Front matter (continued 2)

The repeated and humiliating marching of prisoners of war through the streets of Constantinople to show them off to the childish gaze of a people much influenced by externals, might with advantage be dispensed with. And it was certainly not exactly kind to make wounded English officers process past the Sultan at the Friday's "Selamlik"; it was rather too like slave-driving methods and the abuses of the Middle Ages.

I was an unwilling witness of one most regrettable incident that took place shortly before I left Constantinople. In this case the sufferings of some unfortunate prisoners of war were cruelly exploited for political ends. A whole troup of about 2,000 Rumanians, from Dobrudja, were hounded up and down the streets of Pera and Stamboul in a purposely destitute and exhausted condition, so that the appearance of these poor wretches, who hung their heads dejectedly and had lost all trace of military bearing, might give the impression that the Turks were dealing with a very inferior foe and would soon be at the end of the business. This is how the authorities were going to increase the confidence of the doubting population!

The Turkish escort had apparently given these prisoners nothing to drink on the way—although the Turk, being a great water-drinker himself, knows only too well what a man needs on a dusty journey of several days on a transport train—for with my own eyes I saw dozens of them simply flinging themselves like animals full length on the ground when they reached the Taksim Fountain, and trying to slake their terrible thirst. It was with pitiable trickery like this—for which no doubt Enver Pasha was responsible, for the simple Turkish soldier is much too good-natured not to share his bread and water with his prisoners—that attempts were made, at the expense of all feelings of humanity, to cheer up the uneducated masses.

The Turkish Government, however, apart from a few cases of reprisals, where the prisoners were treated in an even more barbaric and primitive manner, did not, as a general rule, go the length of interning civilians. This was not without its own good grounds. In the first place, a very large part of the trade of the country lay in the hands of these Europeans, and they were consequently absolutely indispensable to the Turks in their everyday commercial life; secondly, a Government that had systematically rooted out the Armenians, hanged Arabian notables, and brutally mishandled the Greeks, could scarcely dispense, in the eyes of Europe, with the very last pretence of being more or less civilised; and, lastly, perhaps the fear of being brought to book later on may have had a restraining influence on them—we saw how growing anxiety about the Russian advance on the Eastern front led, at any rate for a time, to a discontinuance of Armenian persecutions.

Besides all this, hundreds and thousands of Turks were resident in enemy countries, and of course the desire was to avoid reprisals. So the Government contented itself with threats and subterfuges, after a first unsuccessful attempt to expose a large number of French subjects to fire from the enemy guns in Gallipoli—a plan which failed entirely, owing to the energetic opposition of officials of the American Embassy who had accompanied these chosen victims to Gallipoli. Every means was used, however, even announcements in the newspapers and a Vote of Credit "for the removal of enemy subjects to the interior," to keep the sword of Damocles for ever hanging over the heads of all subjects of Entente countries, even women and children.

From the fall of Kut-el-Amara up to the time of Rumania's entry into the war, there were no important episodes of a military or political nature from the particular point of view of Turkey. (The Arabian catastrophe I will deal with in another connection.) With the ebb and flow of war and constant anxiety about Russia's movements, time passed slowly enough. It was well known that the Turkish offensive was already considerably weakened and the lack of means of transport was an open secret. Starvation and spotted fever raged at the Front as well as in the interior and the capital. Asiatic cholera even made its appearance in European Pera, but was fortunately successfully combated by vaccination.

Further decisive Russian victories on the west and the Gulf of Alexandretta were expected after the fall of Ersindjian, for the ambition and personal hatred against the Turks of the Grand Duke Nicolai Nicolajivitch, commanding the armies in Armenia, would probably stop short at nothing less than complete overthrow of the enemy. Simple-minded souls, whose geography was not their strong point, reckoned how long it would take the Russians to get from Anatolia and when the conquest of Constantinople would take place.

The less optimistic among those who were panting for final emancipation from the Young Turkish military yoke set their hopes on the entry of Rumania. In all circles Rumania's probable attitude was fairly clear, and no one ever doubted that she would be drawn into the war.

In consequence of the new operations after Rumania's declaration of war, the revival of the offensive in Macedonia, and the events in Athens, all eyes were turned again to the ever-doubtful Greece. The Greek element, Ottoman and Hellenic combined, in Constantinople alone may be reckoned at several hundred thousand. Never were sympathies so great for Venizelos, never was the spirit of the Irredenta so outspoken as among the Greeks in Turkey, who had been the dupes since 1909 of every possible kind of Young Turkish intrigue. In contrast to the Armenians, the great mass of whom thought and felt as loyal Ottoman citizens right up to the very end when Talaat and Enver's policy of extermination set in against them—in contrast to these absolutely helpless and therefore all the more easy victims to the Turkish national lust of persecution, the attitude of the Greek citizens was all the more marked.

Since the Græco-Turkish war of 1912-13 and the impetus given to Pan-Hellenism by the successful issue of the war, there is not one single Greek in either country—no matter what his social standing—that has not ardently looked forward to and desired the overthrow of Turkey. But the Greek is much too clever to let his feelings be seen; and he is not so unprotected as the Armenian. And so up to the present time the Turk has confined himself more to small intrigues against the Greek population, except in a few remote districts—more especially the shores of the Black Sea—where massacres like those organised among the Armenians have been carried out, but on a very much smaller scale.

Sympathy with Venizelos and the Irredentistic desire for Greece to throw in her lot with the Entente are counterbalanced, however, in the case of the Greeks living in Turkey, by grave anxiety as to their own welfare if it came to a break between the two countries. Turkish hatred of the Greeks knows no bounds, and it was no idle fear that made the Greeks in Constantinople tremble, in spite of their satisfaction politically, when the rumours were afloat in autumn 1916 of King Constantine's abdication and Greece's entry on the side of the Entente.

But the ideas as to how the Turks would act towards them in such a case were diametrically opposed even among those who had lived in the country a long time and knew the Turkish mind exactly. Many expected immediate Greek massacres on the largest scale; others, again, expected only brutal intrigues and chicanery, economic ruin; still others thought that nothing at all would happen, that the Turks were already too demoralised, and that at any rate in Pera the far superior Greek element would completely command the situation. This last I considered mere megalomaniac optimism in view of the fact that Turkey was still unbroken so far as things military were concerned, and I believe that those people were right who believed that Greece's entry on the side of the Entente would be the signal for the carrying out of atrocities against all Greeks, at any rate in the commercial world.

It would be interesting to know which idea the German authorities favoured. That the event would pass off without damage being done, they apparently did not believe, for in those days when Greece's decision seemed to be imminent, the former Goeben and the Breslau, which had been lying at Stenia on the Bosporus, were brought up with all speed and anchored just off the coast with their guns turned on Pera, and the German garrison, as I knew from different officers, had orders to be prepared for an alarm.

Did the Germans think they were going to have to protect Turks or Greeks in the case of definite news from Athens? Was it Germany's intention to protect the European population, who had nothing to do with the impending political decision, although they might sympathise with it—was it Germany's intention to protect them, at any rate in this instance, from the Turkish lust of extermination? Had these two ships, now known as the Jawuz Sultan Selim and the Midilli, not belonged for a long time to the Imperial Ottoman Navy?

When Rumania flung off her shackles, there was great rejoicing in Pera, and even the greatest pessimists believed that relief was near and would be accomplished within two months at latest. But another and more terrible reverse absolutely destroyed the last shred of anti-Turkish hope, and the victories in Rumania, especially the fall of Bucharest, combined with the speech of the Russian minister Trepoff, had the effect of sending over solid to the side of the Government even the few who had hitherto, at least in theory, formed an opposition, although a powerless one.

Victories shared with the Bulgarians, too, did away with the last remains of unfriendly feelings towards that people and consolidated the Turko-Bulgarian Alliance. Indeed, one may say that for Turkey the third great phase of the war began with the removal of all danger of the fall of Constantinople through the collapse of the Rumanian forces.

The first comprised the time of the powerful attacks directed at the very heart of the Empire, its most vulnerable point, and ended with the English-French evacuation of Gallipoli. The second was the period of alternate successes and reverses, almost a time of stagnation, when practically all interest was centred on the Russian menace in Asia Minor and the efforts made to withstand it. It ended equally successfully with the removal of the Russian menace from the Balkans. The third will be the phase of increasing internal weakness, of the dissipation of strength through the sending of troops to Europe, of the successful renewal of the English offensive in Mesopotamia, perhaps even of an English-French offensive against Syria and of the final revolt of all the Arabian lands, ushered in by the events in the Hedjaz and the founding of a purely Arabian Caliphate. The third phase cannot last longer than the year 1917; it will mean the decision of the whole European war.

CHAPTER V

The economic situation—Exaggerated Entente hopes—Hunger and suffering among the civil population—The system of requisitioning and the semi-official monopolists—Profiteering on the part of the Government clique—Frivolity and cynicism—The "Djemiet"—The delegates of the German Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft (Central Purchases Commission)—A hard battle between German and Turkish intrigue—Reform of the coinage—Paper money and its depreciation—The hoarding of bullion—The Russian rouble the best investment.

During the entire course of the war as I have briefly sketched it in the foregoing pages, the economic situation in the whole country and particularly in the capital became more and more serious. But, let me just say here, in anticipation, that Turkey, being a purely agricultural country with a very modest population, can never be brought to sue for peace through starvation, nor, with Germany backing and financing her, through any general exhaustion of commercial resources, until Germany herself is brought to her knees. Any victory must be a purely military and political one. The whole crux of the food problem in Turkey is that the people suffer, suffer cruelly, but not enough for hunger to have any results in the shape of an earlier conclusion of peace. This is the case also with the Central Powers, as the Entente have unfortunately only too surely convinced themselves now after their first illusions to the contrary.

There is another element in the Turkish question too—the large majority of the population are a heterogeneous mass of enslaved and degenerate beings, outcasts of society, plunged in the lowest social and commercial depths, entirely lacking in all initiative, who can never become a factor in any political upheaval, for in Turkey this can only be looked for from the military or the educated classes. If the Entente Powers ever counted on Turkey's chronic state of starvation and lack of supplies coming to their aid in this war, they have made a sad mistake. Therefore in attempting to sketch in a few pages the conditions of life and the economic situation in Turkey, my aim is solely to bring to light the underlying Turkish methods, and the ethics and spirit of the Young Turkish Government.

During the periods of the very acute bread crises, which occurred more than once, but notably in the beginning of 1916, some dozen men literally died of hunger daily in Constantinople alone. With my own eyes I have repeatedly seen women collapsing from exhaustion in the streets. From many parts of the interior, particularly Syria, there were reliable reports of a still worse state of affairs. But even in more normal times there was always a difficulty in obtaining bread, for the means of communication in that vast and primitive land of Turkey are precarious at best, and it was no easy matter to get the grain transported to the centres of consumption.

Then in Constantinople there was a shortage not only of skilled labour, but of coal for milling purposes. The result was that the townspeople only received a daily ration of a quarter of a kilogramme (about 8 oz.—not a quarter of an oka, which would be about 10 oz.) of bread, which was mostly of an indigestible and occasionally very doubtful quality—utterly uneatable by Europeans—although occasionally it was quite good though coarse. If the poor people in Constantinople wanted to supplement this very insufficient allowance, they could do so when things were in a flourishing condition at the price of about 2-1/2 or 3 piastres (1 piastre = about 2-1/4d.) the English pound, and later 4 or 5 piastres. Even this was for the most part only procurable by clandestine means from soldiers who were usually willing to turn part of their bread ration into money.

This is about all that can be said about the feeding of the people, for bread is by far the most important food of the Oriental, and the prices of the other foodstuffs soon reached exorbitant heights. What were the poor to feed on when rice, reckoned in English coinage, cost roughly from 3s. 2d. to 4s. 4d. an oka (about 2-1/2 lb.), beans 2s. 4d. the oka, meat 3s. to 4s., and the cheapest sheep's cheese and olives, hitherto the most common Turkish condiment to eat with bread, rose to 3s. and 1s. 8d. the oka?

Wages, on the other hand, were ludicrously low. We may obtain some idea of the standard of living from the fact that the Government, who always favoured the soldiers, did not pay more than 5 piastres (about 1s.) a day to the families of soldiers on active service. I have often wondered what the people really did eat, and I was never able to come to any satisfactory conclusion, although I often went to market myself to buy and see what other people bought. It is significant enough that just shortly before I left Constantinople—that is, a few weeks after the Turko-Bulgarian-German victories in Rumania and the fall of Bucharest—the price of bread in the Turkish capital, in spite of the widely advertised "enormous supplies" taken in Rumania, rose still higher.

I cannot speak from personal experience of what happened after Christmas 1916 in this connection, but everyone was quite convinced, in spite of the official report, that the harvest of 1916, despite the tremendous and praiseworthy efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture and the military authorities, would show a very marked decrease as a result of the mobilisation of agricultural labour, the requisitioning of implements, and the shortage of buffaloes, which, instead of ploughing fields, were pulling guns over the snow-covered uplands of Armenia. There was a very general idea that the harvest of 1917 would be a horrible catastrophe. And yet I am fully convinced, and I must emphasise it again, that, in spite of agricultural disaster, Turkey will still go on as a military power.

And now let us see what the Government did in connection with the food problem. At a comparatively early stage they followed Germany's example and introduced bread tickets, which were quite successful so long as the flour lasted. In the autumn of 1915 they took the organisation of the bread supply for large towns out of the hands of the municipalities, and gave it over to the War Office. They got Parliament to vote a large fund to buy up all available supplies of flour, and in view of the immense importance of bread as the chief means of nourishment of the masses, they decided to sell it at a very considerable loss to themselves, so that the price of the daily ration (though not of the supplementary ration) remained very much as it had been in peace time. The Government always favoured the purely Mohammedan quarters of the town so far as bread supply was concerned, and the people living in Fatih and other parts of Stamboul were very much better off than the inhabitants of Græco-European Pera.

Then Talaat made speeches in the House on the food question in which he did all in his power to throw dust in the eyes of the starving population, but he did not really succeed in blinding anyone as to the true state of affairs. In February 1916, when there was practically a famine in the land, he even went so far as to declare in Parliament that the food supplies for the whole of Turkey had been so increased by enormous purchases in Rumania, that they were now fully assured for two years.

It was no doubt with cynical enjoyment that the "Committee" of the Young Turks enlarged on the privations of the people in such publications as the semi-official Tanin, in which the following wonderful sentiment appeared: "One can pass the night in relative brightness without oil in one's lamp if one thinks of the bright and glorious future that this war is preparing for Turkey!"

One could have forgiven such cheap phrases if they had been a true, though possibly misguided, attempt to provide comfort in face of real want; but at the same time as such paragraphs were appearing in the Tanin and thousands of poor Turkish households had to spend the long winter nights without the slightest light, thousands of tons of oil were lying in Constantinople alone in the stores of the official accapareurs.

This brings me to the second series of measures taken by the Turkish Government to relieve the economic situation—those of a negative nature. Their positive measures are pretty well exhausted when one has mentioned their treatment of the bread crisis.

The question of requisitioning is one of the most important in Turkish life in war-time, and is not without its ludicrous side. In imitation of German war-time methods, either wrongly understood or wittingly misapplied by Oriental greed, the Turkish Government requisitioned pretty well everything in the food line or in the shape of articles of daily use that were sure to be scarce and would necessarily rise in price. But while in the civilised countries of Central Europe the supplies so requisitioned were sagely applied to the general good, the members of the "Committee of Union and Progress" looked with fine contempt and the grim cynicism of arch-dictators on the privations and sufferings of the people so long as they did not actually starve, and used the supplies requisitioned for the personal enrichment of their clique.

When I speak of requisitioning, I do not mean the necessary military carrying off of grain, cattle, vehicles, buffaloes, and horses, general equipment, and so on, in exchange for a scrap of paper to be redeemed after the war (of very doubtful value in view of Turkey's position)—I do not mean that, even though the way it was accomplished bled the country far more than was necessary, falling as it did in the country districts into the hands of ignorant, brutal, and fanatical underlings, and in the town being carried out with every kind of refinement by the central authorities. Too often it was a means of violent "nationalisation" and deprivation of property and rights exercised especially against Armenians, Greeks, and subjects of other Entente countries. If there was a particularly nice villa or handsome estate belonging to someone who was not a Turk, soldiers were immediately billeted there under some pretext or other, and it was not long before these rough Anatolians had reduced everything to rack and ruin.

I do not mean either the terrible damage to commercial life brought about by the way the military authorities, in complete disregard of agricultural interests, were always seizing railway waggons, and so completely laming all initiative on the part of farmers and merchants, whose goods were usually simply emptied out on the spot, exposed to ruin, or disposed of without any kind of compensation being given.

What I do mean is the huge semi-official cornering of food, which must be regarded as typical of the Young Turks' idea of their official responsibility towards those for whom they exercised stewardship.

The "Bakal Clique" ("provision merchants," "grocers") was known through the whole of Constantinople, and was keenly criticised by the much injured public. It was, first of all, under the official patronage of the city prefect, Ismet Bey, a creature of the Committee; but later on, when they realised that dire necessity made a continuance of this system of cornering quite unthinkable, he was made the scapegoat, and his dismissal from office was freely commented on in the Committee newspapers as "an act of deliverance." The Committee thought that they would thus throw dust in the eyes of the sorely-tried people of Constantinople. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish pounds were turned into cash in the shortest possible time by this semi-official syndicate, at the expense of the starving population, and found their way into the pockets of the administrators.

That was how the Young Turkish parvenus were able to fulfil their one desire and wriggle their way into the best clubs, where they gambled away huge sums of money. The method was simple enough: whatever was eatable or useable, but could only be obtained by import from abroad, was "taken charge of," and starvation rations, which were simply ludicrously inadequate and quite insufficient for the needs of even the poorest household, were doled out by "vesikas" (the ticket system).

The great stock of goods, however, was sold secretly at exorbitant prices by the creatures of the "Bakal Clique," who simply cornered the market. That is how it happened that in Constantinople, cut off as it was from the outer world and without imports, even at the end of 1916, with a population of well over a million, there were still unlimited stores of everything available for those who could pay fancy prices, while by the beginning of 1915 those less well endowed with worldly goods had quite forgotten the meaning of comfort and the poor were starving with ample stores of everything still available.

In businesses belonging to enemy subjects the system of requisitioning, of course, reached a climax, stores of all kinds worth thousands of pounds simply disappearing, without any reason being given for carrying them off, and nothing offered in exchange, but one of these famous "scraps of paper." Cases have been verified and were freely discussed in Pera of ladies' shoes and ladies' clothing even being requisitioned and turned into large sums of cash by the consequent rise in price.

The profiteering of Ismet and company, who chose the specially productive centre of the capital for their system of usury, was not, however, by any means an isolated case of administrative corruption, for exactly the same system of requisitioning, holding up and then reselling under private management at as great a profit as possible, underlay and underlies the great semi-official Young Turkish commercial organisation, with branches throughout the whole country, known as the "Djemiet" and under the distinguished patronage of Talaat himself.

After Ismet Bey's fall, the "Djemiet" took over the supplying of the capital as well (with the exception of bread). We will speak elsewhere of this great organisation, which is established not only for war purposes, but serves towards the nationalisation of economic life. So far as the system of requisitioning is concerned, it comes into the picture through its firm opposition to German merchants who were trying to buy up stores of food and raw materials from their ally Turkey. The intrigues and counter-intrigues on both sides sometimes had most remarkable results.

One of the really bright sides of life in Constantinople in war-time was the amusement one extracted from the silent and desperate war continually being waged by the many well-fed gentlemen of the "Z.E.G." ("Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft," "Central Purchasing Commission") and their minions who tried to rob Turkey of foodstuffs and raw material for the benefit of Germany, against the "Djemiet" and more particularly the Quartermaster-General, Ismail Hakki Pasha, that wooden-legged, enormously wealthy representative of the neo-Turkish spirit—he was the most perfect blend of Oriental politeness and narrow-minded decision to do exactly the opposite of what he had promised. On the Turkish side, the determination to safeguard the interests of the Army, and in the case of the "Djemiet" the effort not to let any foodstuffs out of Germany—a standpoint that has at last found expression in a formal prohibition of all export—then the quest of personal enrichment on the part of the great "Clique"; on the German side, the insatiable hunger for everything Turkey could provide that had been lacking for a long time in Germany: the whole thing was a wonderfully variegated picture of mutual intrigue.

The gentlemen of the "Z.E.G.," after months of inactivity spent in reviling the Turks and studying Young Turkish and other morals and manners by frequenting all the pleasure resorts in the place, managed at last to get the exports of raw materials set on the right road, and so it came about that the fabulous sums in German money that had to be put into circulation in payment of these goods, in spite of Turkey's indebtedness to Germany, led to a very considerable depreciation in the value of the Mark even in Turkey for some time.

But until the understanding as to exports was finally arrived at, there were many dramatic events in Constantinople, culminating in the Turks re-requisitioning, with the help of armed detachments, stores already paid for by Germany and lying in the warehouses of the "Z.E.G." and the German Bank!

On the financial side, apart from Turkey's enormous debt to Germany, the wonderful attempt at a reform and standardisation of the coinage in the middle of May 1916 is worthy of mention. The reform, which was a simplification of huge economic value of the tremendously complicated money system and introducing a theoretical gold unit, must be regarded chiefly as a war measure to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkish paper money.

This last attempt, as was obvious after a few months' trial, was entirely unsuccessful, and even hastened the fall of paper money, for the population soon discovered at the back of these drastic measures the thinly veiled anxiety of the Government lest there should be a further deterioration. Dire punishments, such as the closing down of money-changers' businesses and arraignment before a military court for the slightest offence, were meted out to anyone found guilty of changing gold or even silver for paper.

In November 1916, however, it was an open secret that, in spite of all these prohibitions, there was no difficulty in the inland provinces and in Syria and Palestine in changing a gold pound for two or more paper pounds. In still more unfrequented spots no paper money would be accepted, so that the whole trade of the country simply came to a standstill. Even in Constantinople at the beginning of December 1916, paper stood to gold as 100 to 175.

The Anatolian population still went gaily on, burying all the available silver medjidiehs and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in the ground, because being simple country folk they could not understand, as the Government with all its prayers and threats were so anxious they should, that throughout Turkey and in the greater and mightier and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed paper money was really much better than actual coins, and was just as valuable as gold! The people, too, could not but remember what had happened with the "Kaimé" after the Turko-Russian war, when thousands who had believed in the assurances of the Government suddenly found themselves penniless. In Constantinople it was a favourite joke to take one of the new pound, half-pound, or quarter-pound notes issued under German paper, not gold, guarantee and printed only on one side and say, "This [pointing to the right side] is the present value, and that [blank side] will be the value on the conclusion of peace."

Even those who were better informed, however, and sat at the receipt of custom, did exactly the same as these stupid Anatolian country-people; no idea of patriotism prevented them from collecting everything metal they could lay their hands on, and, in spite of all threats of punishment—which could never overtake them!—paying the highest price in paper money for every gold piece they could get. Their argument was: "One must of course have something to live on in the time directly following the conclusion of peace." In ordinary trade and commerce, filthy, torn paper notes, down to a paper piastre, came more and more to be practically the only exchange.

A discerning Turk said to me once: "It would be a very good plan sometime to have the police search these great men for bullion every evening on their return from the official exchanges. That would be more to the point than any reform in the coinage!"

Those who could not get gold, bought roubles, which were regarded as one of the very best speculations going, until one day the Turkish Government, in their annoyance at some Russian victory, suddenly deported to Anatolia a rich Greek banker of the name of Vlasdari, who was accused of having speculated in roubles, which of course gave them the double benefit of getting rid of a Greek and seizing his beautiful estate in Pera.

Only the greatest optimists were deceived into believing that it was a profitable transaction to buy Austrian paper money at the fabulously low price the Austrian Krone had reached against the Turkish pound, which was really neither politically nor financially in any better a state. The members of the "Committee of Union and Progress" had of course shipped their gold off to Switzerland long ago.

CHAPTER VI

German propaganda and ethics—The unsuccessful "Holy War" and the German Government—"The Holy War" a crime against civilisation, a chimera, a farce—Underhand dealings—The German Embassy the dupe of adventurers—The morality of German Press representatives—A trusty servant of the German Embassy—Fine official distinctions of morality—The German conception of the rights of individuals.

Now that we have given a rough sketch of the main events of the war as it affected the economic life of the people, and have devoted a chapter to that sinister crime, the Armenian persecutions, we shall leave the Young Turks for a moment and turn to an examination of German propaganda methods.

It is a very painful task for a German who does not profess to be a "World Politician," but really thinks in terms of true "world-politics," to deal with the many intrigues and machinations of our Government in their relation to the so-called "Holy War" (Arab. Djihad), where in their quest of a vain illusion they stooped to the very lowest means. Practically all their hopes in that direction have been sadly shattered. Their costly, unscrupulous, thoroughly unmoral efforts against European civilisation in Mohammedan countries have resulted in the terrific counter-stroke of the defection of the Arabs and the foundation of a purely Arabian Chaliphate under English protection. Thus England has already won a brilliant victory against Germany and Turkey in spite of Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara, although it seems probable that even these will be wiped out by greater deeds on the part of the Entente before long. One could not have a better example of Germany's total inability to succeed in the sphere of world-politics.

The so-called "Holy War," if it had succeeded, would have been one of the greatest crimes against human civilisation that even Germany has on her conscience, remembering as we do her recent ruthless "frightfulness" at sea, and her attempt to set Mexico and the Japanese against the land of most modern civilisation and of greatest liberty. A successful "Djihad" spreading to all the lands of Islam would have set back by years all that civilisation so patiently and so painfully won; it would not have been at all comparable with the Entente's use of coloured troops in Europe which Germany deprecated so loudly, for in the Holy War it would have been a case of letting the wildest fanaticism loose against the armies of law and order and civilisation; in the case of the Entente it was part of a purely military action on the part of England and France, who held under their sway all the inhabitants, coloured and otherwise, of those Colonial regions from which troops were sent to Europe and to which they will return.

But the attempt against colonial civilisation did not succeed. The "Djihad," proclaimed as it was by the Turanian pseudo-Chaliph and violently anti-Entente, was doomed to failure from the very start from its obvious artificiality. It was a miserable farce, or rather a tragicomedy, the present ending of which, namely the defection of the Arabian Chaliphate, is the direct contrary of what had been aimed at with such fanatical urgency and the use of such immoral propaganda.

The attempt to "unloose" the Holy War was due primarily to the most absurd illusions. It would seem that in Germany, the land of science, the home of so many eminent doctors of research, even the scholars have been attacked by that disease of being dazzled by wild political illusions, or surely, knowing the countries of Islam outside-in as they must, they would long ago have raised their voices against such arrant folly. It would seem that all her inherent knowledge, all her studies, have been of little or no avail to Germany, so that mistake after mistake has been committed in the realm of world politics. It may be said that Germany, even if she were doubtful of the issue, should still not have left untried this means of crippling her opponents. To that I can only reply by pointing to the actual position of affairs, well known to Germany, not only in English, but also in French and Russian Islamic colonial territory, which should have rendered the "Djihad" entirely and absolutely out of the question.

Let us take for example Egypt, French North-West Africa, and Russian Turkestan, not to speak of the masterly English colonial rule in India, which has now been tested and tried for centuries. Anyone who has ever seen Egypt with the area under culture practically doubled under modern English rule by the help of every kind of technical contrivance for the betterment of existing conditions, and the skilful utilisation of all available means at an expense of millions of pounds, with its needy population given an opportunity to earn a living wage and even wealth through a lucrative cultivation of the land under conditions that are a paradise compared with what they were under the Turkish rule of extortion and despotism—anyone who has seen that must have looked from the very beginning with a very doubtful eye on Germany's and Turkey's illusions of stirring up these well-doing people against their rulers.

The same thing occurs again in the extended territory of North-West Africa from the Atlas lands to the Guinea coast and Lake Chad, where France, as I know from personal experience, stands on a high level of colonial excellence, developing all the resources of the country with consummate skill, shaping her "empire colonial" more and more into a shining gem in the crown of colonial endeavour, and, as I can testify from my own observations in Morocco, Senegal, the Niger, and the Interior of the Guinea territories of the "A.O.F." (Afrique Occidentale Française), capturing the hearts of the whole population by her essential culture, and, last but not least, winning the Mohammedans by her clever Islam policy.

That, finally, Russia, at any rate from the psychological standpoint, is perhaps the best coloniser of Further Asia, even German textbooks on colonial policy admit unreservedly, and the glowing conditions that she has brought about especially in the basin of Ferghana in Turkestan by the introduction of the flourishing and lucrative business of cotton-growing are known to everyone. Only politicians of the most wildly fantastic type, who see everywhere what they want to see, could believe that in this war the Turkish "Turanistic" bait would ever have any effect in Russian Central Asia, or make its inhabitants now living in security, peace, and well-being wish back again the conditions which prevailed under the Emirs of Samarkand, Khiva, and Bokhara. But Germany, who should have been well informed if anyone was, believed all these fantastic impossibilities.

One could let it pass with a slight feeling of irritation against Germany if it were merely a case of the failure of the "Djihad." But unfortunately the propaganda, as stupid as it was unsuccessful, exercised in this connection, will be written down for all time as one of the blackest and most despicable marks against Germany's account in this war. In Turkey alone, the underhand manipulation for the unloosing of the "Holy War" and the German Press propaganda so closely allied with it, indeed the whole way in which the German cause in the East was represented journalistically throughout the war, are subjects full of the saddest, most biting irony, to sympathise with which must lower every German who has lived in the Turkish capital in the eyes of the whole civilised world.

In order to demonstrate the rôle played in this affair by the German Embassy at Constantinople I will not make an exhaustive survey but simply confine myself to a few episodes and outstanding features. An eminent German Red Cross doctor, clear-sighted and reliable, who had many tales to tell of what he had seen in the "Caucasus" campaign, said to me one evening, as we sat together at a promenade concert: "Do you see that man in Prussian major's uniform going past? I met him twice in Erzerum last winter. The man was nothing but an employee in a merchant's business in Baku, and had learnt Russian there. He has never done military service. When war broke out, he hurried to the Embassy in Pera and offered his services to stir up the Georgians and other peoples of the Caucasus against Russia. Of course he got full powers to do what he wanted, and guns and ammunition and piles of propaganda pamphlets were placed at his disposal so that he might carry on his work from the frontier of the then still neutral Turkey. Whole chests full of good gold coins were sent to him to be distributed confidentially for propaganda purposes; of course he was his own most confidential friend! He went back to Erzerum without having won a single soul for the cause of the 'Djihad.' That has not prevented his living as a 'grand seigneur,' for the Embassy are not yet daunted, and now the fellow struts about in a major's uniform, lent to him, although he has never been a soldier, so that the cause may gain still more prestige."

Numerous examples of similar measures might be cited, and instances without number given, of the German Embassy being made the dupe of greedy adventurers who treated them as an inexhaustible source of gold. First one would appear on the scene who announced himself as the one man to cope with Afghanistan, then another would come along on his way to Persia and play the great man "on a special mission" for a time in Pera while money belonging to the German Empire would find its way into all sorts of low haunts. And so things went on for two years until, with the Arabian catastrophe, even the eyes of the great diplomatic optimists of Ayas-Pasha might have been opened.

I will only mention here how even a bona fide connoisseur of the East like Baron von Oppenheim, who had already made tours of considerable value for research purposes right across the Arabian Peninsula, and so should have known better than to share these false illusions, doled out thousands of marks from his own pocket—and millions from the Treasury!—to stir up the tribes to take part in the "Djihad," and how he returned to Pera from his propaganda tour with a real Bedouin beard, and, still unabashed, took over the control of the German Embassy's "News Bureau," which kept up these much-derided war telegraph and picture offices known in Pera and elsewhere by the non-German populace as sacs de mensonges, and which flooded the whole of the East with waggon loads of pamphlets in every conceivable tongue—in fact these, with guns and ammunition, formed the chief load of the bi-weekly "culture-bringing" Balkan train!

I will only cite the one example of the far-famed Mario Passarge—a real Apache to look at. With his friend Frobenius, the ethnographer and German agent, well known to me personally from French West Africa for his liking for absinthe and negro women and his Teutonic brusqueness emphasised in comparison with the kindly, helpful French officials, as well as by hearsay from many scandalous tales, Passarge undertook that disastrous expedition to the Abyssinians which failed so lamentably owing to the Italians, and then after its collapse came to Turkey as special correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung and managed to swindle his way through Macedonia with a false Italian passport to Greece, where he wrote sensational reports for his wonderful newspaper about the atrocities and low morale of Sarrail's army—the same newspaper that had made itself the laughing-stock of the whole of Europe, and at the same time had managed to get the German Government to pursue for two years the shadow of a separate peace with Russia, by publishing a marvellous series of "Special Reports via Stockholm," on conditions in Russia that were nothing but a tissue of lies inspired by blind Jewish hate; if a tithe of them had been true, Russia would have gone under long ago.

I need not repeat my own opinion on all the machinations of the German Embassy, but I will simply give you word for word what a German Press agent in Constantinople (I will mention no names) once said to me: "It is unbelievable," he declared, "what a mob of low characters frequent the German Embassy now. The scum of the earth, people who would never have dared before the war to have been seen on the pavements of Ayas-Pasha, have now free entry. Any day you can see some doubtful-looking character accosting the porter at the Embassy, whispering something in his ear, and then being ushered down the steps to where the propaganda department, the news bureau, has its quarters. There he gives wonderful assurances of what he can do, and promises to stir up some Mohammedan people for the "Djihad." Then he waits a while in the ante-room, and is finally received by the authorities; but the next time he comes to the Embassy he walks in through the well-carpeted main entrance, and requests an audience with the Ambassador or other high official, and we soon find him comfortably equipped and setting off on a 'special mission' as the confidential servant of the German Embassy." But even the recognition of these truths has not prevented this journalist from eating from the crib of the German Embassy!

I cannot leave this disagreeable subject without making some mention of a type that does more than anything to throw light on the morale of this German propaganda. Everyone in Constantinople knows—or rather knew, for he has now feathered his nest comfortably and departed to Germany with his money—Mehmed Zekki "Bey," the publisher and chief editor of the military paper Die Nationalverteidigung and its counterpart La Défense, published daily in French but representative of Young Turkish-German interests. Hundreds of those who know Zekki also know that he used to be called "Capitaine Nelken y Waldberg." Fewer know that "Nelken" alone would have been more in accordance with fact.

I will relate the history of this individual, as I know it from the mouths of reliable informants—the members of the Embassy and the Consulate. Nelken, a Roumanian Jew, a shopkeeper by trade, had been several times in prison for bankruptcy and fraud, and at last fled from Roumania. He took refuge in the Turkish capital, where he continued his business and married a Greek wife. Here again he became bankrupt, as is only too clear from the public notice of restoration in the Constantinople newspapers, when his lucrative political activity as the champion of Krupp's, of the German cause and "the holy German war," as much a purely pan-Germanic as Islamic affair, provided him with the wherewithal to pay off his former disreputable debts.

To go back to his history—with money won by fraud in his pocket, he deserted his wife and went off, no doubt having made a thorough and most professional study of the subject in the low haunts of Pera, as a white-slave trader to the Argentine, and then—I rely for my information on an official of the German Consulate in Pera—set up as proprietor of a brothel in Buenos Ayres. Then, as often happens, the Argentine special police took him into their service, thinking, on the principle of "setting a thief to catch a thief," that he would have special experience for the post. Grounds enough there for him to add on the second name of his falsified passport "Nelken y Waldberg" and to call himself in Europe a "Capitaine de la Gendarmerie" from the Argentine.

From there he went to Cairo and edited a little private paper called Les Petites Nouvelles Egyptiennes. For repeated extortion he was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, but unfortunately only in contumaciam, for he had already fled the country, not, however, before he had been publicly smacked on the face in the "Flasch" beer garden without offering satisfaction as an "Argentine General" should—a performance that was later repeated in every detail in Toklian's Restaurant in Constantinople.

He told me once that he had been sentenced in this way because, on an understanding with the then German Diplomatic Agent in Cairo, von Miquel, he had attacked Lord Cromer's policy sharply, and that his patron von Miquel had given him the timely hint to leave Egypt. I will leave it to one's imagination to discover how much truth there was in this former brothel-keeper's connection with official German "world-politics" and high diplomacy. From what I have seen personally since, I believe that Zekki, alias Nelken, was probably speaking the truth in this case, although it is certainly a fact that in German circles in Cairo at that time ordinary extortion was recognised as being punishable by imprisonment for a considerable length of time.

Nelken then returned to Constantinople and devoted himself with unflagging energy to his previous business of agent. He turned to the Islamic faith and became a citizen of the Ottoman Empire because he found it more profitable so to do, and could thus escape from his former liabilities. Then in spite of lack of means, he managed to found a military newspaper, which, however, soon petered out. Nelken became Mehmed Zekki and a journalist, and of course called himself "Bey."

Up to this point the history of this individual is nothing but a characteristic extract from life as it is lived by hundreds of rogues in the East. But now we come to something which is almost unbelievable and which leads me to give credence to his version of his relations with von Miquel, which after all only shows more clearly than ever that German "world-politics" are not above making use of the scum of the earth for their intrigues. In full knowledge of this man's whole black past—as Dr. Weber of the German Embassy himself told me—the German Embassy with the sanction of the Imperial Government (this I know from letters Zekki showed me in great glee from the Foreign Office and the War Office) appointed this fellow, whom all Pera said they would not touch with gloves on or with the tongs, to be their confidential agent with a large monthly honorarium and to become a pillar of "the German cause" in the East. And it could not even be said in extenuation that the man had any great desire or any wonderful vocation to represent Germany, for—as the Embassy official said to me—"We knew that Zekki was a dangerous character and rather inclined to the Entente at the outbreak of war, so we decided to win him over by giving him a salary rather than drive him into the enemy's camp." So it simply comes to this, that Germany buys a bankrupt, a blackmailer, a procurer, a brothel-keeper with cash to fight her "Holy War" for her!

As publisher of the Défense Zekki received a large salary from Germany, one from Austria, afterwards cut down not from any excess of moral sense, but simply from excess of economy, and a very considerable sum from Krupp's. As representative of German interests he did all he could to propitiate the Young Turks by the most fulsome flattery, and more recently he was pushing hard to get on the Committee of Union and Progress. But the Turks jibbed at what the German Embassy had brought on themselves—seeing Zekki "Bey" moving about their sacred halls with the most imposing nonchalance and condescension. Zekki himself once complained to me bitterly that in spite of his having presented Enver Pasha with a valuable clock worth eighty Turkish pounds which Enver had accepted with pleasure, he would not even answer a written request from Zekki craving an audience with him. (This, incidentally, is a most excellent example of the working of Enver's mind, a megalomaniac as greedy as he was proud.)

The military director of the Turkish Press said to me once: "We are only waiting for the first 'gaffe' in his paper to get this filthy creature hunted out of his lair," and one day when through carelessness a small uncensored and really quite harmless military notice appeared in print (everything is submitted to the censor), the Turkish Government gave it short shrift indeed, and banned sine die this "Ottoman" paper which lived by Krupp and the German trade advertisements, and had become an advocate of the German Embassy, because it was paid in good solid cash for it. The paper was replaced by a new one in Turkish hands, called Le Soir.

I could go on talking for ages from most intimate personal knowledge about this man, superb in his own way. His doings were not without a certain comic side which amused while it aggravated one. I could mention, for example, his great lawsuit in Germany in 1916, in which he brought an accusation of libel against some German who had called him a blackmailer and a criminal who had been repeatedly punished. He managed to win the lawsuit—that is, the defenders had to pay a fine of twenty marks, because the evidence brought against Zekki could not be followed up to Egypt on account of England's supremacy on the sea, and also no doubt because the interests of Krupp and the German Embassy could not have this cherished blossom of German propaganda disturbed! So for him at any rate the lack of "freedom of the seas" he had so often raged about in his leading articles was a very appreciable advantage.

The last time I remember seeing the man he was engaged in an earnest tête-à-tête about the propagation of German political interests by means of arms with the Nationalist Reichstag deputy, Dr. Streesemann, a representative of the German heavy goods trade and of German jingoism who had hastened to Constantinople for the furtherance of German culture. Most significantly, no doubt in remembrance of his days in Buenos Ayres, Zekki had chosen for this interview the most private room of the Hôtel Moderne, a pension with a bar where sect could be had; and the worthy representative of the German people, probably nothing loth to have a change from his eternal "Pan-German" diet, accepted his invitation with alacrity. I followed the two gentlemen to make my own investigations, and I certainly got as much amusement, although in a different sense, as one usually does in such haunts. It was really most entertaining to watch Nelken the ex-Jew and Young Turk, with his fez on his head, nodding jovially to all the German officers at the neighbouring tables, and settling the affairs of the realm with this Pan-German representative of the people.

I trust my readers will forgive me if, in spite of the distaste I feel at having to write this unsavoury chapter about German Press representatives and those in high diplomatic authority who commission them, I relate one more episode of a like character before I close. One of these writers employed in the service of the German Embassy had done one of his female employees an injury which cannot be repeated here. His colleague—out of professional jealousy, the other said—gave evidence against him under oath at the German Consulate, and the other brought a charge of perjury against him. The German Consulate, in order not to lose such a trusty champion of the German cause for a trifle like the wounded honour of a mere woman—an Armenian to boot!—simply suppressed the whole case, although all Pera was speaking about it.

Against this we have the case later on of a German journalist, most jealous of German interests, who had a highly important document stolen out of his desk with false keys by one of his clerks in the pay of the Young Turkish Committee. The document was the copy of a very confidential report addressed to high official quarters in Germany, in which there were some rather more uncomplimentary remarks about Enver and Talaat than appeared in the version for public consumption. An Embassy less notoriously cowardly than the German one would simply have shielded their man in consideration of the fact that the report was never meant for publication and of the reprehensible way it had been stolen and made public. But our chicken-hearted diplomats allowed him to be dismissed in disgrace by the Turks, and so practically gave their official sanction to the meanest Oriental methods of espionage.

I have, however, now come to the conclusion from information I have received that German cowardice in this case probably had a background of hypocrisy and malice, for this same journalist had spoken with remarkable freedom, not indeed as a pro-Englander, but in contrast to German and Turkish narrow-mindedness, of how well he had been treated by the English authorities, and particularly General Maxwell in the exercise of his profession in Cairo, where he had been allowed for fully five weeks, after the outbreak of war, to edit a German newspaper. (I have seen the numbers myself and wondered at the almost incredible liberality of the English censorship.) Instead of being sent to Malta he had been treated most fairly and kindly and given every opportunity to get away safely to Syria. Of course the narration of events like these were rather out of place in our "God Punish England" time, and it was no doubt on account of this, apart from all cowardice, that the German Embassy made their fine distinctions between personal and political morality in the case of their Press representative.

We have spoken of German propaganda for the "Holy War," as carried out by individuals as well as by pamphlets and the Press. The Turkish capital saw a very appreciable amount of this in the shape of wandering adventurers and printed paper. Several thousand Algerian, Tunisian, French West African, Russian Tartar, and Turkestan prisoners of war of Mohammedan religion from the German internment camps were kept for weeks in Pera and urged by the German Government in defiance of all the laws of the peoples to join the "Djihad" against their own rulers.

They were told that they would have the great honour of being presented to the Caliph in Stamboul; as devout Mohammedans they could of course not find much to object to in that. A wonderfully attractive picture was painted for them of the delights of settling in the flourishing lands of the East, and living free of expense instead of starving in prison under the rod of German non-commissioned officers till the far-distant conclusion of peace. One can well imagine how such marvellous conjuring tricks would appeal to these poor fellows.

They have repeatedly told me that they had been promised to be allowed to settle in Turkey without any mention being made of using them again as soldiers. But once on the way to Constantinople there was no further question of asking them what their opinion was of what was being done to them. They were simply treated as Turkish voluntary soldiers and sent off to the Front, to Armenia, and the Irak. How far they were used as real front-line soldiers or in service behind the lines I do not know; what I do know is that they left Constantinople in as great numbers as they came from Germany, armed with rifles and fully equipped for service in the field. One can therefore guess how many of them became "settlers" as they had been promised. Several days running in the early summer of 1916 I saw them being marched off in the direction of the Haidar-Pasha station on the Anatolian Railway. They were headed by a Turkish band, but on not one single face of all these serried ranks did I see the slightest spark of enthusiasm, and the German soldiers and officers escorting each separate section were not exactly calculated to leave the impression with the public that these were zealots fighting voluntarily for their faith who could not get fast enough out to the Front to be shot or hanged by their former masters!

In her system of recruiting in the newly founded kingdom of Poland, Germany demonstrated even more clearly of what she was capable in this direction.

CHAPTER VII

Young Turkish nationalism—One-sided abolition of capitulations—Anti-foreign efforts at emancipation—Abolition of foreign languages—German simplicity—The Turkification of commercial life—Unmistakable intellectual improvement as a result of the war—Trade policy and customs tariff—National production—The founding of new businesses in Turkey—Germany supplanted—German starvation—Capitulations or full European control?—The colonisation and forcible Turkification of Anatolia—"The properties of people who have been dispatched elsewhere"—The "Mohadjirs"—Greek persecutions just before the Great War—The "discovery" of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Ottoman Empire—Turkey finds herself at last—Anatolian dirt and decay—The "Greater Turkey" and the purely Turkish Turkey—Cleavage or concentration?

From the Germans we now turn again to the Turks, to try to fathom the exact mentality of the Young Turks during the great war, and to discover what were the intellectual sources for their various activities.

To give a better idea of the whole position I will just preface my remarks by stating a few of the outstanding features of the present Young Turkish Government and their dependents. Their first and chief characteristic is hostility to foreigners, but this does not prevent them from making every possible use of their ally Germany, or from appropriating in every walk of life anything European, be it a matter of technical skill, government, civilisation, that they consider might be profitable. Secondly they are possessed of an unbounded store of jingoism, which has its origin in Pan-Turkism with its ruling idea of "Turanism." Pan-Turkism, which seems to be the governing passion of all the leading men of the day, finds expression in two directions. Outwardly it is a constant striving for a "Greater Turkey," a movement that for a large part in its essence, and certainly in its territorial aims, runs parallel with the "Holy War"; inwardly it is a fanatical desire for a general Turkification which finds outlet in political nationalistic measures, some of criminal barbarity, others partaking of the nature of modern reforms, beginning with the language regulations and "internal colonisation" and ending in the Armenian persecutions.

It is worthy of note that of the two intellectual sources of the "Holy War," namely Turanism—which one might reverse and call an extended form of Old-Turkism—and Pan-Islamism, the men of the "Committee for Unity and Progress" have only made logical though unsuccessful use of the former, although theoretically speaking they recognise the value of the latter as well. While Turkish race-fanaticism, which finds practical outlet in Turanistic ideas, is still the intellectual backbone of official Turkey to-day and has to be broken by the present war, the Young Turkish Islam policy is already completely bankrupt and can therefore be studied here dispassionately in all its aspects. We propose to treat the matter in some detail.

All New-Turkish Nationalistic efforts at emancipation had as first principle the abolition of Capitulations. The whole Young Turkish period we have here under review is therefore to be dated from that day, shortly before Turkey's entry into the war, when that injunction was flung overboard which Europe had anxiously placed for the protection of the interests of Europeans on a State but too little civilised. It was Turkey herself that did this after having curtly refused the Entente offer to remove the Capitulations as a reward for Turkey's remaining neutral. Germany, who was equally interested in the existence or non-existence of Capitulations, never mentioned this painful subject to her ally for a very long time, and it was 1916 before she formally recognised the abolition of Capitulations, long after she had lost all hold on Turkey in that direction.

As early as summer 1915 there were clear outward indications in the streets of Constantinople of a smouldering Nationalism ready to break out at any moment. Turkey, under the leadership of Talaat Bey, pursued her course along the well-trodden paths, and the first sphere in which there was evidence of an attempt at forcible Turkification was the language. Somewhere toward the end of 1915 Talaat suddenly ordered the removal of all French and English inscriptions, shop signs, etc., even in the middle of European Pera. In tramcars and at stopping-places the French text was blocked out; boards with public police warnings in French were either removed altogether or replaced by unreadable Turkish scrawls; the street indications were simply abolished. The authorities apparently thought it preferable that the Levantine public should get into the wrong tramcar, should break their legs getting out, pick flowers in the parks and wander round helplessly in a maze of unnamed streets rather than that the spirit of forcible Turkification should make even the least sacrifice to comfort.

Of the thousand inhabitants of Pera, not ten can read Turkish; but under the pressure of the official order and for fear of brutal assault or some kind of underhand treatment in case of non-compliance, the inhabitants really surpassed themselves, and before one could turn, all the names over the shops had been painted over and replaced by wonderful Turkish characters that looked like decorative shields or something of the kind painted in the red and white of the national colours. If one had not noted the entrance to the shop and the look of the window very carefully, one might wander helplessly up and down the Grand Rue de Péra if one wanted to buy something in a particular shop.

But the German, as simple-minded as ever where political matters were concerned, was highly delighted in spite of the extraordinary difficulty of communal life. "Away with French and English," he would shout. "God punish England; hurrah, our Turkish brothers are helping us and favouring the extension of the German language!"

The answer to these pan-German expansion politicians and language fanatics, whose spiritual home was round the beer-tables of the "Teutonia," was provided by a second decree of Talaat's some weeks later when all German notices had to disappear. A few, who would not believe the order, held out obstinately, and the signs remained in German till they were either supplemented in 1916, on a very clear hint from Stamboul, by the obligatory Turkish language or later quite supplanted. It was not till some time after the German had disappeared—and this is worthy of note—that the Greek signs ceased to exist. Greek had been up to that time the most used tongue and was the commercial language of the Armenians.

Then came the famous language regulations, which even went so far—with a year of grace granted owing to the extraordinary difficulties of the Turkish script—as to decree that in the offices of all trade undertakings of any public interest whatsoever, such as banks, newspapers, transport agencies, etc., the Turkish language should be used exclusively for book-keeping and any written communication with customers. One can imagine the "Osmanic Lloyd" and the "German Bank" with Turkish book-keeping and Turkish letters written to an exclusively European clientèle! Old and trusty employees suddenly found themselves faced with the choice of learning the difficult Turkish script or being turned out in a year's time. The possibility—indeed, the necessity—of employing Turkish hands in European businesses suddenly came within the range of practical politics—and that was exactly what the Turkish Government wanted.

The arrangement had not yet come into operation when I left Constantinople, but it was hanging like the sword of Damocles over commercial undertakings that had hitherto been purely German. Optimists still hoped it never would come to this pass and would have welcomed any political-military blow that would put a damper on Turkey's arrogance. Others, believing firmly in a final Turkish victory, began to learn Turkish feverishly. Be that as it may, the new arrangements were hung up on the walls of all offices in the summer of 1916 and created confusion enough.

Many other measures for the systematic Turkification of commercial life and public intercourse followed hard on this first bold step, which I need scarcely mention here. And in spite of the ever-growing number of German officials in the different ministries, partly foisted on the Turkish Government by the German authorities, partly gladly accepted for the moment because the Turks had still much to learn from German organisation and could profit from employing Germans, in spite of the appointment of a number of German professors to the Turkish University of Stamboul (who, however, as a matter of fact, like the German Government officials, had to wear the fez and learn Turkish within a year, and besides roused most unfavourable and anti-German comment in the newspapers), it was soon perfectly evident to every unbiased witness that Germany would find no place in a victorious Turkey after the war if the "Committee for Union and Progress" did not need her. Some sort of light must surely have broken over the last blind optimism of the Germans in the course of the summer of 1916.

Hand in hand with the nationalistic attempt to coerce European businesses into using the Turkish language there went more practical attempts to turkify all the important branches of commerce by the founding of indigenous organisations and the introduction of reforms of more material content than those language decrees. These efforts, in spite of the enormous absorption of all intellectual capabilities and energies in war and the clash of arms, were expressed with a truly marvellous directness of aim, and, from the national standpoint, a truly commendable magnificence of conception.

This latter has indeed never been lacking as a progressive ethnic factor in Turkish politics. The Turks have a wonderful understanding, too, of the importance of social problems, or at least, as a sovereign people, they feel instinctively what in a social connection will further their sovereignty. The war with its enormous intellectual activity has certainly brought all the political and economic resources of the Turks—including the Young Turkish Government—to the highest possible stage of development, and we ought not to be surprised if we often find that measures, whether of a beneficent or injurious character, are not lacking in modern exactness, clever technicality, and thoroughness of conception. Without anticipating, I should just like to note here how this change appears to affect the war. No one can doubt that it will enormously intensify zeal in the fight for the existence of the Turkey of the future, freed from its jingoistic outgrowths, once more come to its senses and confined to its own proper sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of the Empire. But, on the other hand, iron might and determined warfare against this misguided State are needed to root out false and harmful ideas.

If, after this slight digression, we glance for a moment at the practical measures for a complete Turkification of Turkey, the economic efforts at emancipation and the civic reforms carried through, we find first of all that the new Turkey, when she had thrown the Capitulations overboard, then proceeded to emancipate herself completely from European supervision in the realm of trade and commerce.

A very considerable step in advance in the way of Turkish sovereignty and Turkish economic patriotism was the organisation and—since September 1916—execution of the neo-Turkish autonomic customs tariff, which with one blow gives Turkish finances what the Government formerly managed to extract painfully from the Great Powers bit by bit, by fair means or foul, at intervals of many years, and which with its hard-and-fast scale of taxes—which there appears to be no inclination in political circles at the moment to modify by trade treaties!—means an exceedingly adequate protection of Turkey's national productions, without any reference whatever to the export interests of her allies, and is a very strong inducement to the renaissance of at any rate the most important national industries. The far-flung net of the "Djemiet" (whose acquaintance we have already made in another connection), that purely Turkish commercial undertaking with Talaat Bey at its head, regulating everything as it did, taking everything into its own hands, from the realising of the products of the Anatolian farmers (and incidentally bringing it about that their ally Germany had to pay heavily and always in cash, even although the Government itself owed millions, to Germany and got everything on credit from flour out of Roumania to paper for their journals) to the most difficult rationing of towns, forms a foundation for the nationalising of economic life of the very greatest importance.

The establishment of purely Turkish trade and transport companies, often with pensioned Ministers as directors and principal shareholders, and the new language regulations and other privileges will soon cut the ground away from under the feet of European concerns. Able assistance is given in this direction by the Tanin and the Hilal (the "Crescent"), the newly founded "Committee" paper in the French language (when it is a question of the official influencing of public opinion in European and Levantine quarters, exceptions can be made even in language fanaticism!) in which a series of articles invariably appear at the founding of each new company praising the patriotic zeal of the founders.

Then again there are the increasingly thinly veiled efforts to establish a purely Turkish national banking system. Quite lately there has been a movement in favour of founding a Turkish National Bank with the object of supplanting the much-hated "Deutsche Bank" in spite of the credit it always gives, and that international and preponderatingly French institution, the "Banque Impériale Ottomane," which had already simply been sequestrated without more ado.

The Turks have decided, too, that the mines are to be nationalised, and Turkish companies have already been formed, without capital it is true, to work the mines after the war. The same applies to the railways—in spite of the fine German plans for the Baghdad Railway.

All these wonderful efforts at emancipation are perfectly justified from the patriotic point of view, and are so many blows dealt at Germany, who, quite apart from Rohrbach's Welt-politik, had at least hoped to find a lucrative field of privileged commercial activity in the country of her close and devoted allies the Turks. It is of supreme significance that while the war is still at its height, while the Empire of the Sultan is defending its very existence at the gates of the capital with German arms and German money, there is manifested with the most startling clearness the failure of German policy, the endangering of all these German "vital interests" in Turkey which according to Pan-German and Imperialistic views were one of the most important stakes to be won by wantonly letting loose this criminal war on Europe.

No doubt many a German was only too well aware of the fact that in this Turkey suddenly roused by the war all the ground had been lost that he had built on with such profit before, and many an anxious face did one see in German circles in Constantinople. I need not tarry here over the drastic comments I heard from so many German merchants on this subject. They show a most curious state of mind on the part of those who had formerly, in their quest for gain and nothing but gain, profited in true parasitical fashion from the financial benefits of the Capitulations and had seen nothing but the money side of this arrangement which was, after all, entered into for other purposes. It was no rare thing and no paradox to find a German company director say, as I heard one say: "If things went against Turkey to-day, I would willingly shoulder my gun, old man as I am."

No thinking man will expend too much grief over the ruthless abolition of the Capitulations, for they were unmoral and gave too much opportunity to parasites and rogues, while they were quite inadequate to protect the interests of civilisation. They may have sufficed in the time of Abdul-Hamid, who was easily frightened off and was always sensible and polite in his dealings with Europe. For the Turkey of Enver and Talaat quite other measures are needed. One must, according to one's political standpoint, either recognise and accept their nationalistic programme of emancipation or combat it forcibly by introducing full European control. And however willing one may be to let foreign nations develop in their own particular way and work out their own salvation, one's standpoint with regard to a State so behindhand, so fanatical, so misguided as Turkey can be but one: the introduction and continuation at all costs of whatever guarantees the best protection to European civilisation in this land of such importance culturally and historically.

Not only were Europeans, but the natives themselves, affected by the series of measures that one might class together under the heading of Turkish Internal Colonisation and the Nationalising of Anatolia. The programme of the Young Turks was not only a "Greater Turkey," but above all a purely Turkish Turkey; and if the former showed signs of failing because they had over-estimated their powers and their chances in the war or had employed wrong methods, there was nothing at all to hinder a sovereign Government from striving all the more ruthlessly to gain their second point.

The way this Turkification of Anatolia was carried on was certainly not lacking in thoroughness, like all their nationalistic efforts. The best means that lay to hand were the frightful Armenian persecutions which affected a wonderful clearance among the population. "The properties of persons who have been dispatched elsewhere" within the meaning of the Provisory Bill were either distributed free or sold for a mere song to anyone who applied to the Committee for them and proved themselves of the same political persuasion or of pure Turkish or preponderatingly Turkish nationality. The rent was often fixed as low as 30 piastres a month (about 5s. 8d.) for officials and retired military men. In the case of the latter, Enver Pasha thought this an excellent opportunity for getting rid, through the medium of a kindly invitation to settle in the Interior, of those who worried him by their dissatisfaction with his system and who might have prepared difficulties for him. This "settling" was carried out with the greatest zeal in the exceptionally flourishing and fruitful districts of Brussa, Smyrna-Aidin, Eskishehir, Adabazar, Angora, and Adana, where Armenians and Greeks had played such a great, and, to the Turks, unpopular part as pioneers of civilisation.

The semi-official articles in the Tanin were perfectly right in praising the local authorities who in contrast with their former indifference and ignorance "had now fully recognised the great national importance of internal colonisation and the settling of Mohadjirs (emigrants from the lost Turkish territory in Bosnia, Macedonia, Thrace, etc.) in the country." There is nothing to be said in favour of the stupid, unprogressive character of the Anatolian as contrasted with the strength, physical endurance, intelligence, and mobility of these emigrants. The latter had also, generally speaking, lived in more highly developed districts.

The great drawback of the Mohadjirs, however, is their instability, their idleness and love of wandering, their frivolity, and their extraordinary fanaticism. As faithful Mohammedans following the standard of their Padishah and leaving the parts of the country that had fallen under Christian rule, they seemed to think they were justified in behaving like spoilt children towards the native population. They treated them with ruthless disregard, they were bumptious, and, if their new neighbours were Greek or Armenian, they inclined to use force, a proceeding which was always possible because the Government did not take away their firearms and were even known to have doled them out to stir up unrest. It has occurred more than once that Mohadjirs have crossed swords even with Turkish Anatolians living peacefully in their own villages. One can then easily imagine how much more the heretic giaurs ("Christian dogs," "unclean men") had to suffer at their hands.

I should like to say a word here about these Greek persecutions in Thrace and Western Anatolia that have become notorious throughout the whole of Europe. They took place just before the outbreak of war, and cost thousands of peaceful Greeks—men, women, and children-their lives, and reduced to ashes dozens of flourishing villages and towns. At the time of the murder of Sarajevo, I happened to be staying in the vilajet of Aidin, in Smyrna and the Hinterland, and saw with my own eyes such shameful deeds as must infuriate anyone against the Turkish Government that aids and abets such barbarity—from old women being driven along by a dozen Mohadjirs and dissipated soldiers to the smoking ruins of Phocæa.

Everyone at that time, at any rate in Smyrna, expected the immediate outbreak of a new Græco-Turkish war, and perhaps the only thing that prevented it was the method of procrastination adopted by both sides, for both were waiting for the Dreadnoughts they had ordered, until finally these smaller clouds were swallowed up in the mighty thunder-cloud gathering on the European horizon. Only the extreme speed with which one dramatic event followed another, and my own mobilisation which precluded my writing anything of a political nature, prevented me on that occasion from giving my sinister impressions of Young Turkish jingoism and Mohadjir brutality. Even if I had been able to write what I thought it is extremely doubtful if it would ever have seen the light of day, for the German papers were but little inclined, as I had opportunity of discovering personally, to say anything unpleasant about the Young Turkish Government, whose help they were already reckoning on, and preferred rather to behave in a most un-neutral manner and keep absolutely silent about all the ill-treatment and abuse that had been meted out to Greece. But I remembered these scenes most opportunely later, and that visit of mine to Western Anatolia was certainly most useful in increasing my knowledge of Young Turkish methods of "internal colonisation."

But all the methods used are by no means forcible. Attempts are now being made—and this again is most significant for the spirit of the newest Young Turkish era—to gain a footing in the world of science as opposed to force, and so to be able to carry out their measures more systematically and give them the appearance of beneficent modern social reforms. So it comes about that the Turkish idea of penetrating and "cleaning-up" Anatolia finds practical expression on the one hand in exterminating and robbing the Christian population, while on the other it inclines to efforts which in time may work out to be a real blessing. The common principle underlying both is Nationalism.

Anatolia was suddenly "discovered." At long length the Young Turkish Government, roused intellectually and patriotically by the war and brought to their senses by the terrible loss of human life entailed, suddenly realised the enormous national importance of Anatolia, that hitherto much-neglected nucleus of the Ottoman Empire. Under the spiritual inspiration of Mehmed Emin, the national poet of Anatolian birth whose poems with their sympathy of outlook and noble simplicity of form make such a warm-hearted and successful appeal to the best kind of patriotism, men have begun since 1916, even in the circles of the arrogant "Stambul Effendi," to take an interest in the kaba türk (uncouth Turk), the Anatolian peasant, his needs and his standard of civilisation. The real, needy, primitive Turk of the Interior has suddenly become the general favourite.

A whole series of most remarkable lectures was delivered publicly in the Türk Odjaghi, under the auspices of the Committee, by doctors, social politicians, and political economists, and these were reported and discussed at great length in all the Turkish newspapers. Their subject was the incredible destitution in Anatolia, the devastation wrought by syphilis, malaria, and other terrible dirt diseases, abortions as a result of hopeless poverty, the lack of men as a result of constant military service in many wars, and they called for immediate and drastic reforms.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I acknowledge that this first late step on the way of improvement, this self-knowledge, which appeals to me more thoroughly than anything else I saw in Turkey, is probably really the beginning of a happier era for that beautiful land of Anatolia, so capable of development but so cruelly neglected. For one can no longer doubt that the Government has the real intention of carrying out actual reforms, for they must be only too well aware that the strengthening and healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Turkish race, is absolutely essential for any Turkish mastery, and is the very first necessity for the successful carrying out of more far-reaching national exertions. With truly modern realisation of the needs of the case, directly after Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey's first compelling lecture, different local government officials, especially the Vali of the Vilajet of Kastamuni, which was notorious for its syphilis epidemics, made unprecedented efforts to improve the terrible hygienic conditions then reigning. Let us hope that such efforts will bear fruit. But this will probably only be the case to any measurable extent later, after the war, when Turkey will find herself really confined to Anatolia, and will have time and strength for positive social work.

In the meantime I cannot get rid of the uneasy impression that this "discovery" of Anatolia and zealous Turkish social politics are no more than a cleverly worked excuse on the part of the Government for further measures of Turkification, and the cloven hoof is unfortunately only too apparent in all this seemingly noble effort on the part of the Committee. One hears and sees daily the methods that go hand in hand with this official pushing into the foreground of the great importance of the purely Turkish elements in Anatolia—Armenian persecutions, trickery, expropriations carried out against Greeks, the yielding up of flourishing districts to quarrelsome Mohadjirs. So long as the Turkish Government fancy themselves conquerors in the great war, so long as they pursue the shadow of a "Greater Turkey," so long as Turkey continues to dissipate her forces she will not accomplish much for Anatolia, in spite of her awakening and her real desire for reform.

Finally, in this discovery of Anatolia, in this desire to put an end to traditional destitution, this recognition of the real import of even the poorest, most primitive, dullest peasant peoples in the undeveloped Interior, so long as they are of Turkish race, in this sudden flood of learned eloquence over the needs and the true inner worth of these miserable neglected Turkish peasants, in this pressing demand for thorough reforms for the economic and social strengthening of this element—measures which with the present ruling spirit of jingoism in the Government threaten to be carried through only at the expense of the non-Turkish population of Anatolia—we see very clear proof that the neo-Turkish movement is a pure race movement, is nothing but Pan-Turkism both outwardly and inwardly, and has very little indeed to do with religious questions or with Islam. The idea of Islam, or rather Pan-Islamism, is a complete failure. This we shall try to show in the following chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

Religion and race—The Islam policy of Abdul-Hamid and of the Young Turks—Turanism and Pan-Islamism as political principles—Turanism and the Quadruple Alliance—Greed and race-fanaticism—Religious traditions and modern reforms—Reform in the law—A modern Sheikh-ul-Islam—Reform and nationalisation—The Armenian and Greek Patriarchates—The failure of Pan-Islamism—The alienation of the Arabs—Djemal Pasha's "hangman's policy" in Syria—Djemal as a "Pro-French"—Djemal and Enver—Djemal and Germany—His true character—The attempt against the Suez Canal—Djemal's murderous work nears completion—The great Arabian and Syrian Separatist movement—The defection of the Emir of Mecca and the great Arabian catastrophe.

In little-informed circles in Europe people are still under the false impression that the Young Turks of to-day, the intellectual and political leaders of Turkey in this war, are authentic, zealous, and even fanatical Mohammedans, and superficial observers explain all unpleasant occurrences and outbreaks of Young Turkish jingoism on Pan-Islamic grounds, especially as Turkey has not been slow in proclaiming her "Holy War." But this conception is entirely wrong. The artificial character of the "Djihad," which was only set in motion against a portion of the "unbelievers," while the others became more and more the ruling body in Turkey, is the best proof of the untenability of this theory. The truth is that the present political régime is the complete denial of the Pan-Islamic idea and the substitution of the Pan-Turkish idea of race.

Abdul-Hamid, that much-maligned and dethroned Sultan, who, however, towers head and shoulders above all the Young Turks put together in practical intelligence and statesmanly skill, and would never have committed the unpardonable error of throwing in his lot with Germany in the war and so bringing about the certain downfall of Turkey, was the last ruler of Turkey that knew how to make use of Pan-Islamism as a successful instrument of authority.

Enver and Talaat and all that breed of jingoists on the Ittahad (Committee for Union and Progress) were upstarts without any schooling in political history, and so all the more inclined to the doctrinal revolutionism and short-sighted fanaticism of the successful adventurer, and were much too limited to recognise the tremendous political import of Pan-Islamism. Naturally once they had conceived the idea of the "Djihad," they tried to make theoretical use of Pan-Islamism; but practically, far from extending Turkey's influence to distant Arabian lands, to the Soudan and India, they simply let Turkey go to ruin through their Pan-Turkish illusions and their race-fanaticism.

Abdul-Hamid with his clever diplomacy managed to maintain, if not the real sympathies, at any rate the formal loyalty of the Arabs and their solidarity with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. It was he who conceived the idea of that undertaking of eminent political importance, the Hedjaz Railway, which facilitates pilgrimages to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and links up the Arabian territory with the Turkish, and he was always able to quell any disturbances in these outlying parts of the Empire with very few troops indeed. Nowadays the Young Turkish Government, even if they had the troops to spare, might send a whole army to the Hedjaz and they would be like an island of sand in the midst of that stormy Arab sea. The Arabs, intellectually far superior to the Turks, have at last made up their minds to defy their oppressors, and all the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire may be taken as already lost, no matter what the final result of the great war may be.

The Young Turks had scarcely come into power when they began with incredible lack of tact to treat the Arabs in a most supercilious manner, although as a matter of fact the Arabs far surpassed them in intellect and culture. They inaugurated a most un-modern campaign of shameless blood-sucking, cheated them of their rights, treated them in a bureaucratic manner, and generally acted in such an unskilful way that they finally alienated for ever the Arab element as they had already done in the case of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Albanians.

The ever-recurring disturbances in Yemen, finally somewhat inadequately quelled by Izzet Pasha, are still in the memory of all. And later, directly after the reconquering of Adrianople during the Second Balkan war, there was another moment of real national rebirth when a reconciliation might have been effected. The visit of a great Syrian and Arabian deputation to the Sultan to congratulate him over this auspicious event should have provided an excellent opportunity. I was staying some months then in Constantinople on my way back from Africa, and I certainly thought that the half-broken threads might have been knotted together again then if the Young Turks had only approached the Arabs in the right way. Even the great Franco-British attack on Stamboul might have been calculated to rouse a feeling of solidarity among the Mohammedans living under the Ottoman flag, and in the autumn and winter of 1915-1916 Arab troops actually did defend the entrance to the Dardanelles with great courage and skill. But Arab loyalty could not withstand for ever the mighty flood of race-selfishness that possessed the Young Turks right from the moment of their entry into the war. The enthusiasm of the Arabs soon disappeared when Pan-Turkish ideas were proclaimed all too clearly even to the inhabitants of their own land, when an era of systematic enmity towards the non-Turkish parts of the population was introduced and the heavy fist of the Central Committee was laid on the southern parts of the Empire as well.

An attempt was made to bring the ethnic principle of "Turanism" within the region of practical politics, but it simply degenerated into complete race-partiality and was not calculated to further the ideas of Pan-Islamism and the Turko-Arabian alliance which were both of such importance in the present war. It is this idea of Turanism that lies at the back of the efforts being made towards a purely Turkish Turkey, and that of course makes it clear at once that it must to a very large extent oppose the idea of Pan-Islamism. It is true that both principles may be made use of side by side as sources of propaganda for the idea of expansion and the policy of a "Greater Turkey." Turanists peep over the crest of the Caucasus down into the Steppes of the Volga, where the Russian Tartars live, and to the borders of Western Siberia and Inner China where in Russian Turkestan a race of people of very close kinship live and where very probably the Ottoman people had their cradle. The Pan-Islamists want the alliance of these Russian parts as well, but from another point of view, and, above all, they aim at the expansion of Ottoman rule to the farthest corners of Africa and South-West Asia, to the borders of negro territory, and through Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan to the foot of the Himalayas, while on grounds of practical politics they strive to abolish the old, seemingly insurmountable antithesis between Sonnites and Shiites within the sanctuary of Islam.

The programme of the so-called "Djihad" works on this principle, but goes much farther. As well as stirring up against their present rulers those parts of Egypt and Tripoli which once owned allegiance to the Sultan and the Atlas lands, which are at any rate spiritually dependent on the Caliph in Stamboul, the "Djihad" aims at introducing the spirit of independence into all English, French, Italian, and Russian Colonial territory by rousing the Mohammedans and so doing infinite harm to the enemies of Turkey. It is most important, therefore, always to differentiate between this "Holy War" "stirring-up" propaganda from Senegal to Turkestan and British India, and the more territorial Pan-Islamism of the present war, which goes hand in hand with the efforts being made towards a "Greater Turkey."

Instead of uniting all these principles skilfully for the realisation of a great end, making sure of the Arab element by wisely restraining their selfish and exaggeratedly pro-Turkish instincts and their despotic lust for power, and so giving their programme of expansion southwards some prospect of succeeding, the Turks gave way right from the beginning of the war to such a flood of brutal, narrow-minded race-fanaticism and desire to enrich the Turkish element at the cost of the other inhabitants of the country, that no one can really be surprised at the pitiable result of the efforts to secure a Greater Turkey.

I should just like to give one small example of the fanatical hatred that exists even in high official circles against the non-Turkish element in this country of mixed race. The following anecdote will give a clear enough idea of the ruling spirit of fanaticism and greed. I was house-hunting in Pera once and could not find anything suitable. I approached a member of the Committee and he said in solemn earnest: "Oh, just wait a few weeks. We are all hoping that Greece will declare war on us before long, and then all the Greeks will be treated as the Armenians have been. I can let you have the nicest villa on the Bosporus. But then," he added with gleaming eyes, "we won't be so stupid as merely to turn them out. These Greek dogs (köpek rum) will have the pleasure of seeing us take everything away from them—everything—and compelling them to give up their own property by formal contract."

I can guarantee that this is practically a word-for-word rendering of this extraordinary outburst of fanaticism and greed on the part of an otherwise harmless and decent man. I could not help shuddering at such opinions. Apparently it was not enough that Turkey was already at war with three Great Powers; she must needs seek armed conflict with Greece, so that, as was the outspoken, the open, and freely-admitted intention of official persons, she might then deal with four and a half millions of Ottoman Greeks, practically her own countrymen, as she had done with the unfortunate Armenians. In face of such opinions one cannot but realise how unsure the existence of the Young Turkish State has become by its entry into the war, and cannot but foresee that this race-fanaticism will lead the nation to political and social suicide. Can one imagine a purely Turkish Turkey, when even the notion of a Greater Turkey failed?