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.