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Title: Deutschland Über Allah
Author: E. F. Benson
Release Date: July 1, 2013 [EBook #43073]
Language: English
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DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH
DEUTSCHLAND
ÜBER ALLAH
BY
E. F. BENSON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH
IT was commonly said at the beginning of this war that, whatever
Germany's military resources might be, she was hopelessly and childishly
lacking in diplomatic ability and in knowledge of psychology, from
which all success in diplomacy is distilled. As instances of this grave
defect, people adduced the fact that apparently she had not anticipated
the entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her treatment of
Belgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced not to be a
crime merely, but a blander of the stupidest sort. It is perfectly true
that Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in the light of
innumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the psychology
of civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till now, at
any rate, of "having got the hang of it" at all. But critics of her
diplomacy failed to see the root-fact that she did not understand it
merely because it did not interest her. It was not worth her while to
master the psychology of other civilised nations, since she was out not
to understand them but to conquer them. She had all the information she
wanted about their armies and navies and guns and ammunition neatly and
correctly tabulated. Why, then, since this was all that concerned her,
should she bother her head about what they might feel on the subject
of gas-attacks or the torpedoing of neutral ships without warning? As
long as her fumes were deadly and her submarines subtle, nothing further
concerned her.
But Europe generally made a great mistake in supposing that she could
not learn psychology and the process of its distillation into diplomacy
when it interested her. The psychology of the French and English was a
useless study, for she was merely going to fight them, but for years she
had been studying with an industry and a patience that put our diplomacy
to shame (as was most swiftly and ignominiously proven when it came
into conflict with hers) the psychology of the Turks. For years she had
watched the dealings of the Great Powers with Turkey, but she had never
really associated herself with that policy. She sat quietly by and saw
how it worked. Briefly it was this. For a hundred years Turkey had been
a Sick Man, and for a hundred years he had been kept alive in Europe
by the sedulous attentions of the Physician-Powers, who dared not let
him die for fear of the stupendous quarrels which would instantly arise
over his corpse. So there they all sat round his bed, and kept him alive
with injections of strychnine and oxygen and, no less, by a policy of
rousing and irritating the patient. All through the reign of Abdul Hamid
they persevered: Great Britain plucked his pillow from him, so to speak,
by her protectorate of Egypt; Russia tweaked Eastern Rumelia from him;
France deprived him of his hot-water bottle when she snatched at the
Constantinople quays, and they all shook and slapped him when he went to
war with Greece in 1896, and instantly deprived him of the territory
he had won in Thessaly. That was the principle of European diplomacy
towards Turkey, and from it Germany always held aloof.
But from about the beginning of the reign of the present German Emperor,
German or rather Prussian diplomacy had been going quietly about its
work. It was worth while to study the psychology of the Turks, because
dimly then, but with ever increasing distinctness, Germany foresaw that
Turkey might be a counter of immense importance in the great conflict
which was assuredly drawing nearer, though as yet its existence was but
foreshadowed by the most distant reflections of summer lightning on a
serene horizon. But if Turkey was to be of any profit to her, she wanted
a strong Turkey who could fight with her (or rather for her), and she
had no use for the Sick Man whom the other Powers were bent on keeping
alive but no more. Her own eventual domination of Turkey was always the
end in view, but she wanted to dominate not a weak but a strong servant.
And her diplomacy was not less than brilliant simply from the facts that
on the one hand it soothed Turkey instead of irritating, and on the
other it went absolutely unnoticed for a long time. Nobody knew that it
was going on. She sent officers to train the Turkish army, well knowing
what magnificent material Anatolia afforded, and she had thoroughly
grasped the salient fact that to make any way with Oriental peoples your
purse must be open and your backshish unlimited. "There is no God but
backshish, and the Deutsche Bank is his prophet."
For years this went on very quietly, and all over the great field of
the Ottoman Empire the first tiny blades of the crop that Germany was
sowing began to appear. To-day that crop waves high and covers the whole
field with its ripe and fruitful ears. For to-day Turkey is neither
more nor less than a German colony, and more than makes up to her for
the colonies she has lost and hopes to regain. She knows that perfectly
well, and so do any who have at all studied the history and the results
of her diplomacy there. Even Turkey itself must, as in an uneasy dream,
be faintly conscious of it. For who to-day is the Sultan of Turkey? No
other than William II. of Germany. It is in Berlin that his Cabinet
meets, and sometimes he asks Talaat Bey to attend in a strictly honorary
capacity. And Talaat Bey goes back to Constantinople with a strictly
honorary sword of honour. Or else he gives one to William II. from his
_soi-disant_ master, the Sultan, or takes one back to his _soi-disant_
master from his real master. For no one knows better than William II.
the use that swords of honour play in deeds of dishonour.
The object of this pamphlet is to trace the hewn and solid staircase of
steps by which Germany's present supremacy over Turkey was achieved.
Apart from the quiet spade-work that had been going on for some years,
Germany made no important move till the moment when in 1909 the Young
Turk party, after the forced abdication of Abdul Hamid, proclaimed the
aims and ideal of the new régime. At once Germany saw her opportunity,
for here, with her help, might arise the strong Turkey which she
desired to see, instead of the weak Turkey which all the other European
Powers had been keeping on a lowering diet for so long (desirous only
that it should not quite expire), and from that moment she began to
lend, or rather let, to Turkey in ever increasing quantities the
resources of her scientific and her military knowledge. It was in her
interests, if Turkey was to be of use to her, that she should educate,
and irrigate, and develop the unexploited treasures of human material,
of fertility and mineral wealth; and Germany's gold, her schools, her
laboratories were at Turkey's disposal. But in every case she, as in
duty bound to her people, saw that she got very good value for her
outlay.
Here, then, was the great psychological moment when Germany instantly
moved. The Young Turks proclaimed that they were going to weld the
Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole, and by a piece
of brilliant paradoxical reasoning Germany determined that it was she
who was going to do it for them. In flat contradiction of the spirit of
their manifestos, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived
and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of
the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference!
They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born
Turkish babe, and they nursed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and
soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it
arose from its cradle a baby no more but a great Prussian guardsman who
shouted "Deutschland über Allah!"
Only once was there a check in the career of the Prussian infant, and
that was no more than a childish ailment. For when the Balkan wars
broke out the Turkish army was in the transitional stage. Its German
tutors had not yet had time to inspire the army with German discipline
and tradition; they had only weeded out, so to speak, the old Turkish
spirit, the blind obedience to the ministers of the Shadow of God. The
Shadow of God, in fact, in the person of the Sultan had been dragged
out into the light, and his Shadow had grown appreciably less. In
consequence there was not at this juncture any cohesion in the army,
and it suffered reverse after reverse. But a strong though a curtailed
Turkey was more in accordance with Prussian ideas than a weak and
unformed one, and Germany bore the Turkish defeats very valiantly. And
that was the only set-back that this Pan-Prussian youngster experienced,
and it was no more than an attack of German measles which he very
quickly got over. For two or three years German influence wavered,
then recovered, "with blessings on the falling out, that all the more
endears."
It is interesting to see how Germany adapted the Pan-Turkish ideal to
her own ends, and by a triumphant vindication of Germany's methods the
best account of this Pan-Turkish ideal is to be found in a publication
of 1915 by Tekin Alp, which was written as German propaganda and by
Germany disseminated broadcast over the Turkish Empire. The movement was
organised by Kemal Bey in 1909 as a branch committee of the Union and
Progress Party at Constantinople, and its headquarters were in Salonica,
where the deposed Abdul Hamid was subsequently confined. Another branch,
under Zia Bey, worked at Constantinople. Kemal Bey collected a group of
young and ardent writers, who exploited the idea of a restoration of a
national and universal Turkey which should unite all Turkish elements,
and, as was hinted even then, extirpate the other nationalities, such as
the Armenians, which were a menace, or might conceivably be a menace,
to complete Turkish autocracy. The young writers were supplemented by
a group called Yeni Hayat, or the "Young Life," who worked for the
restoration of national traditions. Certain opposition was met with,
but this was overcome, and at once Kemal Bey and his assistants had the
Koran translated into Turkish, and the prayers for the Khalif--in Arabic
no longer, but in Turkish--were distributed throughout the Empire.
Knowing full well that, apart from language, the religious bond of Islam
was one of the strongest uniting forces, if not actually the strongest,
at their disposal, they proclaimed that the true faith was the Turkish
and not the Arab version. With a stupendous audacity they claimed this
difference between the two, namely, that the Arab conception of Allah
was the God of Vengeance, the Turkish conception the God of Love. The
Turkish language and the Turkish Allah, God of Love, in whose name the
Armenians were tortured and massacred, were the two wings on which
Turkey was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among
them a Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen
branches of it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a
Turkish Guiji or gymnastic club and an Izji or boy scouts' club. A union
of merchants worked for the same object in districts where hitherto
trade had been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared
on their shops that only Turkish labour was employed. Religious funds
also were used for similar economic restoration.
Turkey then was to be for the Turks, and so was a great deal more
than Turkey. They claimed that of the 10,000,000 population of Persia
one-third were Turks, while the province Azerbaijan--the richest,
most active and enlightened district of Persia--was entirely Turkish.
Similarly they regarded the country south of the Caucasus as Turkish,
since Turks formed 50 to 80 per cent. of its population. Kasan, in fact,
was Turkish, and if the Turks in the plain of the Volga, in the Crimea,
and in the Caucasus were welded into Turkey, a nation of between forty
and fifty million would be formed--Osmanlis all of them.
Germany saw, Germany tabulated, Germany licked her lips and took out
her long spoon, for her hour was come. She did not interfere: she only
helped to further the Pan-Turkish ideal. With her usual foresight she
perceived that the Izji, for instance, was a thing to encourage, for
the boys who were being trained now would in a few years be precisely
the young men of whom she could not have too many. By all means the
boy-scout movement was to be encouraged. She encouraged it so generously
and methodically that in 1916, according to an absolutely reliable
source of information, we find that the whole boy-scout movement, with
its innumerable branches, is under the control of a German officer,
Colonel von Hoff. In its classes (derneks) boys are trained in military
practices, in "a recreational manner," so that they enjoy--positively
enjoy (a Prussian touch)--the exercises that will fit them to be of
use to the Sultan William II. They learn trigger-drill, they learn
skirmishing, they are taught to make reports on the movements of their
companies, they are shown neat ways of judging distance. They are
divided into two classes, the junior class ranging from the ages of
twelve to seventeen, the senior class consisting of boys over seventeen
but not yet of military age. But since Colonel von Hoff organised this
boys of the age of seventeen have become of military age. Prussian
thoroughness therefore saw that their training must begin earlier; the
old junior class has become the senior class, and a new junior class
has been set on foot which begins its recreational exercises in the
service of William II., Gott and Allah, at the age of eight. It is all
great fun, but those pigeon-livered little boys who are not diverted by
it have to go on with their fun all the same, for, needless to say, the
Izji is compulsory on all boys. Of course they wear a uniform which is
made in Germany and is of a "semi-military" character.
The provision of soldiers and sailors, then, trained from the early
age of eight was the first object of Germany's peaceful and benign
penetration. As from the Pisgah height of the Pan-Turkish ideal she saw
the promised land, but she had no idea of seeing it only, like Moses,
and expiring without entering it, and her faith that she would enter
it and possess it has been wonderfully justified. She has not only
penetrated but has dominated; a year ago towns like Aleppo were crammed
with German officers, while at Islahie there were separate wooden
barracks for the exclusive use of German troops. There is a military
mission at Mamoura, where all the buildings are permanent erections
solidly built of stone, for no merely temporary occupation is intended,
and thousands of freight-cars with Belgian marks upon them throng the
railways, and on some is the significant German title of "Military
Headquarters of the Imperial Staff." There are troops in the Turkish
army to which is given the title of "Pasha formation," in compliment
to Turkey, but the Pasha formations are under the command of Baron
Kress von Kressenstein, and are salted with German officers, N.C.O.s,
and privates, who, although in the Turkish army, retain their German
uniforms.
This German leaven forms an instructional class for the remainder
of the troops in these formations, who are Turkish. The Germans are
urged to respect Moslem customs and to show particular consideration
for their religious observances. Every German contingent arriving at
Constantinople to join the Pasha formations finds quarters prepared
on a ship, and when the troops leave for their "destination" they
take supplies from depôts at the railway station which will last them
two or three months. They are enjoined to write war diaries, and are
provided with handbooks on the military and geographical conditions in
Mesopotamia, with maps, and with notes on the training and management
of camels. This looks as if they were intended for use against the
English troops in Mesopotamia, but I cannot find that they have been
identified there. The greatest secrecy is observed with regard to
these Pasha formations, and their constitution and movements are kept
extremely veiled.
Wireless stations have been set up in Asia Minor and Palestine, and
these are under the command of Major Schlee. A Turkish air-service was
instituted, at the head of which was Major Serno, a Prussian officer.
At Constantinople there is a naval school for Turkish engineers and
mechanics in the arsenal, to help on the Pan-Turkish ideal, and with
a view to that all the instructors are German. Similarly by the
spring of this year Germany had arranged to start submarine training
in Constantinople for the Turks, and a submarine school was open and
at work in March. Other naval cadets were sent to Germany for their
training, and Turkish officers were present at the battle of Jutland in
June, 1916, and of course were decorated by the Emperor in person for
their coolness and courage.
A complete revision of the Turkish system of exemption from military
service was necessary as soon as Germany began to want men badly. The
age for military service was first raised, and we find a Turkish order
of October, 1916, calling on all men of forty-three, forty-four, and
forty-five years of age to pay their exemption tax if they did not wish
to be called to the Colours. That secured their money, and, with truly
Prussian irony, hardly had this been done when a fresh Army order was
issued calling out all men whether they had paid their exemption tax
or not. Still more men were needed, and in November a fresh levy of
boys was raised regardless of whether they had reached the military
age or not. This absorbed the senior class of the boy scouts, who
hitherto had learned their drill in a "recreationary manner." Again the
Prussian Moloch was hungry for more, and in December the Turkish Gazette
announced that all males in Asia Minor between the ages of fourteen and
sixty-five were to be enrolled for military service, and in January of
this year, 1917, fresh recruiting was foreshadowed by the order that
men of forty-six to fifty-two who had paid their exemption money should
be medically examined to see if they were fit for active service.
Wider and wider the net was spread, and in the same month a fresh
Turco-German convention was signed whereby was enforced a reciprocal
surrender in both countries of persons liable to military service, and
of deserters, and simultaneously all Turks living in Switzerland who had
paid exemption money were recalled to their Germanised fatherland. By
now the first crops of the year were ripening in Smyrna, and in default
of civilian labour (for everyone was now a soldier) they were reaped by
Turkish soldiers and the produce sent direct to Germany.
Already in August, 1916, certificates of Ottoman nationality had been
granted to Serbians resident in the Empire who were willing to become
Ottoman subjects, and their "willingness" was intensified by hints that
incidents akin to the Armenian massacres might possibly occur among
other alien people. They had to sign a declaration that they would not
revert to their former nationality, and thus no doubt many Serbs passed
into the Turkish army. Further enrolments were desirable, and in March,
1917, all Greeks living in Anatolia were forcibly proselytised, their
property was confiscated, and they were made liable to military service.
Unfortunately all were not available, for of those who were removed from
the villages where they lived to military centres ten per cent, died
on the forced marches from hunger and exposure. That was annoying for
the German recruiting agents, but it suited well enough the Pan-Turkish
ideal of exterminating foreign nationalities. When trouble or discontent
occurred among the troops it was firmly dealt with, as, for instance,
when in November, 1916, there were considerable desertions from the 49th
Division. On that occasion the order was given to fire on them, and many
were killed and wounded. The officer who gave the order was commended by
the Prussian authorities for his firmness. Should such an incident occur
again, it will no doubt be dealt with with no less firmness, for in
April, 1917, Mackensen was put in supreme command of all troops in Asia
Minor. Simultaneously in Berlin Prince Zia-ed-Din, the Turkish Sultan's
heir, presented a sword of honour to the Sultan William II. Probably he
gave him good news of the progress of the German harbour works begun
in the winter at Stamboul, and himself learned that the railway bridge
which the Turks proposed to build over the Bosphorus was not to be
proceeded with, for the German high command had superseded that scheme
by their own idea of making a tunnel under the Bosphorus instead, which
would be safer from aircraft.
Such up to date, though in brief outline, is the history of the progress
of the Prussian octopus in Turkish military and naval matters. In
October, 1914, just before Turkey came into the war, she had been
mobilising for three months, while Enver Pasha continued successfully
convincing our Ambassador in Constantinople of his sincere and
unshakable friendship for England, and had 800,000 men under arms.
Already, of course, German influence was strong in the army, which now
was thoroughly trained in German methods, but that army might still be
called a Turkish army. Nowadays by no stretch of language can it be
called Turkish except in so far that all Turkish efficient manhood is
enlisted in it, for there is no branch or department of it over which
the Prussian octopus has not thrown its paralysing tentacles and affixed
its immovable suckers. Army and navy alike, its wireless stations, its
submarines, its aircraft, are all directly controlled from Berlin, and,
as we have seen, the generalissimo of the forces is Mackensen, who is
absolutely the Hindenburg of the East. But thorough as is the control
of Berlin over Constantinople in military and naval matters, it is not
one whit more thorough than her control in all other matters of national
life. Never before has Germany been very successful in her colonisations
; but if complete domination--the sucking of a country till it is a mere
rind of itself, and yet at the same time full to bursting of Prussian
ichor--may be taken as Germany's equivalent of colonisation, then indeed
we must be forced to recognise her success. And it was all done in
the name and for the sake of the Pan-Turkish ideal! Even now Prussian
Pecksniffs like Herr Ernst Marre, whose pamphlet, "Turks and Germans
after the War," was published in 1916, continue to insist that Germany
is nobly devoting herself to the well-being of Turkey. "In doing this,"
he exclaims in that illuminating document, "we are benefiting Turkey....
This is a war of liberation for Turkey," though omitting to say from
whom Turkey is being liberated. Perhaps the Armenians. Occasionally,
it is true, he forgets that, and naively remarks, "Turkey is a very
difficult country to govern. But after the war Turkey will be very
important as a transit country." But then he remembers again and says,
"We wish to give besides taking, and we should often like to give more
than we can hope to give." Let us look into this, and see the manner in
which Germany expresses her yearning to impoverish herself for the sake
of Turkey.
All this reorganisation of the Turkish army was of course a very
expensive affair and required skilful financing, and it was necessary
to get the whole of Turkey's exchequer arrangements into German hands.
A series of financial regulations was promulgated. The finance minister
during 1916 was still Turkish, but the official immediately under him
was German. He was authorised to deposit with the Controllers of the
Ottoman National Debt German Imperial Bills of £T30,000,000 and to
issue German paper money to the like amount. This arrangement ensures
the circulation of the German notes, which are redeemable by Turkey
_in gold_ two years after the declaration of peace. Gold is declared
to be the standard currency, and no creditor is obliged to accept in
payment of a debt more than 300 piastres in silver or fifty in nickel.
And since there is no gold in currency (for it has been all called in,
and penalties of death have been authorised for hoarders) it follows
that this and other issues of German paper will filter right through
the Empire. At the same time a German expert, Dr. Kautz, was appointed
to start banks throughout Turkey in order to free the peasants from
the Turkish village usurer, and in consequence enslave them to the
German banks. Similarly a German was put at the head of the Ottoman
Agricultural Bank. These new branches worked very well, but it is
pleasant to think that one such was started by the Deutsche Bank at
Bagdad in October, 1916, which now has its shutters up. Before this, as
we learn from the _Oesterreichischer Volkswirt_ (June, 1916), Germany
had issued other gold notes, in payment for gold from Turkey, which is
retainable in Berlin till six months after the end of the war. (It is
reasonable to wonder whether it will not be retained rather longer than
that.) These gold notes were accepted willingly at first by the public,
but the increase in their number (by the second issue) has caused them
to be viewed with justifiable suspicion, and the depreciation in them
continues. But the Turkish public has no redress except by hoarding
gold, which is a penal offence. That these arrangements have not
particularly helped Turkish credit may be gathered from the fact that
the Turkish gold £I, nominally 100 piastres, is now worth 280
piastres.
Again, the Deutsche Orientbank has made many extensions, and is already
financing cotton and wool trade for after the war. The establishment of
this provoked much applause in German financial circles, who find it to
be an instance of the "far-reaching and powerful Germano-Austrian unity,
which replaces the disunion of Turkish finance." This is profoundly
true, especially if we omit the word "Austrian," inserted for diplomatic
reasons. Again we find Germany advancing £3,000,000 of German paper to
the Turkish Government in January, 1917 for the payment of supplies
they have received from Krupp's works and (vaguely) for interest to
the German financial minister. This too, we may conjecture, is to be
redeemed after the war in gold.
In March of this year we find in the report of the Ottoman Bank a German
loan of £1,000,000 for the purchase of agricultural implements by
Turkey, and this is guaranteed by house-taxes. In all up to that month,
as was announced in the Chamber of Deputies at Constantinople, Germany
had advanced to Turkey the sum of £142,000,000, entirely, it would seem,
in German paper, to be repaid at various dates in gold. The grip, in
fact, is a strangle-hold, all for Turkey's good, as no doubt will prove
the "New Conventions" announced by Zimmermann in May, 1917, to take the
place of the abolished Capitulations, "which left Turkey at the mercy of
predatory Powers who looked for the disruption of the Ottoman Empire."
Herr Zimmermann does not look for that: he looks for its absorption.
And sees it.
The industrial development of Turkey by this benevolent and
disinterested Power has been equally thorough and far-reaching, though
Germany here has had a certain amount of competition by Hungary to
contend against, for Hungary considered that Germany was trespassing on
her sphere of interest. But she has been able to make no appreciable
headway against her more acute partner, and her application for a
monopoly of sugar-production was not favourably received, for Germany
already had taken the beet industry well in hand. In Asia Minor the
acreage of cultivation early in 1917 had fallen more than 50 per cent,
from that under crops before the war, but owing to the importation
of machinery from the Central Powers, backed up by a compulsory
Agricultural Service law, which has just been passed, it is hoped
that the acreage will be increased this year by something like 30 per
cent. The yield per acre also will be greatly increased this year, for
Germany has, though needing artificial manure badly herself, sent large
quantities into Turkey, where they will be more profitably employed.
She has no fear about securing the produce. This augmented yield will,
it is true, not be adequate to supply the needs of Turkey, who for the
last two years has suffered from very acute food shortage, which in
certain districts has amounted to famine and wholesale starvation of the
poorer classes. But it is unlikely that their needs will be considered
at all, for Germany's needs (she the fairy godmother of the Pan-Turk
ideal) must obviously have the first call on such provisions as are
obtainable. Thus, though in February, 1917, there was a daily shortage
in Smyrna of 700 sacks of flour, and the Arab and Greek population was
starving, no flour at all was allowed to be imported into Smyrna. But
simultaneously Germany was making huge purchases of fish, meat, and
flour in Constantinople (paid for in German paper), including 100,000
sheep. Yet such was the villainous selfishness of the famine-stricken
folk at Adrianople that when the trains containing these supplies
were passing through a mob held them up and sold the contents to the
inhabitants. That, however, was an isolated instance, and in any case
a law was passed in October, 1916, appointing a military commission to
control all supplies. It enacts that troops shall be supplied first,
and specially ordains that the requirements of German troops come under
this head. (Private firms have been expressly prohibited from purchasing
these augmented wheat supplies, but special permission was given in
1915 to German and Austro-Hungarian societies to buy.) A few months
later we find that there are a hundred deaths daily in Constantinople
from starvation and 200 in Smyrna, where there is a complete shortage
of oil. But oil is still being sent to Germany, and during 1916 five
hundred reservoirs of oil were sent there, each containing up to 15,000
kilogrammes. But Kultur must be supplied first, else Kultur would grow
lean, and the Turkish God of Love will look after the Smyrniotes. It
is no wonder that he blockade of Germany does not produce the desired
result a little quicker, for food is already pouring in from Turkey,
and when the artificial manures have produced their early harvest the
stream will become a torrent.
But during all these busy and tremendous months of war Germany has not
only been denuding Turkey of her food supplies, for the sake of the
Pan-Turkish ideal; in the same altruistic spirit she has been vastly
increasing the productiveness of her new and most important colony.
There is a great irrigation work going on in Konia, and another at Adana
financed by the Deutsche Bank. Ernst Marre gives us a capital account
of this, for Adana was already linked up with the Bagdad railway in
October, 1916, which was to be the great artery connecting Germany with
the East. There is some considerable shortage of labour there (owing in
part to the Armenian massacres, to which we shall revert presently),
but the financial arrangements are in excellent shape. The whole of the
irrigation works are in German hands and have been paid for by German
paper; and to get the reservoirs, &c., back into her own control it
has been agreed that Turkey, already completely bankrupt, will have to
pay not only what has been spent, but a handsome sum in compensation;
while, as regards shortage of labour, prisoners have been released in
large numbers to work without pay. This irrigation scheme at Adana will
increase the cotton yield by four times the present crop, so we learn
from the weekly Arab magazine, _El Alem el Ismail_, which tells us also
of the electric-power stations erected there.
The same paper (October, 1916) announces to the Anatolian merchants
that transport is now easy, owing to the arrival of engines and
trucks from Germany, while _Die Zeit_ (February, 1917) prophesies a
prosperous future for this Germane-Turkish cotton combine. Hitherto
Turkey has largely imported cotton from England; now Turkey--thanks to
German capital on terms above stated--will, in the process of internal
development so unselfishly devised for her by Germany, grow cotton for
herself, and be kind enough to give a preferential tariff to Germany.
A similarly bright future may be predicted for the irrigation scheme
at Konia, where will arise a sugar-beet industry. Artesian wells have
been sunk, and there is the suggestion to introduce Bulgarian labour
in default of Turkish. As we have seen, Hungary attempted to obtain
a monopoly with regard to sugar, but Germany has been victorious on
this point (as on every other when she competes with Hungary) and
has obtained the concession for a period of thirty years. A similar
irrigation scheme is bringing into cultivation the Makischelin Valley,
near Aleppo, and Herr Wied has been appointed as expert for irrigation
plant in Syria.
Indeed, it would be easier to enumerate the industries and economical
developments of Turkey over which Germany has not at the present
moment got the control than those over which she has. In particular
she has shown a parental interest in Turkish educational questions.
She established last year, under German management, a school for the
study of German in Constantinople; she has put under the protection
of the German Government the Jewish institution at Haifa for technical
education in Palestine; from Sivas a mission of schoolmasters has been
sent to Germany for the study of German methods. Ernst Marre surmises
that German will doubtless become compulsory even in the Turkish
intermediate (secondary) schools. In April, 1917, the first stone of
the "House of Friendship" (!) was laid at Constantinople, the object
of which institution is to create among Turkish students an interest
in everything German, while earlier in the year arrangements were made
for 10,000 Turkish youths to go to Germany to be taught trades. These I
imagine were unfit for military service. With regard to such a scheme
Haul Haled Bey praises the arrangement for the education of Turks in
Germany. When they used to go to France, he tells us, "they lost their
religion" (certainly Prussian Gott is nearer akin to Turkish Allah) "and
returned home unpatriotic and useless. In Germany they will have access
to suitable religious literature" (Gott!) "and must adopt all they see
good in German methods without losing their original characteristics."
Comment on this script is needless. The hand is the hand of Halil Haled
Bey, but the voice is the voice of Prussia! Occasionally, but rarely,
Austrian competition is seen. Professor Schmoller, in an Austrian
quarterly review, shows jealousy of German influence, and we find in
October, 1916, an Ottoman-Austrian college started at Vienna for 250
pupils of the Ottoman Empire. But Germany has 10,000 in Berlin. At Adana
(where are the German irrigation works) the German-Turkish Society has
opened a German school of 300, while, reciprocally, courses in Turkish
have been organised at Berlin for the sake of future German colonists.
In Constantinople the _Tanin_ announces a course of lectures to be
held by the Turco-German Friendship Society. Professor von Marx, of
Munich, discoursed last April on foreign influence and the development
of nations, with special reference to Turkey and the parallel case of
Germany.
So much for German education, but her penetrative power extends into
every branch of industry and economics. In November, 1916, a Munich
expert was put in charge of the College of Forestry, and an economic
society was started in Constantinople on German lines with German
instructors. Inoculation against small-pox; typhoid, and cholera was
made compulsory; and we find that the Turkish Ministers of Posts, of
Justice, and of Commerce, figureheads all of them, have as their acting
Ministers Germans. In the same year a German was appointed as expert for
silkworm breeding and for the cultivation of beet. Practically all the
railways in Asia Minor are pure German concerns by right of purchase.
They own the Anatolian railway concession (originally British), with
right to build to Angora and Konia; the Bagdad railway concession, with
preferential rights over minerals; they have bought the Mersina-Adana
railway, with right of linking up to the Bagdad railway; they have
bought the Smyrna-Cassaba railway, built with French capital. They have
secured also the Haidar Pasha Harbour concession, thereby controlling
and handling all merchandise arriving at railhead from the interior of
Asia Minor. Meantime railway construction is pushed on in all directions
under German control, and the Turkish Minister of Finance (August, 1916)
allocates a large sum of paper German money for the construction of
ordinary roads, military roads, local government roads, all of which
are new to Turkey, but which will be useful for the complete German
occupation which is being swiftly consolidated. To stop the mouths of
the people, all political clubs have been suppressed by the Minister
of the Interior, for Prussia does not care for criticism. To supply
German ammunition needs, lead and zinc have been taken from the roofs of
mosques and door-handles from mosque gates, and the iron railings along
the Champs de Mars at Pera have been carted away for the manufacture
of bombs. A Turco-German convention signed in Berlin in January of
this year permits subjects of one country to settle in the other while
retaining their nationality and enjoying trading and other privileges.
In Lebanon Dr. König has opened an agricultural school for Syrians of
all religions. In the Horns district the threatening plague of locusts
in February, 1917, was combated by Germans; and a German expert, Dr.
Bucher, had been already sent to superintend the whole question. For
this concerns supplies to Germany, as does also the ordinance passed
in the same month that two-thirds of all fish caught in the Lebanon
district should be given to the military authorities (these are German)
and that every fish weighing over 6oz. in the Beirut district should be
Korban also. The copper mines at Anghana Maden, near Diarbekr, are busy
exporting their produce into Germany.
There is no end to this penetration: German water-seekers, with divining
and boring apparatus, accompanied the Turkish expedition into Sinai;
Russian prisoners were sent by Germany for agricultural work in Asia
Minor, to take the place of slaughtered 'Armenians; a German-Turkish
treaty, signed January 11, 1917, gives the whole reorganisation of the
economic system to a special German mission. A Stuttgart journal chants
a characteristic "_Lobgesang_" over this feat. "That is how," it proudly
exclaims, "we work for the liberation of peoples and nationalities."
In the same noble spirit, we must suppose, German legal reforms were
introduced in December, 1916, to replace the Turkish Shuriat, and in
the same month all the Turks in telegraph offices in Constantinople
were replaced by Germans. Ernst Marre, in his "Turks and Germans after
the War" (1916), gives valuable advice to young Germans settling in
Turkey. He particularly recommends them, knowing how religion is one of
the strongest bonds in this murderous race, to "trade in articles of
devotion, in rosaries, in bags to hold the Koran," and points out what
good business might be built up in gramophones. Earlier in this year
we find a "German Oriental Trading Company" founded for the import of
fibrous materials for needs of military authorities, and a great carpet
business established at Urfa with German machinery that will supplant
the looms at Smyrna. A saltpetre factory is established at Konia by
Herr Toepfer, whose enterprise is rewarded with an Iron Cross and
a Turkish decoration. The afforestation near Constantinople ordered
by the Ministry of Agriculture is put into German hands, and in the
vilayet of Aidin (April, 1916) ninety concessions were granted to German
capitalists to undertake the exploitation of metallic ores. Occasionally
the German octopus finds it has gone too far for the moment and releases
some struggling limb of its victim, as, for instance, when we see that
in September, 1916, the German Director's stamp for the "Imperial German
Great Radio Station" at Damascus has been dis-carded temporarily, as
that station "should be treated for the present as a Turkish concern."
A "Trading and Weaving Company" was established at Angora in 1916,
an "Import and Export Company" at Smyrna, a "Trading and Industrial
Society" at Beirut, a "Tobacco Trading Company" at Latakieh, an
"Agricultural Company" at Tripolis, a "Corn Exporting Company" in
Lebanon, a "Rebuilding Commission" (perhaps for sacked Armenian houses)
at Konia. More curious yet will be a Tourist's Guide Book--a Baedeker,
in fact--for travellers in Konia and the erection of a monument in
honour of Turkish _women_ who have replaced men called up for military
duty. Truly these last two items--a guide book for Anatolia and a
monument to women--are strange enterprises for Turks. A new Prussian day
is dawning, it seems, for Turkish women as well, for the _Tanin_ (April,
1917) tells us that diplomas are to be conferred on ladies who have
completed their studies in the Technical School at Constantinople.
It is needless to multiply instances of German penetration: I have but
given the skeleton of this German monster that has fastened itself with
tentacles and suckers on every branch of Turkish industry. There is
none round which it has not cast its feelers--no Semitic moneylender
ever obtained a surer hold on his victim. In matters naval, military,
educational, legal, industrial, Germany has a strangle-hold. Turkey's
life is already crushed out of her, and, as we have seen, it has been
crushed out of her by the benevolent Kultur-mongers who, among all
the Great Powers of Europe, sacrificed their time and their money to
the achievement of the Pan-Turkish ideal. Silently and skilfully they
worked, bamboozling their chief tool, Enver Pasha, even as Enver Pasha
bamboozled us. As long as he was of service to them they retained him;
for his peace of mind at one time they stopped up all letter-boxes
in Constantinople because so many threatening letters were sent him.
But now Enver Pasha seems to have had his day; he became a little
autocratic and thought that he was the head of the Pan-Turkish ideal.
So he was, but the Pan-Turkish ideal had become Pan-Prussian, and he
had not noticed the transformation. Talaat Bey has taken his place;
it is he who in May, 1917, was received by the Emperor William, by
King Ludwig, and by the Austrian Emperor, and he who is the mouthpiece
of the German efforts to make a separate peace with Russia. Under
Czardom, he proclaimed, the existence of Turkey was threatened, but
now the revolution has made friendship possible, for Russia no longer
desires territorial annexation. And, oh, how Turkey would like to be
Russia's friend! Enver Pasha has been thrown aside for contumacy, and
I cannot but think it curious that when on April 2, 1917, he visited
the submarine base at Wilhelmshaven he was very nearly killed in a
motor-accident. But it may have been an accident. Since then I cannot
find that he has taken any more active part in Pan-Turkish ideals than
to open a soup-kitchen in some provincial town.
I have left to the end of this essay the question of Germany's knowledge
of and complicity in the Armenian massacres. From the tribune of the
Reichstag on January 15, 1916, there was made a definite denial of the
existence of such massacres at all; on another subsequent occasion it
was stated that Germany could not interfere in Turkish internal affairs.
In view of the fact that there is no internal affair appertaining
to Turkey in which Germany has not interfered, the second of these
statements may be called insincere. But the denial of the massacres is a
deliberate lie. Germany--official Germany--knew all about them, and she
permitted them to go on. The proofs of this are here shortly stated.
(1) In September, 1915, four months before the denial of the massacres
was made in the Reichstag, Dr. Martin Niepage, higher grade teacher
in the German Technical School at Aleppo, prepared and sent, in his
name and that of several of his colleagues, a report of them to the
German Embassy at Constantinople. In that report he gives a terrible
account of what he has seen with his own eyes, and also states that
the country Turks' explanation with regard to the origination of
those measures is that it is "the teaching of the Germans." The German
Embassy at Constantinople therefore knew of the massacres, and knew
also that the Turks attributed them to orders from Germany. Dr. Niepage
also consulted, before sending his report, with the German Consul at
Aleppo, Herr Hoffman, who told him that the German Embassy had been
already advised in detail about the massacres from the consulates at
Alexandretta, Aleppo, and Mosul, but that he welcomed a further protest
on the subject.
(2) These reports, or others like them, had not gone astray, for in
August, 1915, the German Ambassador in Constantinople made a formal
protest to the Turkish Government about the massacres.
There is, then, no doubt that the German Government, when it officially
denied the massacres, was perfectly cognisant of them. It was also
perfectly capable of stopping them, for they were not local violences,
but wholesale murders organised at Constantinople. Germany had indeed
already given assurances that such massacres should not occur. She had
assured the Armenian Katholikos at Adana that so long as Germany had
any influence in Turkey he need not fear a repetition of the horrors
that had taken place under Abdul Hamid. Had she, then, no influence in
Constantinople, or how was it that she had obtained complete control
over all Turkish branches of government? The same assurance was given by
the German Ambassador in April, 1915, to the Armenian Patriarch and the
President of the Armenian National Council.
So, in support of the Pan-Turkish ideal and in the name of the Turkish
Allah, the God of Love, Germany stood by and let the infamous tale of
lust and rapine and murder be told to its end. The Turks had planned to
exterminate the whole Armenian race except some half-million, who would
be deported penniless to work at agricultural developments under German
rule, but this quality of Turkish mercy was too strained for Major Pohl,
who proclaimed that it was a mistake to spare so many. But he was a
soldier, and did not duly weigh the claims of agriculture.
The choice was open to Germany; Germany chose, and let the Armenian
massacres go on. But she was in a difficulty. What if the Turkish
Government retorted (perhaps it did so retort), "You are not consistent.
Why do you mind about the slaughter of a few Armenians? What about
Belgium and your atrocities there?"
And all the ingenuity of the Wilhelmstrasse would not be able to find an
answer to that.
I do not say that Germany wanted the massacres, for she did not. She
wanted more agricultural labour, and I think that, if only for that
reason, she deprecated them. But she allowed them to go on when it was
in her power to stop them, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not wash
clean her hand from that stinking horror.
Here, then, are some of the problems which those who, at the end of
the war, will have to deal with the problem of Turkey must tackle.
It is just as well to recognise that at the present moment Turkey is
virtually and actually a German colony, and the most valuable colony
that Germany has ever had. It will not be enough to limit, or rather
abolish, the supremacy of Turkey over aliens and martyrised peoples;
it will be necessary to abolish the supremacy of Germany over Turkey.
To do this the victory of our Allied Nations must be complete, and
Germany's octopus monopoly of Turkish industries severed. Otherwise we
shall immediately be confronted with a Germany that already reaches as
far as Mesopotamia. That is done now; and that, before there can come
any permanent peace for Europe, must be undone. Nothing less than the
complete release of that sucker and tentacle embrace will suffice.
Printed in Great Britain by THE FIELD & QUEEN (HORACE COX) LTD..
Bream's buildings, London, E.C. 4.
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