THE TURK REVERTS TO THE ANCESTRAL TYPE
The defeat of the English fleet at the Dardanelles had consequences
which the world does not yet completely understand. The practical effect
of the event, as I have said, was to isolate the Turkish Empire from all
the world, excepting Germany and Austria. England, France, Russia, and
Italy, which for a century had held a threatening hand over the Ottoman
Empire, had now lost all power to influence or control. The Turks now
perceived that a series of dazzling events had changed them from
cringing dependents of the European Powers into free agents. For the
first time in two centuries they could now live their national life
according to their own inclinations and govern their peoples according
to their own will. The first expression of this rejuvenated national
life was an episode which, so far as I know, is the most terrible in the
history of the world. New Turkey, freed from European tutelage,
celebrated its national rebirth by murdering not far from a million of
its own subjects.
I can hardly exaggerate the effect which the repulse of the Allied fleet
produced upon the Turks. They believed that they had won the really
great decisive battle of the war. For several centuries, they said, the
British fleet had victoriously sailed the seas, and, had now met its
first serious reverse at the hands of the Turks. In the first moments of
their pride the Young Turk leaders now saw visions of the complete
resurrection of their Empire. What had for two centuries been a decaying
nation had suddenly started on a new and glorious life. In their pride
and arrogance the Turks began to look with disdain upon the people who
had taught them what they knew of modern warfare, and nothing angered
them so much as any suggestion that they owed any part of their success
to their German allies.
“Why should we feel any obligation to the Germans?” Enver would say to
me. “What have they done for us which compares with what we have done
for them? They have lent us some money and sent us a few officers, it is
true, but see what we have done! We have defeated the British
fleet--something which the Germans and no other nation could do. We
have stationed large armies in the Caucasus, and so have kept busy
large bodies of Russian troops that would have been used on the Western
front. Similarly we have compelled England to keep large armies in Egypt
and Mesopotamia, and in that way we have weakened the Allied armies in
France. No, the Germans could never have achieved their military
successes without us; the shoe of obligation is entirely on their foot.”
This conviction possessed all the leading men in Turkey, and now began
to have a determining effect upon Turkish national life and Turkish
policy. Essentially the Turk is a bully and a coward; he is as brave as
a lion when things are going his way, but cringing, abject, and
nerveless when reverses are overwhelming him. And now that the fortunes
of war were apparently favouring the Empire, I began to see an entirely
new Turk unfolding before my eyes. The hesitating and fearful Ottoman,
feeling his way cautiously amid the mazes of European diplomacy, and
seeking opportunities to find an advantage for himself in the divided
counsels of the European Powers, now gave place to an upstanding, almost
dashing, figure, proud and assertive, determined to live his own life
and absolutely contemptuous of his Christian foes.
I was really witnessing a remarkable development in race psychology--an
almost classical instance of reversion to type. The ragged, unkempt Turk
of the twentieth century was vanishing, and in his place was appearing
the Turk of the fourteenth and the fifteenth, the Turk who had swept out
of his Asiatic fastnesses, conquered all the powerful peoples in his
way, and founded in Asia, Africa, and Europe one of the most extensive
empires that history has known. If we are properly to appreciate this
new Talaat and Enver, and the events which now took place, we must
understand the Turk who, under Osman and his successor, exercised this
mighty but devastating influence in the world. We must realise that the
basic fact underlying the Turkish mentality is its utter contempt for
all other races. A fairly insane pride is the element that largely
explains this strange human species. The common term applied by the Turk
to the Christian is “dog,” and in his estimation this is no mere
rhetorical figure; he actually looks upon his European neighbours as far
less worthy of consideration than his own domestic animals.
“My son,” an old Turk once said, “do you see that herd of swine? Some
are white, some are black, some are large, some are small; they differ
from each other in some respects, but they are all swine. So it is with
Christians. Be not deceived, my son. These Christians may wear fine
clothes, their women may be very beautiful to look upon; their skins are
white and splendid; many of them are very intelligent, and they build
wonderful cities and create what seem to be great States. But remember
that underneath all this dazzling exterior they are all the same--they
are all swine.”
I have talked with many of the splendid men and women whom America has
sent as missionaries to Turkey. They tell me that, in the presence of a
Turk, they are always conscious of this attitude. The Turk may be
obsequiously polite, but there is invariably an almost unconscious
feeling that he is mentally shrinking from his American friend as
something unclean. And this fundamental conviction for centuries
directed the Ottoman policy toward its subject peoples. This wild horde
swept from the plains of Central Asia and, like a whirlwind, overwhelmed
the nations of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, conquered Egypt, Arabia, and
practically all of Northern Africa and then poured into Europe, crushed
the Balkan nations, occupied a large part of Hungary, and even
established the outposts of the Ottoman Empire in the southern part of
Russia.
So far as I can discover, the Ottoman Turks had only one great quality,
that of military genius. They had several military leaders of commanding
ability, and the early conquering Turks were brave, fanatical, and
tenacious fighters, just as their descendants are to-day. I think that
these old Turks present the most complete illustration in history of the
brigand idea in politics. They were lacking in what we may call the
fundamentals of a civilised community. They had no alphabet and no art
of writing, no books, no poets, no art, and no architecture; they built
no cities and thus established no orderly state. They knew no law except
the rule of might, and they had practically no agriculture and no
industrial organisation. They were simply wild and marauding horsemen,
whose one conception of tribal success was to pounce upon people who
were more civilised than themselves and plunder them.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these tribes overran the
cradle of modern civilisation, which has given Europe its religion and,
to a large extent, its civilisation. At that time these territories were
the seats of many peaceful and prosperous nations. The Mesopotamian
valley supported a large industrious agricultural population; Bagdad was
one of the largest and most flourishing cities in existence;
Constantinople had a greater population than Rome, and the Balkan region
and Asia Minor contained several powerful States. Over all this part of
the world the Turk now swept like a huge, destructive force. Mesopotamia
in a few years became a desert; the great cities of the East were
reduced to misery, and the subject peoples became slaves.
Such graces of civilisation as the Turk has acquired in five centuries
have practically all been taken from the subject peoples whom he so
greatly despises. His religion comes from the Arabs; his language has
acquired a certain literary value by borrowing certain Arabic and
Persian elements; and his writing is Arabic. Constantinople’s finest
architectural monument, the Mosque of St. Sophia, was originally a
Christian church, and practically all Turkish architecture is derived
from the Byzantine. The mechanism of business and industry has always
rested in the hands of the subject peoples--Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and
Arabs. The Turks have learned little of European art or science, they
have established very few educational institutions, and illiteracy is
the prevailing rule. The result is that poverty has attained a degree of
sordidness and misery in the Ottoman Empire which is almost unparalleled
elsewhere. The Turkish peasant lives in a mud hut in which he sleeps; he
has no chairs, no tables, no eating utensils, no clothes except the few
scant garments which cover his back and which he usually wears for many
years.
In the course of time these Turks might learn certain things from their
European and Arabic neighbours, but there was one idea which they could
never even faintly grasp. They could not understand that a conquered
people were anything except slaves. When they took possession of a land,
they found it occupied by a certain number of camels, horses, buffaloes,
dogs, swine, and human beings. Of all these living things, the object
that physically most resembled themselves they regarded as the least
important. It became a common saying with them that a horse or a camel
was far more valuable than a man; these animals cost money, whereas they
could get all the “infidel Christians” they needed for nothing. The
usual name applied to the Christian was _rayah_--meaning cattle. It is
true that the early Sultans gave the subject peoples and the Europeans
in the Empire certain rights, but these in themselves really reflected
the contempt in which all non-Moslems were held.
I have already described the “capitulations,” under which foreigners in
Turkey had their own courts, prison, post-offices, and other
institutions. Yet the early Sultans gave these privileges not from a
spirit of tolerance, but merely because they looked upon the Christian
nations as unclean, and therefore unfit to have any contact with the
Ottoman administrative and judicial system. The Sultans similarly
erected the several peoples each as the Greeks and Armenians into
separate “millets,” or nations, not because they desired to promote
their independence and welfare, but because they regarded them as
vermin, and therefore disqualified for membership in the Ottoman State.
The attitude of the Government toward their Christian subjects was
illustrated by certain regulations which limited their freedom of
action. The buildings in which Christians lived should not be
conspicuous, and their churches should have no belfry. Christians were
not permitted to ride a horse, for that was the exclusive right of the
noble Moslems. If a Turk in the street should ask a Christian to clean
his shoes, the latter must do so under penalty of death. The Turk had
the right to test the sharpness of his sword upon the neck of any
Christian.
One of the most remarkable official documents ever devised is the burial
permit which the Ottoman Government used to issue, up to a hundred years
ago, for the interment of its Christian subjects. The following is a
literal translation:--“Oh thou irreligious priest, who hast been
expelled from the presence of God, thou that wearest the crown of the
devil and black raiments, so and so of your congregation of polluted
infidels having died--although his desecrated corpse is not acceptable
to the earth, yet as its terrible stench will become a public nuisance,
take the polluted dead one, open a ditch, throw him in it, trample him
under foot, and come back, thou infidel swine!”
Imagine a great Government, year in and year out, maintaining this
attitude toward many millions of its own subjects! And for centuries the
Turks simply lived like parasites upon these overburdened and
industrious people. They taxed them to economic extinction, stole their
most beautiful daughters and forced them into their harems, took
Christian male infants by the hundreds of thousands and brought them up
as Moslem soldiers. I have no intention of describing the terrible
vassalage and oppression that went on for five centuries; my purpose is
merely to emphasise this innate attitude of the Moslem Turk to people
not of his own race and religion--that they are not human beings with
rights, but merely chattels, which may be permitted to live when they
promote the interest of their masters, but which may be pitilessly
destroyed when they have ceased to be useful. This attitude is
intensified by a disregard for human life and an intense delight in
physical human suffering which are the not unusual attributes of
primitive peoples.
Such were the mental characteristics of the Turk in his days of military
greatness. In recent times his attitude toward foreigners and his
subject peoples had superficially changed. His own military decline, and
the ease with which the infidel nations defeated his finest armies, had
apparently given the haughty descendants of Osman a respect at least for
their prowess.
The rapid disappearance of his own Empire in a hundred years the
creation out of the Ottoman Empire of new States like Greece, Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Rumania, and the wonderful improvement which had followed
the destruction of the Turkish yoke in these benighted lands, may have
increased the Ottoman hatred for the unbeliever, but at least they had a
certain influence in opening his eyes to his importance. Many Turks also
now received their education in European universities, they studied in
their professional schools, and they became physicians, surgeons,
lawyers, engineers, and chemists of the modern kind. However much the
more progressive Moslems might despise their Christian associates, they
could not ignore the fact that the finest things, in this temporal world
at least, were the products of European and American civilisation. And
now that one development of modern history which seemed to be least
understandable to the Turk began to force itself upon the consciousness
of the more intelligent and progressive. Certain leaders arose who began
to speak surreptitiously of such things as “Constitutionalism,”
“Liberty,” “Self-Government,” and to whom the Declaration of
Independence contained certain truths that might have a value even for
Islam. These daring spirits began to dream of overturning the autocratic
Sultan and of substituting a parliamentary system for his irresponsible
rule. I have already described the rise and fall of this Young Turk
movement under such leaders as Talaat, Enver, Djemal, and their
associates in the Committee of Union and Progress. The point which I am
emphasising here is that this movement presupposed a complete
transformation of Turkish mentality, especially in its attitude toward
subject peoples. No longer, under the reformed Turkish State, were
Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and Jews to be regarded as “filthy Giaours.”
All these peoples were henceforth to have equal rights and equal duties.
A general love-feast now followed the establishment of the new régime,
and scenes of almost frenzied reconciliation, in which Turks and
Armenians embraced each other publicly, apparently signalised the
absolute union of the once antagonistic peoples. The Turkish leaders,
such as Talaat and Enver, visited Christian churches and sent forth
prayers of thanksgiving for the new order, and went to Armenian
cemeteries to shed tears of retribution over the bones of the martyred
Armenians who lay there. Armenian priests reciprocally paid their
tributes to the Turks in Mohammedan mosques. Enver Pasha visited several
Armenian schools, telling the children that the old days of
Moslem-Christian strife had passed for ever and that the two peoples
were now to live together as brothers and sisters.
There were cynics who smiled at all these demonstrations, and yet one
development encouraged even them to believe that an earthly Paradise had
arrived. All through the period of domination only the master Moslem had
been permitted to bear arms and serve in the Ottoman Army. To be a
soldier was an occupation altogether too manly and glorious for the
despised Armenian. But now the Young Turks encouraged all Armenians to
arm, and enrolled them in the Army on an equality with Moslems. These
Armenians fought, both as officers and soldiers, in the Italian and the
Balkan Wars, winning high praise from the Turkish Generals for their
valour and skill. Armenian leaders had figured conspicuously in the
Young Turk movement; these men apparently believed that a constitutional
Turkey was possible, and they preferred such a Turkey to the suzerainty
of the great European Powers or even to an independent State of their
own. They were conscious of their own intellectual and industrial
superiority to the Turks, and knew that they could prosper in the
Ottoman Empire if left alone, whereas, under European control, they
would have greater difficulty in meeting competition of the more
rigorous European colonists who might come in. With the deposition of
the Red Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and the establishment of a constitutional
system, the Armenians now for the first time in several centuries felt
themselves to be free men.
But, as I have already described, all these aspirations vanished like a
dream. Long before the European war began the Turkish democracy had
disappeared. The power of the new Sultan had gone, and the hopes of
regenerating Turkey on modern lines had disappeared, leaving only a
group of individuals, headed by Talaat and Enver, actually in possession
of the State. Having lost their democratic aspirations, these men now
supplanted it with a new national conception. In place of a democratic
constitutional State they resurrected the idea of Pan-Turkism; in place
of equal treatment of all Ottomans they decided to establish a country
exclusively for Turks. I have called this a new conception; yet it was
new only to the individuals who then controlled the destiny of the
Empire, for, in reality, it was merely an attempt to revive the most
barbaric ideas of their ancestors. It represented, as I have said,
merely an atavistic reversion to the original Turk.
We now saw that the Turkish leaders, in talking about liberty, equality,
fraternity, and constitutionalism, were merely children repeating
phrases; that they had used the word “democracy” merely as a ladder by
which to climb to power. After five hundred years’ close contact with
European civilisation the Turk remained precisely the same individual as
the one who had emerged from the steppes of Asia in the Middle Ages. He
was clinging just as tenaciously as his ancestors to that conception of
a State as consisting of a few master individuals whose right it is to
enslave and plunder and maltreat any peoples whom they can subject to
their military control. Though Talaat, Enver, and Djemal all came of the
humblest families, the same fundamental ideas of master and slave
possessed them that formed the statecraft of Osman and the early
Sultans. We now discovered that a paper constitution, and even tearful
visits to Christian churches and cemeteries, could not uproot the inborn
preconception of this nomadic people, that there are only two kinds of
people in the world--the conquering and the conquered.
When the Turkish Government abrogated the capitulations, and in this way
freed themselves from the domination of the foreign Powers, they were
merely taking one step toward realising this Pan-Turkish ideal. I have
told of the difficulties which I had with them over the Christian
schools. Their determination to uproot these, or at least to transform
them into Turkish institutions, was merely another detail in the same
racial progress.
Similarly, they attempted to make all foreign business houses employ
only Turkish labour, insisting that they should discharge their Greek,
Armenian, and Jewish clerks, stenographers, workmen, and other
employees. They ordered foreign business houses to keep their books in
Turkish, and I had some difficulty in arranging a compromise by which
they could keep them in both French and Turkish. The Ottoman Government
even refused to have any dealings with the representative of the largest
Austrian munition maker unless he admitted a Turk as a partner. They
developed a mania for suppressing all languages except Turkish. For
decades French had been the accepted language of foreigners in
Constantinople; all street signs were printed in both French and
Turkish. One morning the astonished foreign residents discovered that
all these French signs had been removed and that the names of streets,
the directions on street cars, and other public notices, appeared only
in these strange Turkish characters, which very few of them understood.
Great confusion resulted from this change, but the ruling powers refused
to restore the detested foreign language.
These leaders not only reverted to the barbaric conceptions of their
ancestors, but they went to extremes that had never entered the minds of
the wary Sultans. Their fifteenth-and sixteenth-century predecessors
treated the subject peoples as dirt under their feet, yet they believed
that they had a certain usefulness and did not disdain to make them
their serfs. But this Committee of Union and Progress, led by Talaat and
Enver, now decided to do away with them altogether. The old conquering
Turks had made the Christians their servants, but their parvenu
descendants bettered their instruction, for they determined to
exterminate them wholesale and Turkify the Empire by massacring the
non-Moslem elements. Originally this was not the statesmanlike
conception of Talaat and Enver; the man who first devised it was one of
the greatest monsters known to history, the “Red Sultan,” Abdul Hamid.
This man came to the throne in 1876, at a critical period in Turkish
history. In the first two years of his reign he lost Bulgaria, as well
as important provinces in the Caucasus, his last remaining vestiges of
sovereignty in Montenegro, Serbia, and Rumania, and all his real powers
in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Greece had long since become an independent
nation, and the processes that were to wrench Egypt from the Ottoman
Empire had already begun. As the Sultan took stock of his inheritance,
he could easily foresee the day when all the rest of his domain would
pass into the hand of the infidel.
What had caused this disintegration of this extensive Turkish Empire?
The real cause, of course, lay deep in the character of the Turk, but
Abdul Hamid saw only the more obvious fact that the intervention of the
great European Powers had brought relief to these imprisoned nations. Of
all the new kingdoms which had been carved out of the Sultan’s
dominions, Serbia--let us remember this fact to her everlasting
honour--is the only one that has conquered her own independence. Russia,
France, and Great Britain have set free all the rest. And what had
happened several times before might happen again. There still remained
one compact race in the Ottoman Empire that had national aspirations and
national potentialities.
In the north-eastern part of Asia Minor bordering on Russia there were
six provinces in which the Armenians formed the largest element in the
population. From the times of Herodotus this portion of Asia has borne
the name of Armenia. The Armenians of the present day are the direct
descendants of the people who inhabited the country three thousand years
ago. Their origin is so ancient that it is lost in fable and mystery.
There are still undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions on the rocky hills
of Van, the largest Armenian city, that have led certain
scholars--though not many, I must admit it--to identify the Armenian
race with the Hittites of the Bible. What is definitely known about the
Armenians, however, is that for ages they have constituted the most
civilised and most industrious race in the eastern section of the
Ottoman Empire. From their mountains they have spread all over the
Sultan’s dominions, and form a considerable element in the population of
all the large cities. Everywhere they are known for their industry,
their intelligence, and their decent and orderly lives. They are so
superior to the Turks intellectually and morally that much of the
business and industry had passed into their hands. With the Greeks, the
Armenians constitute the economic strength of the Empire. These people
became Christians in the fourth century and established the Armenian
Church as their State religion. This is said to be the oldest State
Church in existence.
In face of persecutions which have no parallel elsewhere, these people
have clung to their early Christian faith with the utmost tenacity. For
fifteen hundred years they have lived there in Armenia, a little island
of Christians surrounded by backward peoples of hostile religion and
hostile race. Their long existence has been one unending martyrdom. The
territory which they inhabit forms the connecting link between Europe
and Asia, and all the Asiatic invasions--Saracens, Tartars, Mongols,
Kurds, and Turks--have passed over their peaceful country. For centuries
they have thus been the Belgium of the East.
Through all this period the Armenians have regarded themselves not as
Asiatics, but as Europeans. They speak an Indo-European language, their
racial origin is believed to be by scholars Aryan, and the fact that
their religion is the religion of Europe has always made them turn their
eyes westward; and out of that western country, they have always
believed, would some day come the deliverance that would rescue them
from their murderous masters. And now, as Abdul Hamid in 1876 surveyed
his shattered domain, he saw that its most dangerous spot was Armenia.
He believed, rightly or wrongly, that these Armenians, like the
Rumanians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, and the Serbians, aspired to
restore their independent individual nation, and he knew that Europe and
America sympathised with this ambition.
The Treaty of Berlin, which had definitely ended the Turco-Russian War,
contained an article which gave the European Powers a protecting hand
over the Armenians. How could he free himself permanently from this
danger? An enlightened administration, which would have transformed the
Armenians into free men and made them safe in their lives and property
and civil and religious rights, would probably have made them peaceful
and loyal subjects. But no Turk could rise to such a conception of
statesmanship as this. Instead, Abdul Hamid decided that there was only
one way of ridding Turkey of the Armenian problem--and that was to rid
her of the Armenians. The physical destruction of 2,000,000 men, women,
and children by massacres, organised and directed by the State, seemed
to be the one sure way of forestalling the further disruption of the
Turkish Empire.
One day Abdul Hamid sent for the Armenian Patriarch, the head of the
Armenian Church. He received him in his palace directly overlooking the
Bosphorus. The Sultan pointed to this stream and said: “If your
Armenians do not stop agitating, I will make their blood flow like the
Bosphorus out there!”
And now for nearly thirty years Turkey gave the world an illustration of
government by massacre. We in Europe and America heard of these events
when they reached especially monstrous proportions, as they did in
1895-96, when nearly 200,000 Armenians were most atrociously done to
death. But through all these years the existence of the Armenians was
one continuous nightmare. Their property was stolen, their men were
murdered, their women were ravished, their young girls were kidnapped
and forced to live in Turkish harems. All these things happened daily.
Yet Abdul Hamid was not able to accomplish his full purpose; had he had
his will, he would have massacred the whole nation in one hideous orgy.
He attempted to do this in 1895, but found certain insuperable
obstructions to his plan. Chief of these were England, France, and
Russia. These atrocities called Gladstone, then eighty-six years old,
from his retirement, and his speeches, in which he denounced the Sultan
as “the Great Assassin” and “Abdul the Damned,” aroused the whole world
to the enormities that were taking place. It became apparent that,
unless the Sultan desisted, England, France, and Russia would intervene,
and the Sultan well knew that, in case this intervention took place,
such remnants of Turkey as had survived earlier partitions would
disappear. Thus Abdul Hamid had to abandon his satanic enterprise of
destroying a whole race by murder; yet Armenia continued to suffer the
slow agony of pitiless persecution. Up to the outbreak of the European
war not a day had passed in the Armenian vilayets without its outrages
and its murders. The Young Turk régime, despite its promises of
universal brotherhood, brought no respite to the Armenians. A few months
after the love-feastings already described, one of the worst massacres
took place at Adana, in which 35,000 people were destroyed.
And now the Young Turks, who had adopted so many of Abdul Hamid’s ideas,
also made his Armenian policy their own. Their passion for Turkifying
the nation seemed to demand logically the extermination of all
Christians--Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians. Much as they admired the
Mohammedan conquerors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they now
perceived that these great warriors had made one fatal mistake, for they
had had it in their power completely to obliterate the Christian
populations and had neglected to do so. This policy, in their opinion,
was a fatal error of statesmanship, and explained all the woes from
which Turkey has suffered in modern times. Had these old Moslem
chieftains, when they conquered Bulgaria, put all the Bulgarians to the
sword, and peopled the Bulgarian country with Moslem Turks, there would
never have been any modern Bulgarian problem, and Turkey would never
have lost this part of her Empire. Similarly, had they destroyed all the
Rumanians, Serbians, and Greeks, the provinces which are now occupied by
these races would still have remained integral parts of the Sultan’s
domain. They felt that the mistake had been a terrible one, but that
something might be saved from the ruin. They would destroy all Greeks,
Syrians, Armenians, and other Christians, move Moslem families into
their homes and into their farms, and so make sure that these
territories would not similarly be taken away from Turkey.
In order to accomplish this great reform it would not be necessary to
murder every living Christian. The most beautiful and healthy Armenian
girls could be taken, converted forcibly to Mohammedanism, and made the
wives or concubines of devout followers of the Prophet. Their children
would then automatically become Moslems and so strengthen the Empire as
the Janissaries did in former years. These Armenian girls represent a
high type of womanhood, and the Young Turks, in their crude, intuitive
way, recognised that the mingling of their blood with the Turkish
population would exert a eugenic influence upon the whole. Armenian boys
of tender years could be taken into Turkish families and be brought up
in ignorance of the fact that they were anything but Moslems. These
were about the only elements, however, that could make any valuable
contributions to the new Turkey which was now being planned. Since all
precautions must be taken against the development of a new generation of
Armenians, it would be necessary to kill outright all men who were in
their prime and thus capable of propagating the accursed species. Old
men and women formed no great danger to the future of Turkey, for they
had already fulfilled their natural function of leaving descendants;
still, they were nuisances and therefore should be disposed of.
Unlike Abdul Hamid, the Young Turks found themselves in a position where
they could carry out this “holy” enterprise. Great Britain, France, and
Russia had stood in the way of their predecessor. But now these
obstacles had been removed. The Young Turks, as I have said, believed
that while they were at war with these nations they had no
representatives in Turkey who could interfere with their internal
affairs. Only one Power could successfully raise objections, and that
was Germany. But Germany had never attempted to stop massacres in
Turkey. In 1898, when all the rest of Europe was ringing with
Gladstone’s denunciations and demanding intervention, Kaiser Wilhelm the
Second had gone to Constantinople, visited Abdul Hamid, pinned his
finest decorations on that bloody tyrant’s breast, and kissed him on
both cheeks. The same Kaiser who had done this in 1898 was still sitting
on the throne in 1915, and was now Turkey’s ally. Thus for the first
time in two centuries the Turks, in 1915, had their Christian
populations utterly at their mercy. The time had finally come to make
Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks.
[Illustration: Sheik-ul-Islam proclaiming a Holy War.
[_To face p. 192._
]
[Illustration: The Bosphorus--Key to the Black Sea.]