The text of the scheme is to be found in the defined policy of the Young Turk party as set forth in their Congress of 1911. 'Turkey must become a really Mohammedan country, and Moslem ideas and Moslem influence must be preponderant.... Sooner or later the complete Ottomanisation of all Turkish subjects must be effected: it is clear, however, that this can never be attained by persuasion, but that we must resort to armed force.'

There is the text that was expanded into the discourse of murder; it is the definition of a policy. Within a few years there followed the European War, and that probably was the immediate cause of its being put into effect. No more admirable opportunity for Ottomanisation could present itself, for the entry of Turkey into the war was most unpopular with the bulk of the Turkish population, and it was advisable to bribe them into acceptance of it. The bribe was the houses, the property, the money and the trade that throughout the length and breadth of Turkey was in Armenian hands. For the Armenians were by far the wealthiest of the alien populations, and some 90 per cent. of Turkish trade passed through their shops and offices. Here, then, was the psychological moment: Turkey for the Turk was the aim of the Committee of Union and Progress, and with a discontented population, unwilling to fight, the moment had come for restoring to the Turk this mass of property which at present belonged to an alien race. War might have its drawbacks and its clouds, but war would be seen to have its advantages and its silver linings, if out of it there came this legacy of Armenian wealth. And by the same stroke Turkey could get rid of those thousands of meddlesome missionaries, American and French, who spread religion and learning and other undesirable things among the cursed race. Once remove the cursed race, and there would be an end of their instructors also, for there would be none to instruct. 'Thanks to their schools,' so we read in the Hilal, an organ of the Young Turks, 'foreigners were able to exercise great moral influence over the young men of the country.... By closing them (i.e. by exterminating their pupils) the Government has put an end to a situation as humiliating as it was dangerous.'

Such, then, was the spirit that animated Enver and Talaat, and during the winter of 1914-15 they perfected their plans. The Armenian race was to cease, and the Valis and other officials were, each in his district, to see to the thoroughness of its cessation. Sometimes, as happened at Erzerum, the Vali in question, not having the broad out-look of Enver, or quaintly and curiously having a womanish objection to the national duty of flogging men to death and giving over young girls to a barbarous soldiery, remonstrated with the authorities, or even refused to obey orders. Such a one was instantly removed from his office, and a stauncher patriot substituted. All was put on an orderly footing: here Kurds were to be employed on the old Abdul Hamid formula, who by way of wage would enjoy the privilege of raping as many women and girls out of their hapless convoy as seemed desirable, while in agricultural districts they were allowed also to take over the sheep and cattle of their murdered victims. Here, in towns where there was more chance of resistance than in scattered homesteads, it would be wise to employ regular troops, backed, if necessary, by artillery, to whom would be entrusted the murder of the whole male population, after suitable tortures, supposing the executioners had a taste for the sport, and to them was given the right of general plunder. Then, as soon as the number and capacity of the vacant houses were telegraphed to Constantinople, occupiers from the discontented townsfolk and natives of Thrace were assigned to them. Sometimes there would be a big school building to give away as well, but that was not always so, for it might be more convenient to assemble Armenians there for purposes of registration or so forth, and then, if it happened to catch fire, why Enver would understand that such accidents would occur. Among other careful and well-thought-out instructions came the order that, when possible, the murders should not take place in the town, but outside it, for clean Allah-fearing Moslems would not like to live in habitations defiled by Christian corpses. But, above all, there must be thoroughness; not a man must be left alive, not a girl nor a woman who must not drag her outraged body, so long as breath and the heart-beat remained in it, to, or rather towards those 'agricultural colonies,' as Talaat Bey, in a flash of whimsical Prussian humour, called them. One was advantageously situated in the middle of the Anatolian desert at the village of Sultanieh. There, for miles round, stretched the rocks and sands of a waterless wilderness, but no doubt the women and children of this very industrious race would manage to make it wave with cornfields. Another agricultural colony, by way of contrast, should be established a couple of days' journey south of Aleppo, where the river loses itself in pestilential and malarious swamps. Arabs could not live there, but who knew whether those hardy Armenians (the women and children, of them at least who had proved themselves robust enough to reach the place) would not flourish there out of harm's way? After the swamps one came to the Arabian desert, and there, a hundred miles south-east, was a place called Deir-el-Zor; wandering Arab tribes sometimes passed through it, but, arrived there, the Armenians should wander no more. In those arid sands and waterless furnaces of barren rock there was room for all and to spare. Sultanieh, the swamps, and Deir-el-Zor: these were the chief of Talaat Bey's agricultural colonies.

There must be collecting stations for these tragic colonists, centres to which they must be herded in from surrounding districts: one at Osmanieh, let us say, one at Aleppo, one at Ras-el-Ain, one at Damascus. And since it would be a pity to let so many flowers of girlhood waste their sweetness on the desert air of Deir-el-Zor, slave markets must be established at these collecting stations. There would be plenty of girls, and prices would be low, but the reverend ministers of Allah the God of Love, the Ulemas, the Padis and the Muftis, should be accorded a preferential tariff. Indeed they should pay nothing at all; they should just choose a girl and take her away, and, with the help of Allah the God of Love, convert her to the blessed creed. No one was too young for these lessons.... A little abstemiousness would not hurt these pampered Christians, so when they set out on their marches they need not be provided with rations or water. Perhaps some might die, but Talaat had no use for weaklings at his agricultural colonies. Nor must there be any poking and prying on the part of those interfering American missionaries; and so Talaat Bey put all the agricultural colonies out of bounds for foreigners....

There was no hurry over these deportations, for the plea of military exigencies, which had caused the deportations in Armenia itself to be terminated by massacre with a rapidity almost inartistic, did not apply to Armenians so far from the seat of war. Their picnics could be conducted quietly and pleasantly in the leisurely Oriental manner. Even the men need not be murdered absolutely out of hand. Strong young fellows might be stripped and tied down and then beaten to death by bastinadoing the feet till they burst, or by five hundred blows on the chest and stomach. Their cries would mingle with the screams of their sisters in the embrace of Turkish soldiers. And, talking of embraces, if a woman was desirable, she need not walk all the way to Deir-el-Zor, but by embracing Islamism be transferred to a harem. But these were details that might be left to individual taste: there were no precise instructions save that no Armenian men must be discoverable in the Ottoman Empire at all, and no women save those who had become Turkish women, or who were at work on the waterless and the malarial agricultural colonies.

Talaat Bey reviewed his finished scheme. He thought it would do, and Enver Pasha agreed with him, and Jemal Bey (who soon after styled himself Jemal the Great), the Military Governor of Syria, and so responsible for the last stages of their pilgrimage, thought it would do very well indeed. And instructions were sent out to every town in the Empire where there were Armenians, in accordance with the programme of Talaat Bey.

How Enver carried out his part of the programme in Armenia itself we have seen, and by the end of the year (1915) his work was done, and Armenia was Armenia no longer. But operations, as I have said, were conducted in a more leisurely manner elsewhere, and the agony of that butchery protracted. But Jemal got to work at once in the thickly populated district round Zeitun. He had had no success in the campaign of the winter in the direction of the Suez Canal, and his troops were hungry for some sort of victory. The Zeitunlis were hardy independent mountaineers, who were possessed of arms, and Jemal thought it more prudent not to dally with deportations, but conduct a regular campaign against them. For two or three months they resisted, entrenching themselves in the hills, but they could not hold out against artillery and the modern apparatus of war, and the whole tribe was wiped out. That done, Jemal became Jemal the Great by reason of his national services, and paid a visit to Germany. On his return we shall hear of him again.

Meanwhile, from all the reports that have arrived from missionaries and others, we may take one or two, almost at random. At certain places, as in the governments of Ismid, Angora and Diarbekr, the Armenian population was completely wiped out. Sometimes tortures were added, as at a certain Anatolian town where there was a big Armenian school, in which a number of professors and instructors, some of whom had studied in America, in Scotland, and in Germany, had for years been working.

What happened to them was this:—

(1) Professor A served the College thirty-five years, and taught Turkish and history. He was arrested without charge, the hair of his head and beard were pulled out in order to secure damaging confessions. He was starved and hung up by the arms for a day and a night and repeatedly beaten. He was then murdered.

(2) Professor B, who had served the College thirty-three years, and taught mathematics, suffered the same fate.

(3) Professor C, head of the preparatory department, had served the College for twenty years. He was made to witness the spectacle of a man being beaten almost to death, and became mentally deranged. He was murdered with his family.

(4) Professor D, who taught mental and moral sciences, was treated in the same way as Professor A. He also had three finger nails pulled out by the roots, and was subsequently murdered.

Similarly, at Diarbekr, the Armenians were collected in batches of 600, taken out of the town, and killed to the last man. Among them was the Armenian Archbishop; his eyes and nails were dragged out before he was butchered.

Or let us take a look at some of the collecting camps. At one, described by an eye-witness, we find that the convoy had arrived after several months of travel. More than half were already dead, they had been pillaged by bandits and Kurds seven times. They were forbidden to drink water when they passed by a stream, three-quarters of the young women and girls had been kidnapped, the rest were compelled to sleep with the gendarmes who conducted them. At Osmanieh it was decided to deport the women and children by train. They lay about the station starving and fever-stricken. When the train arrived many were jostled on to the line, and the driver yelled with joy, crying out, 'Did you see how I smashed them up?'

At another camp typhus broke out; those who died of it were left unburied, as vouched for by a Turkish officer, in order to increase the infection....

Urfa was another collecting camp for the Armenians in that district, and the following account is based on the information of an eye-witness. Here, before the concentration began, the Armenians living in the town offered resistance to the Turks, and held out until Fahri Bey, second in command to Jemal the Great, arrived with artillery, bombarded the town, and massacred every Armenian there. Quiet being thus restored, the bands of deported began to arrive. They came by rail or on foot, and, with the Prussian love of tabulation, were divided into three groups.

The first group consisted of old men, old women, and young children. They, guarded by gendarmes, were sent marching through the desert to Deir-el-Zor. Few, if any, ever arrived there, all dying by the way.

The second group, consisting of able-bodied men, was led off in batches and slaughtered. Among them were Zohrab and Vartkes, Armenian deputies who had been brought there from Constantinople.

The third group consisted of young marriageable girls. Some, perhaps, found their way into harems.

From Aleppo (one of the final concentration camps before such as were left of the convoys set forth for their goal, the swamps or the desert round Deir-el-Zor) we have the detailed evidence of Dr. Martin Niepage, High Grade teacher in the German Technical School. This gentleman, with a courage and a humanity to which the highest tribute must be paid, addressed a report of protest to the German Ambassador at Constantinople, and wrote an open letter to the Reichstag on the subject of what he had seen with his own eyes in that town. In his preliminary matter he speaks as follows:—

'In dilapidated caravanserais I found quantities of dead, many corpses being half-decomposed, and others still living among them who were soon to breathe their last. In other yards I found quantities of sick and dying people, whom nobody was looking after.... We teachers and our pupils had to pass them every day. Every time we went out we saw through the open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and wrapped in rags. In the morning our school children, on their way through the narrow streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-carts on which every day, from eight to ten rigid corpses without coffin or shroud, were carried away, their arms and legs trailing out of the vehicle.'

From the report itself:—

'Out of convoys which, when they left their homes on the Armenian plateau, numbered from two to three thousand men, women, and children, only two or three hundred survivors arrived here in the south. The men were slaughtered on the way, the women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and those who are still children, have been abused by Turkish soldiers and officers.... Even when they are fording rivers they do not allow those dying of thirst to drink. All the nourishment they receive is a daily ration of a little meal sprinkled on their hands.... Opposite the German Technical School at Aleppo, a mass of about four hundred emaciated forms, the remnant of such convoys, is lying in one of the caravanserais. There are about a hundred children (boys and girls) among them, from five to seven years old. Most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. When one enters the yard, one has the impression of entering a madhouse. If one brings food, one notices that they have forgotten how to eat.... If one gives them bread, they put it aside indifferently. They just lie there quietly waiting for death.'

Dr. Niepage wrote this report in the hope of saving such as then (1915) survived. No notice whatever was taken of it, and his postscript, written in May 1916, records the fact that 'the exiles encamped at Ras-el-Ain on the Bagdad Railway, estimated at 20,000 men, women and children, were slaughtered to the last one.'[1]

[Footnote 1: It is right to add that at Aleppo an officer called Bekir Sami guarded 50,000 Armenians whom he had collected from neighbouring districts, who were threatened with massacre, and I find that a German missionary states that there were 45,000 Armenians alive in Aleppo. This forms confirmatory evidence, but at the same time there is nothing to show that they were not subsequently deported to Deir-el-Zor. In this case it is highly improbable that any survive.]

In Dr. Niepage's view, as I have stated elsewhere, the Germans are directly responsible for the continuance of the massacres. Such, too, is the opinion, he tells us, of the educated Moslems, and his courage in stating this has lost him his post at Aleppo. It is to be sincerely hoped that he has escaped the fate of a certain Dr. Lepsius, who, for drawing attention to the fact that Germany allowed the Armenian massacres, has been arrested for high treason.

Before the end of 1915 the German authorities, who had refused to interfere in the massacres, and both in the official press and through official utterances had expressed their support of this Ottomanisation of the Empire, began to think that you might have too much of a good thing, and that the massacres had really gone far enough. Their reason was clear and explicit: there would be a very serious shortage of labour in the beet-growing industry and in the harvest-fields, for which they had sent grain and artificial manures from Germany. There had been some talk, they said, of saving 500,000 Armenians out of the race, but, in the way things were going on, it seemed that the remnant would not nearly approach that figure. Would not the great Ottomanisers temper their patriotism with a little clemency? Talaat Bey disagreed: he wanted to make a complete job of it, but Jemal the Great, fresh from his visit to Germany, supported the idea, and, in spite of Talaat's opposition, made a spectacular exhibition of clemency, in which, beyond doubt, we can trace an 'Imitatio Imperatoris,' in the following manner.

There was at the time a large convoy of men and women in Constantinople which was to be led out for murder and deportation, and Jemal gave orders that it should be spared and sent back to its highland home. He gave orders also that the entire convoy should be informed who was their saviour, and should be led in procession past his house and show their gratitude. All day the sorry pageant lasted, the ragged, half-starved crowd streamed by the house of Jemal the Great, with murmurs of thanksgiving and uplifted hands, and all manner of obeisances, while Jemal the Great stood in his porch with stern, impassive face, and hand on his sword-hilt in the best Potsdam manner, and acknowledged these thanksgivings....[1]

[Footnote 1: In support of Jemal's claim to clemency it must be added that, according to a report coming from Alexandria, he hanged twelve of the worst assassins sent to Syria as ringleaders of the massacres. I cannot find corroboration of this.]

Here, then, is the absurd, the Williamesque side of this ludicrous popinjay, Jemal the Great, and it contains not only the obvious seeds of laughter, but the more helpful seeds of hope. He has a strong hand on the very efficient army of Syria, and his visits to Berlin seem perhaps to have turned his head not quite in the direction that the Master-egalo-megalomaniac of Berlin intended. I gather that Jemal the Great was not so much impressed by the magnificence of William II. as to fall dazzled and prone at the Imperial feet, and lick with enraptured tongue the imperial boot polish, but rather to be inspired to do the same himself, to become the God-anointed of the newly acquired German province, which is Turkey, and make a Potsdam of his own. This is only a guess, but the conduct of Jemal the Great in the matter of these Armenian refugees, and in other affairs, has been distinctly imperial. In June of this year, for instance, he telegraphed to H.E. the Vali of Syria, and an extract from his text is truly Potsdamish. 'One and a half million of sandbags,' he wrote, 'are required for the fortress of Gaza.... The bags should be made, if necessary, of all the silk-hangings in houses of Syria and Palestine.' With his army behind him, he has twice already defied the orders of Talaat, and I am inclined to think that he is the coming Strong Man of the effete Empire with whom it would be well worth while to make friends, even at a highish price. The Allied Powers should keep an undazzled eye on him, for it is quite possible that, having defied Talaat successfully, he may go on to defy the real rulers of Turkey, who live in Berlin. His Syrian army, from such sources as are available, appears to be more efficient than any other body of troops the Turks can put into the field, and he has them in control. Probably in the winter of 1917-1918 our troops will come into collision with them. But in the interval, also quite probably, Jemal the Great may resent German superintendence.[1]

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

But in addition to his ludicrous side, there is in him a refined hypocrisy and a subtle cruelty worthy of Abdul Hamid. One instance will suffice.

There had been some talk that at certain of these concentration camps there was no water supply, and he gave orders, did Jemal the Great and the Merciful, that water should be sent. A train consisting of trucks of water accordingly was despatched to one of those camps, situated in the desert, with no supply nearer than six miles, and an eye-witness describes its arrival. The mob of Armenians, mad with thirst, surrounded it, and, since everything must be done in an orderly and seemly manner, were beaten back by the Turkish guards, and made to stand at a due distance for the distribution. And when those ranks, with their parched throats and sun-cracked lips, were all ready, the Turkish guards opened the taps of the reservoirs, and allowed the whole of their contents to run away into the sand. Whether Jemal the Great planned that, or whether it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say. But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe's tales, only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from the Times' correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917. He describes the treatment of English prisoners in Germany: 'An equally common entertainment with those women (German Red Cross nurses) was to offer a wounded man a glass, perhaps, of water, then, standing just outside his reach, to pour it slowly on the ground.' Could those sisters of mercy have read the account of Jemal's clemency, or is it merely an instance of the parallelism of similar minds?

So the empty train returned, and Jemal the Great caused it to be known in Berlin that he was active in securing a proper water supply for the famous agricultural settlements in the desert, and loud were the encomiums in the press of the Central Powers over the colonisation of Syria by the Armenians, the progress and enlightenment of the Turks, and the skilful and humane organisation of Jemal the Great.

There is no difficulty in estimating to-day the number of Armenian men who survive in the Turkish Empire. All appeals to the Prussian overlords, such as were made by Dr. Niepage, and the belated remonstrance of the Prussians themselves when they foresaw a dearth of labour for the husbandry of beet and cereals, fell on deaf ears, and I cannot see any reason for supposing that Armenian men exist any more in the Empire. It is more difficult to judge of the numbers of women who, by accepting the Moslem creed and the harems, are still alive. Certainly in some districts there were considerable 'conversions,' and Dr. Niepage rates them as many thousands. But the willingness to accept those conditions was not always a guarantee for their being granted, and I have read reports where would-be converts were told that 'religion' was a more serious matter than that, and, instead of being accepted, they were massacred. But even if Dr. Niepage is right, we can scarcely consider these women as constituting an Armenian element any more in the country. The work of butchery, the torture, the long-drawn agonies of those inhuman pilgrimages have come to an end because there are no more Armenian victims available. Apart from those who escaped over the Russian frontier, and the handful who sought refuge in Egypt, the race exists no longer, and the seal has been set on the bloodiest deed that ever stained the annals of the barbarous Osmanlis. It is not in revenge on the murderers, but in order to rescue the other subject peoples, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, who are still enclosed within the frontiers of the Empire, that the Allied Governments, in their answer to President Wilson, stated that among their aims as belligerents, was the 'liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks.' There is defined their irreducible demand: never again, after peace returns, will the Turk be allowed to control the destinies of races not his own. Too long already—and to their disgrace be it spoken—have the civilised and Christian nations of Europe tolerated at their very doors a tyranny that has steadily grown more murderous and more monstrous, because they feared the upset of the Balance of Power. Now at least such Powers as value national honour, and regard a national promise as something more than a gabble of ink on a scrap of paper, have resolved that they will suffer the tyranny of the Turk over his alien subject peoples to continue no longer. It is the least they can do (and unhappily the most) to redeem the century-long neglect of their duty. Even now, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, the direst peril threatens those other peoples who at present groan under Turkish rule, and we can but pray that the end of the war will come before Arabs or Greeks or Jews suffer the same fate as has exterminated the Armenians. Too often have we been too late; we must only hope that another item will not have to be added to that miserable list, and that, when the day of reckoning comes, no half-hearted and pusillanimous policy will stay our hands from the complete execution of that to which we stand pledged. The Balance of Power has gone the way of other rickety makeshifts, but there must be no makeshift in our dealings with the Turk, no compromise and no delay. What shall be done with those who planned and executed the greatest massacres known to history matters little; let them be hanged as high as Haman, and have done with them. But what does matter is that at no future time must it be in the power of a Government that has never been other than barbaric and butcherous, to do again as it has done before.

NOTE ON JEMAL THE GREAT

Jemal the Great has very obligingly done what I suggested we might expect him to do, and has kicked against the German control of the Syrian army. General von Falkenhayn was sent to take supreme command, and on June 28th of this year Jemal the Great refused to receive orders from him. In consequence General von Falkenhayn refused responsibility for any offensive movement there if Jemal remained in command.

This promised well for trouble between Turks and Germans, but we must not, I am afraid, build very high hopes on it, for Germany has dealt with the situation in a masterly manner. Jemal was already Minister of Marine as well as commander of the Syrian army, so the Emperor asked him to pay another visit to Berlin, and he has been visiting Krupp's works and German naval yards, and we shall find probably that in the future his activities will be marine rather than military, and that von Falkenhayn will have a free hand in Syria.

But this will prove rather disappointing for Jemal, since it seems beyond mere coincidence that towards the end of August Herr von Kuhlmann, the new German Foreign Minister, induced the Turkish Government (while Jemal was at Berlin) to put their navy and their merchant fleet under the orders of the German Admiralty, and already many Turkish naval officers have been replaced by Germans. Thus Jemal will find himself deprived of his military command, because the navy so urgently needed his guiding hand, while his guiding hand over the navy will be itself guided by the German Admiralty.... In fact, it looks rather like checkmate for Jemal the Great, and an end to the trouble he might have given the German control.

On the eve of his leaving Germany, as yet unconscious probably of the subordination of the entire Turkish fleet to the German Admiralty, he gave an interview to a representative of the Cologne Gazette, which deserves more than that ephemeral appearance. It shows Jemal the Great in a sort of hypnotic trance induced at Potsdam. 'The German fleet,' he says, 'is simply spotless in its power, and a model for all states which need a modern navy—a model which cannot be surpassed.' ... He went for a cruise in a submarine which proceeded 'so smoothly, elegantly, calmly and securely that I had the impression of cruising in a great steamship.' ... He was taken to Belgium, and describes the 'idyllic life there': in the towns 'the people go for walks all day long,' and in the country the peasants blithely gather in the harvest with the help of happy prisoners.' (He does not tell us where the harvest goes to, any more than the Germans tell us where the Turkish harvests go to.) He was taken to General Headquarters, which he describes as 'majestic.' Finally he was taken into the presence of the All-Highest, and seems to have emerged in the condition in which Moses came down from Sinai.... But one must not altogether despair of Jemal the Great. It is still possible that, on his return to Constantinople, when he found that his position, as Minister of Marine was but a clerkship in the German Admiralty, the hypnotic trance began to pass off, and his ambitions to re-assert themselves. He may yet give trouble to the Germans if properly handled.



Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter IV

THE QUESTION OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE

It is impossible to leave this heart-rending tale of the sufferings of the Armenian people under the Turks without some account of that devoted band of American missionaries who, with a heroism unsurpassed, and perhaps unequalled, so eagerly sacrificed themselves to the ravages of pestilence and starvation in order to alleviate the horrors that descended on the people to whom they had been sent. Often they were forcibly driven from the care of their flocks, often in the extermination of their flocks there was none left whom they could shepherd, but wherever a remnant still lingered there remained these dauntless and self-sacrificing men and women, regardless of everything except the cause to which they had devoted themselves. They recked nothing of the dangers to which they exposed themselves so long as there was a child or a woman or a man whom they could feed or nurse. Terrible as were the sufferings through which the Armenians passed, they must have been infinitely more unbearable had it not been for these American missionaries; small as was the remnant that escaped into the safety of Persia or Russian Trans-Caucasia, their numbers must have been halved had it not been for the heroism of these men and women. While the German Consuls contented themselves with a few faint protests to their Ambassador at Constantinople, followed by an acquiescence of silence, the missionaries constituted themselves into a Red Cross Society of intrepid workers, and, as one well-qualified authority tells us, 'suffered as many casualties from typhus and physical exhaustion as any proportionate body of workers on the European battlefields.' Fully indeed did they live up to the mandate of the American board that sent them out: 'Your great business is with the fundamental doctrines and duties of the Gospel.'

At the opening of the European War the American Missions had been at work for nearly a hundred years, and were disseminated over Anatolia and Armenia. They had opened 163 Protestant churches and 450 schools, they established hospitals, and in every possible way spread civilisation in a country where the spirit of the governing class was barbarism. It was not their object to proselytise. 'Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if he will,' so ran the instructions from which I have already quoted, 'the Greek a Greek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental,' and in the same wise and open-minded spirit they encouraged native Protestant Churches which were independent of them and largely self-supporting. Naturally in a country governed by monsters like Abdul Hamid and Enver Pasha in later days, they earned the enmity which is the tribute of barbarians to those who stand for civilisation, and when, owing to the extermination or flight of their Armenian flocks, they were left without a charge, and their schools were closed, we find a paean of self-congratulation going up from the Turkish press inspired by the butchers of Armenia. But till the massacres and the flight were complete, they gave themselves to the 'duties of the Gospel,' and their deeds shine like a star into the blackness of that night of murder.

I will take as an example of the superb heroism of those men and women the diary of an American lady attached to the mission at Urmia, a document that, anonymously, is one of the noblest, least self-conscious records I have ever read. The period of it extends over five months.

Early in January 1915 the Russian troops were withdrawn from Urmia, which lies on the frontier between Turkey and Persia, and simultaneously the Moslem population began to plunder the Christian villages, the inhabitants of which fled for refuge to the missions in the city. Talaat's official murder-scheme was not completed yet, but the Kurds, together with the Turks, had planned a local massacre at Geogtapa, which was stopped by the American doctor of this mission, Dr. Packard, who, at great personal risk, obtained an interview with the Kurdish chief, and succeeded in inducing him to spare the lives of the Christians, if they gave up arms and ammunition and property. The American flag was hoisted over the Mission buildings, and before a week was out there were over ten thousand refugees housed in the yards and rooms, where they remained for five months, the places of the dead being taken by fresh influxes. The dining-room, the sitting-room, the church, the school, were all given over to these destitute people, and from the beginning fear of massacre, as well as prevalence of disease, haunted the camp. It was impossible to move dead bodies outside; they had to be buried in the thronged yards, and every day children were born. But here is the spirit that animated their protectors. 'We have just had a Praise meeting,' records the diarist at the close of the first fortnight, 'with fifty or sixty we could gather from the halls and rooms near, and we feel more cheerful. We thought if Paul and Silas, with their stripes, could sing praises in prison, so could we.'

The weeks, of which each day was a procession of hours too full of work to leave time for anxiety, began to enrol themselves into months, and the hope of rescue by a Russian advance made their hearts sick, so long was it deferred. Refugees from neighbouring villages kept arriving, and there was the constant problem before these devoted friends of their flock, as to how to feed them. All such were welcome, and eager was the welcome they received, though every foot of space in the buildings and in the yards was occupied. But somehow they managed to make room for all who came, and for those villagers who, under threat of torture and massacre, had apostatised, there was but yearning and sorrow, but never a word of blame or bitterness. Sometimes there was a visit of Turkish troops to search for concealed Russians, and, as our diarist remarks, 'We can't complain of the monotony of life, for we never know what is going to happen next. On Tuesday morning we had a wedding in my room here. The boy and girl were simple villagers.... The wedding was fixed for the Syrian New Year, but the Kurds came and carried off wedding clothes and everything else in the house. They all fled here, and were married in the old dirty garments they were wearing when they ran for their lives.... Their only present was a little tea and sugar that I tied up in a handkerchief and gave to the bride.'

The eternal feminine and the eternal human speak there; and there, for this gallantest of women, were two keys that locked up the endless troubles and anxieties that ceased not day or night. But sometimes the flesh was weak, and in the privacy of her diary she says, 'How long, O Lord?' But for that there was the master-key that unlocks all wards, and a little further on we read, 'One of the verses that helps to keep my faith steady is, "He that spared not His own Son." For weeks we have had no word from the outside world, but we "rest in Jehovah and wait patiently for Him."'

The conditions inside the crowded yards grew steadily worse. Dysentery was rife, and the deaths from it in that narrow space averaged thirty a day. The state of the sufferers grew so terrible that it was difficult to get any one to look after them at all, and many were lying in the open yards, and the weather, which hitherto had been warm, got cold, and snow fell. It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be obtained for those in health, and that of a kind utterly unsuitable to the sick, while in the minds of their nurses was the bitter knowledge that with proper diet hundreds of lives could have been saved, and hundreds of cases of illness avoided.

For the dead there was but a small percentage of coffins available, and 'the great mass are just dropped into the great trench of rotting humanity (in the yard). As I stand at my window I see one after another of the little bodies carried by ... and the condition of the living is more pitiful than that of the dead—hungry, ragged, dirty, sick, cold, wet, swarming with vermin. Not for all the wealth of all the rulers of Europe would I bear for one hour their responsibility for the suffering and misery of this one little corner of the world alone. A helpless unarmed Christian community turned over to the sword and the passion of Islam!'

On the top of this came an epidemic of typhoid, twenty-seven cases on the first day. Outside in the town the Turkish Consul began hanging Christians, and the missioners were allowed to take the bodies and bury them. There were threats that the mission would be entered, and all young men (possible combatants) killed, but this fear was not realised. The typhoid increased, and the doctor of the mission and others of the staff fell ill with it; but the patience and service of the remainder never faltered, while the same spirit of uncomplaining suffering animated the refugees. 'Mr. McDowell,' so the diarist relates, 'saw a tired and weary woman with a baby in her arms, sitting in one of the seats, and said to her, "Where do you stay?" She said "Just here." "How long have you been here?" "Since the beginning." (two months) she replied. "How do you sleep at night?" "I lay the baby on the desk in front of me, and I have this post at the back to lean against. This is a very good place. Thank you very much."'

In April there comes a break in the diary after the day on which the following entry is made:—

'I felt on Sunday as if I ought to get my own burial clothes ready, so as to make as little trouble as possible when my time comes, for in these days we all go about our work knowing that any one of us may be the next to go down. And yet I think our friends would be surprised to see how cheerful we have kept, and how many occasions we find for laughing: for ludicrous things do happen. Then, too, after dwelling so intimately with Death for three months, he doesn't seem to have so unfriendly an aspect, and the "Other Side" seems near, and our Pilot close beside us.... I find the Rock on which I can anchor in peace are the words of Christ Himself: "Where I am, there ye may be also." ... That is enough, to be where He is....'

Then comes a break of two months, during which the writer was down with typhoid. She resumes again in June, finding that death has made many changes, and gets back to work again at once. By that time the Russians had entered Urmia, a thanksgiving service was held, the refugees dispersed, and the American Mission went quietly on with its normal work.

Now I have taken this one instance of the work of Americans at Urmia to show in some detail the character of the work that they were doing, and the Christian and humanising influence of it. But all over Armenia and Anatolia were similar settlements, and, as already mentioned, at the time of the massacres there were established there over a hundred of their churches and over four hundred schools, and from these extracts which concern only one not very large centre, it may be gathered what leaven of civilising influence the sum of their energies must have implied. That lamp shone steady and clear, a 'kindly light' in the darkness of Turkish misrule, and in the havoc of the massacres a beacon of hope, not always reached by those hapless refugees. Indeed it seems to have been only on the frontier that the missions were able to save those foredoomed hordes of fleeing Christians; in Armenia and in Anatolia generally the massacres and 'deportations' were complete, and by the end of 1915 all American missions were closed, for there were none to tend and care for. Even if the massacres had not occurred, the entry of America into the war would have resulted in a similar cessation of their work, and most probably in a massacre of the American missioners themselves. Their withdrawal, of course, was hailed with a peacock scream of pride by that enlightened body under Talaat and Enver, called the New Turkish party of Progress, for their presence was a bar to the Turkish notions of civilisation, in that their influence made for humanity, and health and education. Now 'the humiliating and dangerous situation' (to quote from the columns of Hilal) was put an end to, and Turkish progress could make headway again.

Similarly in Syria the outbreak of war put an end to 'the humiliating and dangerous situation' of the presence of French schools and missions. There, for many years, French missioners had done the same work as Americans in Armenia, work in every sense liberal and civilising, but undenominational in religious matters and unproselytising. That came to an end earlier than the organisations in Armenia, and in Syria now, as over the rest of the Turkish people, Arabs and Jews and Greeks have nothing except German influence and Kultur to stand between them and the spirit of Turkish progress of which the Armenian massacres were the latest epiphany. Germany, as we have seen, stood by and let the Armenian massacres go on, professing herself unable to interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey, though at the time there was not a single branch of Turkish industries, railways, telegraphs, armies, navies over which she had not complete control, exercising it precisely as she thought fit.

It is useless, then, to base any confidence in the safety of Jews, Greeks, and Arabs from suffering the same fate as the Armenians, on a veto from Germany. If it suits Germany to let those unfortunate peoples be murdered or deported to agricultural colonies, Germany will assuredly not stir a finger on their behalf nor prevent a repetition of the horrors I have dealt with in the previous chapter. Sooner than risk her hold over Turkey by enforcing unacceptable demands, she will, unless other considerations of self-interest determine her, let further massacres occur, if Talaat Bey insists on them. That spokesman of her policy, Ernst Marre, makes this perfectly explicit in his book, Die Tuerken und Wir nach dem Kriege, upholding from the German standpoint the right of Turkey and the wisdom of Turkey in dealing with her subject peoples as she had dealt with the Armenians. 'The Turkish State,' he tells us, 'is no united whole: Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, cannot be welded together.' (This, by a somewhat grim and ominous coincidence, is in exact accordance with a remark made to a Danish Red Cross Sister by a Turkish gendarme then engaged in massacring Armenians: 'First we get rid of the Armenians,' he said, 'then the Greeks, then the Kurds.') Or again, in defence of the Armenian massacres, 'Only by energetic interference and by expelling of the obstinate Armenian element, could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian dominion.' Or again, 'The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be Ottomanised.' Here, then, is the German point of view: the Ottoman Government will be right to 'dispose of' its subject peoples as it thinks fit. So far from interfering, Germany endorses, and German influence to-day is all that stands between 'the murderous tyranny' and its subject peoples. French, English, and finally American pressure can no longer, since the entry of these nations into the war, be exercised within the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, and the only protection of defenceless aliens is the German Government. It did not stir a finger to save the Armenians, until it saw that depopulation threatened the prosperity of its industries, and it is idle to expect that it will do more if the consolidation of Turkish supremacy demands a further campaign of murder. Greeks, Arabs, and Jews are all completely at the mercy of Talaat's murder-schedules. The only chance that can save them is that further extermination may not suit Germany's political aims, and that she may find it worth her while to be peremptory, and forbid instead of endorsing.

There are unhappily many signs that the butchers of Constantinople are planning further massacres. In February of this year preliminary measures were begun against the Greeks settled in Anatolia. Many were forcibly proselytised, their property was confiscated, and they were forbidden to carry on their businesses. Deportations also occurred, and all Greeks were removed from many villages in Anatolia, into the interior, presumably to 'agricultural colonies' such as those provided for Armenians. They suffered terribly from hunger and exposure, and it is estimated that ten per cent. of them died on their marches. Since then, however, there has been no more heard of any extension of those measures, and there seems to have been as yet no massacre of Greeks. It is reasonable to infer that Germany has in this case intervened. She still hoped to win Greece over to the Central European Powers, and clearly any massacre of Greeks by her own Allies was not desirable. King Constantine, among his endless vacillations and pusillanimous treacheries, probably made a firm protest on the subject. But in the kaleidoscope of war, should Greece come to the side of the Allies, it seems most probable that there will occur a wholesale massacre of Greeks. From what we know of the principles on which German Kultur is based, the most optimistic can scarcely hope that the very faintest remonstrance will emanate from Berlin.

The case of the Arabs in Syria is even more precarious. From the moment that the policy of the Young Turks was evolved, namely, to consolidate Osmanli supremacy by the weakening of its subject peoples, the Ottoman Government has been waiting for its opportunity to get rid of the 'Arab menace.' As we have seen, they began by substituting Turkish for Arabic as a written language in all official usages from the printing of the Koran and the prayers for the Sultan down to the legends on railway tickets. The Arab spirit, according to one of the spokesmen of the New Turk party, had to be suppressed, the Arab lands had to become Turkish colonies. 'It is a peculiarly imperious necessity of our existence,' we read in Jelal Noury Bey's propaganda, 'to Turkise the Arab lands, for the particularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the younger generations of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great catastrophe.' Against the Arabs the Young Turks formed and fostered a special animosity; they were powerful and warlike, and Enver, Talaat, and others saw that the idea of an Osmanli supremacy could never be realised unless very drastic measures were taken against them. The tenets of Islamism, it is true, forbade Moslems to fight Moslems, but Islamism, as a binding force, was already obsolete in the counsels of the new regime, having given place to Kultur. Of all their subject peoples, the Young Turks hated the Arabs the most, and, had not the European War intervened, there is no doubt that the Armenian massacres, already being planned, would have been followed by Arab massacres. But the armed and warlike Arabian tribes were not so easy to deal with as the defenceless Armenians, and Turkish troops could not be spared in sufficient numbers to render an Arab massacre the safe, pleasant, and lucrative pursuit that massacres should be. But Jemal the Great, black with his triumph over the Armenians at Zeitun, was Military Governor of Syria, and, the Armenian question being solved, he began to get to work on the Arab question. Owing to the expulsion of the French Missions from Syria in 1914, we have no such full or detailed information as we have from Americans in Armenia, and the following account is mainly derived from the Arabic journal Mokattam, published in Cairo, the information in which is based on the account given by a Syrian refugee. It agrees with pieces of evidence that have come to hand from other sources.

Ever since the beginning of the war Syria has been an area of direst poverty, starvation, and sickness, which have been the natural co-operators in Jemal's policy there. All supplies have been commandeered for the troops (including by special clause from Potsdam, the German troops); even fish caught by the fishermen of Lebanon have to be handed over to the military authorities, and the shortage of supplies in Smyrna, for instance, is such that at the end of 1916 there were two hundred deaths daily from sheer starvation, while Germany was importing from Turkey hundreds of tons of corn and of meat. Thus this was no natural shortage, for though supplies were low all over the Turkish Empire, there was not dearth of that kind. It was an artificial shortage made possible by German demands, and made intentional by Jemal's policy. Beirut was in no better case than Smyrna; Lebanon perhaps was in sorer straits than either. Money was equally scarce, and it fitted Jemal's policy that this should be so, for when Americans in Beirut had raised funds in America for the relief of the destitute, the Turkish Government forbade their distribution. Arabs and Greeks were dying by the hundred all over the provinces, and the beneficent decrees of nature must not be interfered with. In the streets of towns the poor have been fighting over scraps of sugarcane and orange peel; in the country, to quote from Molcattam, 'no sooner do wild plants and beans start to grow than the fields are filled with women and children who pick them and use them as food.' Except for military purposes (including the victualling of German troops) transportation has ceased to exist, and this, too, was part of the policy of Jemal the Great.

On the heels of famine, like a hound behind a huntsman, came typhus. In the province of Aleppo before the summer of 1916, over 8000 persons had died of it. Doctors and medicines were unobtainable, for all were requisitioned for the needs of the army, and in Damascus and Tripoli, in Hama and Homs, the epidemic spread like a forest fire. No help was sent from Constantinople, none was permitted to be brought by the charitable from abroad, for famine and pestilence among the Arabs were working for the policy of Jemal the Great. There were no troops to spare who should hasten on the work, but the work was progressing by swift and 'natural' means. Hunger and pestilence—behold the finger of Allah the God of Love! How superior He showed Himself to the discarded Allah of the Arabs. 'Ring down the curtain,' said Jemal the Great, 'and let no news of the ways of Allah get abroad!' So a strict surveillance was established on the coast, all boats were chained to the shore, and if any attempted to swim out to ships of the Allied nations which passed, the coast guards had orders to shoot him down. Too much news about Armenian massacres filtered through; there should not now be such leakage. And when starvation and pestilence had firmly established themselves, Jemal the Great went down to see what his personal exertions could effect. All was working in accordance with his plan; the poorer classes of Arabs were dying like flies, but mortality was not so successful among the wealthier, who could, to some extent, purchase food. So Jemal the Great set to work among them. He began by hanging the heads of Syrian-Arabs in Damascus, Beirut, and other cities. No semblance of trial, no prosecution or arraignment, were necessary: he established courts-martial under military control, made lists of the accused, and ordered the courts-martial to condemn them to death. Sometimes he made mistakes, appointing as the members of his court-martial men who were not such sturdy patriots as he, and refused to sentence for no crime the accused whom he nominated. He remedied such mistakes by appointing new boards of more seasoned stuff. Moslem and Christian alike were brought before them, and a general accusation of pro-French tendencies seems to have been sufficient to secure a sentence of death or lifelong imprisonment. He aimed not at the poor and the obscure, for whom hunger and pestilence were providing, but at the rich and the influential. The higher clergy in Christian circles, Bishops and Monsignors, were a favourite target, and among Moslems influential Sheikhs. Sometimes there was a parody of a trial; sometimes the parody was dispensed with, and when the black curtain was last raised over Syria, Jemal the Great had disposed of over eight hundred of the heads of the most influential of Syrian Arabs. He had got rid, in fact, of the whole House of Lords, and something more. Those who are acquainted with 'feudal values' among the Arabs will understand what that means. He decapitated, not individuals only, but groups. For devilish ingenuity in this combination of starvation and pestilence for the poor, and death or lifelong imprisonment for the chiefs, Jemal the Great must take rank with Abdul Hamid and the contrivers of the Armenian massacres. He cannot, it is true, owing to lack of troops, obtain the swift results of Enver in Armenia, but between typhus, starvation, and courts-martial, his solution of the Arab question in Syria is making steady progress. And those measures, hideously efficient in themselves, are, beyond any doubt whatever, only the precursors of more sweeping exterminations of the Arab race, which will be effected after the war, if the Allied Powers do not step in to save it. The Faithful of the Holy City, Mecca, have revolted and thrown off the Turkish yoke, and while the war lasts, and Turkish troops are otherwise occupied under Teutonic supervision, they will be able to maintain their independence, for there is no considerable body of Turks which can seriously threaten them. But the Syrian Arabs, so long as the war lasts, are being, and will be, the victims of a quiet scheme of extermination, which, if long continued, will be as complete as that devised and carried out by the butchers of Constantinople for the peoples of Armenia. It is not in the interest of the Germans to save them, and no check is being put on Jemal the Great to hinder him from assisting starvation and typhus to ravage the country, and supplementing their deadly work by court-martial without trial.

Equally significant of the rage for the destruction of Arabs was the treatment of the Bagdad Arab army corps. In spite of the need for troops one half of it was sent from Bagdad to Erzerum in the depth of winter, without any provision of warm clothing. There, in those cold uplands, the men died at the rate of fifty to sixty a day. Their commanding officer was a Turk, and a creature of Enver's, called Abdul Kader. Though these troops had fought admirably, he openly called them Arab traitors, and his orders seem to have been merely to get rid of them. There were no courts-martial; they were just taken into a climate which killed them.

While for the last thirty years the Armenians and Syrians have emigrated in large numbers from the Ottoman Empire, there has been a large immigration of Jews into it. This movement was originally due to the persecution they suffered in Russia. Germany and Austria were closed to them, and, flying from the hideous pogroms that threatened them with extermination, they begun to settle in Palestine. Wealthy compatriots such as Baron Edmond de Rothschild assisted them, and, with the amazing versatility of their race, they, trades-people and town-folk, adapted themselves to new conditions, turned their wits towards husbandry and agriculture, and during the last thirty years have flourished and multiplied in a manner quite unrealised by the western world. In 1881 there were not more than 25,000 of them in the home of their race, but by the beginning of the European War, when their immigration ceased for the present, they numbered 120,000 souls. Till then the Ottoman Government adopted the ancient Turkish policy of neglect towards them, for they were not powerful enough numerically to earn the honour of a massacre, and, in addition, they were useful settlers. Backed by powerful Western influence, French, English, and German alike, they improved out of knowledge the values of the lands where they established themselves, and by intelligent management, by conserving and increasing the water supply with irrigation and well-digging, they have brought many thousand acres into cultivation. Originally refugees, fleeing from outrageous persecutions, their immigration by degrees took on a different spirit. Not only were they coming out of captivity, but they were entering into the ancient Land of Promise again. Zionism, the spirit of the returning exiles, animated them, and, according to their prophets, they realised that 'The Lord shall comfort Zion, He shall comfort all her waste places.' They had sowed in tears; now, on their return, they were reaping in joy, and, though their land was still under the infidel yoke, they were allowed to dwell in peace, busy, industrious, with the halo of home-coming in their hearts. They paid, of course, their Turkish taxes, but these were not levied in any oppressive manner, and their colonies were thrifty, self-governing, and prosperous. Already before the war, one-tenth of the cultivated land in Palestine was in their hands, they had their own schools, their own methods of organisation, and, more significant than all, Hebrew became a living language again. Germany, intent on her penetration of Turkey, made an attempt to Germanise them also (for Germany, as we shall see, has a very special interest in these Jewish colonies), shook her head over Zionism, for which she tried to substitute Prussianism, and wanted to make the German language compulsory in Jewish schools at Haifa and Jaffa, but her effort completely failed. Nothing could show the inherent vitality of this Jewish colonisation more strikingly.

These Jewish settlers then were left in peace; from minuteness they escaped the notice of the Young Turk party in its schemes for the complete Ottomanisation of the Empire, and, until the present year 1917, no mention of 'the Jewish question' was propounded. But it will he remembered that in 1915, certain Jewish refugees, taking warning from the Armenian massacres, fled to Egypt, and there founded a Zionist mule-corps, which served under the English in the Gallipoli campaign. It seems very probable that it was this that directed the attention of Jemal the Great to the Jewish colonies in Palestine: possibly it was merely that he was a more thorough Ottomaniser than his colleagues in Constantinople. In any case he ordered the 'deportation' of all Jews from Jaffa, Gaza, and other agricultural districts. All Jews were commanded to leave Jaffa within forty-eight hours, no means of transport was given them, and they were forbidden to take with them either provisions or any of their belongings. Eight thousand Jews were evicted from Jaffa alone, and their houses were pillaged, and they robbed, maltreated, and many were murdered. Thus, and in no other way had the massacres of the Armenians begun, and, that there should be no mistake about it, Jemal threatened them explicitly with the fate of the Armenians. Next day Ludd was evacuated also; the evacuation of Haifa and Jerusalem was threatened, and artillery was sent to Jerusalem. There can be no doubt in fact that Jemal planned and began to carry out a massacre of all Jews.

At that point the Germans intervened, and for the present (but only for the present, for so long in fact as Germany has complete control over all Turkish internal affairs, in which she protested she could not meddle) the Jewish colonies in Palestine seem to be safe.[1] The German chief of the General Staff telegraphed to Berlin that the 'military considerations' on which Jemal based his deportations did not exist, and Herr Cohn in the Reichstag drew the Imperial Chancellor's attention to this. How seriously the menace was regarded in Germany, and how far the deportations had gone may be gathered from his words, 'Is the Imperial Chancellor prepared to influence the Turkish Government in such a manner as to prevent with certainty—so far as this is still possible—a repetition in Palestine of the Armenian atrocities?' This was sufficient: Germany, who could not dream of interfering in Turkish internal affairs when only the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was concerned, sent her order, and, for the present, Jemal the Great has been unable to proceed with the solution of the Jewish question in Turkey, which he had just discovered. We need not yet in fact give Jemal his Jew. But some sort of explanation to soothe the exasperation of the Turks in not being allowed to murder when and how and where they pleased, was thought advisable, and the explanation (an extraordinarily significant one) was given in an inspired paragraph of the Frankfurter Zeitung not long after. 'The valuable structure of Zionist cultural work, in which the German Empire must have well founded interest in view of future and very promising trade relations, will, it is very much to be hoped, be preserved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary. Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine where practically no Turks dwell.'

[Footnote 1: This view seems to be borne out by subsequent events, for the Jews evacuated from Jaffa have been permitted to return owing to the intervention of the Spanish Government. It is not hard to guess who prompted that.]

We may take it, then, that with regard to the projected Jewish massacres, quite clearly foreshadowed by the schemes of deportation from Jaffa and Gaza, Germany has made strong representations to the Ottoman Government. She did not do so (indeed she officially refused to do so) when the Armenian massacres began, for she could not interfere in Turkey's internal affairs. But now she has discovered that Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine, and thus, with amazing astuteness, has provided herself with a reason for interfering, while still not giving up the policy of non-interference in Turkish affairs, for Turkey, she has discovered, has no affairs in Palestine. At the same time she guards herself from diplomatic defeat by the hope that Zionist cultural work will be saved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary. In other words, supposing Jemal the Great got completely out of hand, and proceeded to indiscriminate massacre of the Jews, Germany would doubtless accept his plea that military requirements had made it necessary.... And we were once so ignorant as to assure ourselves that Germany had no notions of diplomacy!

The full significance of her intervention on behalf of the Jews, when neither the extermination of the Armenians, the persecution of the Arabs, nor the deportation of the Greeks moved Germany to any decided action or energetic protest, must be left, in so far as it concerns the future, to another chapter. But as regards the present and the past it will be useful to consider here what has prompted her to make a protest (which we may regard, so long as her foot is on the neck of the Turks, as having been successful) against these projected massacres. Certainly it was not humanity; it was not the faintest desire to save innocent people in general from being murdered wholesale, for in the similar case of the Armenians, her bowels of compassion were not moved. Or, possibly, if we incline to lenience, we may say that she was sorry for the Armenians, but could not then risk a disagreement with their murderers who were her allies, whereas now, feeling herself more completely dominant over the Turks than she then did, she could risk being peremptory, especially since there was that saving clause about military requirements. For during the Armenian massacres, the Dardanelles expedition was still on the shores of Gallipoli, and the menace to Constantinople acute. It was possible that if she opposed a firm front to the Armenian massacres, the Turks, already on the verge of despair with regard to saving the capital from capture, might have made terms with the Allies. But now no such imminence of danger threatened them, and, with Germany's domination over them vastly more secure than it had been in 1915, she could afford to treat them less as allies and more as a conquered people. This alone might have accounted for her unprecedented impulse of humanity in the minds of those who still attribute such instincts to her, but she had far stronger reasons than that for wanting to save the Jews of Palestine.

Her policy with regard to them is set forth in a pamphlet by Dr. Davis Treitsch, called Die Jueden der Tuerkei, published in 1915, which is a most illuminating little document. These Jewish colonies, as we have seen, came from Russia, and as Germany realised, long before the war, they might easily form a German nucleus in the Near East, for they largely consisted of German-speaking Jews, akin in language and blood to a most important element in her own population. 'In a certain sense,' says Dr. Treitsch, 'the Jews are a Near Eastern element in Germany and a German element in Turkey.' He goes on with unerring acumen to lament the exodus of German-speaking Jews to the United States and to England. 'Annually some 100,000 of these are lost to Germany, the empire of the English language and the economic system that goes with it is being enlarged, while a German asset is being proportionately depreciated.... It will no longer do simply to close the German frontiers to them, and in view of the difficulties which would result from a wholesale migration of Jews into Germany itself, Germans will only be too glad to find a way out in the emigration of those Jews to Turkey—a solution extraordinarily favourable to the interests of all three parties concerned.'

Here, then, is the matter in a nutshell: Germany, wide-awake as ever, saw long ago the advantage to her of a growing Jewish population from the Pale in Turkey. She was perhaps a little overloaded with them herself, but in this immigration from Russia to Palestine she saw the formation of a colony that was well worth German protection, and the result of the war, provided the Palestinian immigrants were left in peace, would be to augment very largely the number of those settling there. 'Galicia,' says Dr. Treitsch, 'and the western provinces of Russia, which between them contain more than half the Jews in the world, have suffered more from the war than any other region. Jewish homes have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, and there is no doubt whatever that, as a result of the war, there will be an emigration of East European Jews on an unprecedented scale.' This emigration, then, to Palestine was, in Germany's view, a counter-weight to the 100,000 annually lost to her through emigration to America and England. With her foot on Turkey's neck she had control over these German-speaking Jews, and saw in them the elements of a German colony. Her calculations, it is true, were somewhat upset by the development of the Zionist movement, by which those settlers declared themselves to have a nationality of their own, and a language of their own, and Dr. Treitsch concedes that. 'But,' he adds, 'in addition to Hebrew, to which they are more and more inclined, the Jews must have a world-language, and this can only be German.'

This, then, in brief, and only up to the present, is the story of how the Jewish massacres were stayed. The Jews were potential Germans, and Germany, who sat by with folded hands when Arabs and Armenians were led to torture and death, put up a warning finger, and, for the present, saved them. In her whole conduct of the war, nothing has been more characteristic than her 'verboten' to one projected massacre and her acquiescence in others. But, as for her having saved the Jews out of motives of humanity, 'Credant Judaei!'



Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter V

DEUTSCHLAND UeBER ALLAH

It was commonly said at the beginning of this war that, whatever Germany's military resources might be, she was hopelessly and childishly lacking in diplomatic ability and in knowledge of psychology, from which all success in diplomacy is distilled. As instances of this grave defect, people adduced the fact that, apparently, she had not anticipated the entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her treatment of Belgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced to be not a crime merely, but a blunder of the stupidest sort. It is perfectly true that Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in the light of innumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the psychology of civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till now, at any rate, of 'having got the hang of it' at all. But critics of her diplomacy failed to see the root-fact that she did not understand it merely because it did not interest her. It was not worth her while to master the psychology of other civilised nations, since she was out not to understand them, but to conquer them. She had all the information she wanted about their armies and navies and guns and ammunition neatly and correctly tabulated. Why, then, since this was all that concerned her, should she cram her head with irrelevant information about what they might feel on the subject of gas-attacks or the torpedoing of neutral ships without warning? As long as her fumes were deadly and her submarines subtle, nothing further concerned her.

But Europe generally made a great mistake in supposing that Germany could not learn psychology, and the process of its distillation into diplomacy when it interested her. The psychology of the French and English was a useless study, for she was merely going to fight them, but for years she had been studying with an industry and a patience that put our diplomacy to shame (as was most swiftly and ignominiously proven when it came into conflict with hers) the psychology of the Turks. For years she had watched the dealings of the Great Powers with Turkey, but she had never really associated herself with that policy. She sat quietly by and saw how it worked. Briefly it was this. For a hundred years Turkey had been kept alive in Europe by the sedulous attentions of the Physician Powers, who dared not let him die for fear of the stupendous quarrels which would instantly arise over his corpse. So there they all sat round his bed, and kept him alive with injections of strychnine and oxygen, and, no less, by a policy of rousing and irritating the patient. All through the reign of Abdul Hamid they persevered: Great Britain plucked his pillow from him, so to speak, by her protectorate of Egypt; Russia tweaked Eastern Rumelia from him; France deprived him of his hot-water bottle when she snatched at the Constantinople quays, and they all shook and slapped him when he went to war with Greece in 1896, and instantly deprived him of the territory he had won in Thessaly. That was the principle of European diplomacy towards Turkey, and from it Germany always held aloof.

But from about the beginning of the reign of the present German Emperor, German or rather Prussian diplomacy had been going quietly about its work. It was worth while to study the psychology of the Turks, because dimly then, but with ever-increasing distinctness, Germany foresaw that Turkey might be a counter of immense importance in the great conflict which was assuredly drawing nearer, though as yet its existence was but foreshadowed by the most distant reflections of summer lightning on a serene horizon. But if Turkey was to be of any profit to her, she wanted a strong Turkey who could fight with her (or rather for her), and she had no use for the Sick Man whom the other Powers were bent on keeping alive, but no more. Her own eventual domination of Turkey was always the end in view, but she wanted to dominate not a weak but a strong servant. And her diplomacy was not less than brilliant simply from the fact that on the one hand it soothed Turkey instead of irritating, and, on the other, that it went absolutely unnoticed for a long time. Nobody knew that it was going on. She sent officers to train the Turkish army, well knowing what magnificent material Anatolia afforded, and she had thoroughly grasped the salient fact that to make any way with Oriental peoples your purse must be open and your backshish unlimited. 'There is no God but backshish, and the Deutsche Bank is his prophet.'

For years this went on very quietly, and all over the great field of the Ottoman Empire the first tiny blades of the crop that Germany was sowing began to appear. To-day that crop waves high, and covers the whole field with its ripe and fruitful ears. For to-day Turkey is neither more nor less than a German colony, and more than makes up to her for the colonies she has lost and hopes to regain. She knows that perfectly well, and so do any who have at all studied the history and the results of her diplomacy there. Even Turkey itself must, as in an uneasy dream, be faintly conscious of it. For who to-day is the Sultan of Turkey? No other than William II. of Germany. It is in Berlin that his Cabinet meets, and sometimes he asks Talaat Bey to attend in a strictly honorary capacity. And Talaat Bey goes back to Constantinople with a strictly honorary sword of honour. Or else he gives one to William II. from his soi-disant master, the Sultan, or takes one back to his soi-disant master from his real master. For no one knows better than William II. the use that swords of honour play in deeds of dishonour.

The object of this chapter is to trace and mount the hewn and solid staircase of steps by which Germany's present supremacy over Turkey was achieved.

Apart from the quiet spade-work that had been going on for some years, Germany made no important move till the moment when, in 1909, the Young Turk party, after the forced abdication of Abdul Hamid, proclaimed the aims and ideals of the new regime. At once Germany saw her opportunity, for here, with her help, might arise the strong Turkey which she desired to see, instead of the weak Turkey which all the other European Powers had been keeping on a lowering diet for so long (desirous only that it should not quite expire), and from that moment she began to lend, or rather let, to Turkey in ever-increasing quantities, the resources of her scientific and her military knowledge. It was in her interests, if Turkey was to be of use to her, that she should educate, and irrigate, and develop the unexploited treasures of human material, of fertility and mineral wealth; and Germany's gold, her schools, her laboratories were at Turkey's disposal. But in every case she, as in duty bound to her people, saw that she got very good value for her outlay.

Here, then, was the great psychological moment when Germany instantly moved. The Young Turks proclaimed that they were going to weld the Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole, and by a piece of brilliant paradoxical reasoning Germany determined that it was she who was going to do it for them. In flat contradiction of the spirit of their manifestoes, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference! They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born Turkish babe, and they nursed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it arose from its cradle a baby no more, but a great Prussian guardsman who shouted, 'Deutschland ueber Allah!'

Only once was there a check in the growth of the Prussian infant, and that was no more than a childish ailment. For when the Balkan wars broke out the Turkish army was in the transitional stage. Its German tutors had not yet had time to inspire the army with German discipline and tradition; they had only weeded out, so to speak, the old Turkish spirit, the blind obedience to the Ministers of the Shadow of God. The Shadow of God, in fact, in the person of the Sultan, had been dragged out into the light, and his Shadow had grown appreciably less. In consequence there was not at this juncture any cohesion in the army, and it suffered reverse after reverse. But a strong though a curtailed Turkey was more in accordance with Prussian ideas than a weak and sprawling one, and Germany bore the Turkish defeats very valiantly. And that was the only set-back that this Pan-Prussian youngster experienced, and it was no more than an attack of German measles which he very quickly got over. For two or three years German influence wavered, then recovered, 'with blessings on the falling out, that all the more endears.'

It is interesting to see how Germany adapted the Pan-Turkish ideal to her own ends, and, by a triumphant vindication of Germany's methods, the best account of this Pan-Turkish ideal is to be found in a publication of 1915 by Tekin Alp, which was written as German propaganda and by Germany disseminated broadcast over the Turkish Empire. An account of this movement has already been given in Chapter II., as far as the Turkish side of it is concerned, and it remains only to enumerate the German contribution to the fledging of this new Turkish Phoenix. The Turkish language and the Turkish Allah, God of Love, in whose name the Armenians were tortured and massacred, were the two wings on which it was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among them a Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen branches of it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a Turkish Guiji or gymnastic club, and an Izji or boy scouts' club. A union of merchants worked for the same object in districts where hitherto trade had been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared on their shops that only Turkish labour was employed. Religious funds also were used for similar economic restoration.

Germany saw, Germany tabulated, Germany licked her lips and took out her long spoon, for her hour was come. She did not interfere: she only helped to further the Pan-Turkish ideal. With her usual foresight she perceived that the Izji, for instance, was a thing to encourage, for the boys who were being trained now would in a few years be precisely the young men of whom she could not have too many. By all means the boy scout movement was to be encouraged. She encouraged it so generously and methodically that in 1916, according to an absolutely reliable source of information, we find that the whole boy scout movement, with its innumerable branches, was under the control of a German officer, Colonel von Hoff. In its classes (derneks) boys are trained in military practices, in 'a recreational manner,' so that they enjoy—positively enjoy (a Prussian touch)—the exercises that will fit them to be of use to the Sultan William II. They learn trigger-drill, they learn skirmishing, they are taught to make reports on the movements of their companies, they are shown neat ways of judging distances. They are divided into two classes, the junior class ranging from the ages of twelve to seventeen, the senior class consisting of boys over seventeen, but not yet of military age. But since Colonel von Hoff organised this, the military age has been extended, and boys of seventeen have got to serve their country on German fronts. Prussian thoroughness, therefore, saw that their training must begin earlier; the old junior class has become the senior class, and a new junior class has been set on foot which begins its recreational exercises in the service of William II., Got and Allah, at the age of eight. It is all great fun, but those pigeon-livered little boys who are not diverted by it have to go on with their fun all the same, for, needless to say, the Izji is compulsory on all boys. Of course they wear a uniform which is made in Germany and is of a 'semi-military' character.

The provision of soldiers and sailors, then, trained from the early age of eight, was the first object of Germany's peaceful and benign penetration. As from the Pisgah height of the Pan-Turkish ideal she saw the promised land, but she had no idea of seeing it only, like Moses, and expiring without entering it, and her faith that she would enter it and possess it and organise it has been wonderfully justified. She has not only penetrated, but has dominated; a year ago towns like Aleppo were crammed with German officers, while at Islahie there were separate wooden barracks for the exclusive use of German troops. There is a military mission at Mamoura, where all the buildings are permanent erections solidly built of stone, for no merely temporary occupation is intended, and thousands of freight-cars with Belgian marks upon them throng the railways, and on some is the significant German title of 'Military Headquarters of the Imperial Staff.' There are troops in the Turkish army, to which is given the title of 'Pasha formation,' in compliment to Turkey, but the Pasha formations are under command of Baron Kress von Kressenstein, and are salted with German officers, N.C.O.'s, and privates, who, although in the Turkish army, retain their German uniforms.

This German leaven forms an instructional class for the remainder of the troops in these formations, who are Turkish. The Germans are urged to respect Moslem customs and to show particular consideration for their religious observances. Every German contingent arriving at Constantinople to join the Pasha formations finds quarters prepared on a ship, and when the troops leave for their 'destination' they take supplies from depots at the railway station which will last them two or three months. They are enjoined to write war diaries, and are provided with handbooks on the military and geographical conditions in Mesopotamia, with maps, and with notes on the training and management of camels. This looks as if they were intended for use against the English troops in Mesopotamia, but I cannot find that they have been identified there. The greatest secrecy is observed with regard to those Pasha formations, and their constitution and movements are kept extremely well veiled.

Wireless stations have been set up in Asia Minor and Palestine, and these are under the command of Major Schlee. A Turkish air-service was instituted, at the head of which was Major Serno, a Prussian officer, and Turkish aviators are now in training at Ostend, where they will very usefully defend their native country. At Constantinople there is a naval school for Turkish engineers and mechanics in the arsenal, to help on the Pan-Turkish ideal, and with a view to that all the instructors are German: a floating dock is in construction at Ismid, and the order has been placed with German firms. It will be capable of accommodating ships of Dreadnought build, which is a new departure for the strictly Pan-Turkish ideal. The cost is L740,000, to be repaid three years after the end of the war. Similarly, by the spring of this year, Germany had arranged to start submarine training in Constantinople for the Turks, and a submarine school was open and at work in March. A few months later it was established at the island of Prinkipo, where it is now hard at work under German instructors. Other naval cadets were sent to Germany for their training, and Turkish officers were present at the battle of Jutland in June 1916, and of course were decorated by the Emperor in person for their coolness and courage.[1]

[Footnote 1: In October 1917 a bill was passed for the entire remodelling of the Turkish fleet after the war, on the lines of the German fleet, 'which proved its perfect training in the battle of Skager Rak.']

A complete revision of the Turkish system of exemptions from military service was necessary as soon as Germany began to want men badly. The age for military service was first raised, and we find a Turkish order of October 1916, calling on all men of forty-three, forty-four, and forty-five years of age to pay their exemption tax if they did not wish to be called to the colours. That secured their money, and, with truly Prussian irony, hardly had this been done when a fresh army order was issued calling out all men, whether they had paid their exemption tax or not. Germany thus secured both their money and their lives.

Still more men were needed, and in November a fresh levy of boys was raised regardless of whether they had reached the military age or not. This absorbed the senior class of the boy scouts, who hitherto had learned their drill in a 'recreationary manner.' Neither Jews nor Christians are exempt from service, and frequent press gangs go round Constantinople rounding up those who are in hiding.

Again the Prussian Moloch was hungry for more, and in December 1916 the Turkish Gazette announced that all males in Asia Minor between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five were to be enrolled for military service, and in January of this year, 1917, fresh recruiting was foreshadowed by the order that men of forty-six to fifty-two, who had paid their exemption money, should be medically examined to see if they were fit for active service. This fresh recruiting was also put in force in the case of boys, and during the summer of 1917 all boys above the age of twelve, provided they were sound and well-built, were taken for the army. Wider and wider the net was spread, and in the same month a fresh Turco-German convention was signed, whereby was enforced a reciprocal surrender in both countries of persons liable to military service, and of deserters, and simultaneously all Turks living in Switzerland, and who had paid exemption money, were recalled to their Germanised fatherland. By now the first crops of the year were ripening in Smyrna, and in default of civilian labour (for every one was now a soldier) they were reaped by Turkish soldiers and the produce sent direct to Germany.

Already in August 1916, certificates of Ottoman nationality had been granted to Serbians resident in the Empire who were willing to become Ottoman subjects, and their 'willingness' was intensified by hints that incidents akin to the Armenian massacres might possibly occur among other alien peoples. They had to sign a declaration that they would not revert to their former nationality, and thus, no doubt, many Serbs passed into the Turkish army. Further enrolments were desirable, and, in March 1917, all Greeks living in Anatolia were forcibly proselytised, their property was confiscated, and they were made liable to military service. Unfortunately all were not available, for of those who were removed from the villages where they lived to military centres, ten per cent. died on the forced marches from hunger and exposure. That was annoying for the German recruiting agents, but it suited well enough the Pan-Turkish ideal of exterminating foreign nationalities. When trouble or discontent occurred among the troops, it was firmly dealt with, as, for instance, when, in November 1916, there were considerable desertions from the 49th Division. On that occasion the order was given to fire on them, and many were killed and wounded. The officer who gave the order was commended by the Prussian authorities for his firmness. Should such an incident occur again, it will no doubt be dealt with no less firmness, for, in April 1917, Mackensen was put in supreme command of all troops in Asia Minor. But in spite of this desertions have largely increased lately, and during the summer deserters out of all the Turkish armies were believed to number about 200,000. Many of those have formed themselves into brigand bands, who make the roads dangerous for travellers. The exchange of honours goes on, for not long ago, in Berlin, Prince Zia-ed-Din, the Turkish Sultan's heir, presented a sword of honour to the Sultan William II. Probably he gave him good news of the progress of the German harbour works begun in the winter at Stamboul, and himself learned that the railway bridge which the Turks proposed to build over the Bosporus was not to be proceeded with, for the German high command had superseded that scheme by their own idea of making a tunnel under the Bosporus instead, which would be safer from aircraft.

Such up-to-date, though in brief outline, is the history of the establishment of the Prussian octopus grip on military and naval matters in Turkey. We have largely ourselves to blame for it. Upon that pathetic and lamb-like record of our diplomacy during the months between the outbreak of the European War, and the entry of Turkey into it in October 1914, it would be morbid to dwell at any length, though a short summary is necessary. As we all know now, Turkey had concluded a treaty with Germany early in August, and when our Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Louis Malet, who was on leave in England at that date, returned to his post on August 16th, all that Turkey wanted was to gain time in which to effect her mobilisation. This she did, with complete success, and our Ambassador telegraphed to England stating his perfect confidence in the sincerity with which the Grand Vizier professed his friendship for England. All through those weeks of August and September this confidence appeared to continue unabated. The Moderate party in Turkey—that is to say, the hoodwinking party—were reported to be daily gaining strength, and it was most important that the Allies should give them every assistance, and above all not precipitate matters. All was going well: all we had to do was to wait. So we waited, still blindly confident in the sincerity of Turkey's friendship for England, while the mobilisation of the Turkish forces proceeded merrily. By the end of September this was nearly complete, and quite suddenly the Ambassador informed the Foreign Office that Turkey appeared to be temporising. That was perfectly true, but the period of temporisation was nearly over, and by mid-October Turkey had something like 800,000 men under arms, and for nine weeks Enver Pasha had had his signed treaty with Germany in his pocket. Possibly this diplomatic procrastination was useful to us, for it enabled us to bring troops from India in security, and send others to Egypt. But without doubt it was useful to the Turks, for it enabled them to mobilise their armies, and to strengthen enormously the defences of the Dardanelles. Then came the day when Germany and Turkey were ready, the attack was made on Odessa, and out of Constantinople we went. We climbed into the railway carriages that took the last rays of English influence out of the Ottoman Empire, and steep were the stairs in the house of a stranger! Turks are not much given to laughter, but Enver Pasha must at least have smiled on that day.