There must be collecting stations for these tragic colonists, centres to

which they must be herded in from surrounding districts: one at

Osmanieh, let us say, one at Aleppo, one at Ras-el-Ain, one at Damascus.

And since it would be a pity to let so many flowers of girlhood waste

their sweetness on the desert air of Deir-el-Zor, slave markets must be

established at these collecting stations. There would be plenty of

girls, and prices would be low, but the reverend ministers of Allah the

God of Love, the Ulemas, the Padis and the Muftis, should be accorded a

preferential tariff. Indeed they should pay nothing at all; they should

just choose a girl and take her away, and, with the help of Allah the

God of Love, convert her to the blessed creed. No one was too young for

these lessons.... A little abstemiousness would not hurt these pampered

Christians, so when they set out on their marches they need not be

provided with rations or water. Perhaps some might die, but Talaat had

no use for weaklings at his agricultural colonies. Nor must there be any

poking and prying on the part of those interfering American

missionaries; and so Talaat Bey put all the agricultural colonies out of

bounds for foreigners....

There was no hurry over these deportations, for the plea of military

exigencies, which had caused the deportations in Armenia itself to be

terminated by massacre with a rapidity almost inartistic, did not apply

to Armenians so far from the seat of war. Their picnics could be

conducted quietly and pleasantly in the leisurely Oriental manner. Even

the men need not be murdered absolutely out of hand. Strong young

fellows might be stripped and tied down and then beaten to death by

bastinadoing the feet till they burst, or by five hundred blows on the

chest and stomach. Their cries would mingle with the screams of their

sisters in the embrace of Turkish soldiers. And, talking of embraces, if

a woman was desirable, she need not walk all the way to Deir-el-Zor, but

by embracing Islamism be transferred to a harem. But these were details

that might be left to individual taste: there were no precise

instructions save that no Armenian men must be discoverable in the

Ottoman Empire at all, and no women save those who had become Turkish

women, or who were at work on the waterless and the malarial

agricultural colonies.

Talaat Bey reviewed his finished scheme. He thought it would do, and

Enver Pasha agreed with him, and Jemal Bey (who soon after styled

himself Jemal the Great), the Military Governor of Syria, and so

responsible for the last stages of their pilgrimage, thought it would do

very well indeed. And instructions were sent out to every town in the

Empire where there were Armenians, in accordance with the programme of

Talaat Bey.

How Enver carried out his part of the programme in Armenia itself we

have seen, and by the end of the year (1915) his work was done, and

Armenia was Armenia no longer. But operations, as I have said, were

conducted in a more leisurely manner elsewhere, and the agony of that

butchery protracted. But Jemal got to work at once in the thickly

populated district round Zeitun. He had had no success in the campaign

of the winter in the direction of the Suez Canal, and his troops were

hungry for some sort of victory. The Zeitunlis were hardy independent

mountaineers, who were possessed of arms, and Jemal thought it more

prudent not to dally with deportations, but conduct a regular campaign

against them. For two or three months they resisted, entrenching

themselves in the hills, but they could not hold out against artillery

and the modern apparatus of war, and the whole tribe was wiped out. That

done, Jemal became Jemal the Great by reason of his national services,

and paid a visit to Germany. On his return we shall hear of him again.

Meanwhile, from all the reports that have arrived from missionaries and

others, we may take one or two, almost at random. At certain places, as

in the governments of Ismid, Angora and Diarbekr, the Armenian

population was completely wiped out. Sometimes tortures were added, as

at a certain Anatolian town where there was a big Armenian school, in

which a number of professors and instructors, some of whom had studied

in America, in Scotland, and in Germany, had for years been working.

What happened to them was this:--

(1) Professor A served the College thirty-five years, and taught

Turkish and history. He was arrested without charge, the hair of his

head and beard were pulled out in order to secure damaging confessions.

He was starved and hung up by the arms for a day and a night and

repeatedly beaten. He was then murdered.

(2) Professor B, who had served the College thirty-three years, and

taught mathematics, suffered the same fate.

(3) Professor C, head of the preparatory department, had served the

College for twenty years. He was made to witness the spectacle of a man

being beaten almost to death, and became mentally deranged. He was

murdered with his family.

(4) Professor D, who taught mental and moral sciences, was treated in

the same way as Professor A. He also had three finger nails pulled out

by the roots, and was subsequently murdered.

Similarly, at Diarbekr, the Armenians were collected in batches of 600,

taken out of the town, and killed to the last man. Among them was the

Armenian Archbishop; his eyes and nails were dragged out before he was

butchered.

Or let us take a look at some of the collecting camps. At one, described

by an eye-witness, we find that the convoy had arrived after several

months of travel. More than half were already dead, they had been

pillaged by bandits and Kurds seven times. They were forbidden to drink

water when they passed by a stream, three-quarters of the young women

and girls had been kidnapped, the rest were compelled to sleep with the

gendarmes who conducted them. At Osmanieh it was decided to deport the

women and children by train. They lay about the station starving and

fever-stricken. When the train arrived many were jostled on to the line,

and the driver yelled with joy, crying out, 'Did you see how I smashed

them up?'

At another camp typhus broke out; those who died of it were left

unburied, as vouched for by a Turkish officer, in order to increase the

infection....

Urfa was another collecting camp for the Armenians in that district, and

the following account is based on the information of an eye-witness.

Here, before the concentration began, the Armenians living in the town

offered resistance to the Turks, and held out until Fahri Bey, second in

command to Jemal the Great, arrived with artillery, bombarded the town,

and massacred every Armenian there. Quiet being thus restored, the bands

of deported began to arrive. They came by rail or on foot, and, with

the Prussian love of tabulation, were divided into three groups.

The first group consisted of old men, old women, and young children.

They, guarded by gendarmes, were sent marching through the desert to

Deir-el-Zor. Few, if any, ever arrived there, all dying by the way.

The second group, consisting of able-bodied men, was led off in batches

and slaughtered. Among them were Zohrab and Vartkes, Armenian deputies

who had been brought there from Constantinople.

The third group consisted of young marriageable girls. Some, perhaps,

found their way into harems.

From Aleppo (one of the final concentration camps before such as were

left of the convoys set forth for their goal, the swamps or the desert

round Deir-el-Zor) we have the detailed evidence of Dr. Martin Niepage,

High Grade teacher in the German Technical School. This gentleman, with

a courage and a humanity to which the highest tribute must be paid,

addressed a report of protest to the German Ambassador at

Constantinople, and wrote an open letter to the Reichstag on the subject

of what he had seen with his own eyes in that town. In his preliminary

matter he speaks as follows:--

'In dilapidated caravanserais I found quantities of dead, many corpses

being half-decomposed, and others still living among them who were soon

to breathe their last. In other yards I found quantities of sick and

dying people, whom nobody was looking after.... We teachers and our

pupils had to pass them every day. Every time we went out we saw through

the open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and wrapped in rags. In

the morning our school children, on their way through the narrow

streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-carts on which every day,

from eight to ten rigid corpses without coffin or shroud, were carried

away, their arms and legs trailing out of the vehicle.'

From the report itself:--

'Out of convoys which, when they left their homes on the Armenian

plateau, numbered from two to three thousand men, women, and children,

only two or three hundred survivors arrived here in the south. The men

were slaughtered on the way, the women and girls, with the exception of

the old, the ugly and those who are still children, have been abused by

Turkish soldiers and officers.... Even when they are fording rivers they

do not allow those dying of thirst to drink. All the nourishment they

receive is a daily ration of a little meal sprinkled on their hands....

Opposite the German Technical School at Aleppo, a mass of about four

hundred emaciated forms, the remnant of such convoys, is lying in one of

the caravanserais. There are about a hundred children (boys and girls)

among them, from five to seven years old. Most of them are suffering

from typhoid and dysentery. When one enters the yard, one has the

impression of entering a madhouse. If one brings food, one notices that

they have forgotten how to eat.... If one gives them bread, they put it

aside indifferently. They just lie there quietly waiting for death.'

Dr. Niepage wrote this report in the hope of saving such as then (1915)

survived. No notice whatever was taken of it, and his postscript,

written in May 1916, records the fact that 'the exiles encamped at

Ras-el-Ain on the Bagdad Railway, estimated at 20,000 men, women and

children, were slaughtered to the last one.'[1]

[Footnote 1: It is right to add that at Aleppo an officer called Bekir

Sami guarded 50,000 Armenians whom he had collected from neighbouring

districts, who were threatened with massacre, and I find that a German

missionary states that there were 45,000 Armenians alive in Aleppo. This

forms confirmatory evidence, but at the same time there is nothing to

show that they were not subsequently deported to Deir-el-Zor. In this

case it is highly improbable that any survive.]

In Dr. Niepage's view, as I have stated elsewhere, the Germans are

directly responsible for the continuance of the massacres. Such, too, is

the opinion, he tells us, of the educated Moslems, and his courage in

stating this has lost him his post at Aleppo. It is to be sincerely

hoped that he has escaped the fate of a certain Dr. Lepsius, who, for

drawing attention to the fact that Germany allowed the Armenian

massacres, has been arrested for high treason.

Before the end of 1915 the German authorities, who had refused to

interfere in the massacres, and both in the official press and through

official utterances had expressed their support of this Ottomanisation

of the Empire, began to think that you might have too much of a good

thing, and that the massacres had really gone far enough. Their reason

was clear and explicit: there would be a very serious shortage of labour

in the beet-growing industry and in the harvest-fields, for which they

had sent grain and artificial manures from Germany. There had been some

talk, they said, of saving 500,000 Armenians out of the race, but, in

the way things were going on, it seemed that the remnant would not

nearly approach that figure. Would not the great Ottomanisers temper

their patriotism with a little clemency? Talaat Bey disagreed: he wanted

to make a complete job of it, but Jemal the Great, fresh from his visit

to Germany, supported the idea, and, in spite of Talaat's opposition,

made a spectacular exhibition of clemency, in which, beyond doubt, we

can trace an 'Imitatio Imperatoris,' in the following manner.

There was at the time a large convoy of men and women in Constantinople

which was to be led out for murder and deportation, and Jemal gave

orders that it should be spared and sent back to its highland home. He

gave orders also that the entire convoy should be informed who was their

saviour, and should be led in procession past his house and show their

gratitude. All day the sorry pageant lasted, the ragged, half-starved

crowd streamed by the house of Jemal the Great, with murmurs of

thanksgiving and uplifted hands, and all manner of obeisances, while

Jemal the Great stood in his porch with stern, impassive face, and hand

on his sword-hilt in the best Potsdam manner, and acknowledged these

thanksgivings....[1]

[Footnote 1: In support of Jemal's claim to clemency it must be added

that, according to a report coming from Alexandria, he hanged twelve of

the worst assassins sent to Syria as ringleaders of the massacres. I

cannot find corroboration of this.]

Here, then, is the absurd, the Williamesque side of this ludicrous

popinjay, Jemal the Great, and it contains not only the obvious seeds of

laughter, but the more helpful seeds of hope. He has a strong hand on

the very efficient army of Syria, and his visits to Berlin seem perhaps

to have turned his head not quite in the direction that the

Master-egalo-megalomaniac of Berlin intended. I gather that Jemal the

Great was not so much impressed by the magnificence of William II. as to

fall dazzled and prone at the Imperial feet, and lick with enraptured

tongue the imperial boot polish, but rather to be inspired to do the

same himself, to become the God-anointed of the newly acquired German

province, which is Turkey, and make a Potsdam of his own. This is only a

guess, but the conduct of Jemal the Great in the matter of these

Armenian refugees, and in other affairs, has been distinctly imperial.

In June of this year, for instance, he telegraphed to H.E. the Vali of

Syria, and an extract from his text is truly Potsdamish. 'One and a half

million of sandbags,' he wrote, 'are required for the fortress of

Gaza.... The bags should be made, if necessary, of all the silk-hangings

in houses of Syria and Palestine.' With his army behind him, he has

twice already defied the orders of Talaat, and I am inclined to think

that he is the coming Strong Man of the effete Empire with whom it would

be well worth while to make friends, even at a highish price. The Allied

Powers should keep an undazzled eye on him, for it is quite possible

that, having defied Talaat successfully, he may go on to defy the real

rulers of Turkey, who live in Berlin. His Syrian army, from such sources

as are available, appears to be more efficient than any other body of

troops the Turks can put into the field, and he has them in control.

Probably in the winter of 1917-1918 our troops will come into collision

with them. But in the interval, also quite probably, Jemal the Great may

resent German superintendence.[1]

[Footnote 1: See note at end of this chapter.]

But in addition to his ludicrous side, there is in him a refined

hypocrisy and a subtle cruelty worthy of Abdul Hamid. One instance will

suffice.

There had been some talk that at certain of these concentration camps

there was no water supply, and he gave orders, did Jemal the Great and

the Merciful, that water should be sent. A train consisting of trucks

of water accordingly was despatched to one of those camps, situated in

the desert, with no supply nearer than six miles, and an eye-witness

describes its arrival. The mob of Armenians, mad with thirst, surrounded

it, and, since everything must be done in an orderly and seemly manner,

were beaten back by the Turkish guards, and made to stand at a due

distance for the distribution. And when those ranks, with their parched

throats and sun-cracked lips, were all ready, the Turkish guards opened

the taps of the reservoirs, and allowed the whole of their contents to

run away into the sand. Whether Jemal the Great planned that, or whether

it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say.

But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe's tales,

only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from

the _Times'_ correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917. He describes the

treatment of English prisoners in Germany: 'An equally common

entertainment with those women (German Red Cross nurses) was to offer a

wounded man a glass, perhaps, of water, then, standing just outside his

reach, to pour it slowly on the ground.' Could those sisters of mercy

have read the account of Jemal's clemency, or is it merely an instance

of the parallelism of similar minds?

So the empty train returned, and Jemal the Great caused it to be known

in Berlin that he was active in securing a proper water supply for the

famous agricultural settlements in the desert, and loud were the

encomiums in the press of the Central Powers over the colonisation of

Syria by the Armenians, the progress and enlightenment of the Turks, and

the skilful and humane organisation of Jemal the Great.

There is no difficulty in estimating to-day the number of Armenian men

who survive in the Turkish Empire. All appeals to the Prussian

overlords, such as were made by Dr. Niepage, and the belated

remonstrance of the Prussians themselves when they foresaw a dearth of

labour for the husbandry of beet and cereals, fell on deaf ears, and I

cannot see any reason for supposing that Armenian men exist any more in

the Empire. It is more difficult to judge of the numbers of women who,

by accepting the Moslem creed and the harems, are still alive. Certainly

in some districts there were considerable 'conversions,' and Dr. Niepage

rates them as many thousands. But the willingness to accept those

conditions was not always a guarantee for their being granted, and I

have read reports where would-be converts were told that 'religion' was

a more serious matter than that, and, instead of being accepted, they

were massacred. But even if Dr. Niepage is right, we can scarcely

consider these women as constituting an Armenian element any more in the

country. The work of butchery, the torture, the long-drawn agonies of

those inhuman pilgrimages have come to an end because there are no more

Armenian victims available. Apart from those who escaped over the

Russian frontier, and the handful who sought refuge in Egypt, the race

exists no longer, and the seal has been set on the bloodiest deed that

ever stained the annals of the barbarous Osmanlis. It is not in revenge

on the murderers, but in order to rescue the other subject peoples,

Arabs, Greeks, Jews, who are still enclosed within the frontiers of the

Empire, that the Allied Governments, in their answer to President

Wilson, stated that among their aims as belligerents, was the

'liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of

the Turks.' There is defined their irreducible demand: never again,

after peace returns, will the Turk be allowed to control the destinies

of races not his own. Too long already--and to their disgrace be it

spoken--have the civilised and Christian nations of Europe tolerated at

their very doors a tyranny that has steadily grown more murderous and

more monstrous, because they feared the upset of the Balance of Power.

Now at least such Powers as value national honour, and regard a national

promise as something more than a gabble of ink on a scrap of paper, have

resolved that they will suffer the tyranny of the Turk over his alien

subject peoples to continue no longer. It is the least they can do (and

unhappily the most) to redeem the century-long neglect of their duty.

Even now, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, the direst peril

threatens those other peoples who at present groan under Turkish rule,

and we can but pray that the end of the war will come before Arabs or

Greeks or Jews suffer the same fate as has exterminated the Armenians.

Too often have we been too late; we must only hope that another item

will not have to be added to that miserable list, and that, when the day

of reckoning comes, no half-hearted and pusillanimous policy will stay

our hands from the complete execution of that to which we stand pledged.

The Balance of Power has gone the way of other rickety makeshifts, but

there must be no makeshift in our dealings with the Turk, no compromise

and no delay. What shall be done with those who planned and executed the

greatest massacres known to history matters little; let them be hanged

as high as Haman, and have done with them. But what does matter is that

at no future time must it be in the power of a Government that has never

been other than barbaric and butcherous, to do again as it has done

before.

NOTE ON JEMAL THE GREAT

Jemal the Great has very obligingly done what I suggested we might

expect him to do, and has kicked against the German control of the

Syrian army. General von Falkenhayn was sent to take supreme command,

and on June 28th of this year Jemal the Great refused to receive orders

from him. In consequence General von Falkenhayn refused responsibility

for any offensive movement there if Jemal remained in command.

This promised well for trouble between Turks and Germans, but we must

not, I am afraid, build very high hopes on it, for Germany has dealt

with the situation in a masterly manner. Jemal was already Minister of

Marine as well as commander of the Syrian army, so the Emperor asked him

to pay another visit to Berlin, and he has been visiting Krupp's works

and German naval yards, and we shall find probably that in the future

his activities will be marine rather than military, and that von

Falkenhayn will have a free hand in Syria.

But this will prove rather disappointing for Jemal, since it seems

beyond mere coincidence that towards the end of August Herr von

Kuhlmann, the new German Foreign Minister, induced the Turkish

Government (while Jemal was at Berlin) to put their navy and their

merchant fleet under the orders of the German Admiralty, and already

many Turkish naval officers have been replaced by Germans. Thus Jemal

will find himself deprived of his military command, because the navy so

urgently needed his guiding hand, while his guiding hand over the navy

will be itself guided by the German Admiralty.... In fact, it looks

rather like checkmate for Jemal the Great, and an end to the trouble he

might have given the German control.

On the eve of his leaving Germany, as yet unconscious probably of the

subordination of the entire Turkish fleet to the German Admiralty, he

gave an interview to a representative of the _Cologne Gazette_, which

deserves more than that ephemeral appearance. It shows Jemal the Great

in a sort of hypnotic trance induced at Potsdam. 'The German fleet,' he

says, 'is simply spotless in its power, and a model for all states which

need a modern navy--a model which cannot be surpassed.' ... He went for

a cruise in a submarine which proceeded 'so smoothly, elegantly, calmly

and securely that I had the impression of cruising in a great

steamship.' ... He was taken to Belgium, and describes the 'idyllic life

there': in the towns 'the people go for walks all day long,' and in the

country the peasants blithely gather in the harvest with the help of

happy prisoners.' (He does not tell us where the harvest goes to, any

more than the Germans tell us where the Turkish harvests go to.) He was

taken to General Headquarters, which he describes as 'majestic.' Finally

he was taken into the presence of the All-Highest, and seems to have

emerged in the condition in which Moses came down from Sinai.... But one

must not altogether despair of Jemal the Great. It is still possible

that, on his return to Constantinople, when he found that his position,

as Minister of Marine was but a clerkship in the German Admiralty, the

hypnotic trance began to pass off, and his ambitions to re-assert

themselves. He may yet give trouble to the Germans if properly handled.

_Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter IV_

THE QUESTION OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE

It is impossible to leave this heart-rending tale of the sufferings of

the Armenian people under the Turks without some account of that devoted

band of American missionaries who, with a heroism unsurpassed, and

perhaps unequalled, so eagerly sacrificed themselves to the ravages of

pestilence and starvation in order to alleviate the horrors that

descended on the people to whom they had been sent. Often they were

forcibly driven from the care of their flocks, often in the

extermination of their flocks there was none left whom they could

shepherd, but wherever a remnant still lingered there remained these

dauntless and self-sacrificing men and women, regardless of everything

except the cause to which they had devoted themselves. They recked

nothing of the dangers to which they exposed themselves so long as

there was a child or a woman or a man whom they could feed or nurse.

Terrible as were the sufferings through which the Armenians passed, they

must have been infinitely more unbearable had it not been for these

American missionaries; small as was the remnant that escaped into the

safety of Persia or Russian Trans-Caucasia, their numbers must have been

halved had it not been for the heroism of these men and women. While the

German Consuls contented themselves with a few faint protests to their

Ambassador at Constantinople, followed by an acquiescence of silence,

the missionaries constituted themselves into a Red Cross Society of

intrepid workers, and, as one well-qualified authority tells us,

'suffered as many casualties from typhus and physical exhaustion as any

proportionate body of workers on the European battlefields.' Fully

indeed did they live up to the mandate of the American board that sent

them out: 'Your great business is with the fundamental doctrines and

duties of the Gospel.'

At the opening of the European War the American Missions had been at

work for nearly a hundred years, and were disseminated over Anatolia and

Armenia. They had opened 163 Protestant churches and 450 schools, they

established hospitals, and in every possible way spread civilisation in

a country where the spirit of the governing class was barbarism. It was

not their object to proselytise. 'Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if

he will,' so ran the instructions from which I have already quoted, 'the

Greek a Greek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental,' and

in the same wise and open-minded spirit they encouraged native

Protestant Churches which were independent of them and largely

self-supporting. Naturally in a country governed by monsters like Abdul

Hamid and Enver Pasha in later days, they earned the enmity which is the

tribute of barbarians to those who stand for civilisation, and when,

owing to the extermination or flight of their Armenian flocks, they were

left without a charge, and their schools were closed, we find a paean of

self-congratulation going up from the Turkish press inspired by the

butchers of Armenia. But till the massacres and the flight were

complete, they gave themselves to the 'duties of the Gospel,' and their

deeds shine like a star into the blackness of that night of murder.

I will take as an example of the superb heroism of those men and women

the diary of an American lady attached to the mission at Urmia, a

document that, anonymously, is one of the noblest, least self-conscious

records I have ever read. The period of it extends over five months.

Early in January 1915 the Russian troops were withdrawn from Urmia,

which lies on the frontier between Turkey and Persia, and simultaneously

the Moslem population began to plunder the Christian villages, the

inhabitants of which fled for refuge to the missions in the city.

Talaat's official murder-scheme was not completed yet, but the Kurds,

together with the Turks, had planned a local massacre at Geogtapa, which

was stopped by the American doctor of this mission, Dr. Packard, who, at

great personal risk, obtained an interview with the Kurdish chief, and

succeeded in inducing him to spare the lives of the Christians, if they

gave up arms and ammunition and property. The American flag was hoisted

over the Mission buildings, and before a week was out there were over

ten thousand refugees housed in the yards and rooms, where they remained

for five months, the places of the dead being taken by fresh influxes.

The dining-room, the sitting-room, the church, the school, were all

given over to these destitute people, and from the beginning fear of

massacre, as well as prevalence of disease, haunted the camp. It was

impossible to move dead bodies outside; they had to be buried in the

thronged yards, and every day children were born. But here is the spirit

that animated their protectors. 'We have just had a Praise meeting,'

records the diarist at the close of the first fortnight, 'with fifty or

sixty we could gather from the halls and rooms near, and we feel more

cheerful. We thought if Paul and Silas, with their stripes, could sing

praises in prison, so could we.'

The weeks, of which each day was a procession of hours too full of work

to leave time for anxiety, began to enrol themselves into months, and

the hope of rescue by a Russian advance made their hearts sick, so long

was it deferred. Refugees from neighbouring villages kept arriving, and

there was the constant problem before these devoted friends of their

flock, as to how to feed them. All such were welcome, and eager was the

welcome they received, though every foot of space in the buildings and

in the yards was occupied. But somehow they managed to make room for all

who came, and for those villagers who, under threat of torture and

massacre, had apostatised, there was but yearning and sorrow, but never

a word of blame or bitterness. Sometimes there was a visit of Turkish

troops to search for concealed Russians, and, as our diarist remarks,

'We can't complain of the monotony of life, for we never know what is

going to happen next. On Tuesday morning we had a wedding in my room

here. The boy and girl were simple villagers.... The wedding was fixed

for the Syrian New Year, but the Kurds came and carried off wedding

clothes and everything else in the house. They all fled here, and were

married in the old dirty garments they were wearing when they ran for

their lives.... Their only present was a little tea and sugar that I

tied up in a handkerchief and gave to the bride.'

The eternal feminine and the eternal human speak there; and there, for

this gallantest of women, were two keys that locked up the endless

troubles and anxieties that ceased not day or night. But sometimes the

flesh was weak, and in the privacy of her diary she says, 'How long, O

Lord?' But for that there was the master-key that unlocks all wards, and

a little further on we read, 'One of the verses that helps to keep my

faith steady is, "He that spared not His own Son." For weeks we have had

no word from the outside world, but we "rest in Jehovah and wait

patiently for Him."'

The conditions inside the crowded yards grew steadily worse. Dysentery

was rife, and the deaths from it in that narrow space averaged thirty a

day. The state of the sufferers grew so terrible that it was difficult

to get any one to look after them at all, and many were lying in the

open yards, and the weather, which hitherto had been warm, got cold, and

snow fell. It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be

obtained for those in health, and that of a kind utterly unsuitable to

the sick, while in the minds of their nurses was the bitter knowledge

that with proper diet hundreds of lives could have been saved, and

hundreds of cases of illness avoided.

For the dead there was but a small percentage of coffins available, and

'the great mass are just dropped into the great trench of rotting

humanity (in the yard). As I stand at my window I see one after another

of the little bodies carried by ... and the condition of the living is

more pitiful than that of the dead--hungry, ragged, dirty, sick, cold,

wet, swarming with vermin. Not for all the wealth of all the rulers of

Europe would I bear for one hour their responsibility for the suffering

and misery of this one little corner of the world alone. A helpless

unarmed Christian community turned over to the sword and the passion of

Islam!'

On the top of this came an epidemic of typhoid, twenty-seven cases on

the first day. Outside in the town the Turkish Consul began hanging

Christians, and the missioners were allowed to take the bodies and bury

them. There were threats that the mission would be entered, and all

young men (possible combatants) killed, but this fear was not realised.

The typhoid increased, and the doctor of the mission and others of the

staff fell ill with it; but the patience and service of the remainder

never faltered, while the same spirit of uncomplaining suffering

animated the refugees. 'Mr. McDowell,' so the diarist relates, 'saw a

tired and weary woman with a baby in her arms, sitting in one of the

seats, and said to her, "Where do you stay?" She said "Just here." "How

long have you been here?" "Since the beginning." (two months) she

replied. "How do you sleep at night?" "I lay the baby on the desk in

front of me, and I have this post at the back to lean against. This is a

very good place. Thank you very much."'

In April there comes a break in the diary after the day on which the

following entry is made:--

'I felt on Sunday as if I ought to get my own burial clothes ready, so

as to make as little trouble as possible when my time comes, for in

these days we all go about our work knowing that any one of us may be

the next to go down. And yet I think our friends would be surprised to

see how cheerful we have kept, and how many occasions we find for

laughing: for ludicrous things do happen. Then, too, after dwelling so

intimately with Death for three months, he doesn't seem to have so

unfriendly an aspect, and the "Other Side" seems near, and our Pilot

close beside us.... I find the Rock on which I can anchor in peace are

the words of Christ Himself: "Where I am, there ye may be also." ...

That is enough, to be where He is....'

Then comes a break of two months, during which the writer was down with

typhoid. She resumes again in June, finding that death has made many

changes, and gets back to work again at once. By that time the Russians

had entered Urmia, a thanksgiving service was held, the refugees

dispersed, and the American Mission went quietly on with its normal

work.

Now I have taken this one instance of the work of Americans at Urmia to

show in some detail the character of the work that they were doing, and

the Christian and humanising influence of it. But all over Armenia and

Anatolia were similar settlements, and, as already mentioned, at the

time of the massacres there were established there over a hundred of

their churches and over four hundred schools, and from these extracts

which concern only one not very large centre, it may be gathered what

leaven of civilising influence the sum of their energies must have

implied. That lamp shone steady and clear, a 'kindly light' in the

darkness of Turkish misrule, and in the havoc of the massacres a beacon

of hope, not always reached by those hapless refugees. Indeed it seems

to have been only on the frontier that the missions were able to save

those foredoomed hordes of fleeing Christians; in Armenia and in

Anatolia generally the massacres and 'deportations' were complete, and

by the end of 1915 all American missions were closed, for there were

none to tend and care for. Even if the massacres had not occurred, the

entry of America into the war would have resulted in a similar cessation

of their work, and most probably in a massacre of the American

missioners themselves. Their withdrawal, of course, was hailed with a

peacock scream of pride by that enlightened body under Talaat and Enver,

called the New Turkish party of Progress, for their presence was a bar

to the Turkish notions of civilisation, in that their influence made for

humanity, and health and education. Now 'the humiliating and dangerous

situation' (to quote from the columns of _Hilal_) was put an end to, and

Turkish progress could make headway again.

Similarly in Syria the outbreak of war put an end to 'the humiliating

and dangerous situation' of the presence of French schools and missions.

There, for many years, French missioners had done the same work as

Americans in Armenia, work in every sense liberal and civilising, but

undenominational in religious matters and unproselytising. That came to

an end earlier than the organisations in Armenia, and in Syria now, as

over the rest of the Turkish people, Arabs and Jews and Greeks have

nothing except German influence and Kultur to stand between them and the

spirit of Turkish progress of which the Armenian massacres were the

latest epiphany. Germany, as we have seen, stood by and let the Armenian

massacres go on, professing herself unable to interfere in the internal

affairs of Turkey, though at the time there was not a single branch of

Turkish industries, railways, telegraphs, armies, navies over which she

had not complete control, exercising it precisely as she thought fit.

It is useless, then, to base any confidence in the safety of Jews,

Greeks, and Arabs from suffering the same fate as the Armenians, on a

veto from Germany. If it suits Germany to let those unfortunate peoples

be murdered or deported to agricultural colonies, Germany will assuredly

not stir a finger on their behalf nor prevent a repetition of the

horrors I have dealt with in the previous chapter. Sooner than risk her

hold over Turkey by enforcing unacceptable demands, she will, unless

other considerations of self-interest determine her, let further

massacres occur, if Talaat Bey insists on them. That spokesman of her

policy, Ernst Marré, makes this perfectly explicit in his book, _Die

Türken und Wir nach dem Kriege_, upholding from the German standpoint

the right of Turkey and the wisdom of Turkey in dealing with her subject

peoples as she had dealt with the Armenians. 'The Turkish State,' he

tells us, 'is no united whole: Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds,

cannot be welded together.' (This, by a somewhat grim and ominous

coincidence, is in exact accordance with a remark made to a Danish Red

Cross Sister by a Turkish gendarme then engaged in massacring Armenians:

'First we get rid of the Armenians,' he said, 'then the Greeks, then the

Kurds.') Or again, in defence of the Armenian massacres, 'Only by

energetic interference and by expelling of the obstinate Armenian

element, could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian dominion.' Or

again, 'The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be

Ottomanised.' Here, then, is the German point of view: the Ottoman

Government will be right to 'dispose of' its subject peoples as it

thinks fit. So far from interfering, Germany endorses, and German

influence to-day is all that stands between 'the murderous tyranny' and

its subject peoples. French, English, and finally American pressure can

no longer, since the entry of these nations into the war, be exercised

within the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, and the only protection of

defenceless aliens is the German Government. It did not stir a finger to

save the Armenians, until it saw that depopulation threatened the

prosperity of its industries, and it is idle to expect that it will do

more if the consolidation of Turkish supremacy demands a further

campaign of murder. Greeks, Arabs, and Jews are all completely at the

mercy of Talaat's murder-schedules. The only chance that can save them

is that further extermination may not suit Germany's political aims,

and that she may find it worth her while to be peremptory, and forbid

instead of endorsing.

There are unhappily many signs that the butchers of Constantinople are

planning further massacres. In February of this year preliminary

measures were begun against the Greeks settled in Anatolia. Many were

forcibly proselytised, their property was confiscated, and they were

forbidden to carry on their businesses. Deportations also occurred, and

all Greeks were removed from many villages in Anatolia, into the

interior, presumably to 'agricultural colonies' such as those provided

for Armenians. They suffered terribly from hunger and exposure, and it

is estimated that ten per cent. of them died on their marches. Since

then, however, there has been no more heard of any extension of those

measures, and there seems to have been as yet no massacre of Greeks. It

is reasonable to infer that Germany has in this case intervened. She

still hoped to win Greece over to the Central European Powers, and

clearly any massacre of Greeks by her own Allies was not desirable.

King Constantine, among his endless vacillations and pusillanimous

treacheries, probably made a firm protest on the subject. But in the

kaleidoscope of war, should Greece come to the side of the Allies, it

seems most probable that there will occur a wholesale massacre of

Greeks. From what we know of the principles on which German Kultur is

based, the most optimistic can scarcely hope that the very faintest

remonstrance will emanate from Berlin.

The case of the Arabs in Syria is even more precarious. From the moment

that the policy of the Young Turks was evolved, namely, to consolidate

Osmanli supremacy by the weakening of its subject peoples, the Ottoman

Government has been waiting for its opportunity to get rid of the 'Arab

menace.' As we have seen, they began by substituting Turkish for Arabic

as a written language in all official usages from the printing of the

Koran and the prayers for the Sultan down to the legends on railway

tickets. The Arab spirit, according to one of the spokesmen of the New

Turk party, had to be suppressed, the Arab lands had to become Turkish

colonies. 'It is a peculiarly imperious necessity of our existence,' we

read in Jelal Noury Bey's propaganda, 'to Turkise the Arab lands, for

the particularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the younger

generations of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great

catastrophe.' Against the Arabs the Young Turks formed and fostered a

special animosity; they were powerful and warlike, and Enver, Talaat,

and others saw that the idea of an Osmanli supremacy could never be

realised unless very drastic measures were taken against them. The

tenets of Islamism, it is true, forbade Moslems to fight Moslems, but

Islamism, as a binding force, was already obsolete in the counsels of

the new regime, having given place to Kultur. Of all their subject

peoples, the Young Turks hated the Arabs the most, and, had not the

European War intervened, there is no doubt that the Armenian massacres,

already being planned, would have been followed by Arab massacres. But

the armed and warlike Arabian tribes were not so easy to deal with as

the defenceless Armenians, and Turkish troops could not be spared in

sufficient numbers to render an Arab massacre the safe, pleasant, and

lucrative pursuit that massacres should be. But Jemal the Great, black

with his triumph over the Armenians at Zeitun, was Military Governor of

Syria, and, the Armenian question being solved, he began to get to work

on the Arab question. Owing to the expulsion of the French Missions from

Syria in 1914, we have no such full or detailed information as we have

from Americans in Armenia, and the following account is mainly derived

from the Arabic journal _Mokattam,_ published in Cairo, the information

in which is based on the account given by a Syrian refugee. It agrees

with pieces of evidence that have come to hand from other sources.

Ever since the beginning of the war Syria has been an area of direst

poverty, starvation, and sickness, which have been the natural

co-operators in Jemal's policy there. All supplies have been

commandeered for the troops (including by special clause from Potsdam,

the German troops); even fish caught by the fishermen of Lebanon have

to be handed over to the military authorities, and the shortage of

supplies in Smyrna, for instance, is such that at the end of 1916 there

were two hundred deaths daily from sheer starvation, while Germany was

importing from Turkey hundreds of tons of corn and of meat. Thus this

was no natural shortage, for though supplies were low all over the

Turkish Empire, there was not dearth of that kind. It was an artificial

shortage made possible by German demands, and made intentional by

Jemal's policy. Beirut was in no better case than Smyrna; Lebanon

perhaps was in sorer straits than either. Money was equally scarce, and

it fitted Jemal's policy that this should be so, for when Americans in

Beirut had raised funds in America for the relief of the destitute, the

Turkish Government forbade their distribution. Arabs and Greeks were

dying by the hundred all over the provinces, and the beneficent decrees

of nature must not be interfered with. In the streets of towns the poor

have been fighting over scraps of sugarcane and orange peel; in the

country, to quote from _Molcattam_, 'no sooner do wild plants and beans

start to grow than the fields are filled with women and children who

pick them and use them as food.' Except for military purposes (including

the victualling of German troops) transportation has ceased to exist,

and this, too, was part of the policy of Jemal the Great.

On the heels of famine, like a hound behind a huntsman, came typhus. In

the province of Aleppo before the summer of 1916, over 8000 persons had

died of it. Doctors and medicines were unobtainable, for all were

requisitioned for the needs of the army, and in Damascus and Tripoli, in

Hama and Homs, the epidemic spread like a forest fire. No help was sent

from Constantinople, none was permitted to be brought by the charitable

from abroad, for famine and pestilence among the Arabs were working for

the policy of Jemal the Great. There were no troops to spare who should

hasten on the work, but the work was progressing by swift and 'natural'

means. Hunger and pestilence--behold the finger of Allah the God of

Love! How superior He showed Himself to the discarded Allah of the

Arabs. 'Ring down the curtain,' said Jemal the Great, 'and let no news

of the ways of Allah get abroad!' So a strict surveillance was

established on the coast, all boats were chained to the shore, and if

any attempted to swim out to ships of the Allied nations which passed,

the coast guards had orders to shoot him down. Too much news about

Armenian massacres filtered through; there should not now be such

leakage. And when starvation and pestilence had firmly established

themselves, Jemal the Great went down to see what his personal exertions

could effect. All was working in accordance with his plan; the poorer

classes of Arabs were dying like flies, but mortality was not so

successful among the wealthier, who could, to some extent, purchase

food. So Jemal the Great set to work among them. He began by hanging the

heads of Syrian-Arabs in Damascus, Beirut, and other cities. No

semblance of trial, no prosecution or arraignment, were necessary: he

established courts-martial under military control, made lists of the

accused, and ordered the courts-martial to condemn them to death.

Sometimes he made mistakes, appointing as the members of his

court-martial men who were not such sturdy patriots as he, and refused

to sentence for no crime the accused whom he nominated. He remedied such

mistakes by appointing new boards of more seasoned stuff. Moslem and

Christian alike were brought before them, and a general accusation of

pro-French tendencies seems to have been sufficient to secure a sentence

of death or lifelong imprisonment. He aimed not at the poor and the

obscure, for whom hunger and pestilence were providing, but at the rich

and the influential. The higher clergy in Christian circles, Bishops and

Monsignors, were a favourite target, and among Moslems influential

Sheikhs. Sometimes there was a parody of a trial; sometimes the parody

was dispensed with, and when the black curtain was last raised over

Syria, Jemal the Great had disposed of over eight hundred of the heads

of the most influential of Syrian Arabs. He had got rid, in fact, of

the whole House of Lords, and something more. Those who are acquainted

with 'feudal values' among the Arabs will understand what that means. He

decapitated, not individuals only, but groups. For devilish ingenuity in

this combination of starvation and pestilence for the poor, and death or

lifelong imprisonment for the chiefs, Jemal the Great must take rank

with Abdul Hamid and the contrivers of the Armenian massacres. He

cannot, it is true, owing to lack of troops, obtain the swift results of

Enver in Armenia, but between typhus, starvation, and courts-martial,

his solution of the Arab question in Syria is making steady progress.

And those measures, hideously efficient in themselves, are, beyond any

doubt whatever, only the precursors of more sweeping exterminations of

the Arab race, which will be effected after the war, if the Allied

Powers do not step in to save it. The Faithful of the Holy City, Mecca,

have revolted and thrown off the Turkish yoke, and while the war lasts,

and Turkish troops are otherwise occupied under Teutonic supervision,

they will be able to maintain their independence, for there is no

considerable body of Turks which can seriously threaten them. But the

Syrian Arabs, so long as the war lasts, are being, and will be, the

victims of a quiet scheme of extermination, which, if long continued,

will be as complete as that devised and carried out by the butchers of

Constantinople for the peoples of Armenia. It is not in the interest of

the Germans to save them, and no check is being put on Jemal the Great

to hinder him from assisting starvation and typhus to ravage the

country, and supplementing their deadly work by court-martial without

trial.

Equally significant of the rage for the destruction of Arabs was the

treatment of the Bagdad Arab army corps. In spite of the need for troops

one half of it was sent from Bagdad to Erzerum in the depth of winter,

without any provision of warm clothing. There, in those cold uplands,

the men died at the rate of fifty to sixty a day. Their commanding

officer was a Turk, and a creature of Enver's, called Abdul Kader.

Though these troops had fought admirably, he openly called them Arab

traitors, and his orders seem to have been merely to get rid of them.

There were no courts-martial; they were just taken into a climate which

killed them.

While for the last thirty years the Armenians and Syrians have emigrated

in large numbers from the Ottoman Empire, there has been a large

immigration of Jews into it. This movement was originally due to the

persecution they suffered in Russia. Germany and Austria were closed to

them, and, flying from the hideous pogroms that threatened them with

extermination, they begun to settle in Palestine. Wealthy compatriots

such as Baron Edmond de Rothschild assisted them, and, with the amazing

versatility of their race, they, trades-people and town-folk, adapted

themselves to new conditions, turned their wits towards husbandry and

agriculture, and during the last thirty years have flourished and

multiplied in a manner quite unrealised by the western world. In 1881

there were not more than 25,000 of them in the home of their race, but

by the beginning of the European War, when their immigration ceased for

the present, they numbered 120,000 souls. Till then the Ottoman

Government adopted the ancient Turkish policy of neglect towards them,

for they were not powerful enough numerically to earn the honour of a

massacre, and, in addition, they were useful settlers. Backed by

powerful Western influence, French, English, and German alike, they

improved out of knowledge the values of the lands where they established

themselves, and by intelligent management, by conserving and increasing

the water supply with irrigation and well-digging, they have brought

many thousand acres into cultivation. Originally refugees, fleeing from

outrageous persecutions, their immigration by degrees took on a

different spirit. Not only were they coming out of captivity, but they

were entering into the ancient Land of Promise again. Zionism, the

spirit of the returning exiles, animated them, and, according to their

prophets, they realised that 'The Lord shall comfort Zion, He shall

comfort all her waste places.' They had sowed in tears; now, on their

return, they were reaping in joy, and, though their land was still

under the infidel yoke, they were allowed to dwell in peace, busy,

industrious, with the halo of home-coming in their hearts. They paid, of

course, their Turkish taxes, but these were not levied in any oppressive

manner, and their colonies were thrifty, self-governing, and prosperous.

Already before the war, one-tenth of the cultivated land in Palestine

was in their hands, they had their own schools, their own methods of

organisation, and, more significant than all, Hebrew became a living

language again. Germany, intent on her penetration of Turkey, made an

attempt to Germanise them also (for Germany, as we shall see, has a very

special interest in these Jewish colonies), shook her head over Zionism,

for which she tried to substitute Prussianism, and wanted to make the

German language compulsory in Jewish schools at Haifa and Jaffa, but her

effort completely failed. Nothing could show the inherent vitality of

this Jewish colonisation more strikingly.

These Jewish settlers then were left in peace; from minuteness they

escaped the notice of the Young Turk party in its schemes for the

complete Ottomanisation of the Empire, and, until the present year 1917,

no mention of 'the Jewish question' was propounded. But it will he

remembered that in 1915, certain Jewish refugees, taking warning from

the Armenian massacres, fled to Egypt, and there founded a Zionist

mule-corps, which served under the English in the Gallipoli campaign. It

seems very probable that it was this that directed the attention of

Jemal the Great to the Jewish colonies in Palestine: possibly it was

merely that he was a more thorough Ottomaniser than his colleagues in

Constantinople. In any case he ordered the 'deportation' of all Jews

from Jaffa, Gaza, and other agricultural districts. All Jews were

commanded to leave Jaffa within forty-eight hours, no means of transport

was given them, and they were forbidden to take with them either

provisions or any of their belongings. Eight thousand Jews were evicted

from Jaffa alone, and their houses were pillaged, and they robbed,

maltreated, and many were murdered. Thus, and in no other way had the

massacres of the Armenians begun, and, that there should be no mistake

about it, Jemal threatened them explicitly with the fate of the

Armenians. Next day Ludd was evacuated also; the evacuation of Haifa and

Jerusalem was threatened, and artillery was sent to Jerusalem. There can

be no doubt in fact that Jemal planned and began to carry out a massacre

of all Jews.

At that point the Germans intervened, and for the present (but only for

the present, for so long in fact as Germany has complete control over

all Turkish internal affairs, in which she protested she could not

meddle) the Jewish colonies in Palestine seem to be safe.[1] The German

chief of the General Staff telegraphed to Berlin that the 'military

considerations' on which Jemal based his deportations did not exist, and

Herr Cohn in the Reichstag drew the Imperial Chancellor's attention to

this. How seriously the menace was regarded in Germany, and how far the

deportations had gone may be gathered from his words, 'Is the Imperial

Chancellor prepared to influence the Turkish Government in such a manner

as to prevent with certainty--so far as this is still possible--a

repetition in Palestine of the Armenian atrocities?' This was

sufficient: Germany, who could not dream of interfering in Turkish

internal affairs when only the massacre of hundreds of thousands of

Armenians was concerned, sent her order, and, for the present, Jemal the

Great has been unable to proceed with the solution of the Jewish

question in Turkey, which he had just discovered. We need not yet in

fact give Jemal his Jew. But some sort of explanation to soothe the

exasperation of the Turks in not being allowed to murder when and how

and where they pleased, was thought advisable, and the explanation (an

extraordinarily significant one) was given in an inspired paragraph of

the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ not long after. 'The valuable structure of

Zionist cultural work, in which the German Empire must have well founded

interest in view of future and very promising trade relations, will, it

is very much to be hoped, be preserved from destruction so far as purely

military requirements do not make it necessary. Pan-Turkish ideals have

no sort of meaning in Palestine where practically no Turks dwell.'

[Footnote 1: This view seems to be borne out by subsequent events, for

the Jews evacuated from Jaffa have been permitted to return owing to the

intervention of the Spanish Government. It is not hard to guess who

prompted that.]

We may take it, then, that with regard to the projected Jewish

massacres, quite clearly foreshadowed by the schemes of deportation from

Jaffa and Gaza, Germany has made strong representations to the Ottoman

Government. She did not do so (indeed she officially refused to do so)

when the Armenian massacres began, for she could not interfere in

Turkey's internal affairs. But now she has discovered that Pan-Turkish

ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine, and thus, with amazing

astuteness, has provided herself with a reason for interfering, while

still not giving up the policy of non-interference in Turkish affairs,

for Turkey, she has discovered, _has_ no affairs in Palestine. At the

same time she guards herself from diplomatic defeat by the hope that

Zionist cultural work will be saved from destruction so _far as purely

military requirements do not make it necessary_. In other words,

supposing Jemal the Great got completely out of hand, and proceeded to

indiscriminate massacre of the Jews, Germany would doubtless accept his

plea that military requirements had made it necessary.... And we were

once so ignorant as to assure ourselves that Germany had no notions of

diplomacy!

The full significance of her intervention on behalf of the Jews, when

neither the extermination of the Armenians, the persecution of the

Arabs, nor the deportation of the Greeks moved Germany to any decided

action or energetic protest, must be left, in so far as it concerns the

future, to another chapter. But as regards the present and the past it

will be useful to consider here what has prompted her to make a protest

(which we may regard, so long as her foot is on the neck of the Turks,

as having been successful) against these projected massacres. Certainly

it was not humanity; it was not the faintest desire to save innocent

people in general from being murdered wholesale, for in the similar

case of the Armenians, her bowels of compassion were not moved. Or,

possibly, if we incline to lenience, we may say that she was sorry for

the Armenians, but could not then risk a disagreement with their

murderers who were her allies, whereas now, feeling herself more

completely dominant over the Turks than she then did, she could risk

being peremptory, especially since there was that saving clause about

military requirements. For during the Armenian massacres, the

Dardanelles expedition was still on the shores of Gallipoli, and the

menace to Constantinople acute. It was possible that if she opposed a

firm front to the Armenian massacres, the Turks, already on the verge of

despair with regard to saving the capital from capture, might have made

terms with the Allies. But now no such imminence of danger threatened

them, and, with Germany's domination over them vastly more secure than

it had been in 1915, she could afford to treat them less as allies and

more as a conquered people. This alone might have accounted for her

unprecedented impulse of humanity in the minds of those who still

attribute such instincts to her, but she had far stronger reasons than

that for wanting to save the Jews of Palestine.

Her policy with regard to them is set forth in a pamphlet by Dr. Davis

Treitsch, called _Die Jüden der Türkei_, published in 1915, which is a

most illuminating little document. These Jewish colonies, as we have

seen, came from Russia, and as Germany realised, long before the war,

they might easily form a German nucleus in the Near East, for they

largely consisted of German-speaking Jews, akin in language and blood to

a most important element in her own population. 'In a certain sense,'

says Dr. Treitsch, 'the Jews are a Near Eastern element in Germany and a

German element in Turkey.' He goes on with unerring acumen to lament the

exodus of German-speaking Jews to the United States and to England.

'Annually some 100,000 of these are lost to Germany, the empire of the

English language and the economic system that goes with it is being

enlarged, while a German asset is being proportionately depreciated....

It will no longer do simply to close the German frontiers to them, and

in view of the difficulties which would result from a wholesale

migration of Jews into Germany itself, Germans will only be too glad to

find a way out in the emigration of those Jews to Turkey--a solution

extraordinarily favourable to the interests of all three parties

concerned.'

Here, then, is the matter in a nutshell: Germany, wide-awake as ever,

saw long ago the advantage to her of a growing Jewish population from

the Pale in Turkey. She was perhaps a little overloaded with them

herself, but in this immigration from Russia to Palestine she saw the

formation of a colony that was well worth German protection, and the

result of the war, provided the Palestinian immigrants were left in

peace, would be to augment very largely the number of those settling

there. 'Galicia,' says Dr. Treitsch, 'and the western provinces of

Russia, which between them contain more than half the Jews in the world,

have suffered more from the war than any other region. Jewish homes

have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, and there is no doubt

whatever that, as a result of the war, there will be an emigration of

East European Jews on an unprecedented scale.' This emigration, then, to

Palestine was, in Germany's view, a counter-weight to the 100,000

annually lost to her through emigration to America and England. With her

foot on Turkey's neck she had control over these German-speaking Jews,

and saw in them the elements of a German colony. Her calculations, it is

true, were somewhat upset by the development of the Zionist movement, by

which those settlers declared themselves to have a nationality of their

own, and a language of their own, and Dr. Treitsch concedes that. 'But,'

he adds, 'in addition to Hebrew, to which they are more and more

inclined, the Jews must have a world-language, and this can only be

German.'

This, then, in brief, and only up to the present, is the story of how

the Jewish massacres were stayed. The Jews were potential Germans, and

Germany, who sat by with folded hands when Arabs and Armenians were led

to torture and death, put up a warning finger, and, for the present,

saved them. In her whole conduct of the war, nothing has been more

characteristic than her 'verboten' to one projected massacre and her

acquiescence in others. But, as for her having saved the Jews out of

motives of humanity, 'Credant Judaei!'

_Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter V_

DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH

It was commonly said at the beginning of this war that, whatever

Germany's military resources might be, she was hopelessly and childishly

lacking in diplomatic ability and in knowledge of psychology, from which

all success in diplomacy is distilled. As instances of this grave

defect, people adduced the fact that, apparently, she had not

anticipated the entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her

treatment of Belgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced

to be not a crime merely, but a blunder of the stupidest sort. It is

perfectly true that Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in

the light of innumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the

psychology of civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till

now, at any rate, of 'having got the hang of it' at all. But critics of

her diplomacy failed to see the root-fact that she did not understand it

merely because it did not interest her. It was not worth her while to

master the psychology of other civilised nations, since she was out not

to understand them, but to conquer them. She had all the information she

wanted about their armies and navies and guns and ammunition neatly and

correctly tabulated. Why, then, since this was all that concerned her,

should she cram her head with irrelevant information about what they

might feel on the subject of gas-attacks or the torpedoing of neutral

ships without warning? As long as her fumes were deadly and her

submarines subtle, nothing further concerned her.

But Europe generally made a great mistake in supposing that Germany

could not learn psychology, and the process of its distillation into

diplomacy when it interested her. The psychology of the French and

English was a useless study, for she was merely going to fight them, but

for years she had been studying with an industry and a patience that

put our diplomacy to shame (as was most swiftly and ignominiously proven

when it came into conflict with hers) the psychology of the Turks. For

years she had watched the dealings of the Great Powers with Turkey, but

she had never really associated herself with that policy. She sat

quietly by and saw how it worked. Briefly it was this. For a hundred

years Turkey had been kept alive in Europe by the sedulous attentions of

the Physician Powers, who dared not let him die for fear of the

stupendous quarrels which would instantly arise over his corpse. So

there they all sat round his bed, and kept him alive with injections of

strychnine and oxygen, and, no less, by a policy of rousing and

irritating the patient. All through the reign of Abdul Hamid they

persevered: Great Britain plucked his pillow from him, so to speak, by

her protectorate of Egypt; Russia tweaked Eastern Rumelia from him;

France deprived him of his hot-water bottle when she snatched at the

Constantinople quays, and they all shook and slapped him when he went to

war with Greece in 1896, and instantly deprived him of the territory he

had won in Thessaly. That was the principle of European diplomacy

towards Turkey, and from it Germany always held aloof.

But from about the beginning of the reign of the present German Emperor,

German or rather Prussian diplomacy had been going quietly about its

work. It was worth while to study the psychology of the Turks, because

dimly then, but with ever-increasing distinctness, Germany foresaw that

Turkey might be a counter of immense importance in the great conflict

which was assuredly drawing nearer, though as yet its existence was but

foreshadowed by the most distant reflections of summer lightning on a

serene horizon. But if Turkey was to be of any profit to her, she wanted

a strong Turkey who could fight with her (or rather for her), and she

had no use for the Sick Man whom the other Powers were bent on keeping

alive, but no more. Her own eventual domination of Turkey was always the

end in view, but she wanted to dominate not a weak but a strong servant.

And her diplomacy was not less than brilliant simply from the fact that

on the one hand it soothed Turkey instead of irritating, and, on the

other, that it went absolutely unnoticed for a long time. Nobody knew

that it was going on. She sent officers to train the Turkish army, well

knowing what magnificent material Anatolia afforded, and she had

thoroughly grasped the salient fact that to make any way with Oriental

peoples your purse must be open and your backshish unlimited. 'There is

no God but backshish, and the Deutsche Bank is his prophet.'

For years this went on very quietly, and all over the great field of the

Ottoman Empire the first tiny blades of the crop that Germany was sowing

began to appear. To-day that crop waves high, and covers the whole field

with its ripe and fruitful ears. For to-day Turkey is neither more nor

less than a German colony, and more than makes up to her for the

colonies she has lost and hopes to regain. She knows that perfectly

well, and so do any who have at all studied the history and the results

of her diplomacy there. Even Turkey itself must, as in an uneasy dream,

be faintly conscious of it. For who to-day is the Sultan of Turkey? No

other than William II. of Germany. It is in Berlin that his Cabinet

meets, and sometimes he asks Talaat Bey to attend in a strictly honorary

capacity. And Talaat Bey goes back to Constantinople with a strictly

honorary sword of honour. Or else he gives one to William II. from his

_soi-disant_ master, the Sultan, or takes one back to his _soi-disant_

master from his real master. For no one knows better than William II.

the use that swords of honour play in deeds of dishonour.

The object of this chapter is to trace and mount the hewn and solid

staircase of steps by which Germany's present supremacy over Turkey was

achieved.

Apart from the quiet spade-work that had been going on for some years,

Germany made no important move till the moment when, in 1909, the Young

Turk party, after the forced abdication of Abdul Hamid, proclaimed the

aims and ideals of the new regime. At once Germany saw her opportunity,

for here, with her help, might arise the strong Turkey which she

desired to see, instead of the weak Turkey which all the other European

Powers had been keeping on a lowering diet for so long (desirous only

that it should not quite expire), and from that moment she began to

lend, or rather let, to Turkey in ever-increasing quantities, the

resources of her scientific and her military knowledge. It was in her

interests, if Turkey was to be of use to her, that she should educate,

and irrigate, and develop the unexploited treasures of human material,

of fertility and mineral wealth; and Germany's gold, her schools, her

laboratories were at Turkey's disposal. But in every case she, as in

duty bound to her people, saw that she got very good value for her

outlay.

Here, then, was the great psychological moment when Germany instantly

moved. The Young Turks proclaimed that they were going to weld the

Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole, and by a piece

of brilliant paradoxical reasoning Germany determined that it was she

who was going to do it for them. In flat contradiction of the spirit of

their manifestoes, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived

and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of

the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference!

They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born

Turkish babe, and they nursed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and

soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it

arose from its cradle a baby no more, but a great Prussian guardsman who

shouted, 'Deutschland über Allah!'

Only once was there a check in the growth of the Prussian infant, and

that was no more than a childish ailment. For when the Balkan wars broke

out the Turkish army was in the transitional stage. Its German tutors

had not yet had time to inspire the army with German discipline and

tradition; they had only weeded out, so to speak, the old Turkish

spirit, the blind obedience to the Ministers of the Shadow of God. The

Shadow of God, in fact, in the person of the Sultan, had been dragged

out into the light, and his Shadow had grown appreciably less. In

consequence there was not at this juncture any cohesion in the army, and

it suffered reverse after reverse. But a strong though a curtailed

Turkey was more in accordance with Prussian ideas than a weak and

sprawling one, and Germany bore the Turkish defeats very valiantly. And

that was the only set-back that this Pan-Prussian youngster experienced,

and it was no more than an attack of German measles which he very

quickly got over. For two or three years German influence wavered, then

recovered, 'with blessings on the falling out, that all the more

endears.'

It is interesting to see how Germany adapted the Pan-Turkish ideal to

her own ends, and, by a triumphant vindication of Germany's methods, the

best account of this Pan-Turkish ideal is to be found in a publication

of 1915 by Tekin Alp, which was written as German propaganda and by

Germany disseminated broadcast over the Turkish Empire. An account of

this movement has already been given in Chapter II., as far as the

Turkish side of it is concerned, and it remains only to enumerate the

German contribution to the fledging of this new Turkish Phoenix. The

Turkish language and the Turkish Allah, God of Love, in whose name the

Armenians were tortured and massacred, were the two wings on which it

was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among them a

Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen branches of

it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a Turkish Guiji

or gymnastic club, and an Izji or boy scouts' club. A union of merchants

worked for the same object in districts where hitherto trade had been in

the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared on their shops

that only Turkish labour was employed. Religious funds also were used

for similar economic restoration.

Germany saw, Germany tabulated, Germany licked her lips and took out her

long spoon, for her hour was come. She did not interfere: she only

helped to further the Pan-Turkish ideal. With her usual foresight she

perceived that the Izji, for instance, was a thing to encourage, for

the boys who were being trained now would in a few years be precisely

the young men of whom she could not have too many. By all means the boy

scout movement was to be encouraged. She encouraged it so generously and

methodically that in 1916, according to an absolutely reliable source of

information, we find that the whole boy scout movement, with its

innumerable branches, was under the control of a German officer, Colonel

von Hoff. In its classes (derneks) boys are trained in military

practices, in 'a recreational manner,' so that they enjoy--positively

enjoy (a Prussian touch)--the exercises that will fit them to be of use

to the Sultan William II. They learn trigger-drill, they learn

skirmishing, they are taught to make reports on the movements of their

companies, they are shown neat ways of judging distances. They are

divided into two classes, the junior class ranging from the ages of

twelve to seventeen, the senior class consisting of boys over seventeen,

but not yet of military age. But since Colonel von Hoff organised this,

the military age has been extended, and boys of seventeen have got to

serve their country on German fronts. Prussian thoroughness, therefore,

saw that their training must begin earlier; the old junior class has

become the senior class, and a new junior class has been set on foot

which begins its recreational exercises in the service of William II.,

Got and Allah, at the age of eight. It is all great fun, but those

pigeon-livered little boys who are not diverted by it have to go on with

their fun all the same, for, needless to say, the Izji is compulsory on

all boys. Of course they wear a uniform which is made in Germany and is

of a 'semi-military' character.

The provision of soldiers and sailors, then, trained from the early age

of eight, was the first object of Germany's peaceful and benign

penetration. As from the Pisgah height of the Pan-Turkish ideal she saw

the promised land, but she had no idea of seeing it only, like Moses,

and expiring without entering it, and her faith that she would enter it

and possess it and organise it has been wonderfully justified. She has

not only penetrated, but has dominated; a year ago towns like Aleppo

were crammed with German officers, while at Islahie there were separate

wooden barracks for the exclusive use of German troops. There is a

military mission at Mamoura, where all the buildings are permanent

erections solidly built of stone, for no merely temporary occupation is

intended, and thousands of freight-cars with Belgian marks upon them

throng the railways, and on some is the significant German title of

'Military Headquarters of the Imperial Staff.' There are troops in the

Turkish army, to which is given the title of 'Pasha formation,' in

compliment to Turkey, but the Pasha formations are under command of

Baron Kress von Kressenstein, and are salted with German officers,

N.C.O.'s, and privates, who, although in the Turkish army, retain their

German uniforms.

This German leaven forms an instructional class for the remainder of the

troops in these formations, who are Turkish. The Germans are urged to

respect Moslem customs and to show particular consideration for their

religious observances. Every German contingent arriving at

Constantinople to join the Pasha formations finds quarters prepared on a

ship, and when the troops leave for their 'destination' they take

supplies from depots at the railway station which will last them two or

three months. They are enjoined to write war diaries, and are provided

with handbooks on the military and geographical conditions in

Mesopotamia, with maps, and with notes on the training and management of

camels. This looks as if they were intended for use against the English

troops in Mesopotamia, but I cannot find that they have been identified

there. The greatest secrecy is observed with regard to those Pasha

formations, and their constitution and movements are kept extremely well

veiled.

Wireless stations have been set up in Asia Minor and Palestine, and

these are under the command of Major Schlee. A Turkish air-service was

instituted, at the head of which was Major Serno, a Prussian officer,

and Turkish aviators are now in training at Ostend, where they will very

usefully defend their native country. At Constantinople there is a

naval school for Turkish engineers and mechanics in the arsenal, to help

on the Pan-Turkish ideal, and with a view to that all the instructors

are German: a floating dock is in construction at Ismid, and the order

has been placed with German firms. It will be capable of accommodating

ships of Dreadnought build, which is a new departure for the strictly

Pan-Turkish ideal. The cost is £740,000, to be repaid three years after

the end of the war. Similarly, by the spring of this year, Germany had

arranged to start submarine training in Constantinople for the Turks,

and a submarine school was open and at work in March. A few months later

it was established at the island of Prinkipo, where it is now hard at

work under German instructors. Other naval cadets were sent to Germany

for their training, and Turkish officers were present at the battle of

Jutland in June 1916, and of course were decorated by the Emperor in

person for their coolness and courage.[1]

[Footnote 1: In October 1917 a bill was passed for the entire

remodelling of the Turkish fleet after the war, on the lines of the

German fleet, 'which proved its perfect training in the battle of Skager

Rak.']

A complete revision of the Turkish system of exemptions from military

service was necessary as soon as Germany began to want men badly. The

age for military service was first raised, and we find a Turkish order

of October 1916, calling on all men of forty-three, forty-four, and

forty-five years of age to pay their exemption tax if they did not wish

to be called to the colours. That secured their money, and, with truly

Prussian irony, hardly had this been done when a fresh army order was

issued calling out all men, whether they had paid their exemption tax or

not. Germany thus secured both their money and their lives.

Still more men were needed, and in November a fresh levy of boys was

raised regardless of whether they had reached the military age or not.

This absorbed the senior class of the boy scouts, who hitherto had

learned their drill in a 'recreationary manner.' Neither Jews nor

Christians are exempt from service, and frequent press gangs go round

Constantinople rounding up those who are in hiding.

Again the Prussian Moloch was hungry for more, and in December 1916 the

Turkish _Gazette_ announced that all males in Asia Minor between the

ages of fourteen and sixty-five were to be enrolled for military

service, and in January of this year, 1917, fresh recruiting was

foreshadowed by the order that men of forty-six to fifty-two, who had

paid their exemption money, should be medically examined to see if they

were fit for active service. This fresh recruiting was also put in force

in the case of boys, and during the summer of 1917 all boys above the

age of twelve, provided they were sound and well-built, were taken for

the army. Wider and wider the net was spread, and in the same month a

fresh Turco-German convention was signed, whereby was enforced a

reciprocal surrender in both countries of persons liable to military

service, and of deserters, and simultaneously all Turks living in

Switzerland, and who had paid exemption money, were recalled to their

Germanised fatherland. By now the first crops of the year were ripening

in Smyrna, and in default of civilian labour (for every one was now a

soldier) they were reaped by Turkish soldiers and the produce sent

direct to Germany.

Already in August 1916, certificates of Ottoman nationality had been

granted to Serbians resident in the Empire who were willing to become

Ottoman subjects, and their 'willingness' was intensified by hints that

incidents akin to the Armenian massacres might possibly occur among

other alien peoples. They had to sign a declaration that they would not

revert to their former nationality, and thus, no doubt, many Serbs

passed into the Turkish army. Further enrolments were desirable, and, in

March 1917, all Greeks living in Anatolia were forcibly proselytised,

their property was confiscated, and they were made liable to military

service. Unfortunately all were not available, for of those who were

removed from the villages where they lived to military centres, ten per

cent. died on the forced marches from hunger and exposure. That was

annoying for the German recruiting agents, but it suited well enough the

Pan-Turkish ideal of exterminating foreign nationalities. When trouble

or discontent occurred among the troops, it was firmly dealt with, as,

for instance, when, in November 1916, there were considerable desertions

from the 49th Division. On that occasion the order was given to fire on

them, and many were killed and wounded. The officer who gave the order

was commended by the Prussian authorities for his firmness. Should such

an incident occur again, it will no doubt be dealt with no less

firmness, for, in April 1917, Mackensen was put in supreme command of

all troops in Asia Minor. But in spite of this desertions have largely

increased lately, and during the summer deserters out of all the Turkish

armies were believed to number about 200,000. Many of those have formed

themselves into brigand bands, who make the roads dangerous for

travellers. The exchange of honours goes on, for not long ago, in

Berlin, Prince Zia-ed-Din, the Turkish Sultan's heir, presented a sword

of honour to the Sultan William II. Probably he gave him good news of

the progress of the German harbour works begun in the winter at

Stamboul, and himself learned that the railway bridge which the Turks

proposed to build over the Bosporus was not to be proceeded with, for

the German high command had superseded that scheme by their own idea of

making a tunnel under the Bosporus instead, which would be safer from

aircraft.

Such up-to-date, though in brief outline, is the history of the

establishment of the Prussian octopus grip on military and naval matters

in Turkey. We have largely ourselves to blame for it. Upon that pathetic

and lamb-like record of our diplomacy during the months between the

outbreak of the European War, and the entry of Turkey into it in October

1914, it would be morbid to dwell at any length, though a short summary

is necessary. As we all know now, Turkey had concluded a treaty with

Germany early in August, and when our Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir

Louis Malet, who was on leave in England at that date, returned to his

post on August 16th, all that Turkey wanted was to gain time in which to

effect her mobilisation. This she did, with complete success, and our

Ambassador telegraphed to England stating his perfect confidence in the

sincerity with which the Grand Vizier professed his friendship for

England. All through those weeks of August and September this confidence

appeared to continue unabated. The Moderate party in Turkey--that is to

say, the hoodwinking party--were reported to be daily gaining strength,

and it was most important that the Allies should give them every

assistance, and above all not precipitate matters. All was going well:

all we had to do was to wait. So we waited, still blindly confident in

the sincerity of Turkey's friendship for England, while the mobilisation

of the Turkish forces proceeded merrily. By the end of September this

was nearly complete, and quite suddenly the Ambassador informed the

Foreign Office that Turkey appeared to be temporising. That was

perfectly true, but the period of temporisation was nearly over, and by

mid-October Turkey had something like 800,000 men under arms, and for

nine weeks Enver Pasha had had his signed treaty with Germany in his

pocket. Possibly this diplomatic procrastination was useful to us, for

it enabled us to bring troops from India in security, and send others to

Egypt. But without doubt it was useful to the Turks, for it enabled them

to mobilise their armies, and to strengthen enormously the defences of

the Dardanelles. Then came the day when Germany and Turkey were ready,

the attack was made on Odessa, and out of Constantinople we went. We

climbed into the railway carriages that took the last rays of English

influence out of the Ottoman Empire, and steep were the stairs in the

house of a stranger! Turks are not much given to laughter, but Enver

Pasha must at least have smiled on that day.

Already, of course, German influence was strong in the army, which now

was thoroughly trained in German methods, but that army might still be

called a Turkish army. Nowadays, by no stretch of language can it be

called Turkish except in so far that all Turkish efficient manhood is

helplessly enlisted in it, for there is no branch or department of it

over which the Prussian octopus has not thrown its paralysing tentacles

and affixed its immovable suckers. Army and navy alike, the wireless

stations, the submarines, the aircraft, are all directly controlled from

Berlin, and, as we have seen, the generalissimo of the forces is

Mackensen, who is absolutely the Hindenburg of the East. But thorough as

is the control of Berlin over Constantinople in military and naval

matters, it is not one whit more thorough than her control in all other

matters of national life. Never before has Germany been very successful

in her colonisation; but if complete domination--the sucking of a

country till it is a mere rind of itself, and yet at the same time full

to bursting of Prussian ichor--may be taken as Germany's equivalent of

colonisation, then indeed we must be forced to recognise her success.

And it was all done in the name and for the sake of the Pan-Turkish

ideal. Even now Prussian Pecksniffs like Herr Ernst Marré, whose

pamphlet, _Die Türken und Wir nach dem Kriege_, was published in 1916,

continue to insist that Germany is nobly devoting herself to the

well-being of Turkey. 'In doing this,' he exclaims in that illuminating

document, 'we are benefiting Turkey.... This is a war of liberation for

Turkey,' though omitting to say from whom Turkey is being liberated.

Perhaps the Armenians. Occasionally, it is true, he forgets that, and

naively remarks, 'Turkey is a very difficult country to govern. But

after the war Turkey will be very important as a transit country.' But

then he remembers again and says, 'We wish to give besides taking, and

we should often like to give more than we can hope to give.' Let us look

into this, and see the manner in which Germany expresses her yearning to

impoverish herself for the sake of Turkey.

All this reorganisation of the Turkish army was of course a very

expensive affair, and required skilful financing, and it was necessary

to get the whole of Turkey's exchequer arrangements into German hands. A

series of financial regulations was promulgated. The Finance Minister,

during 1916, was still Turkish, but the official immediately under him

was a German. He was authorised to deposit with the Controllers of the

Ottoman National Debt German Imperial Bills of £T30,000,000, and to

issue German paper money to the like amount. This arrangement insures

the circulation of the German notes, which are redeemable by Turkey in

_gold_ two years after the declaration of peace. Gold is declared to be

the standard currency, and no creditor is obliged to accept in payment

of a debt more than 300 piastres in silver or fifty in nickel. And since

there is no gold in currency (for it has been all called in, and

penalties of death have been authorised for hoarders) it follows that

this and other issues of German paper will filter right through the

Empire. At the same time a German expert, Dr. Kautz, was appointed to

start banks throughout Turkey in order to free the peasants from the

Turkish village usurer, and in consequence enslave them to the German

banks. Similarly a German was put at the head of the Ottoman

Agricultural Bank. These new branches worked very well, but it is

pleasant to think that one such was started by the Deutsche Bank at

Bagdad in October 1916, which now has its shutters up. Before this, as

we learn from the _Oesterreichischer Volkswirt_ (June 1916), Germany had

issued other gold notes, in payment for gold from Turkey, which is

retainable in Berlin till six months after the end of the war. (It is

reasonable to wonder whether it will not be retained rather longer than

that.) These gold notes were accepted willingly at first by the public,

but the increase in their number (by the second issue) has caused them

to be viewed with justifiable suspicion, and the depreciation in them

continues. But the Turkish public has no redress except by hoarding

gold, which is a penal offence. That these arrangements have not

particularly helped Turkish credit may be gathered from the fact that

the Turkish gold £1, nominally 100 piastres, was very soon worth 280

piastres in the German paper standard, and it now fetches a great deal

more.

Again, the Deutsche Orientbank has made many extensions, and is already

financing cotton and wool trade for after the war. The establishment of

this provoked much applause in German financial circles, who find it to

be an instance of the 'far-reaching and powerful Germano-Austrian unity,

which replaces the disunion of Turkish finance.' This is profoundly

true, especially if we omit the word 'Austrian' inserted for diplomatic

reasons. Again we find Germany advancing £3,000,000 of German paper to

the Turkish Government in January 1917, for the payment of supplies they

have received from Krupp's works and (vaguely) for interest to the

German Financial Minister. This, too, we may conjecture, is to be

redeemed after the war in gold.

In March of this year we find in the report of the Ottoman Bank a German

loan of £1,000,000 for the purchase of agricultural implements by

Turkey, and this is guaranteed by house-taxes. In all up to that month,

as was announced in the Chamber of Deputies at Constantinople, Germany

had advanced to Turkey the sum of £142,000,000, entirely, it would seem,

in German paper, to be repaid at various dates in gold. The grip, in

fact, is a strangle-hold, all for Turkey's good, as no doubt will prove

the 'New Conventions' announced by Zimmermann in May 1917, to take the

place of the abolished Capitulations, 'which left Turkey at the mercy of

predatory Powers who looked for the disruption of the Ottoman Empire.'

Herr Zimmermann does not look for that: he looks for its absorption. And

sees it.