Every one at all familiar with recent German literature will recall
frequent references to the _Drang nach Morgenland_. The “impulse toward
the Land of the Morning”--fit inspiration for a sentimental nation.
It has been pointed out, again and again, that the open road to German
expansion lies in the direction of Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia.
Indeed, the expansion has been actually taking place, by a process
of infiltration, as it were. Recall the Bagdad Railway, the German
incursions into Ottoman finance, the German reorganization of the
Turkish army. All that lay between the Germans and their dream of the
Morgenland was a group of petty states, easily to be subjugated or
overleaped, and the decaying Turkish political organization.
But there was an irreconcilable Russian dream of Constantinople and the
Eastern Mediterranean, and a British dream of a sub-tropic zone, all
the way to India, taking laws, if from any power, from Britain.
For years, as every one knows, these dreams have played at cards with
the Balkans. Not to go beyond the present century, did we not see
Russian influence steadily advancing there, until rudely checked by
Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Again, the insidious
development of Russian influence, culminating in the humiliation
of Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War, but checked by the creation
of an independent Albania under a German prince. Russian influence
encroaching once more, stimulated by the Albanian fiasco and the
intensification of Pan-Serbism, to be checked--for no doubt so it
was intended--by the utter humiliation of Servia. Probably it was
not believed that Russia would trump the Austrian ace. But who could
suppose that, in such a game, the trumps would not, sooner or later, be
drawn out?
It would be interesting to know why the ace was led just now, and why
it was trumped at this precise moment. What is of more importance,
however, is to know why the game was set. What did Germany want with
the Land of the Morning? What does the Eastern Mediterranean mean to
Russia? And what would it signify to England if either dream were
realized? Is it matter of sentiment, of “historic mission,” or is it
matter of practical interest? And if matter of practical interest,
whose interest weighs so heavily that it must be bought with cities in
ruins and provinces devastated, with hundreds of thousands of the best
and most useful lives sent down to dusty death?
Manifestly, not the interest of the mass of humanity.