, that they fully agreed
+it was an absolute necessity for Russia to have the control of the
+only outlet for her enormous trade to the Mediterranean, and that
+commercially at any rate the fight for Constantinople and the Straits
+was a fight for a just cause.
+
+Now, let us take these two points of view together. From the purely
+German standpoint, which is better?--a victorious and self-governing
+Turkey imbued with jingoism and the desire for emancipation,
+practically closed to us, even commercially, or an amputated Turkey,
+compelled to appeal for European help and European capital to recover
+from her state of complete exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those
+Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of all their fine phrases and
+the German help they had to accept for all their inward distaste of
+it, hate us from the very depths of their heart; a Turkey which, even
+if Russia,--as a last resort!--is allowed to become mistress of the
+Dardanelles with huge international guarantees, would, in the Anatolia
+that is left to her, capable of development as it is, and rich in
+national wealth, offer a very considerable field of activity for German
+enterprise? The short-sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting for the
+victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-Turkism against the modern, civilised
+States of the Entente, who had no wish at all that Germany should not
+fare as well as the rest in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can
+perhaps answer my question. They should have asked themselves this,
+and foreseen the consequences before they yielded weakly to Turkish
+caprices and themselves stirred up the Turks against Europe.
+
+As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit,
+in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty,
+guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at
+a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could
+possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect
+Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her
+long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the
+question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of
+Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if
+necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can
+thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No"
+before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia
+at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the
+Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal
+of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement
+about the war in Constantinople and elsewhere were not required to
+show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the
+bitter end."
+
+Never, however--and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of
+the World-politician--have I ever heard a single one of those Germans,
+who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order
+to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion
+the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German
+activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near
+East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have
+decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them,
+to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had
+committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further
+with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have
+any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of
+commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist
+were Turkey victorious.
+
+Luckily for mankind, history has decided otherwise. After the war, the
+huge and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will be carried down to
+the then open seaports between Europe and Asia; the wealth of Odessa
+and the Pontus ports, enormously increased and free to develop, will
+be concentrated on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and the whole
+hitherto neglected city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata to
+Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha, will become an earthly paradise
+of pulsing life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury and elegance of
+the Crimea will move southwards to these shores of unique natural
+beauty and mild climate which form the bridge between two continents
+and between two seas. Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful
+labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the
+Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the
+war, under Turkish regime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes
+which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth.
+
+Never, even after another hundred years of Turkish rule, would that
+unique coast ever have become what it can be and what it must be--one
+of the very greatest centres of international intercourse and the
+Riviera of the East, not only in beauty of landscape, but in luxury
+and wealth. The greatest stress in this connection is to be laid on
+the lively Russian impetus that will spring from a modernised Russia,
+untrammelled by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced as I am that
+Russia after the war will no longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared
+by Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey, I am prepared to give this
+impetus full play, as being the best possible means for the further
+development of Constantinople.
+
+In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes of the Taurus and the foot
+of the Armenian mountains, there will extend a modern Turkey which
+has finally come to rest, to concentration, to peaceful labour, after
+centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the suicidal policy of
+military adventurers, and superficial attempts at expansion coupled
+with neglect of the most important internal duties. The inhabitants
+of these lands will soon have forgotten that "Greater Turkey" has
+collapsed. They will be really happy at last, these people whose
+idea of happiness hitherto had been a veneer of material well-being
+obtained by toadying, while the great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt,
+ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an outworn militarism, oppressed
+by a decaying administration. Then, but not till then, the world will
+see what the Turkish people is capable of. Then there will be no need
+for pessimism about this kindly and honourable race. Then we can become
+honest "Pro-Turks" again.
+
+In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not forget that the whole shore,
+where once stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-out Hellenic
+centre of civilisation. Quite independently of all political feelings
+towards present-day Greece, this historical fact must be taken into
+consideration in the final ruling. It is to be hoped that the Greek
+people will not have to atone for ever for the faults of their
+non-Greek king who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty to be a
+Greek and nothing but a Greek, and who has betrayed the honour and the
+future of the nation.
+
+The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste by war, and emptied of men
+by Talaat's passion for persecution, will obtain autonomy from her
+conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps be linked up with all the other
+parts of the east, inhabited by the last remnants of the Armenian
+people. Armenia, with its central position and divided into three among
+Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may from its geographical position, its
+unfortunate history, and the endless sufferings it has been called
+upon to bear, be called the Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from the
+Turkish system, freed from all antagonistic Turko-Russian military
+principles of obstruction, linked up by railways to the west as well as
+the already well-developed region of Transcaucasia, with a big through
+trade from the Black Sea via Trapezunt to Persia and Mesopotamia,
+it will once more offer an excellent field of activity to the high
+intellectual and commercial abilities of its people, now, alas!
+scattered to the four winds of heaven. But they will return to their
+old home, bringing with them European ideas, European technique, and
+the most modern methods from America.
+
+If men are lacking, they can be obtained from the near Caucasus with
+its narrow, over-filled valleys, inhabited by a most superior race
+of men, who have always had strong emigrating instincts. Even this
+most unfortunate country in the whole world, which the Turks of the
+Old Regime and of the New have systematically mutilated and at last
+bequeathed to Russia with practically not a man left, is going to have
+its spring-time.
+
+In the south, Great Arabia and Syria will have autonomy under the
+protection of England and France with their skilful Islam policy; they
+will have the benefit of the approved methods of progressive work in
+Egypt, the Soudan, and India as well as the Atlas lands; they will be
+exposed to the influences and incitements of the rest of civilised
+Europe; they will probably be enriched with capital from America,
+where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as well as Armenian, refugees have
+found a home; they will provide the first opportunity in history of
+showing how the Arab race accommodates itself to modern civilisation
+on its own ground and with its own sovereign administration. The final
+deliverance of the Arabs from the oppressive and harmful supremacy of
+the Turks, now happily accomplished by the war, was one of the most
+urgent demands for a race that can look back on centuries of brilliant
+civilisation. The civilised world will watch with the keenest interest
+the self-development of the Arabian lands.
+
+Even Germany, once she is at peace, will have no need to grumble at
+these arrangements, however diametrically opposed they may be to the
+now sadly shattered plans of the Pan-German and Expansion politicians.
+Germany will not lose the countless millions she has invested in
+Turkey. She will have her full and sufficient share in the European
+work and commercial activity that will soon revive again in the Near
+East. The Baghdad railway of "Rohrbach & Company" will never be
+built, it is true; but the Baghdad Railway with a loyal international
+marking off of the different zones of interest, the Baghdad Railway,
+as a huge artery of peaceful intercourse linking up the whole of Asia
+Minor and bringing peace and commercial prosperity, will all the more
+surely rise from its ruins. And when once the German _Weltpolitik_
+with its jealousy, its tactless, sword-rattling interference in the
+time-honoured vital interests of other States, its political intrigues
+disguised in commercial dress, is safely dead and buried, there will be
+nothing whatever to hinder Germany from making use of this railway and
+carrying her purely commercial energy and the products of her peaceful
+labour to the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving in return the
+rich fruits of her cultural activity on the soil of Asia Minor.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+For the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the
+representative of a great national paper like the _Koelnische Zeitung_,
+could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the
+furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and
+which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as
+an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to
+explain the role I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how
+I came to the decision to publish my experiences.
+
+As far as my post on the _Koelnische Zeitung_ is concerned, I accepted
+it and went to Turkey although I was from the very beginning against
+German "World-politics" of the present-day style at any rate (not
+against German commercial and cultural activity in foreign countries)
+and against militarism--as was only to be expected from one who had
+studied colonial politics and universal history unreservedly, and had
+spent many years studying in the English, French, and German colonies
+of Africa--and although I was quite convinced that Germany's was the
+crime of setting the war in motion. Besides, my "anti-militarism" is
+not of a dogmatic kind, but refers merely to the relations customary
+between civilised nations--witness the fact that I took part in the
+Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-West Africa as a volunteer.
+
+I hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for my extra-European
+leanings, a sphere of labour less absorbed by German militarism, and
+opportunity for independent study, and surely no one will take it amiss
+that I seized such a chance, certainly unique in war-time, in spite of
+my political views.
+
+Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the background to begin with,
+so as to be able to form my own opinion, of course doing my uttermost
+at the same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken. In spite
+of everything I had to witness, it was quite easy to reconcile all
+oppositions, until that famous day when my wife denounced Germany to
+my face. From that moment I became an enemy of present-day Germany
+and began to think of one day publishing the whole truth about the
+system. Until then I had contented myself with never saying a good word
+about the war, as one can easily find for oneself from a perusal of my
+various articles in the _Koelnische Zeitung_ during 1915-16, dated from
+Constantinople and marked (a small steamship).
+
+That dramatic event which finally alienated me from the German cause
+took place just after the end of a severe crisis in my relationship
+with German-Turkish Headquarters. Some slight hints I had given of
+Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and jingoism in a series of articles
+appearing from February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title "Turkish
+Economic Problems," so far as they were possible under existing
+censorship conditions, was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine
+that Headquarters would certainly be furious with a journalist whose
+articles appeared one fine day, literally translated, in the _Matin_
+under the title: "_Situation insupportable en Turquie, decrite par un
+journaliste allemand_" ("Insufferable situation in Turkey, described
+by a German journalist"), and cropped up once more on June 1st, in
+the _Journal des Balcans_, I was three times over threatened with
+dismissal. My paper sent a confidential man to hold an inquiry, and
+after a month he made a confidential report, which resulted in my being
+allowed to remain. But the fact that the same journalist that wrote
+such things was married to a Czech was too much for my colleagues,
+who were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part in the pay of the
+Young Turkish Committee, whose politics they praised, regardless of
+their own inward convictions, like the representative of the _Berliner
+Tageblatt_, to get material benefit or make sure of their own jobs.
+I gleaned many humorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press
+colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded as a "dangerous
+character that must be got rid of," and my wife (who was far too young
+ever to worry about politics) as a "Russian spy"--perhaps because, with
+the justifiable pride and reserve of her race, she did not attempt to
+cultivate the society of the German colony. That began the period of
+intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did not succeed in damaging
+me, although matters went so far as a denunciation of me before the
+"Prevention of Espionage Department" of the General Staff in Berlin. My
+paper, after they had given me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had
+arranged for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all that had
+taken place, thought it was better to give me the chance of changing
+and offered me a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.
+
+However, I was now quite finished with Germany, or rather with its
+politics; it would have been a moral impossibility for me to write
+another single word in the editorial line; so I refused the offer and
+applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916, to the end of the war
+(by telegram about the middle of August). It was granted me with an
+expression of regret.
+
+Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917), I severed all connection
+with my paper by mutual consent from October 1st, 1916, onwards. After
+my resignation, no special editorial representative of the _Koelnische
+Zeitung_ was appointed to take my place, as the censorship made any
+kind of satisfactory work impossible.
+
+I should like to emphasise the fact that the intrigues against me,
+the crisis with Headquarters I have just mentioned, and my departure
+from Constantinople did not injure me in any way either morally
+or financially, and have nothing whatever to do with the present
+publication. It is certainly not any petty annoyance that could bring
+me to such an action, which will probably entail more than enough
+unpleasant consequences for me. The reproaches levelled against me by
+my pushing, jingoistic colleagues were as impotent as their attempts to
+get rid of me as "dangerous to the German Cause"; I have written proof
+of this from my paper in my hand, and also of the fact that it was of
+my own free-will that I retired. I can therefore look forward quite
+calmly to all the personal invective that is sure to be showered on me
+for political reasons.
+
+I had sufficient independent means not to feel the loss of my post
+in Constantinople too keenly; and if I still kept my post after the
+beginning of the crisis with Headquarters, it was simply and solely so
+that as a newspaper correspondent I might be in possession of fuller
+information, and able to follow up as long as possible the developments
+that were taking place on that most interesting soil of Turkey.
+When that was no longer possible, I refused the post offered me in
+Cologne--in fact twice, once by letter and once by telegram--for I
+could not pretend to opinions I directly opposed. I therefore remained
+as a free-lance in the Turkish capital. I was extremely glad that the
+difference of opinion ended as it did, for I had at last a free hand to
+say and write what I thought and felt.
+
+My stay in Constantinople for a further three months as a silent
+observer naturally did not escape the notice of the German authorities,
+and after they had reported to the Foreign Office that a "satisfactory
+co-operation between me and the German representatives was not longer
+possible," they had of course to discover some excuse for putting an
+end to my prolonged stay in Turkey. They finally attempted to get rid
+of me by calling me up for military duty again. But this was useless in
+my case, for my health had been badly shaken by my spell at the Front
+at the beginning of the war, and besides I had the doctor's word for it
+that I should never be able to stand the German climate after having
+lived so long in the Tropics.
+
+Whether they liked it or not, the authorities had to find some
+other means of getting me out of Constantinople. The Consul-General
+approached me, after he had discussed the matter with the Ambassador,
+to see if I would not like to go to Switzerland to get properly cured;
+otherwise he was sure I would be turned out by the Turks. They were
+evidently afraid, for I was getting more and more into bad odour
+with the German authorities for my ill-concealed opinions, that I
+would publish my impressions, with documentary support, as soon as
+ever there was a change of government in Turkey, or as soon as the
+German censorship was removed and anything of the kind was possible.
+They apparently thought that the frontier regulations would be quite
+sufficient to prevent my taking any documentary evidence with me to
+Switzerland.
+
+As a matter of fact this was the case, and the day before my departure
+from Constantinople I carefully burned the whole of my many notes,
+which would have produced a much more effective indictment against the
+moral sordidness of the German-Young Turkish system than these very
+general sketches. But the strictest frontier regulations could not
+prevent me from taking with me, free of all censorship, the impressions
+I had received in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after a
+painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German and to the duties I
+had undertaken. Even then I had considerable difficulty in getting
+across the frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days at the
+frontier before I was finally allowed into Switzerland. It was only
+owing to the fact that I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the
+authority of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging that no
+difficulties of a political kind might be placed in the way of my
+going to Switzerland, as I had been permitted to do so by medical
+certificate, the passport authorities and the local command, that I
+finally won my point with the frontier authorities and was permitted to
+cross into Switzerland.
+
+To tell the truth, I must admit that the high civil authorities, and
+particularly the Foreign Office, treated me throughout most kindly and
+courteously. For this one reason I had a hard fight with myself, right
+up to the very last, even after I arrived in Switzerland, before I
+sat down and wrote out my impressions and opinions of German-Turkish
+politics. And if I have now finally decided to make them public, I can
+only do so with an expression of the most honest regret that my private
+and political conscience has not allowed me to requite the kindness of
+the authorities by keeping silent about what I saw of the German and
+Turkish system.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE ***
+
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