TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE

BY A. J. TOYNBEE

MCMXVII

CONTENTS

 I THE PAST

 II THE PRESENT

III THE FUTURE

I

What is Turkey? It is a name which explains nothing, for no formula canembrace the variety of the countries marked "Ottoman" on the map: theHigh Yemen, with its monsoons and tropical cultivation; the tilted rimof the Hedjaz, one desert in a desert zone that stretches from theSahara to Mongolia; the Mesopotamian rivers, breaking the desert with astrip of green; the pine-covered mountain terraces of Kurdistan, whichgird in Mesopotamia as the hills of the North-West Frontier of Indiagird the Plains; the Armenian highlands, bleak as the Pamirs, which feedMesopotamia with their snows and send it the soil they cannot keepthemselves; the Anatolian peninsula--an offshoot of Central Europe withits rocks and fine timber and mountain streams, but nursing a steppe inits heart more intractable than the Puszta of Hungary; thecoast-lands--Trebizond and Ismid and Smyrna clinging to the Anatolianmainland and Syria interposing itself between the desert and the sea, but all, with their vines and olives and sharp contours, keeping true tothe Mediterranean; and then the waterway of narrows and land-locked seaand narrows again which links the Mediterranean with the Black Sea andthe Russian hinterland, and which has not its like in the world. 

The cities of Turkey are as various as the climes, with the addedimpress of many generations of men: Adrianople, set at a junction ofrivers within the circle of the Thracian downs, a fortress since itsfoundation, well chosen for the tombs of the Ottoman conquerors;Constantinople, capital of empires where races meet but never mix, mistress of trade routes vital to the existence of vast regions beyondher horizon--Central Europe trafficking south-eastward overland andRussia south-westward by sea; Smyrna, the port by which men go up anddown between Anatolia and the Aegean, the foothold on the Asiaticmainland which the Greeks have never lost; Konia, between the mountaingirdle and the central steppe, where native Anatolia has always stood atbay, guarding her race and religion against the influences of thecoasts; Aleppo, where, if Turkey were a unity, the centre of Turkeywould be found, the city where, if anywhere, the races of the Near Easthave mingled--building their courses into her fortress walls from thepolygonal work of the Hittite founders to the battlements that kept outthe Crusaders--and now the half-way point of a railway surveyed along animmemorially ancient route, but unfinished like the history of Aleppoherself; Van by its upland lake, overhanging the Mesopotamian lowlandsand with the writing of their culture graven on its cliffs, yet living alife apart like some Swiss canton and half belonging to the infinitenorth; Bagdad, the incarnation for the last millennium of an eternalcity that shifts its site as its rivers shift their beds--from Seleuciato Bagdad, from Babylon to Seleucia, from Kish to Babylon--but whichalways springs up again, like Delhi, within a few parasangs of its lastruins, in an area that is an irresistible focus of population; Basraamid its palm-groves, so far down stream that it belongs to the IndianOcean--the port from which Sinbad set sail for fairyland, and from whichless mythical Arab seamen spread their religion and civilisation farover African coasts and Malayan Indies; these, and besides them almostall the holy cities of mankind: Kerbela, between the Euphrates and thedesert, where, under Sunni rule, the Shias of Persia and India havestill visited the tombs of their saints and buried their dead;Jerusalem, where Jew and Christian, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, Armenian and Abyssinian, have their common shrines and separatequarters; Mekka and Medina in the heart of the desert, beyond whichtheir fame would never have passed but for a well and a mart and aprecinct of idols and the Prophet who overthrew them; and there are thecities on the Pilgrim Road (linked now by railway with Medina, thenearer of the _Haramein_): Beirût the port, with its electric trams andnewspapers, the Smyrna of the Arab lands; and Damascus the oasis, looking out over the desert instead of the sea, and harbour not of shipsbut of camel-caravans. 

The names of these cities call up, like an incantation, the memory ofthe civilisations which grew in them to greatness and sank in them todecay: Mesopotamia, a great heart of civilisation which is cold to-day, but which beat so strongly for five thousand years that its pulses werefelt from Siberia to the Pillars of Hercules and influenced the tasteand technique of the Scandinavian bronze age; the Assyrians, whoextended the political marches of Mesopotamia towards the north, andturned them into a military monarchy that devastated the motherland andall other lands and peoples from the Tigris to the sea; the Hebrews, discovering a world-religion in their hill-country overlooking thecoast; the Sabaeans, whose queen made the first pilgrimage to Jerusalem, coming from Yemen across the Hedjaz when Mekka and Medina were still ofno account; the Philistines and Phoenicians of the Syrian sea-board, whowere discovering the Atlantic and were too busy to listen to the Hebrewprophets in their hinterland; the Ionians, who opened up the Black Seaand created a poetry, philosophy, science, and architecture which arestill the life-blood of ours, before they were overwhelmed, like thePhoenicians before them, by a continental military power; the Hittites, who first transmitted the fruitful influences of Mesopotamia to theIonian coasts--a people as mysterious to their contemporaries as toourselves, maturing unknown in the fastnesses of Anatolia, raising up asudden empire that raided Mesopotamia and colonised the Syrian valleys, and then succumbing to waves of northern invasion. All these people roseand fell within the boundaries of Turkey, held the stage of the worldfor a time, and left their mark on its history. There is a romance abouttheir names, a wonderful variety and intensity in their vanished life;yet they are not more diverse than their modern successors, in whoseveins flows their blood and whose possibilities are only dwarfed bytheir achievements. 

There were less than twenty million people in Turkey before the War, andduring it the Government has caused a million or so to perish bymassacre, starvation, or disease. Yet, in spite of this daemoniac effortafter uniformity, they are still the strangest congeries of racial andsocial types that has ever been placed at a single Government's mercy. The Ottoman Empire is named after the Osmanli, but you might search longbefore you found one among its inhabitants. These Osmanlis are agoverning class, indigenous only in Constantinople and a fewneighbouring towns, but planted here and there, as officers andofficials, over the Ottoman territories. They come of a clan of Turkishnomads, recruited since the thirteenth century by converts, forced orvoluntary, from most of Christendom, and crossed with the blood ofslave-women from all the world. They are hardly a race. Traditionfortified by inertia makes them what they are, and also their Turkishlanguage, which serves them for business of state and for a literature, though not without an infusion of Persian and Arabic idioms said toamount to 95 per cent. Of the vocabulary[1]. 

This artificial language is hardly a link between Osmanli officialdomand the Turkish peasantry of Anatolia, which speaks Turkish dialectsderived from tribes that drifted in, some as late as the Osmanlis, sometwo centuries before. Nor has this Turkish-speaking peasantry much incommon with the Turkish nomads who still wander over the centralAnatolian steppe and have kept their blood pure; for the peasantry hasreverted physically to the native stock, which held Anatolia from timeimmemorial and absorbs all newcomers that mingle with it on its soil. Thus there are three distinct "Turkish" elements in Turkey, divided byblood and vocation and social type; and even if we reckon all who speaksome form of Turkish as one group, they only amount to 30 or 40 percent. Of the whole population of the Empire. 

The rest are alien to the Turks and to one another. Those who speakArabic are as strong numerically as the Turks, or stronger, but they tooare divided, and their unity is a problem of the future. There arepure-bred Arab nomads of the desert; there are Arabs who have settled intowns or on the land, some within the last generation, like the Muntefikin Mesopotamia, some a millennium or two ago, like the Meccan Koreish, but who still retain their tribal consciousness of race; there are Arabsin name who have nothing Arabic about them but their language--most ofthe peasantry of Syria are such, and the inhabitants of ancient centresof population like Damascus or Bagdad; in Syria many of these "Arabs"are Christians, and some Christians, though they speak Arabic, haveretained their separate sense of nationality--notably the Roman CatholicMaronites of the Lebanon--and would hardly be considered as Arabs eitherby themselves or by their neighbours. The same is true of the Druses, another remnant of an earlier stock, which has preserved its identityunder the guise of Islam so heretically conceived as to rank as anindependent religion. As for the Yemenis--they will resent theimputation, for no Arabs count up their genealogies so zealously asthey, but there is more East African than Semitic blood in their veins. They are men of the moist, fertile tropics, brown of skin, and workinghalf naked in their fields, like the peoples of Southern India andBengal. And on the opposite fringes of the Arabic-speaking area thereare fragments of population whose language is Semitic butpre-Arabic[2]--the Jacobite Christians of the Tor-Abdin, and theNestorians of the Upper Zab, who once, under the Caliphs, were theindustrious Christian peasantry of Mesopotamia, but now are shepherdsand hillmen among the Kurds. The Kurds themselves are more scatteredthan any other stock in Turkey, and divided tribe against tribe, buttaken together they rank third in numerical strength, after the Arabsand Turks. There are mountain Kurds and Kurds of the plain, husbandmenand herdsmen, Kurds who have kept to their original homes along theeastern frontier, and Kurds who, under Ottoman auspices, have spreadthemselves over the Armenian plateau, the North Mesopotamian steppes, the Taurus valleys, and the hinterland of the Black Sea. 

The chief thing the Kurds have in common is the Persian dialect theyspeak, but it is usual to class as Kurds any and every community in theKurdish area which is not Turkish or Arab and can by courtesy be calledMoslem (the Kurds, for that matter, are only Moslems skin-deep). Suchcommunities abound: the Dersim highlands, in particular, are anethnographical museum; "Kizil-Bashi" is a general name for their kind;only the Yezidis, though they speak good Kurdish, are distinguished fromthe rest for their idiosyncrasy of worshipping Satan under the form of apeacock (Allah, they argue, is good-natured and does not need to bepropitiated) and they are repudiated with one accord by Moslem andChristian. 

But not all the scattered elements in Turkey are isolated or primitive. The Greeks and Armenians, for instance, are, or were, the mostenergetic, intellectual, liberal elements in Turkey, the naturalintermediaries between the other races and western civilisation--"were"rather than "are, " because the Ottoman Government has taken ruthlesssteps to eliminate just these two most valuable elements among itssubjects. The urban Greeks survive in centres like Smyrna andConstantinople, but the Greek peasantry of Thrace and Anatolia hasmostly been driven over the frontier since the Second Balkan War. As forthe Armenians, the Government has been destroying them by massacre anddeportation since April, 1915--business and professional men, peasantsand shepherds, women and children--without discrimination or pity. Athird of the Ottoman Armenians may still survive; a tenth of them aresafe within the Russian and British lines. Fortunately half this nation, and the majority of the Greeks, live outside the Ottoman frontiers, andare beyond the Osmanli's power. 

To compensate for its depopulation of the countries under its dominion, the Ottoman Government, during the last fifty years, has been settlingthem with Moslem immigrants from its own lost provinces or from otherMoslem lands that have changed their rulers. These "Mouhadjirs" arereckoned, from first to last, at three-quarters of a million, drawn fromthe most diverse stocks--Bosniaks and Pomaks and Albanians, Algerinesand Tripolitans, Tchetchens and Circassians. Numbers have been plantedrecently on the lands of dispossessed Armenians and Greeks. They addmany more elements to the confusion of tongues, but they are probablydestined to be absorbed or to die out. The Circassians, in particular, who are the most industrious (though most unruly) and preserve theirnationality best, also succumb most easily to transplantation, throughrefusal to adapt their Caucasian clothes and habits to Anatolian orMesopotamian conditions of life. 

All this is Turkey, and we come back to our original question: Whatcommon factor accounts for the name? What has stained this coat of manycolours to one political hue? The answer is simple: Blood. Turkey, theOttoman state, is not a unity, climatic, geographical, racial, oreconomic; it is a pretension, enforced by bloodshed and violencewhenever and wherever the Osmanli Government has power. 

It is a complex pretension. The first impulse, and the traditionalmethod by which it has been given effect, came from a little tribe ofpagan, nomadic Turks who wandered into Anatolia from Central Asia in thethirteenth century A. D. And were granted camping grounds by the reigningTurkish Sultan of the country--for Anatolia was already Turkish twocenturies before the Osmanlis appeared on the scene. But to call themOsmanlis is to anticipate the next stage in their history. They arenamed after Osman, their first leader's son, and he after the thirdsuccessor of the Prophet--it was a good Moslem name, and he took it whenhe was converted to Islam and organised his pagan tent-dwellers into asettled Mohammedan State in the north-western hills of Anatolia, on theborders of Christendom. A tribe had become a march, and the final stagewas from march to empire. 

From this point onwards Ottoman history singularly resembles the historyof the Osmanlis' present allies. The March of Brandenburg, the March ofAustria, and the March of Osman--they were each founded as the outerbulwarks of a civilisation, and all erected themselves into centres ofmilitary ascendancy over their fellow-countrymen and co-religionists tothe rear as well as the strangers opposite their front. The Osmanlis mayhave been more savage in their methods than the marchmen ofGermany--though hardly, perhaps, than the Teutonic Knights who preparedthe soil of Prussia for the Hohenzollerns. The Teutonic Knightsexterminated their victims; the Osmanlis drained theirs of their bloodby taking a tribute of their male children, educating them as Moslems, and training them as recruits for an Ottoman standing army. Their firstexpansion was forwards into Christian Europe; their capital shifted froma village in the hills to the city of Brusa on the Asiatic shore ofMarmora, from Brusa across the Dardanelles to Adrianople, fromAdrianople to the imperial city on the Bosphorus; and, with the captureof Constantinople, the Osmanli Sultans usurped the pretensions of EastRome, as the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns the emblems of Charlemagne andCaesar Augustus. 

Byzantium has become a very potent element in the Osmanlis' character, more potent than the habits of the march or the instinct of the steppes. It has dictated their system of administration, dominated their outlookon life, penetrated their blood. But the heritage of "Rûm" is not thefinal factor in the Ottoman Empire as it exists to-day; for after thesuccessors of Osman had founded their military monarchy with blood andiron on the ruins of one-third of Europe, they turned eastwards, with agenuinely Oriental gesture, and overran kingdoms and lands with theapparently mechanical impetus of all Asiatic conquerors, from Sargon ofAkkad and Cyrus the Persian to Jenghis Khan and Timur. The stoutestopponent of the Osmanlis in Asia was the Anatolian Sultanate ofKaraman--Moslem, Turkish, and the legitimate heir of those SeljukTurkish Sultans who had given Osman's father his first footing in theland. Osmanli and Karamanli fought on equal terms, but when Karaman wasoverthrown there was no power left in Asia that could stop the Osmanlis'advance. The Egyptians and Persians had no more chance against Ottomandiscipline and artillery than the last Darius had against theMacedonians. A campaign or two brought Sultan Selim the First from theTaurus to Cairo; a few more campaigns at intervals during the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, when Ottoman armies could be spared fromEurope, drove the Persians successively out of Armenia and Mosul andBagdad. And thus, by accident, as it were, in the pursuit of morecoveted things, the Osmanlis acquired "Turkey-in-Asia, " which is allthat remains to them now and all that concerns us here. 

"Turkey-in-Asia" is a transitory phenomenon, a sort of chrysalis whichenshrouded the countries of Western Asia because they were exhausted andneeded torpor as a preliminary to recuperation. Many calamities hadfallen upon them during the five centuries before the chrysalis formed. The break-up of the Arab Caliphate of Bagdad had led to aninterminable, meaningless conflict among a host of petty Moslem States;the wearing struggle between Islam and Christendom had been intensifiedby the Crusades; and waves of nomadic invaders, each more destructiveand more irresistible than the last, had swept over Moslem Asia out ofthe steppes and deserts of the north-east. The most terrible were theMongols, who sacked Bagdad in 1258, and gave the _coup de grâce_ to thecivilisation of Mesopotamia. And then, when the native productiveness ofthe Near East was ruined, the transit trade between Europe and theIndies, which had belonged to it from the earliest times and had beenthe second source of its prosperity, was taken from it by the westernseafarers who discovered the ocean routes. The pall of Ottoman dominiononly descended when life was extinct. 

The Osmanlis, whose nomadic forefathers had fled before the face of theMongols out of Central Asia, took the heritage which had slipped fromthe Mongols' grasp, and gathered all threads of authority in WesternAsia into their hands. The most valuable spoil of their Asiaticconquests was the Caliphate. Hulaku, the sacker of Bagdad, had put theCaliph Mustasim to death, and the remnant of the Abbasids had kept up ashadowy succession at Cairo, under the protection of the Sultan ofEgypt. Selim the Osmanli, when he entered Cairo as a conqueror in 1517, caused the contemporary Abbasid to cede his title, for what it wasworth, to him and his successors. It was a doubtful title, scorned byall Shias and regarded coldly by many Sunni rulers who were unwilling torecognise a spiritual superior in their most formidable temporal rival. But such as it was, it strengthened the Osmanli's hold on his dominions. Caliph of Islam, victorious guardian of the Moslem marches, and heir byconquest of imperial Rûm, the Osmanli Sultan held his Asiatic provinceswith ease; but the best security for his tenure was the misery to whichthey were reduced. Commerce and cultivation ebbed, population dwindled, and nomads still drifted in upon what once had been settled lands. TheOttoman Government, desiring a barrier against Persia, encouraged theKurds to spread themselves over Armenia; it welcomed less the Shammarand Anazeh Arabs, who broke over the Euphrates about the year 1700 andturned the last fields of Northern Mesopotamia to desolation; but it wastoo impotent or indifferent to turn them out. Western Asia lay fallowunder the Ottoman cannon-wheels. There have been fallow periods beforein the slow rhythm of its life--under the Persians, for instance, whooverran all lands and peoples of the East in the sixth century B. C. , overshadowed the Greeks for a moment, as the Osmanlis overshadowedEurope, halted, too massive for offence but seemingly unassailable, andthen collapsed pitifully before the probing spears of Alexander. 

The Osmanlis are passing at this moment as the Achaemenids passed then. They lost the last of Europe in the Balkan War, and with it theirprestige as increasers of Islam; the growth of national consciousnessamong their subjects, not least among the Turks themselves, has loosenedthe foundations of their military empire, as of the other militaryempires with which they are allied. They forfeited the Caliphate whenthey proclaimed the Holy War against the Allied Powers--inciting Moslemsto join one Christian coalition against another, not in defence of theirreligion, but for Ottoman political aggrandisement. They lost it morallywhen this incitement was left unheeded by the Moslem world; they lost itin deed when the Sherif of Mekka asserted his rights as the legitimateguardian of the Holy Cities, drove out the Ottoman garrison from Mekka, and allied himself with the other independent princes of Arabia. All theprops of Ottoman dominion in Asia have fallen away, but nothing dooms itso surely as the breath of life that is stirring over the dormant landsand peoples once more. The cutting of the Suez Canal has led thehighways of commerce back to the Nearer East; the democracy andnationalism of Europe have been extending their influence over Asiaticraces. On whatever terms the War is concluded, one far-reaching resultis certain already: there will be a political and economic revival inWestern Asia, and the direction of this will not be in Ottoman hands. 

We are thus witnessing the foundation of a new era as momentous, if notas dramatic, as Alexander's passage of the Dardanelles. The Ottomanvesture has waxed old, and something can be discerned of the new formsthat are emerging from beneath it; their outstanding features are worthour attention. 

II

The new Turkish Nationalism is the immediate factor to be reckonedwith. It is very new--newer than the Young Turks, and sharply opposed tothe original Young Turkish programme--but it has established itsascendancy. It decided Turkey's entry into the War, and is the key tothe current policy of the Ottoman Government. 

The Young Turks were not Nationalists from the beginning; the "Committeeof Union and Progress" was founded in good faith to liberate andreconcile all the inhabitants of the Empire on the principles of theFrench Revolution. At the Committee's congress in 1909 the Nationalistswere shouted down with the cry: "Our goal is organisation and nothingelse[3]. " But Young Turkish ideals rapidly narrowed. Liberalism gave wayto Panislamism, Panislamism to Panturanianism, and the "Ottoman StateIdea" changed from "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to theTurkification of non-Turkish nationalities by force. 

"The French Ideal, " writes the Nationalist Tekin Alp in _Thoughts on theNature and Plan of a Greater Turkey_, "is in contradiction to the needsand conditions of the age. " By contrast, "the Turkish national movementdoes not exhibit the failings of the earlier movements. It is in everyway adapted to the intellectual standard and feelings of the nation. Italso keeps pace with the ideas of the age, which have for some decadescentred round the principle of Nationality. In adopting TurkishNationalism as the basis of their national policy, the Turks have onlyabandoned an abnormal state of affairs and thereby placed themselves ona level with modern nations[4]. "

The development of Nationalism among the Turks was a natural phenomenon. Starting in the West, the movement has been spreading for a centurythrough Central Europe, Hungary, and the Balkans, till from the Turks'former subjects it has passed to the Turks themselves. Chance played itspart. Dr. Nazim Bey, for instance, the General Secretary of the "Unionand Progress" Committee, is said to have been fired by a work of M. LéonCahun's on the early history of the Turks and Mongols, lent him by theFrench Consul-General at Salonika, and the movement was, and still is, confined to a small _intelligentsia_. But that is the case with othernational movements too, and does not hinder them from being powerfulforces. Turkish Nationalism was kept alive after 1909 by a small groupof enthusiasts at Salonika--their leader was Ziya Bey, who had come upto the Young Turk Congress from Diarbekir, and was one of the firstconverts to the new idea. It gained ground suddenly during, the BalkanWar. The shock of defeat produced a craving for regeneration; the finalloss of Europe turned the minds of the Osmanlis to the possibilities ofAsia, and they were struck by the action of several prominent Russiansubjects of Turco-Tatar nationality, who, out of racial sympathy, hadgiven their services to the Ottoman Government in this time ofadversity. As Tekin Alp expresses it:

"The Turks realised that, in order to live, they must become essentiallyTurkish, become a nation, be themselves. .. . The Turkish nation turnedaside its gaze from the lost territory and looked instead upon Turania, the ideal country of the future. "

Two years later this "New Orientation" had so mastered the OttomanGovernment that it drew them into the European War. 

There are many aims within the new Turkish horizon. Some of them arenegative and non-political, some practical and extremely aggressive. Ziya Bey's adherents first took in hand the purification of the Turkishlanguage. A Turkish poet had endeavoured before to dispense with the 95per cent. (?) of the vocabulary that was borrowed from Persian andArabic, and "his poetry had to be published in small provincial papersbecause the important newspapers of the towns would not accept it. " Theestablished writers in the traditional style made a hard fight, butTekin Alp claims that the _Yeni Lisan_ (New Language) "is to-day inpossession of an absolute and unlimited authority. " Borrowed rhythmshave been banned as well as borrowed words, and there is even anagitation to replace the Arabic script by a new Turkish alphabet--animitation of the Albanian movement which was opposed so fiercely by theTurks themselves before the Balkan War. In 1913 the Government steppedin with the foundation of a "Turkish Academy" (_Turk Bilgi Derneyi_), and the Ministry of Education started an "Institute of Terminology, ""Conservatoire, " and "Writing and Translation Committee. " Thetranslation of foreign masterpieces as an incentive to a new nationalliterature was in the programme of Ziya Bey's society, the _Yeni Hayat_(New Life). Their most cherished plan was to translate the Koran and theFriday Sermon, to have the Khutba (Prayer for the Caliph) recited inTurkish, and to remove the Arabic texts from the walls of the mosques[5];the eyes and ears of Turkish Moslems were to be saved from thecontamination of an anti-national language; but the campaign againstArabic passed over into an attack upon Islam. 

"The Turkish Nationalists, " Tekin Alp explains, "have made great effortsto nationalise religion itself, and to give it the impress of theTurkish national spirit. This idea was zealously supported by afortnightly periodical, and one of the noblest tasks undertaken by ithas been the translation of the Koran into Turkish. This is a reform ofthe greatest importance. It is well known that the translation of theKoran has hitherto been considered a sin. The Nationalists have cutthemselves off from this superstitious prejudice and have had threetranslations made, the above-mentioned and two others. "

On this issue the Nationalists broke a lance with the _Islamjis_, or"clericals, " as Tekin Alp prefers to call them. 

"Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities, but only Believers, the _Islamjis_ thought that to occupy oneself withnational questions was to act against the interests and principles ofIslam itself. .. . According to the Nationalists, the pronouncement in theKoran was directed exclusively against the very frequent dissensions ofclans and parties in the various Arab races. " (A sneer which is meant tohave a modern application. ) "Although the Nationalists proclaimthemselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed, nevertheless they donot conceal the fact that their interpretation of Islam is not the sameas that of the Arabs. They maintain that the Turks cannot interpret theKoran in the same manner as the Arabs. .. . Their idea of God is alsodifferent. "

This amazing _Kulturkampf_ is quite possibly a reminiscence ofBismarckian Germany, for Turkish Nationalism is saturated with forgottenEuropean moods, and its vein of Romanticism is as antiquated as theKaiser's. It has taken Attila to its heart, and rehabilitated JenghisKhan, Timur, Oghuz, and the rest with the erudition of a Turanian WalterScott. 

"My Attila, my Jenghis, " sings Ziya Gök Alp, "these heroic figures, which stand for the proud fame of my race, appear on the dry pages ofthe history books as covered with shame and disgrace, while in realitythey are no less than Alexander and Caesar. Still better known to myheart is Oghuz Khan[6]. In me he still lives in all his fame andgreatness. Oghuz Khan delights and inspires my heart and causes me tosing psalms of gladness. The fatherland of the Turks is not Turkey orTurkestan, but the broad eternal land of Turania. "

The Ministry of _Evkaf_ (Religious Endowments) recently made a grant of£50, 000 (Turkish) towards the publication of works on these worthies;the students at the Military College in Constantinople are alleged tohave been diverted from their studies by their devotion to suchliterature, and on the eve of the War the Professor of MilitaryEducation there is reported to have delivered the following address toan instruction class of reserve officers:

"We are, gentlemen, before all, Turks. I wonder why we are calledOttomans, for who is Osman after whom we are named? He is a Turk fromAltai, who overran this country with his Turkish Army. Therefore it ismore of an honour to us to be named after his origin than after himself. We have so far been deceived by the ignorance of our forebears, and fieon these forebears who made us forget our nationality. .. . Be sure thatTurkish nationality is better for us than Islam, and racial pride is oneof the greatest social virtues[7]. "

These extravagances must not be taken too literally. The Young Turkpoliticians, though they have embarked on a Nationalist policy, are notso reckless as to break openly with Islam or to denounce the founder oftheir State. They see clearly enough that Turkish Nationalism carried toa logical extreme is incompatible with the Ottoman pretension, and theyfavour the view, so severely criticised by Tekin Alp, "that all threegroups of ideas--Ottomanism, Islamism, and the Turkish Movement--shouldwork side by side and together. " But, with this reservation, they followthe doctrinaires, who on their part are quite ready to press Islam intotheir service. Tekin Alp candidly admits that

"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and nationalimpulses. They realised only too clearly that the still abstract idealsof Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the lowerclasses, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was found moreexpedient to reach these classes under the flag of religion. "

This sentence reveals in a flash one motive of the Armenian"Deportations, " which followed Turkey's intervention in the War; and acelebrated German authority, in a memorial[8] written in 1916, givesthis very explanation of their origin. 

"Turkey's entry into the War, " he writes, "was unwelcome to Turkishsociety in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well asto the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and themilitary dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. Theproclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of theMohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and theChristian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkishchauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the Warpopular with the mass of the Mohammedan population. "

The evidence presented in the British Blue Book on the _Treatment ofArmenians in the Ottoman Empire_[9] shows that this explanation iscorrect. The Armenians were not massacred spontaneously by the localMoslems; the initiative came entirely from the Central Government atConstantinople, which planned the systematic extermination of theArmenian race in the Ottoman Empire, worked out a uniform method ofprocedure, despatched simultaneous orders to the provincial officialsand gendarmerie to carry it into effect, and cashiered the few whodeclined to obey. The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regulartroops and gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of_chettis_, consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by theGovernment for this work; when the Armenians were gone the Turkishpopulace was encouraged to plunder their goods and houses, and as theconvoys of exiles passed through the villages the best-looking women andchildren were sold cheap or even given away for nothing to the Turkishpeasantry. Naturally the Turkish people accepted the good things theGovernment offered them, and naturally this reconciled them momentarilyto the War. 

Thus in the Armenian atrocities the Young Turks made Panislamism andTurkish Nationalism work together for their ends, but the development oftheir policy shows the Islamic element receding and the Nationalistgaining ground. 

"After the deposition of Abd-ul-Hamid, " writes the German authorityquoted above, "the Committee of Union and Progress reverted more andmore to the ex-Sultan's policy. To begin with, a rigorous party tyrannywas set up. A power behind the Government got the official executiveapparatus into its hand, and the elections to Parliament ceased to befree. The appointment of the highest officials in the Empire and of allthe most important servants of the administration was settled by decreesof the Committee. All bills had to be debated first by the Committee andto receive its approval before they came before the Chamber. Publicpolicy was determined by two main considerations: (1) The centralisticidea, which claimed for the Turkish race not merely preponderant butexclusive power in the Empire, was to be carried to its logicalconsequences; (2) The Empire was to be established on a purely Islamicfoundation. Turkish Nationalism and the Panislamic Idea precluded _apriori_ any equality of treatment for the various races and religions ofthe Empire, and any movement which looked for the salvation of theEmpire in the decentralisation or autonomy of its various parts wasbranded as high treason. The nationalistic and centralistic tendency wasdirected not merely against the various non-Mohammedan nationalities--Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Jews--but also against thenon-Turkish Mohammedan nations--Arabs, Mohammedan Syrians, Kurds, and the Shia element in the population. An idol of 'Pan-Turkism' waserected, and all non-Turkish elements in the population were subjectedto the harshest measures. The rigorous action which this policyprescribed against the Albanians, who were mostly Mohammedans and hadbeen thorough loyalists till then, led to the loss of almost the wholeof European Turkey. The same policy has provoked insurrections in theArab half of the Empire, which a series of campaigns has failed tosuppress. The conflict with the Arab element continues"--this waswritten in 1916--"though the 'Holy War' has forced it to a certainextent into the background. "

"The conflict with the Arabs"--that has been the worst folly of theYoung Turkish politicians, and it will perhaps be the most powerfulsolvent of the Empire which the Osmanlis have misgoverned so long. It isthe inevitable consequence of the camarilla government and thePan-Turkish chauvinism for which the Committee of Union and Progress hascome to stand. 

The Committee consists by its statutes of Turks alone, and the electioneven of one Arab was vetoed[10]. Tekin Alp informs us that

"The portfolio of the Minister of Trade and Agriculture, which has beenin the hands of Greeks and Armenians since the time of the Constitution, and was lately given to a Christian Arab, has at last been handed overto the Constantinople deputy Ahmed Nasimi Bey, who joined with Ziya GökAlp in laying the foundations of the Turkish Movement immediately afterthe proclamation of the Constitution. With one exception the members ofthe Cabinet are all imbued with the same ideas and principles. "

The Armenian deportations gave the Committee an opportunity oftightening its hold over the provincial officials as well. Valis whorefused to carry out the orders were superseded if they werestrong-minded enough to persist; but more often they were browbeaten bythe leaders of the local Young Turk organisations, or even by their ownsubordinates, and let things go their way. Ways and means of packing theadministration with their own henchmen had been discussed by theCommittee already in their congress of October, 1911, and they haddefined their policy then in the following remarkable resolutions[11]:

"The formation of new parties in the Chamber or in the country must besuppressed and the emergence of new 'liberal ideas' prevented. Turkeymust become a really Mohammedan country, and Moslem ideas and Mosleminfluence must be preponderant. Every other religious propaganda must besuppressed. The existence of the Empire depends on the strength of theYoung Turkish Party and the suppression of all antagonistic ideas. .. . 

"Sooner or later the complete Ottomanisation of all Turkish subjectsmust be effected; it is clear, however, that this can never be attainedby persuasion, but that we must resort to armed force. The character ofthe Empire must be Mohammedan, and respect must be secured forMohammedan institutions and traditions. Other nationalities must bedenied the right of organisation, for decentralisation and autonomy aretreason to the Turkish Empire. _The nationalities are a_ quantiténégligeable. _They can keep their religion but not their language. Thepropagation of the Turkish language is one of the sovereign means ofconfirming the Mohammedan supremacy and assimilating the otherelements_. "

The confusion of aims in these two paragraphs reveals the direction inwhich Young Turkish policy has been travelling. Religion is nowsecondary to language, and the precedence still given to the Islamicformula is only in apparent contradiction to this, for Mohammedansupremacy is equated with the Turkish National Idea. Such a version ofPanislamism leaves no room for an Arab race under Ottoman rule, and the"Panturanian" address given by the Turkish Professor at the MilitaryCollege in Constantinople had a sequel which showed the Arabs what they, too, had to expect from Turkey's entrance into the War. 

There were Arabs among the officers whom the Professor was addressing, and one of them ventured to protest. 

"All Ottomans are not Turks, " he said, "and if the Empire were to beconsidered purely Turkish, then all the non-Turkish elements would beforeign to it, instead of being living members of the political bodyknown as the Ottoman Empire, fighting the common fight for it and forIslam. "

To this the Professor is reported to have replied:

"Although you are an Arab, yet you and your race are subject to Turkey. Have not the Turks colonised your country, and have they not conqueredit by the sword? The Ottoman State, which you plead, is nothing but asocial trick, to which you resort in order to attain your ends. As toreligion, it has no connexion with politics. We shall soon march forwardin the name of Turkey and the Turkish flag, casting aside religion, asit is only a personal and secondary question. You and your nation mustrealise that you are Turks, and that there is no such thing as Arabnationality and an Arab fatherland. "

It is said that the Arab officers present handed in a joint protest tothe Minister of War, asking for the Professor's dismissal, and thatEnver Bey's answer was to have them all sent to the front-line trenches. 

Certainly the Turkish Nationalists have not concealed their attitudetowards the Arabs since the War began. 

"The Arab lands, " writes Djelal Noury Bey in a recently-published work, "and above all Irak[12] and Yemen, must become Turkish colonies in whichwe shall spread our own language, so that at the right moment we maymake it the language of religion. It is a peculiarly imperious necessityof our existence for us to Turkise the Arab lands, for theparticularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the youngergeneration of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great catastrophe. Against this we must be forearmed. "

And Ahmed Sherif Bey, again, has written as follows in the _Tanin_:

"The Arabs speak their own language and are as ignorant of Turkish as iftheir country were not a dependency of Turkey. It is the business of the_Porte_ to make them forget their own language and to impose upon theminstead that of the nation which rules them. If the Porte loses sight ofthis duty it will be digging its grave with its own hands, for if theArabs do not forget their language, their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their ancient empire on the ruins ofOttomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia. "

A Turkish pamphleteer wrote that "the Arabs have been a misfortune toTurkey, " and that "a Turkish conqueror's war-horse is better than theProphet of any other nation. " This pamphlet was distributed in theCaucasus at the Ottoman Government's expense as Turkish propaganda. 

But the best proof of the Young Turks' intentions towards the Arabs istheir actual conduct in the Arab provinces of their Empire. In thespring of 1916 an Arab who had escaped from Syria published some factsin the Egyptian Press which the Turkish censorship had previouslymanaged to conceal[13]. Business was ruined, because the Turks hadconfiscated all gold and forced the people to accept depreciated paper;the population was starving, and the Turks had prohibited the Americancolony at Beirût from organising relief; the national susceptibilitiesof the inhabitants were outraged in petty ways--the railway tickets, forinstance, were no longer printed in Arabic, but only in Turkish andGerman; and spies were active in denouncing the least manifestations ofdisaffection. A Turkish court-martial was sitting in the Lebanon, and atthe time our informant left Syria it had 240 persons under arrest, 180of them on political charges. These prisoners were the leading men ofSyria--Christians and Moslems without distinction; for in Syria, as inArmenia, the Turks put the leaders out of the way before they attackedthe nation as a whole; most of the Syrian bishops had been deported ordriven into hiding; by the beginning of March, 1916, it was reckonedthat 816 Arabs in Syria and 117 in Mesopotamia had already beencondemned to death with the confiscation of their property. A Turkishofficer, taking our informant for a Turk too, remarked to him: "ThoseArabs wish to get rid of us and are secretly in sympathy with ourenemies, but we mean to get rid of them ourselves before they have anychance of translating their sympathy into action. " This caps what aTurkish gendarme in Armenia said to a Danish sister serving with theGerman Red Cross: "First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, thenthe Kurds[14]. " Every non-Turkish nationality in the Ottoman Empire isthreatened with extermination. 

But the aims of Turkish Nationalists are not limited by the Ottomanfrontiers. If they are resolved to clear their Empire of everynon-Turkish element, that is only a step towards extending it overeverything Turkish that lies outside. The Turks have not only aliens toget rid of, but an irredenta to win. 

"The Ottoman Turks, " Tekin Alp reminds his readers, "now only representa tenth of the whole Turkish nation. There are now sixty to seventymillion Turkish subjects of various states in the world, who shouldsucceed in giving the nation an important place among the other Powers. Unfortunately, there is no connexion between the separate groups, whichare distributed over great tracts of land. Their aspirations andnational institutions still divide them. .. . Now that the Ottoman Turkshave awakened from their sleep of centuries they do not only think ofthemselves, but hasten to save the other parts of their race who areliving in slavery or ignorance. .. . 

"Turkish irredentism may be directed towards material or moral reformsaccording to circumstances. If the geographical position favours theventure, the Turks can free their brothers from foreign rule. In theother case, they can carry it on on moral or intellectual lines. 

"Irredentism, which other nations may regard as a luxury--though often avery terrible and costly one--is a political and social necessity forthe Turks. .. . If all the Turks in the world were welded into one hugecommunity, a strong nation would be formed, worthy to take an importantplace among the other nations of the world[15]. "

This may be a dream, but the Young Turks have used the political andmilitary resources of the Ottoman Empire to make it a reality. At thecongress of 1911 it was resolved that "immigration from the Caucasus andTurkestan must be promoted, land found for the immigrants, and theChristians hindered from acquiring real estate. " Turkey was first to bereinforced by the Turks abroad; in the European War she was to strikeout as their liberator. The day after their declaration of war the YoungTurkish Government issued a proclamation in which the followingsentences occur:

"Our participation in the world war represents the vindication of ournational ideal. The ideal of our nation and people leads us towards thedestruction of our Muscovite enemy, in order to obtain thereby a naturalfrontier to our empire, which should include and unite all branches ofour race. "

When war broke out the "Dashnaktzagan"--the Armenian parliamentary partyin the Ottoman Empire--were in congress at Erzerum. A deputation ofYoung Turk propagandists[16] presented themselves, and urged theArmenians to join them in raising a general insurrection in Caucasia. They sketched their proposed partition of Russian territory; the Tatars[17] were to have this, the Georgians that, the Armenians this other;autonomy for the new provinces under Ottoman suzerainty was to be thereward for co-operation. The Dasknaktzagan had always worked with theYoung Turks in internal politics, but they refused to join them in thisaggressive venture. The Ottoman Armenians, they said, would do theirduty as Ottoman subjects during the war, but they advised the Governmentto preserve peace if that were still possible[18]. But the Turks werepast reason, and their Army was already on the move. The main bodycrossed the Russian frontier; a second force invaded Northern Persia, and penetrated as far as Tabriz. Tabriz is the capital of Azerbaijan, aprovince where the majority of the population is Turkish by language;and beyond, across the River Aras, lies the Russian province of Baku, also containing a large Turkish-speaking population and the vitaloilfields. The Turkish plan of campaign was frustrated by the brilliantRussian victory of Sarikamysh. By the end of January, 1915, the TurkishArmy was back within its own frontiers, and in this quarter it has notagain advanced beyond them. But the Young Turks' irredentist ambitionshave remained in being. During their brief occupation of Northern Persiathey did their best to wipe out the Syriac element in thepopulation--the Nestorian Christians of Urmia. Their plan was to get ridof all the non-Turkish peoples which separate the Turks of Anatolia fromthe Turks of Baku and Azerbaijan, and this was the second motive of theArmenian deportations, which they put in hand a month or two after theirmilitary projects had failed. 

The Turkish Irredentists propose, in fact, to gain their ends bybloodshed and terrorism. Tekin Alp (like most Turkish publicists andpoliticians since 1908) is a Macedonian[19], and is profoundly impressedby the methods which the other nationalities there employed to thediscomfiture of the Turks themselves. 

"Observers, " he writes, "who, like myself, are Macedonians, and, likemyself, had ample opportunity of gaining an intimate knowledge of theirredentist propaganda of the Bulgars, Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs, areable to judge the significance of this striving after a national ideal, and how sweet and inspiring it is to go through the greatest dangers forsuch a cause. This is best illustrated by a few living examples" (whichhe proceeds to give). .. . 

Macedonia is soaked in blood. Atrocities were committed here the merethought of which makes one's hair stand on end. Nevertheless, theleaders of robber bands and members of the terrible irredentistorganisations were not regarded by the public as wild robbers, but asheroes fighting for the unity of the nation. 

"Will the Young Turks emulate the self-sacrifice of these men?"

Russia and Persia are the fields marked out for such activity:

"In some places ordinary propaganda is sufficient, but inhotly-contested territory recourse is to be had to the more violentmeasures used in Macedonia. The neighbouring land of Persia is withoutdoubt the best of all countries with Turkish population for spreadingthe new ideas, and it has been found that simple propaganda is amplysufficient to produce a satisfactory effect on this fruitful soil. "

In Persia, Tekin Alp reckons, one-third of the population is of Turkishblood. He passes these Turkish elements in review, and concludes that"the spirit of the administration is Turkish, and also the leadingspirit of Persian civilisation, even though these be clothed in Persianguise"--for at present the tables are turned. "All those Turkishwarriors and heroes, Shahs and Grand Viziers, thinkers and scholars, have lost their Turkish consciousness and have become assimilated to thePersians in writing, speech, and literature. " Even the compact twomillions and a half of Turkish-speaking Azerbaijanis will write lettersonly in Persian, and will not read a Turkish newspaper. He omits themost important fact--that these Turks of Persia are Shias like theirPersian fellow-countrymen, while the "Mohammedan institutions andtraditions" for which the Ottoman Turks are pledged by the Young TurkParty to "secure respect" are those of the Sunni persuasion. But thenTurkish Nationalism depends upon ignoring religion. Tekin Alp sets outconfidently to give the Turks in Persia "a Turkish soul. " His model isthe Rumanian propaganda among the Vlachs in Macedonia, and hisexpectations are great:

"There is no power in Persia to put down such a movement, because itcould do no harm to anyone. The nationalisation of the Persian Turkswould even be a great and unexpected help to the Persian Government. .. . Persia would be situated with regard to the Turkish Government asBavaria towards Prussia. "

And this is only a stage towards a higher goal:

"The united Turks should form the centre of gravity of the world ofIslam. The Arabs of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, the Persians, Afghans, etc. , must enjoy complete independence in their own affairs, butoutwardly the world of Islam must present a perfectly united front. "

The Arabs of North Africa and the Shias of Iran can appraise the"independence" held out to them by the "unity" which Turkish Nationalismhas been presenting already to Syria and Irak, the Yemen and the Hedjaz. 

But Tekin Alp deals even less tenderly with Russia. In explaining thebond of interest between Turkish Nationalism and Germany he remarks that

"The Pan-Turkish aspirations cannot come to their full development andrealisation until the Muscovite monster is crushed, because the verydistricts which are the object of Turkish Irredentism--Siberia, theCaucasus, the Crimea, Afghanistan, etc. --are still directly orindirectly under Russian rule. "

The "et cetera" proves to be nothing less than the province of Kazan:

"The alluvial plains of the Volga and the Kama, in European Russia, areinhabited by four or five million Turks. .. . The Northern Turks are notindeed superior to the Ottoman Turks, but must not therefore beunderrated. Their progressive economic and social organisation is inevery way a great help to the national movement. 

"If, " he concludes, "the Russian despotism is, as we hope, to bedestroyed by the brave German, Austrian, and Turkish Armies, thirty toforty million Turks will receive their independence. With the tenmillion Ottoman Turks this will form a nation of fifty million, advancing towards a great civilisation which may perhaps be compared tothat of Germany, in that it will have the strength and energy to riseever higher. In some ways it will be even superior to the degenerateFrench and English civilisations. "

This Nationalism, which dominates Turkey's present, has also decided thequestion of her future. If such a movement has taken possession of theOsmanlis, the Osmanlis must lose possession of their Empire. TurkishNationalism now directs the Ottoman Government, wields its pretensions, is master within its frontiers; and how does it use its mastery? To makea hell of Armenia and Syria, and to plot out new Macedonias in Persiaand the heart of Russia. Thus Turkish Nationalism shows where the Turkis intolerable and must go, but it also shows where he has some right tostay. 

There are innocent and constructive elements in it, as in all movementsof the kind. As in Europe, it has forced open the Dead Hand of theChurch. Under its influence the Ministry of _Evkaf_, which holds theenormous religious endowments of Turkey in trust, has turned its fundsto the founding of a national bank and library, and the subsidising of anational architecture. It has also started elementary schools, like thevoluntary schools supported by the Christian nationalities, in aid ofthe Ministry of Education; and it has taken up the reform of the Moslemseminaries (_Medressés_), which have been one of the strongholds ofTurkish reaction. The welfare of Turkish students is a concern of theNationalist society called _Turk Ujaghi_ (the Turkish Family), foundedin 1912, and now possessing sixteen branches in various provincial townsof Anatolia--only Turks may be members--with affiliated societies in theCaucasus and Turkestan. The _Turk Ujaghi_ organises lantern lectures, lectures on mediaeval Anatolian art, and even lectures by a Turkish ladyon Panturanianism and woman's rights--she is said to have hadKhodjas[20] in her audience, and, if so, this certainly shows anunheard-of openness to new ideas on the part of the "Islamji. " Anothersociety, the _Turk Güji_ (Turkish Strength), encourages physical culturelike the Slavonic _Sokols_, and there are _Izdjis_, or TurkishBoy-Scouts, under Enver Bey's patronage, who take "Turanian"scout-names, blazon the White Wolf of Turkish paganism on their flags, and cheer, it is said, not for the "Caliph" or the "Padishah, " but forthe "Khakan. "

This jumble of efforts, half-admirable and half-absurd, will justifyTurkish Nationalism if it brings about the regeneration of the Anatolianpeasantry. The Anatolians have suffered as much from the Ottomandominion as any of the races which have come under its yoke. They havepaid for Ottoman Imperialism with their blood and physique; theirvillages have been ravaged by the syphilis of the garrison towns, andthe wider the frontiers of the Empire the further from their homes theAnatolian soldiers have died--in the Yemen, in Albania, in Irak, on thesnow-covered Armenian plateau. Two things are necessary for Anatolia'ssalvation--the limitation of the Turkish State to the lands inhabited byits Turkish-speaking population, and the replacement of the mongrelOsmanli bureaucracy by a cleaner and more democratic political order. Ifthe Allies can compass this, they may claim without hypocrisy to haveliberated another nationality; for Anatolia will be reborn on the day ofits escape from the Ottoman chrysalis as truly as were Serbia and Greeceand Rumania and Bulgaria. 

The beginnings will be difficult, as they have been in the Balkans. Whatever frontiers a Turkish National State may receive, they cannot bedrawn without including non-Turkish elements--racial geography isnowhere very simple between Bagdad and Vienna--and in view of what theTurk's racial minorities have suffered during the War and before it, those left to him hereafter must be safeguarded by stringentguarantees--far more stringent than the Capitulations, which, for thatmatter, protected none but the nationals of foreign Powers. TheCapitulations are a problem in themselves. They were repudiated by theYoung Turkish Government at the beginning of the War, as well as theconventions regulating the customs tariff. It is difficult to see howthe Peace Conference can pass over flagrant violations of internationaltreaties, and the Nationalists' contention that Turkish justice has beenbrought up to a European standard will not bear examination; on thecontrary, the Young Turkish congress of 1911 passed a resolution that"the reorganisation of the administration of justice was less importantthan the abolition of the Capitulations. " These difficulties, however, might be settled with a new and better Anatolian government; and as forthe racial question, with time and guaranteed tolerance for religion itmight solve itself, for there is a rude vitality in the Turkishlanguage, and the Greek and Armenian minorities in Central Anatolia havebeen gradually adopting it in place of their native speech, though thistendency is now being counteracted by the spread of national schoolsamong the scattered outposts of the two nationalities in the interior. 

III

With these suggestions, Anatolia and Turkish Nationalism may bedismissed from our survey. Shorn of their pretensions in Armenia and thecountries south of Taurus, the Turks may experiment in the art ofgovernment without the tragedies which their present domination hasbrought upon mankind. The other lands and peoples of Western Asia, whenthey have ceased to be "Turkey, " will be restored once more to thecivilised world. What forces will shape their growth? Not, evenindirectly, the discrowned Turk, for if he were not banned by his crimeshe would still be doomed by his incapacity. 

The relative qualities of the different Near Eastern races are not indoubt. A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, whoresigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities in1915, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the_Reichstag_[21]:

"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities--Armenians, Syrians and Greeks--on account of their cultural and economicsuperiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turkifyingthem by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated orconverted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doingthey are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting themselves. Yetwho is to help Turkey forward if not the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Empire? TheTurks, _the least gifted of the races living in Turkey_, are themselvesonly a minority of the population, and are still far behind the Arabs inculture. Where is there any Turkish trade, Turkish handicraft, Turkishindustry, Turkish art, Turkish science? They have even borrowed theirlaw and religion from the conquered Arabs, and their language, so far asit has been given literary form. 

"We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks, and Jews in German schools in Turkey for years, can only pass judgmentthat of all our pupils the pure Turks are the most unwilling and theleast talented. When for once in a way a Turk does achieve something, one can be sure in nine cases out of ten that one is dealing with aCircassian, an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins. From my personal experience I can only prophesy that the Turks properwill never achieve anything in trade, industry, or science. 

"We are told now in the German Press about the Turks' hunger foreducation, and of how they are thronging eagerly to learn German. Thereis even a report of language courses for adults which have been startedin Turkey. They have certainly been started, but with what result? Onereads of the language course at a technical school which began withtwelve Turkish teachers as pupils. Our informant forgets to add, however, that after four lessons only six pupils presented themselves;after five, five; after six, four; and after seven only three, so thatafter eight lessons the course broke down, through the indolence of thepupils, before it had properly commenced. If the pupils had beenArmenians they would have persevered till the end of the school year, learnt industriously, and finished with a respectable mastery of theGerman language. "

From a German teacher who has worked in Turkey for three years thisverdict is crushing, and Tekin Alp himself virtually admits the charge. "It is true, " he writes, "that the Turkish character is usually lackingin the qualities most essential to trade or economic undertakings, butthese may be acquired by a reasonable and methodical training andorganisation. " The only "organisation" that seems to occur to him is theBoycott, which has been popular with the Turks since the Revolution of1908. 

"The unaccommodating attitude of the Greek Government was sufficientexcuse, " he remarks, in reference to the Boycott of 1912. "The realmotive, however, was the longing of the Turkish nation for independencein their own country. The Boycott, which was at first directed solelyagainst the Greeks, was then extended to the Armenians and othernon-Mohammedan circles, and was carried out with undiminished energy. This movement, which lasted in all its rigour for several months, causedthe ruin of hundreds of small Greek and Armenian tradesmen. .. . Thesystematic and rigorous Boycott is now at an end, but the spirit itcreated in the people still persists. .. . It can now be asserted that themovement for restoring the economic life of Turkey is on the rightroad. "

The real effects of the Boycott of 1912 are described by the Germanauthority whose memorial has several times been cited in this article. He tells us how, under the patronage of the Young Turkish Government, associations were formed which intimidated the Moslem peasants intobuying from them, when they came to market, instead of from theChristians with whom they had formerly dealt. 

"The peasants came to their old dealers, " the memorial continues, "lamented their fate, and asked their advice as to how they could savethemselves from the hands of their fellow-countrymen. They weredelighted when at last the Boycott came to an end and they could oncemore buy from Greeks and Armenians, where they were well served and gotgood value for their money. "

If the Turkish Nationalists had confined themselves to economic weapons, the Turks' economic ineptitude would have prevented them from doingserious harm; but by abusing the political and military powers of theOttoman State to perpetrate the recent atrocities they have struck amortal blow at the prosperity of Western Asia. 

"In the whole of Asia Minor, with perhaps one or two exceptions, " thesame German authority states, "there is not a single pure Turkish firmengaged in foreign trade. .. . The extermination of the Armenianpopulation means not only the loss of from 10 to 25 per cent. Of thetotal population of Anatolia[22], but, what is most serious, theelimination of those elements in the population which are the mosthighly developed economically and have the greatest capacity forcivilisation. .. . "

And this is the universal judgment of those in a position to know. 

"The result of the deportations, " the American Consul at Aleppo declaresin an official report[23], "is that, as 90 per cent. Of the commerce ofthe interior is in the hands of the Armenians, the country is facingruin. The great bulk of business being done on credit, hundreds ofprominent business men other than Armenians are facing bankruptcy. Therewill not be left in the places evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer, or any of the professional people ortradesmen, with very few exceptions, and the country will be left in apractically helpless state. "

The German memorialist presses the indictment:

"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master ahandicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does notbecome more productive if it destroys its most industrious population. You do not advance the progress of civilisation if you drive into thedesert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wastedopportunities, the element in your population which shows the greatesteconomic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and thegreatest energy in every respect, and which was fitted by nature tobuild the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own senseof right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity ofan unpopular war may temporarily be promoted among the Turkish masses bythe destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements--theArmenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and Jews--but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realise thewhole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economicruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that theTurkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"--it isa German writing--"by victories at the front. "

"We may call it political necessity or what not, " declared an Americantravelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essenceit is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leadingplace[24]. "

What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met hisfate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?

The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for thelast thirty years. They have organised regular steamship servicesbetween German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-Germantrade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in theOttoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debtwas first placed under international administration, Germany held only4. 7 per cent. , of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey'screditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent. , and was second only toFrance[25]. Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of anyother foreign Power, have brought valuable concessions in theirtrain--harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, irrigation worksin the Konia oasis and the Adana plain, and the prospect, when theBagdad Railway reaches the Tigris, of tapping the naphtha deposits ofKerkuk[26]. Dr. Rohrbach, the German specialist on the Near East, forecasts the profits of the Bagdad Railway from the results of Russianrailway-building in Central Asia. He prophesies the cultivation ofcotton, in the regions opened up by the line, on a scale which willcover an appreciable part of the demands of German industry, and willopen a corresponding market for German wares among the newcotton-growing population[27]. "Yet the decisive factor in the BagdadRailway, " he counsels his German readers, "is not to be found in theseeconomic considerations but in another sphere. "

Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home. 

"Germany's relation to Turkey, " his monograph begins, "belies thedoctrine that all modern understandings and differences between nationshave an economic origin. We are certainly interested in the economicadvancement of Turkey . .. But in setting ourselves to make Turkey strongwe have been influenced far more by our political interests as a Stateamong States (_das politische, das staatlich-machtliche Interesse_). Even our economic activity has primarily served this aim, and has infact originated to a large extent in the purely politico-militaryproblems (_aus den unmittelbaren Machtaufgaben_) which confronted theTurkish Government. Exclusively economic considerations play a verysubordinate part in Turco-German relations. .. . Our common politicalaims, and Germany's interest in keeping open the land-route to theIndian Ocean, will make it more than ever imperative for us tostrengthen Turkey economically with all our might, and to put her in aposition to build up, on independent economic foundations, a bodypolitic strong enough to withstand all external assaults. The means willstill be economic; the goal will be of a political order[28]. "

And Dr. Rohrbach formulates the political goal with startling precision. After twelve pages of disquisition on recent international diplomacy hebrings his thesis to this point: the Bagdad Railway links up with therailways of Syria, and

"The importance of the Syrian railway system lies in this, that, if theneed arose, it would be the direct instrument for the exercise ofpressure upon England . .. Supposing that German-Austro-Turkishco-operation became necessary in the direction of Egypt. "

Written as it was in 1911, this is a remarkable anticipation of Turkishstrategic railway-building since the outbreak of war; but it isinfinitely remote in purpose from the economic regeneration of WesternAsia, and even when the German publicists reckon in economic values theygenerally betray their political design. 

"The special point for Germany, " Dr. Wiedenfeld lays down, in discussingthe agricultural possibilities of the Ottoman territories, "is that to alarge extent crops can be grown here which supplement our own economicresources in important respects. .. . In peace time, of course, no onewould think of transporting goods of such bulk as agricultural productsany way but by sea; but the War has impressed on us with brutalclearness the value for us of being able on occasions of extremenecessity to import cotton from Turkey by land. "

Thus Germany's economic activity in Turkey has been not for prosperitybut for power, not for peace but for war. In developing Turkey, Germanyis simply developing the "Central Europe" scheme of a military combineself-contained economically and challenging the world in arms[29]. Germany is concerned with Turkey, not for her splendid past and future, but for her miserable present; for Turkey--as she is, and only as sheis--is a vital chequer on the chess-board where Germany has been playingher game of world power, or "des staatlich-machtlichen Interessens, " asDr. Wiedenfeld would say. Therefore Germany does not eye the lands andpeoples under Ottoman dominion with a view to their common advantage andher own. She selects a "piece" among them which she can keep under herthumb and so control the square. Abd-ul-Hamid was her first pawn, andwhen the Young Turk Party swept him off the board she adopted them andtheir colour[30]; for by hook or by crook, through this agency or that, Turkey had to be commanded or Germany's play was spoilt. 

Germany's control over Turkey depends upon the maintenance of a corruptminority in power--too weak and corrupt to remain in it withoutGermany's guarantee, and corrupt enough, when secured in it, to put itat Germany's disposal. A free hand at home in return for servitude indiplomacy and war--the deal is called "Hegemony, " and is as old asAncient Greece. By her hegemony over the Ottoman Government Germanythreatens the British and Russian Empires from all the Ottomanfrontiers; and with the free hand that is their price the Young Turksinflict on all lands and peoples within those frontiers whatever evilsconduce to the maintenance of their pretensions. 

As Rohrbach and Wiedenfeld point out, this political understandingunderlies all Germany's economic efforts in Western Asia, and we can seehow it has warped them from their proper ends. The track of the BagdadRailway, for example, has not been selected in the economic interests ofthe lands and peoples which it ostensibly serves. Dr. Rohrbach himselfadmits that

"The Anatolian section of the Bagdad Railway cannot be described asproperly paying its way. It is otherwise with the" (French) "line fromSmyrna to Afiun Kara Hissar, which links the Anatolian Railway with theolder railway system in the West. .. . The parts of Asia Minor which werethickly populated and prosperous in antiquity lie mostly westward ofthis first section of the Bagdad Railway, round the river-valleys and"(French and English) "railways leading down to the Aegean. "

"There are other once-flourishing parts of the peninsula, " he continues, "which the Bagdad Railway does not touch at all"--the Vilayet of Sivasand the other Armenian provinces. The original German plan was to carrythe Railway through Armenia from Angora to Kharput, but Russia notunnaturally vetoed the construction, so near her Caucasian frontiers, ofa line which, by the nature of the Turco-German understanding, mustprimarily serve strategic ends[31], and the track was thereforedeflected to the south-east. This took it through the most barren partsof Central Anatolia, and in the next section involved the slow andcostly work of tunnelling the Taurus and Amanus mountains. 

"If merely economic and not political advantages were taken intoaccount, " Dr. Rohrbach concedes, "the question might perhaps be raisedwhether it would not be better to leave the Anatolian section alonealtogether and begin the Bagdad Railway from Seleucia" (on the Syriancoast). "The future export trade in grain, wool, and cotton will in anycase do all it can to lengthen the cheap sea-passage and shortencorrespondingly the section on which it must pay railway freights. Thefact that the route connecting Bagdad with the Mediterranean coast inthe neighbourhood of Antioch is the oldest, greatest, and still mostpromising trade-route of Western Asia is independent of all railwayprojects. "

It is worth remembering that a railway, following this route from theSyrian coast to the Persian Gulf, has more than once been projected bythe British Government. As early as the thirties of last century ColonelChesney was sent out to examine the ground, and in 1867 the proposal wasconsidered by a Committee of the House of Commons. For the economicdevelopment of Western Asia it is clearly a better plan, but then Dr. Rohrbach bases the "necessity for the East Anatolian section of theBagdad Railway" on wholly different grounds. 

"The necessity, " he declares, "consists in Turkey's military interests, which obviously would be very poorly served" (by German railwayenterprise) "if troops could not be transported by train without a breakfrom Bagdad and Mosul to the extremity of Anatolia, and _vice versâ_. "

The Bagdad Railway is thus acknowledged to be an instrument of strategyfor the Germans and for the Turks of domination--for "_vice versâ_"means that Turkish troops can be transported at a moment's noticethrough the tunnels from Anatolia to enforce the Ottoman pretension overthe Arab lands. Militarily, these tunnels are the most valuable sectionof the line; economically, they are the most costly and unremunerative. And the second (and longer) tunnel could still have been dispensed with, if, south of Taurus, the track had been led along the Syrian coast. "Economic interests and considerations of expense, " Wiedenfeldconcedes[32], "argued strongly for the latter course, but--fortunately, as we must admit to-day--the military point of view prevailed. " Thus theTurco-German understanding prevented the Bagdad Railway first frombeginning at a port on the Mediterranean coast, and then from touchingthe coast at all[33]. "The spine of Turkey, " as German writers are fondof calling it, distorts the natural articulation of Western Asia. 

Nemesis has overtaken the Germans in the Armenian deportations--a"political end" of Turkish Nationalism which swept away the "economicmeans" towards Germany's subtler policy. A month or two before theoutbreak of war Dr. Rohrbach stated, in a public lecture, that

"Germany has an important interest in effecting and maintaining contactwith the Armenian nation. We have set before ourselves the necessary andlegitimate aim of spreading and enrooting German influence in Turkey, not only by military missions and the construction of railways, but alsoby the establishment of intellectual relations, by the work of German_Kultur_--in a word, by moral conquests; and we are determined, bypacific means, to reach an amicable understanding with the Turks and theother nations in the Turkish Empire. Our ulterior object in this is tostrengthen the Turkish Empire internally with the aid of German science, education, and training, and for this work the Armenians areindispensable. "

A few months later Germany, as part price of Turkey's intervention inthe War, had to leave the Young Turks a "free hand" to exterminate thenation which was the indispensable instrument of her Turkish policy. Onthe 9th August, 1915, the German Ambassador at Constantinople handed ina formal protest against the deportations, in which his Government"declined all responsibility for the consequences which might result. "On the 11th January, 1916, in the German Reichstag, the Chief of thePolitical Department of the Foreign Office replied to a question fromDr. Liebknecht that "an exchange of views about the reaction of thesemeasures upon the population was taking place, " and that "furtherinformation could not be given. " And while Germany was maintaining this"correct attitude" before the world, she was assisting in Turkey at thedestruction of her own work. 

Even the atrocities of 1909 had damaged the economic prospects of theAdapa district from which Dr. Rohrbach[34] hoped so much, for

"The first thing the Turkish peasants did was to destroy all thesteam-ploughs and nearly all the threshing machines (there were over ahundred of them) which the Armenian villagers had imported for thecultivation of the Civilian plain[35]. "

By the atrocities of 1915 the economic life of Western Asia wascompletely ruined, and the fruits of German enterprise were swept awayin the flood. 

"I have before me, " writes our German memorialised, "a list of thecustomers of a single Constantinople firm of importers which places itsorders principally in Germany and Austria. The accounts which this firmhas outstanding amount to date to £13, 922 (Turkish), owing from 378customers in 42 towns of the interior. In consequence of the Armeniandeportations these debts are no longer recoverable. The 378 customers, with all their employees, goods, and assets, have vanished from the faceof the earth. Any of the owners that are still alive are now beggars onthe borders of the Arabian desert. "

At Urfa, after the atrocities of 1896, philanthropists of all nationshad founded orphanages and started native industries. Attached to theGerman orphanage there was a carpet factory, with dyeing vats and aspinnery, which Dr. Rohrbach[36], after personal investigation, describes as "an institution to be welcomed as unreservedly from thenational as from the humanitarian point of view. "

"The factory, " he remarks, "not only provides work and bread for 400persons, but has transplanted one of the most profitable and promisingindustries of the East into the sphere traversed by the German Railway, where German interests are predominant. "

He prophesies that the whole carpet industry of Western Asia, "fromwhich English and other foreign firms in Smyrna now draw such enormousprofits, " will soon be concentrated round Urfa in German hands. FromArmenia's evil, apparently, springs Germany's good--but in 1911 Dr. Rohrbach did not foresee the catastrophe of 1915. 

"For the rise of the carpet industry, " our German memorialised writes, "Turkey has to thank capitalists and exporters who are almost allArmenians, Greeks, Jews, or Europeans. Like the cotton cultivationintroduced by Germany into Cilicia, this carpet industry, in the easternprovinces, has been deprived of the hands essential to it by theArmenian deportations. "

Eye-witnesses at Urfa describe how the Armenian community there wasmassacred in 1915--the third time in twenty years, and this time toextinction--and it points the irony of the situation that the Turkishguns were served by German artillerymen[37]. 

"I have nothing to say, " writes Dr. Niepage, the German teacher fromAleppo, "about the opinion of the German officers in Turkey. I oftennoticed among them an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to changethe subject, when any German of warm feelings and independent judgmenttalked in their presence of the fearful sufferings of the Armenians. "

This moral bankruptcy is more fatal to the future of Germany in WesternAsia than all the material havoc which the Armenian deportations havecaused. For Dr. Niepage is convinced that the blood of the Armenianswill be on Germany's head:

"'The teaching of the Germans, ' is the simple Turk's explanation, . .. And more sensitive Mohammedans, Turks and Arabs alike, cannot believethat their own Government has ordered these horrors. They lay allexcesses at the Germans' door, for the Germans, during the War, areregarded as Turkey's schoolmasters in everything. The mollahs declare inthe mosques that the German officers, and not the Sublime Porte, haveordered the maltreatment and extermination of the Armenians. .. . Otherssay: 'Perhaps the German Government has its hands tied by certainagreements defining its powers, or perhaps it is not an opportune momentfor intervention. '

"Our presence had no ameliorating effect, and what we could do ourselveswas negligible. .. . The abusive epithet 'Giaur' is heard once more byGerman ears. .. . 

"We think it our duty to draw attention to the fact that our educationalwork in Turkey forfeits its moral basis and the natives' esteem, if theGerman Government is not in a position to prevent the brutalitiesinflicted here upon the wives and children of murdered Armenians. 

"The writer considers it out of the question that the German Government, if it seriously desired to stem the tide of destruction in this eleventhhour, would find it impossible to bring the Turkish Government toreason. .. . 

"If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians as an internalaffair of Turkey, which is only important to us because it ensures usthe Turks' friendship, then we must change the orientation of our German_Kulturpolitik_. We must stop sending German teachers to Turkey, and weteachers must give up telling our pupils in Turkey about German poetsand philosophers, German culture and German ideals, to say nothing ofGerman Christianity. 

"Three years ago I was sent by the Foreign Office as higher-gradeteacher to the German Technical School at Aleppo. The PrussianProvincial School Board at Magdeburg specially enjoined upon me, when Iwent out, to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me in thegrant of furlough to take up this post. I should not be fulfilling myduty as a German official and an accredited representative of Germanculture, if I consented to keep silence in face of the atrocities ofwhich I was a witness, or to look on passively while the pupilsentrusted to my charge were driven out into the desert to die ofstarvation. 

"The things of which everybody here has been a witness for months pastremain as a stain on Germany's shield in the minds of Oriental nations. "

What will be left to Germany in Western Asia after the war? She may keepher trade, though Wiedenfeld confesses that "the exchange of commoditiesbetween Germany and Turkey has never attained any really considerabledimensions, " and that "the German export trade commands no really staplearticle whatever of the kind exported by England, Austria, andRussia"--unless we count as such munitions and other materials ofwar[38]. Except for the last item, this German trade will probablyremain and grow; but the German hegemony, based on railway enterpriseand reinsured by "moral conquests, " will scarcely survive the Ottomandominion. 

Happily there are other representatives of culture, other indigenousnationalities, other possibilities of economic development, which willremain in Western Asia when the Turk and German have gone, and whichmay be equal to repairing the ruin they will leave behind. 

For nearly a century now the American Evangelical Missions have beendoing work there which is the greatest conceivable contrast to theGerman _Kulturpolitik_ of the last thirty years. A missionary, sent outto relieve the first pioneers, was given the following instructions bythe American Board:

"The object of our missions to the Oriental Churches is, first, torevive the knowledge and spirit of the Gospel among them, and, secondly, by this means to operate upon the Mohammedans. 

"The Oriental Churches need assistance from their brethren abroad. Ourobject is not to subvert them: you are not sent among those Churches toproselytise. Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if he will, the Greek aGreek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental. 

"Your great business is with the fundamental doctrines and duties of theGospel[39]. "

In this spirit the American missionaries have worked. They have had nowarships behind them, no diplomatic support, no political ambitions, noeconomic concessions. As Evangelicals their first step was to translatethe Bible into all the living languages and current scripts of theNearer East. For the Bulgars and Armenians this was the beginning oftheir modern literature, but the jealousy of the Orthodox and Gregorianclergy was naturally aroused. Native Protestant Churches formedthemselves--not by the missionaries' initiative but on their own. Theywere trained by the missionaries to self-government, and as they spreadfrom centre to centre they grouped themselves in unions, with annualmeetings to settle their common affairs. The missionaries alsoencouraged them to be self-supporting, and in 1908 the contributions ofthe Native Churches to the general expenses of the missions were twiceas large as those of the American Board[40]. The Ottoman Governmentrecognised its Protestant subjects as a religious corporation _(Millet)_in 1853, and in spite of this the jealousy of the national Churches wasovercome. For the work of the Americans was not confined to the newProtestant community. The translation of the Bible led them also intoeducational work; they laid the foundations of secondary education inWestern Asia, and their schools and colleges--still the onlyinstitutions of their kind--are attended by Gregorians as well asProtestants, Moslems as well as Christians, Moslem girls as well asboys. As they opened up remoter districts they added medicine to theiractivities, and their hospitals, like their schools, have been the firstin the field. And all this has been built up so unassumingly that itsmagnitude is hardly realised by the Americans themselves. In the threeTurkey Missions, which cover Anatolia and Armenia--the whole of Turkeyexcept the Arab lands--there were, on the eve of the War, 209 Americanmissionaries with 1, 299 native helpers, 163 Protestant churches with15, 348 members, 450 schools with 25, 922 pupils; Constantinople Collegeand 6 other colleges or high schools for girls; Robert College on theBosphorus and 9 other colleges for men or boys; and 11 hospitals. 

The War, when it came, seemed to sweep away everything. The ProtestantArmenians, in spite of a nominal exemption, were deported and massacredlike their Gregorian fellow-countrymen; the boys and girls were carriedaway from the American colleges, the nurses and patients from thehospitals; the empty buildings were "requisitioned" by the Ottomanauthorities; the missionaries themselves, in their devoted efforts tosave a remnant from destruction, suffered as many casualties from typhusand physical exhaustion as any proportionate body of workers on theEuropean battlefields. The Turkish Nationalists congratulated themselvesthat the American work in Western Asia was destroyed. In praising alecture by a member of the German _Reichstag_, who had declared himself"opposed to all missionary activities in the Turkish Empire, " aConstantinople newspaper[41] wrote:

"The suppression of the schools founded and directed by ecclesiasticalmissions or by individuals belonging to enemy nations is as important ameasure as the abolition of the Capitulations. Thanks to their schools, foreigners were able to exercise great moral influence over the youngmen of the country, and they were virtually in charge of its spiritualand intellectual guidance. By closing them the Government has put an endto a situation as humiliating as it was dangerous. "

But the missionaries' spirit was something they could not destroy. 

"When they deported the Armenians, " wrote a missionary, "and left uswithout work and without friends, we decided to come home and get ourvacation and be ready to go wherever we could after the War[42]. "

After the War the Turks in Anatolia may still be infatuated enough tobanish their best friends, but in Armenia, when the Turk has gone, theAmericans will find more than their former field; for, in one form oranother, Armenia is certain to rise again. The Turks have not succeededin exterminating the Armenian nation. Half of it lives in Russia, andits colonies are scattered over the world from California to Singapore. Even within the Ottoman frontiers the extermination is not complete, andthe Arabian deserts will yield up their living as well as the memory oftheir dead. The relations of Armenia with the Russian democracy shouldnot be more difficult to settle than those of Finland and Poland; herfrontiers cannot be forecast, but they must include the Six Vilayets--sooften promised reforms by the Concert of Europe and so often abandonedto the revenges of the Ottoman Government--as well as the Civilianhighlands and some outlet to the sea. One thing is certain, that, whatever land is restored to them, the Armenians will turn its resourcesto good account, for, while their town-dwellers are the merchants andartisans of Western Asia, 80 per cent. , of them are tillers of the soil. 

What the Americans have done for Armenia has been done for Syria by theFrench[43]. There are half a million Maronite Catholics in Syria, andsince the seventeenth century France has been the protectress ofCatholicism in the Near East. In 1864, when there was trouble in Syriaand the Maronites were being molested by the Ottoman Government, Francelanded an army corps and secured autonomy for the Lebanon under aChristian governor. But French influence is not limited to the Lebanonprovince. All over Syria there are French clerical, secular, and Judaicschools. Beirût and Damascus, Christian and Moslem--for there is morereligious tolerance in Syria than in most Near Eastern countries--areequally under the spell of French civilisation; and France is the chiefeconomic power in the land, for French enterprise has built the Syrianrailways. The sufferings of Syria during the War have been described;the Young Turks have confiscated the railways and deprived the Lebanonof its autonomy; even Rohrbach deprecates the fact that "only a few ofthe higher officials in Syria are chosen from among the natives of thecountry, while almost all, from the Kaimakam upwards, are sent out fromConstantinople, " and he attributes to this policy "the feeling againstthe Turks, which is most acute in Damascus. " This is Rohrbach'speriphrasis for Arab Nationalism, which will be master in its own housewhen the Turk has been removed. The future status and boundaries ofSyria can no more be forecast than those of Armenia at the present stageof the War; yet here, too, certain tendencies are clear. In some form orother Arab Syria will retain her connection with France, and her growingpopulation will no longer be driven by misgovernment to emigration. 

Syrians and Armenians have been emigrating for the last quarter of acentury, and during the same period the Jews, whose birthright inWestern Asia is as ancient as theirs, have been returning to theirnative land--not because Ottoman dominion bore less hardly upon themthan upon other gifted races, but because nothing could well be worsethan the conditions they left behind. For these Jewish immigrants camealmost entirely from the Russian Pale, the hearth and hell of modernJewry. The movement really began after the assassination of AlexanderII. In 1881, which threw back reform in Russia for thirty-six years. TheJews were the scapegoats of the reaction. New laws deprived them oftheir last civil rights, _pogroms_ of life itself; they came toPalestine as refugees, and between 1881 and 1914 their numbers thereincreased from 25, 000 to 120, 000 souls. 

The most remarkable result of this movement has been the foundation offlourishing agricultural colonies. Their struggle for existence has beenhard; the pioneers were students or trades-folk of the Ghetto, unused tooutdoor life and ignorant of Near Eastern conditions; Baron Edmund deRothschild financed them from 1884 to 1899 at a loss; then they weretaken over by the "Palestine Colonisation Association, " which discoveredthe secrets of success in self-government and scientific methods. 

Each colony is now governed by an elective council of inhabitants, withcommittees for education, police, and the arbitration of disputes, andthey have organised co-operative unions which make them independent ofmiddlemen in the disposal of their produce. Their production has rapidlyrisen in quantity and value, through the industry and intelligence ofthe average Jewish settler, assisted latterly by an AgriculturalExperiment Station at Atlit, near Haifa, which improves the varieties ofindigenous crops and acclimatises others[44]. There is a "Palestine LandDevelopment Company" which buys land in big estates and resells it insmall lots to individual settlers, and an "Anglo-Palestine Bank" whichmakes advances to the new settlers when they take up their holdings. Asa result of this enlightened policy the number of colonies has risen toabout forty, with 15, 000 inhabitants in all and 110, 000 acres of land, and these figures do not do full justice to the importance of thecolonising movement. The 15, 000 Jewish agriculturists are only 12-1/2per cent. Of the Jewish population in Palestine, and 2 per cent. , of thetotal population of the country; but they are the most active, intelligent element, and the only element which is rapidly increasing. Again, the land they own is only 2 per cent. Of the total area ofPalestine; but it is between 8 and 14 per cent. Of the area undercultivation, and there are vast uncultivated tracts which the Jews canand will reclaim, as their numbers grow--both by further colonisationand by natural increase, for the first generation of colonists havealready proved their ability to multiply in the Promised Land. Underthis new Jewish husbandry Palestine has begun to recover its ancientprosperity. The Jews have sunk artesian wells, built dams for waterstorage, fought down malaria by drainage and eucalyptus planting, andlaid out many miles of roads. In 1890 an acre of irrigable land atPetach-Tikweh, the earliest colony, was worth £3 12s. , in 1914, £36, andthe annual trade of Jaffa rose from £760, 000 to £2, 080, 000 between 1904and 1912. "The impetus to agriculture is benefiting the whole economiclife of the country, " wrote the German Vice-Counsul at Jaffa in hisreport for 1912, and there is no fear that, as immigration increases, the Arab element will be crowded to the wall. There are still only twoJewish colonies beyond Jordan, where the Hauran--under the Roman Empirea corn-land with a dozen cities--has been opened up by the railway andis waiting again for the plough. 

But will immigration continue now that the Jew of the Pale has beenturned at a stroke into the free citizen of a democratic country?Probably it will actually increase, for the Pale has been ravaged aswell as liberated during the war, and the Jews of Germany have based aningenious policy on this prospect, which is expounded thus by Dr. Davis-Trietsch of Berlin[45]:

"According to the most recent statistics about 12, 900, 000 out of the14, 300, 000 Jews in the world speak German or Yiddish (_jüdisch-deutsch_)as their mother-tongue. .. . But its language, cultural orientation, andbusiness relations the Jewish element from Eastern Europe" (the Pale)"is an asset to German influence. .. . In a certain sense the Jews are aNear Eastern element in Germany and a German element in Turkey. "

Germany may not relish her kinship with these lost Teutonic tribes, butDr. Davis-Trietsch makes a satirical exposure of such scruples:

"It used to be a stock argument against the Jews that 'all nations'regarded them with equal hostility, but the War has brought upon theGermans such a superabundance of almost universal execration that thequestion which is the most despised of all nations--if one goes, not byjustice and equity, but by the violence and extensiveness of theprejudice--might well now be altered to the Germans' disadvantage. 

"In this unenviable competition for the prize of hate, Turkey, too, hasa word to say, for the unspeakable Turk' is a rhetorical commonplace ofEnglish politics. "

Having thus isolated the Jews from humanity and pilloried them with theGerman and the Turk, the writer expounds their function in theTurco-German system:

"Hitherto Germany has bothered herself very little about the Jewishemigration from Eastern Europe. People in Germany hardly realised that, through the annual exodus of about 100, 000 German-speaking Jews to theUnited States and England, the empire of the English language and theeconomic system that goes with it is being enlarged, while a Germanasset is being proportionately depreciated. .. . 

"The War found the Jewry of Eastern Europe in process of being uprooted, and has enormously accelerated the catastrophe. Galicia and the westernprovinces of Russia, which between them contain many more than half theJews in the world, have suffered more from the War than any otherregion. Jewish homes have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, andthere is no doubt whatever that, as a result of the War, there will bean emigration of East European Jews on an unprecedented scale. .. . 

"The disposal of the East European Jews will be a problem forGermany. .. . It will no longer do simply to close the German frontiers tothem, and in view of the difficulties which would result from awholesale migration of Eastern Jews into Germany itself, Germans willonly be too glad to find a way out in the emigration of these Jews toTurkey--a solution extraordinarily favourable to the interests of allthree parties concerned. .. . "

And from this he passes to a wider vision:

"The German-speaking Jews abroad are a kind of German-speaking provincewhich is well worth cultivation. Nine-tenths of the Jewish world speakGerman, and a good part of the remainder live in the Islamic world, which is Germany's friend, so that there are grounds for talking of aGerman protectorate over the whole of Jewry. "

By this exploitation of aversions, Dr. Trietsch expects to deposit theJews of the Pale over Western Asia as "culture-manure" for a Germanharvest; and if the Jewish migration to Palestine had remained nothingmore than a stream of refugees, he might possibly have succeeded in hispurpose. But in the last twenty years this Jewish movement has become apositive thing--no longer a flight from the Pale but a remembrance ofZion--and Zionism has already challenged and defeated the policy whichDr. Trietsch represents. "The object of Zionism, " it was announced inthe _Basle Programme_, drawn up by the first Zionist Congress in 1897, "is to establish for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assuredhome in Palestine. " For the Zionists Jewry is a nation, and to becomelike other nations it needs its Motherland. In the Jewish colonies inPalestine they see not merely a successful social enterprise but thevisible symbol of a body politic. The foundation of a nationaluniversity in Jerusalem is as ultimate a goal for them as the economicdevelopment of the land, and their greatest achievement has been therevival of Hebrew as the living language of the Palestinian Jews. It wasthis that brought them into conflict with the Germanising tendency. In1907 a secondary school was successfully started at Jaffa, by theinitiative of Jewish teachers in Palestine, with Hebrew as the languageof instruction; but in 1914, when a Jewish Polytechnic was founded atHaifa, the German-Jewish _Hilfsverein_, which had taken a leading part, refused to follow this precedent, and insisted on certain subjects beingtaught in German, not only in the Polytechnic, but in the_Hilfsverein's_ other schools. The result was a secession of pupils andteachers. Purely Hebrew schools were opened; the Zionist organisationgave official support; and the Germanising party was compelled to accepta compromise which was in effect a victory for the Hebrew language. 

Dr. Trietsch himself accepts this settlement, but does not abandon hisidea:

"It was certainly impossible to expect the Spanish and Arabic-speakingJews[46] to submit in their own Jewish country to the hegemony of theGerman language. .. . Only Hebrew could become the common vernacularlanguage of the scattered fragments of Jewry drifting back to Palestinefrom all the countries of the world. But . .. In addition to Hebrew, towhich they are more and more inclined, the Jews must have aworld-language _(Weltsprache), _ and this can only be German. "

Anyone acquainted with the language-ordinances of Central Europe willfeel that this suggestion veils a threat. What has been happening inPalestine during the War? Dr. Trietsch informs us that the OttomanGovernment has been proceeding with the "naturalisation" of thePalestinian Jews, and that the "local execution of this measure has notbeen effected without disturbances which are beyond the province of thispamphlet. " One significant consequence was the appearance in Egypt ofPalestinian refugees, who raised a Zion mule corps there and foughtthrough the Gallipoli campaign. What is the outlook for Palestine afterthe War? If the Ottoman pretension survives, the menace from TurkishNationalism[47] and German resentment[48] is grave. But if Turk andGerman go, there are Zionists who would like to see Palestine a BritishProtectorate, with the prospect of growing into a British Dominion. Certainly, if the Jewish colonies are to make progress, they must berelieved of keeping their own police, building their own roads, and theother burdens that fall on them under Ottoman government, and this canonly be secured by a better public administration. As for the Britishside of the question, we may consult Dr. Trietsch. 

"There are possibilities, " he urges, "in a German protectorate over theJews as well as over Islam. Smaller national units than the 14 1-3million Jews have been able to do Germany vital injury or service, and, while the Jews have no national state, their dispersion over the wholeworld, their high standard of culture, and their peculiar abilitieslend them a weight that is worth more in the balance than many largernational masses which occupy a compact area of their own. "

Other Powers than Germany may take these possibilities to heart. 

Here, then, are peoples risen from the past to do what the Turks cannotand the Germans will not in Western Asia. There is much to bedone--reform of justice, to obtain legal release from the Capitulations;reform in the assessment and collection of the agricultural tithes, which have been denounced for a century by every student of Ottomanadministration; agrarian reform, to save peasant proprietorship, whichin Syria, at any rate, is seriously in danger; genuine development ofeconomic resources; unsectarian and non-nationalistic advancement ofeducation. But the Jews, Syrians, and Armenians are equal to their task, and, with the aid of the foreign nations on whom they can count, theywill certainly accomplish it. The future of Palestine, Syria, andArmenia is thus assured; but there are other countries--once as fertile, prosperous, and populous as they--which have lost not only their wealthbut their inhabitants under the Ottoman domination. These countries havenot the life left in them to reclaim themselves, and must look abroadfor reconstruction. 

If you cross the Euphrates by the bridge that carries the BagdadRailway, you enter a vast landscape of steppes as virgin to the eye asany prairie across the Mississippi. Only the _tells_ (mounds) with whichit is studded witness to the density of its ancient population--forNorthern Mesopotamia was once so populous and full of riches that Romeand the rulers of Iran fought seven centuries for its possession, tillthe Arabs conquered it from both. 

The railway has now reached Nisibin, the Roman frontier fortressheroically defended and ceded in bitterness of heart, and runs pastDara, which the Persians never took. Westward lies Urfa--named Edessa byAlexander's men after their Macedonian city of running waters[49]; laterthe seat of a Christian Syriac culture whose missionaries were heard inChina and Travancore; still famous, under Arab dominion, for itsVeronica and 300 churches; and restored for a moment to Christendom asthe capital of a Crusader principality, till the Mongols trampled itinto oblivion and the Osmanlis made it a name for butchery. 

From Urfa to Nisibin there can be fields again. The climate has notchanged, and wherever the Bedawi pitches his tents and scratches theground there is proof of the old fertility. Only anarchy has banishedcultivation; for, since the Ottoman pretension was established over theland, it has been the battleground of brigand tribes--Kurds from thehills and Arabs from the desert, skirmishing or herding their flocks, making or breaking alliance, but always robbing any tiller of the landof the fruits of his labour. 

"If once, " Dr. Rohrbach prophesies, "the peasant population were sure ofits life and property, it would joyfully expand, push out into thedesert, and bring new land under the plough; in a few years the villageswould spring up, not by dozens, but by hundreds. "

At present cultivation is confined to the Armenian foot-hills--anuncertain arc of green from Aleppo to Mosul. But the railway strikesboldly into the deserted middle of the land, giving the arc a chord, andwhen Turco-German strategic interests no longer debar it from beinglinked up, through Aleppo, with a Syrian port, it will be the reallyvaluable section of the Bagdad system. The railway is the only capitalenterprise that Northern Mesopotamia requires, for there is rainsufficient for the crops without artificial irrigation. Reservoirs ofpopulation are the need. The Kurds who come for winter pasture may beinduced to stay--already they have been settling down in the westerndistricts, and have gained a reputation for industry; the Bedawin, morefickle husbandmen, may settle southward along the Euphrates, and in timethere will be a surplus of peasantry from Armenia and Syria. These willadd field to field, but unless some stronger stream of immigration isled into the land, it will take many generations to recover its ancientprosperity; for in the ninth century A. D. Northern Mesopotamia paidHarun-al-Rashid as great a revenue as Egypt, and its cotton commandedthe market of the world[50]. 

Southern Mesopotamia--the Irak of the Arabs and Babylonia of theGreeks--lies desolate like the North, but is a contrast to it in everyother respect. Its aspect is towards the Persian Gulf, and Rohrbachgrudgingly admits[51] that down the Tigris to Basra, and not upstream toAlexandretta, is the natural channel for its trade. It gets nothing fromthe Mediterranean, neither trade nor rain, and every drop of water forcultivation must be led out of the rivers; but the rivers in theirnatural state are worse than the drought. Their discharge is extremelyvariable--about eight times as great in April as in October; they arealways silting up their beds and scooping out others; and when there areno men to interfere they leave half the country a desert and make theother half a swamp. Yet the soil, when justly watered, is one of therichest in the world; for Irak is an immense alluvial delta, more thanfive hundred miles from end to end, which the Tigris and Euphrates havedeposited in what was originally the head of the Persian Gulf. The Arabscall it the _Sawâd_ or Black Land, and it is a striking change from thebare ledges of Arabia and Iran which enclose its flanks, and from theNorthern steppe-land which it suddenly replaces--at Samarra, if you aredescending the Tigris, and on the Euphrates at Hit. The steppe cannotcompare with the _Sawâd_ in fertility, but the _Sawâd_ does not soreadily yield up its wealth. To become something better than awilderness of dust and slime it needs engineering on the grand scale anda mighty population--immense forces working for immense returns. In astrangely different environment it anticipated our modern rhythm of lifeby four thousand years, and then went back to desolation five centuriesbefore Industrialism (which may repeople it) began. 

The _Sawâd_ was first reclaimed by men who had already a mastery ofmetals, a system of writing, and a mature religion--less civilised menwould never have attempted the task. These Sumerians, in the fourthmillennium B. C. , lived on _tells_ heaped up above flood-level, each_tell_ a city-state with its separate government and gods, forcentralisation was the one thing needful to the country which theSumerians did not achieve. The centralisers were Semites from theArabian plateau. Sargon of Akkad and Naram Sin ruled the whole _Sawâd_as early as 2500 B. C. ; Hammurabi, in 1900, already ruled it fromBabylon; and the capital has never shifted more than sixty miles sincethen. Babylon on the Euphrates and Bagdad on the Tigris are thealternative points from which the _Sawâd_ can be controlled. Just abovethem the first irrigation canals branch off from the rivers, and betweenthem the rivers approach within thirty-five miles of each other. It isthe point of vantage for government and engineering. 

Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters ofBabylon into waters of life, and the _Sawâd_ became a great heart ofcivilisation, breathing in man-power--Sumerians and Amorites andKassites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks andArabs--and breathing out the works of man--grain and wool and Babylonishgarments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions stillfelt in our religion. 

"The land, " writes Herodotus[52], who saw it in its prime, "has a littlerain, and this nourishes the corn at the root; but the crops are maturedand brought to harvest by water from the river--not, as in Egypt, by theriver flooding over the fields, but by human labour and _shadufs_[53]For Babylonia, like Egypt, is one network of canals, the largest ofwhich is navigable. It is far the best corn-land of all the countries Iknow. There is no attempt at arboriculture--figs or vines or olives--butit is such superb corn-land that the average yield is two-hundredfold, and three-hundredfold in the best years. The wheat and barley there area good four inches broad in the blade, and millet and sesame grow as bigas trees--but I will not state the dimensions I have ascertained, because I know that, for anyone who has not visited Babylonia andwitnessed these facts about the crops for himself, they would bealtogether beyond belief. "

Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates hadbecome as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, theYangtse and the Hoang-Ho. 

"This, " Herodotus adds[54], "is the best demonstration I can give of thewealth of the Babylonians: All the lands ruled by the King of Persia areassessed, in addition to their taxes in money, for the maintenance ofthe King's household and army in kind. Under this assessment the King ismaintained for four months out of the twelve by Babylonia, and for theremaining eight by the rest of Asia together, so that in wealth theAssyrian province is equivalent to a third of all Asia. "

The "Asia" over which the Achaemenids ruled included Russian CentralAsia and Egypt as well as modern Turkey and Persia, and Egypt, under thesame assessment, merely maintained the local Persian garrison[55]. Itsmoney contribution was inferior too--700 talents as compared withAssyria's 1, 000; and though these figures may not be conclusive, becausethe Persian "province of Assyria" probably extended over the northernsteppes as well as the _Sawâd_, it is certain that under the ArabCaliphate, when Irak and Egypt were provinces of one empire for thesecond time in history, Irak by itself paid 135 million _dirhems_(francs) annually into Harun-al-Rashid's treasury and Egypt no more than65 million, so that a thousand years ago the productiveness of the_Sawâd_ was more than double that of the Nile. 

Another measure of the land's capacity is the greatness of its cities. Herodotus gives statistics[56] of Babylon in the fifth centuryB. C. --walls 300 feet high, 75 feet broad, and 58 miles in circuit;three- and four-storied houses laid out in blocks; broad straight streetsintersecting one another at regular intervals, at right angles orparallel to the Euphrates. Any one who reads Herodotus' description ofBabylon or Ibn Serapion's of Bagdad, and considers that these vast urbanmasses were merely centres of collection and distribution for the opencountry, can infer the density of population and intensity ofcultivation over the face of the _Sawâd_. When the Caliph Omar conqueredIrak from the Persians in the middle of the seventh century A. D. , andtook an inventory of what he had acquired, he found that there were5, 000, 000 hectares[57] of land under cultivation, and that the poll-taxwas paid by 550, 000 householders, which implies a total population, intown and country, of more than 5, 000, 000 souls, where a bare million anda half maintains itself to-day in city alleys and nomads' tents. 

And in Omar's time the _Sawâd_ was no longer at its best, for, a fewyears before the Arab conquest, abnormally high floods had burst thedykes; from below Hilla to above Basra the Euphrates broadened into aswamp, and the Tigris deserted its former (and present) bed for theShatt-el-Hai, leaving the Amara district a desert. The PersianGovernment, locked in a suicidal struggle with Rome, was powerless tomake good the damage, and the shock of the Arab invasion made itirreparable[58]. Under the Abbasid Caliphs of Bagdad the rest of thecountry preserved its prosperity, but in the thirteenth century Hulakuthe Mongol finished the work of the floods, and under Ottoman dominionthe _Sawâd_ has not recovered. 

Can it still be reclaimed? Surveys have been taken by Sir WilliamWillcocks, as Adviser to the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works, and hisfinal conclusions and proposals are embodied in a report drawn up atBagdad in 1911[59]. 

"The Tigris-Euphrates delta, " he writes, "may be classed as an aridregion of some 5, 000, 000 hectares. .. . All this land is capable of easylevelling and reclamation. The presence of 15 per cent. Lime in the soilrenders reclamation very easy compared with similar work in the denseclays of Egypt. One is never far away from the giant banks of old canalsand the ruins of ancient towns. "

But he does not expect to make all these 5, 000, 000 hectares productivesimultaneously, as they are said to have been when Omar took hisinventory. "It is water, not land, which measures production, " and hereckons that the average combined discharge of the rivers would irrigate3, 000, 000 hectares in winter, and in summer 400, 000 of rice or 1, 250, 000of other crops. This is the eventual maximum; for immediate reclamationhe takes 1, 410, 000 hectares in hand. His project is practically torestore, with technical improvements, the ancient system of canals anddrains, using the Euphrates water to irrigate everything west of theTigris (down to Kut) and the Shatt-el-Hai, and the water of the Tigrisand its tributaries for districts east of that line. Adding 33 per cent. For contingencies to his estimate for cost of materials and rates oflabour, and doubling the total to cover interest on loans and subsequentdevelopment, he arrives at £29, 105, 020 (Turkish)[60] as the cost, fromfirst to last, of irrigation and agricultural works together; and heestimates that the 1, 410, 000 hectares reclaimed by this outlay willproduce crops to the value of £9, 070, 000 (Turkish) a year. In otherwords, the annual return on the gross expenditure will be more than 31per cent. , and under the present tithe system £7, 256, 000 (Turkish) ofthis will remain with the owners of the soil, while £1, 814, 000 will passto the Government. This will give the country itself a net return of24. 9 per cent. On the combined gross cost of irrigation and agriculturalworks, while the Government, after paying away £443, 000 (Turkish) out ofits tithes for maintenance charges, will still receive a clear 9 percent. Per annum on the gross cost of irrigation, to which its share inthe outlay will be confined. 

Unquestionably, therefore, the enterprise is exceedingly profitable toall parties concerned. Looking further ahead, Sir William proposes tosupersede the navigation of the Tigris[61] by railways, and so set freethe whole discharge of the two rivers for irrigation. He contemplateshandling annually 375, 000 tons of cereals and 1, 250, 000 cwt. Of cotton, and estimates the future by the effects of the Chenab Canal in NorthernIndia--

"a canal traversing lands similar to those of Mesopotamia in theirclimate and in the condition in which they found themselves before thecanal works were carried out. .. . In such a land, so like a great part ofMesopotamia, canals have introduced in a few years nearly a million ofinhabitants, and the resurrection of the country has been so rapid thatits very success was jeopardised by a railway not being able to be madequickly enough to transport the enormous produce. "

"A million of inhabitants"--that is the crux of the problem. Labour isas necessary as water for the raising of crops; Sir William's barragesand canals without hands to turn them to account would be a dead lossinstead of a profitable investment; but from what reservoir ofpopulation is this man-power to be introduced? The German economists arebaffled by the difficulty. 

"It is useless, " as Rohrbach puts it, "to sink from 150 to 600 millionmarks in restoring the canal system, and then let the land lie idle, with all its new dams and channels, for lack of cultivators. Yet Turkeycan never raise enough settlers for Irak by internal colonisation[62]. "

She cannot raise them even for the minor enterprises at Konia andAdapa[63], and evidently the _Sawâd_ must draw its future cultivatorsfrom somewhere beyond the bounds of Western Asia. From Germany, manyGermans have suggested; but German experts curtly dismiss the idea. Thefirst point Rohrbach makes in his book on the Bagdad Railway is thatGerman colonisation in Anatolia is impossible for political reasons. "Noworse service, " he declares, "can be done to the German cause in theEast than the propagation of this idea, " and the rise of TurkishNationalism has proved him right[64]. There remain the Arab lands;

"But even, " he continues, "if the Turks thought of foreign colonisationin Syria and Mesopotamia, to hold the Arabs in check" (the politicalfactor again), "that would be little help to us Germans, for only verylimited portions of those countries have a climate in which Germans canwork on the land or perform any kind of heavy manual labour. "

And Germany herself is hard up for men. 

"For all prospective developments in Turkey, " writes Dr. Trietsch, "notmerely scientific knowledge, capital, and organisation are wanted, butmen, and Germany has no resources in men worth speaking of for openingup the Islamic world. "

It is one of his arguments for bringing in the Jews, but thecolonisation of Palestine will leave no Jews over for Irak. Rohrbach[65]disposes of the Mouhadjirs--they are a drop in the bucket, and are nomore adapted to the climate than the Germans themselves. "There isreally nothing for it, " he bursts out in despair, "but the introductionof Mohammedans from other countries where the climatic conditions ofIrak prevail. "

That narrows the field to India and Egypt, and drives Turco-Germanpolicy upon the horns of a dilemma:

"The colonists must either remain subjects of a foreign Power, asolution which could not be considered for an instant by any TurkishGovernment, or else they must become Turkish subjects--"

a condition which, to Indians and Egyptians, as well as Germans, wouldbe prohibitive. No one who has known good government would exchange itfor Ottoman government without the Capitulations as a guarantee. 

The Ottoman Government has its own characteristic view. In a memorandumon railways and reclamation, published by the Ministry of Public Worksin 1909, a _résumé_ is given of the Willcocks scheme. 

"In due time, " the memorandum proceeds, "a comprehensive scheme for thewhole of Mesopotamia must be carried out, but, apart from the questionof expense, it is clear that the public works involved will not bejustified until Turkey is in a position to colonise these extensivedistricts, and this question cannot be considered till we have succeededin getting rid of the Capitulations. "

This is the Ottoman pretension. Egypt, rid of the Osmanli, and India, where he never ruled, have kept their ancient wealth of harvests andpopulation, and have man-power to spare for the reclamation of the_Sawâd_. All the means are at hand for bringing the land to life--thewater, the engineer, the capital, the labour; only the Ottomanpretension stands in the way, and condemns the _Sawâd_ to lie dead andunharvested so long as it endures. 

"The last voyage I made before coming to this country, " wrote SirWilliam Willcocks at Bagdad in 1911, "was up the Nile, from Khartûm tothe great equatorial lakes. In this most desperate and forbidden regionI was filled with pride to think that I belonged to a race whose sons, even in this inhospitable waste of waters, were struggling in the faceof a thousand discouragements to introduce new forest trees and newagricultural products and ameliorate in some degree the conditions oflife of the naked and miserable inhabitants. How should I have felt if, in traversing the deserts and swamps which to-day represent what was therichest and most famous tract of the world, I had thought that I was ascion of a race in whose hands God had placed, for hundreds of years, the destinies of this great country, and that my countrymen could giveno better account of their stewardship than the exhibition of two mightyrivers flowing between deserts to waste themselves in the sea for ninemonths in the year, and desolating everything in their way for theremaining three? No effort that Turkey can make"--she was then stillmistress of the _Sawâd_--"can be too great to roll away the reproach ofthese parched and weary lands, whose cry ascends to heaven. "

Turkey, which claims the present in Western Asia, is nothing but anoverthrow of the past and an obstruction of the future. 

[Footnote 1: Tekin Alp: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal" (Weimar:Gustav Kiepenheuer, 1915). The percentage is of course an exaggeration. ]

[Footnote 2: In the sense of having preceded Arabic in this region, forin itself, and in its original area, Arabic is as old a language an anyother variety of Semitic. ]

[Footnote 3: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, " by Tekin Alp. ]

[Footnote 4: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, " by Tekin Alp. ]

[Footnote 5: _The Near East_, 30th March, 1917, p. 507; see also TekinAlp. ]

[Footnote 6: The legendary ancestor of the Turkish race. ]

[Footnote 7: _The Near East_, loc. Cit. ]

[Footnote 8: Which (for obvious reasons) was printed for privatecirculation only. ]

[Footnote 9: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916). ]

[Footnote 10: Memorial of the German authority cited above. ]

[Footnote 11: Quoted by the German authority cited above. ]

[Footnote 12: The Vilayets of Basra and Bagdad. ]

[Footnote 13: See the journal _Al-Mokattam_ of Cairo, 30th March, 31stMarch, 1st April, 1916 (English translation in the form of a pamphlet:"Syria during March, 1916, " printed by Sir Joseph Causton and Sons Ltd. , 1916). ]

[Footnote 14: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 253. ]

[Footnote 15: _Thoughts on the Nature and Plan of a Greater Turkey. _]

[Footnote 16: Emir Hechmat, their chief, subsequently went to Hamadan inPersia and organised guerilla bands there. ]

[Footnote 17: _i. E. _, the Turkish-speaking population in the RussianCaucasus. ]

[Footnote 18: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 80. ]

[Footnote 19: And, like other Young Turks, a Jew ("Tekin Alp" being a_nom de plume_). ]

[Footnote 20: Moslem _religieux_. ]

[Footnote 21: Ein Wort an die Berufenen Vertreter des Deutschen Volkes:Eindrucke eines deutschen Oberlehrers aus der Türkei, von Dr. MartinNiepage, Oberlehrer an der deutschen Realschule zu Aleppo, z. Zt. Wernigerode. (Printed in the second pamphlet issued by the SwissCommittee for Armenian Relief at Basel; English translation, "TheHorrors of Aleppo. " London, 1917: Hodder and Stoughton. )]

[Footnote 22: The writer includes Armenia under this term. ]

[Footnote 23: Dated 3rd Aug. , 1915: See Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 548. ]

[Footnote 24: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 413. ]

[Footnote 25: "Die deutsch-türkeschen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, " by Dr. Kurt Wiedenfeld, Professor of the Political Sciences at the Universityof Halle. (Duncker and Humblot, 1915). ]

[Footnote 26: "Die Bagdadbahn, " by Dr. Paul Rohrbach (Berlin, 1911), pp. 43, 44. ]

[Footnote 27: "Die Bagdadbahn, " pp. 49, 50. ]

[Footnote 28: The author rubs in his point in his concluding section:"All economic measures we may take in Turkey are only a means to an end, not an end in themselves" (p. 77). ]

[Footnote 29: Wiedenfeld's monograph is a _sonderabdruck_ from the twovolumes of studies on the "Wirtschaftliche Annaherung zwischen demdeutschen Reich u. Seinen Verbundeten, " edited by Heinrich Herkner andpublished by the _Verein fur Sozialpolitik_, which preaches Naumann'screed. ]

[Footnote 30: Just as, by a more gradual process, the Magyar Oligarchy, rather than the Hapsburg Dynasty, has become the instrument of Germancontrol over Austria-Hungary. ]

[Footnote 31: "Die Bagdadbahn, " pp. 29, 33. ]

[Footnote 32: Page 23. ]

[Footnote 33: Except by a branch line from Adana to Alexandretta, Rohrbach (pp. 27, 36, 37) laments the economic drawbacks of thisstrategic necessity. ]

[Footnote 34: "Bagdadbahn, " p. 60. ]

[Footnote 35: The German memorialised. ]

[Footnote 36: "Bagdadbahn, " pp. 39, 40. ]

[Footnote 37: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 530. Major Count Wolf vonWolfskahl, who served as adjutant to Fakhri Pasha in the Turkish"punitive expedition" against Urfa, is mentioned as particularly guiltyby a trustworthy neutral resident in Syria. ]

[Footnote 38: On which Wiedenfeld lays stress, pp. 19, 22. ]

[Footnote 39: "Leavening the Levant, " by Rev. J. Greene, D. D. (Beston, 1916: The Pilgrim Press), p. 99. ]

[Footnote 40: Excluding, of course, the hospital and educationalendowments, and the salaries of the missionaries themselves. ]

[Footnote 41: _Hilal_, 4th April, 1916, quoted in Miscellaneous No. 31(1916), pp. 654-6. ]

[Footnote 42: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 309. ]

[Footnote 43: Though the work of the American Presbyterian Mission atBeirût must not be forgotten. ]

[Footnote 44: See "Zionism and the Jewish Future" (London, 1916: JohnMurray), pp. 138-170; for the agricultural machinery on the JewishNational Fund's Model Farm at Ben-Shamen, see the Report of the GermanVice-Consul at Jaffa for the year 1912. ]

[Footnote 45: "Die Jüden der Türkei" (Leipzig, 1915: Veit u. Comp. ). Pamphlet No. 8 of the _Deutsches Vorderasienscomitee's_ series: "Länderu. Völker der Türkei. "]

[Footnote 46: The Spanish-speaking Jews in Turkey are descended fromrefugees to whom the Ottoman Government gave shelter in the sixteenthcentury; the Arabic-speaking Jews have been introduced into Palestinefrom the Yemen, by the Zionists, since 1908. ]

[Footnote 47: Dr. Trietsch admits that Jewish colonisation in Palestinewas retarded because "the leading French and British Jews remained underthe impression of the Armenian massacres" (of 1895-7) "as presented bythe anti-Turkish, French and British Press. .. . In reality, thebutcheries of Armenians in Constantinople were a convincing proof thatthe Jews in the Ottoman Empire were safe, for . .. Not a hair on a Jewishhead was touched. " One wonders how he will exorcise the "impression" of1915. ]

[Footnote 48: As early as 1912 the German Vice-Consul at Jaffa betrayedhis annoyance at the progress which Zionism was making. He admits indeedthat "the falling off in trade last year would have been greater stillthan it was, if the economic penetration of Palestine were notreinforced by an idealistic factor in the shape of Zionism;" but he ispiqued at the "Jewish national vanity" which makes it advisable forGerman firms to display their advertisements in Palestine in the Hebrewlanguage and character. ]

[Footnote 49: Edessa from Thracian [Greek: _bedu_] = Slavonic _voda. _]

[Footnote 50: _Muslin_ is named after Mosul, and cotton itself (inGreek, Latin, Arabic, and Turkish) _bombyx_ or _bambuk_, after Bambyke(Mumbij). ]

[Footnote 51: "Bagdadbahn, " p. 38. ]

[Footnote 52: Book I. , ch. 193. ]

[Footnote 53: Cp. Sir William Willcocks. "The Irrigation ofMesopotamia, " p. 5 (London, 1911: Spon). ]

[Footnote 54: Book I. , ch. 192. ]

[Footnote 55: Herodotus Book III. , ch. 91. ]

[Footnote 56: Book I. , chs. 178-183. ]

[Footnote 57: A hectare is approximately equal to two and a half acres. ]

[Footnote 58: "The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, " by Guy le Strange(Cambridge, 1905: at the University Press), pp. 25-9. ]

[Footnote 59: "The Irrigation of Mesopotamia, " by Sir William Willcocks, K. C. M. G. , F. R. G. S. (London, 1911: Spon). The report is dated Bagdad, March 26th, 1911. ]

[Footnote 60: £1. 00 Turkish = approximately £0. 90 sterling. ]

[Footnote 61: In his immediate project he intends to keep the Tigrisnavigable, and allots £48, 350 (Turkish) for its improvement. ]

[Footnote 62: Cp. Wiedenfeld, pp. 62-4. ]

[Footnote 63: "Die Bagdadbahn, " pp. 57, 61. ]

[Footnote 64: Cp. Wiedenfeld, p. 64. ]

[Footnote 65: "Bagdadbahn, " p. 83; cp. Trietsch, p. 11. ]