Note 18 — Chapter III · GERMANS BECOME INTERESTED IN THE NEAR EAST

For a biographical account of General von der Goltz (1843–1916) cf. F. W. Wile, Men Around the Kaiser (Philadelphia, 1913), Chapter XXVI. Bismarck consented to the appointment of von der Goltz’s military mission—which was not in accord with his general Eastern policy—as a sort of insurance against the possibility that chauvinism, Pan-Slavism, and anti-German elements in Russia should gain the ascendancy at the court of the Tsar. In such an event it might be possible to utilize Turkish bayonets and Turkish artillery, especially if they had been trained by Prussian officers. Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (English translation, New York, 1906), Volume II, p. 268.