CRESCENT AND IRON CROSS
BY E.F. BENSON
_Crescent and Iron Cross, Preface_
In compiling the following pages I have had access to certain sources of
official information, the nature of which I am not at liberty to specify
further. I have used these freely in such chapters of this book as deal
with recent and contemporary events in Turkey or in Germany in
connection with Turkey: the chapter, for instance, entitled 'Deutschland
über Allah,' is based very largely on such documents. I have tried to be
discriminating in their use, and have not, as far as I am aware, stated
anything derived from them as a fact, for which I had not found
corroborative evidence. With regard to the Armenian massacres I have
drawn largely on the testimony collected by Lord Bryce, on that brought
forward by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee in his pamphlet _The Murder of a
Nation_, and _The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks,_ and on the pamphlet
by Dr. Martin Niepage, called _The Horrors of Aleppo_. In the first
chapter I have based the short historical survey on the contribution of
Mr. D.G. Hogarth to _The Balkans_ (Clarendon Press, 1915). The chapter
called 'Thy Kingdom is Divided' is in no respect at all an official
utterance, and merely represents the individual opinions and surmises of
the author. It has, however, the official basis that the Allies have
pledged themselves to remove the power of the Turk from Constantinople,
and to remove out of the power of the Turk the alien peoples who have
too long already been subject to his murderous rule. I have, in fact,
but attempted to conjecture in what kind of manner that promise will be
fulfilled.
Fresh items of news respecting internal conditions in Turkey are
continually coming in, and if one waited for them all, one would have to
wait to the end of the war before beginning to write at all on this
subject. But since such usefulness as this book may possibly have is
involved with the necessity of its appearance before the end of the war,
I set a term to the gathering of material, and, with the exception of
two or three notes inserted later, ceased to collect it after June 1917.
But up to then anything that should have been inserted in surveys and
arguments, and is not, constitutes a culpable omission on my part.
E.F. BENSON
_Crescent and Iron Cross, Contents_
CHAPTER I
THE THEORY OF THE OLD TURKS