[Footnote 1: Similarly, in October of this year, a new Turkish law was passed, prohibiting the acquisition of Turkish land by foreign settlers. This is aimed point-blank at Germany, and has naturally annoyed Berlin very much.]

[Footnote 2: The army rations have lately been reduced, each Turkish soldier receiving daily an oke of bread and a dried mackerel.]

And should anybody doubt the efficiency of German control in Turkey, and be disposed to be optimistic about the imminence of Turkey's detachment, he might do well to ponder that story.

Meantime the efficacy of our naval blockade is largely discounted by Germany's new source of supply. Possibly in the ensuing winter of 1917-18 conditions may get unbearable, but if the Turkish Government only two years ago massacred more than a million of its subjects, it would be absurd to expect that the starving of a million more would produce much effect on the Ministers of the Turkish God of Love.[1] The people are, of course, told, with suitable statistics, how famine is decimating England and France, and how the total starvation of those unfortunate countries is imminent. Indeed, of all the signs of want of confidence in their German overlords, by far the most promising are the facts that Talaat and Enver have sent their money out of the country, and that Jemal the Great has a swelled head. On these facts there is a certain justifiable optimism to be based. It will do no good to consider them academically in London; but are there not practical channels to reach the instincts of the Turkish triumvirate that might be navigated?

[Footnote 1: The following list of prices in Constantinople is of interest:—

July 1914. July 1917. Rice, per lb. 2-1/4 d. 3s. 4d. Milk, per quart 5d. 2s. Flour, per lb. 3d. 2s. 6d. Petroleum, per lb. 1d. 4s. 6d. Pair of boots L1 L8. ]

We need not trouble ourselves with considering what the Allies will have to do with the Turkish army when once the end of the war comes, for the collapse of the military party in Turkey, which owes its whole vitality to Germany, will be perfect and complete. But the economical future of Turkey is not so plain: at the present moment its bankruptcy is total. Early in the war Germany drained it of such bullion as it had, and has since then advanced it about L150,000,000, which, as far as I can trace, is entirely in German paper, and must be redeemed in gold at some period (chiefly two years) after the end of the war. That is wonderful finance, and one marvels that Turkey could have been so far blinded as to accept it. But I expect that the swallowing of the first loan was sweetened by a spoonful of jam of this kind. Germany pointed out that, though England was quite certainly going to lose the war, she had issued an immense paper coinage which had all the purchasing power of gold. Germany, on the other hand, with her dear Ally to help her, was just as certainly going to win the war. How, then, could there be the slightest risk of the German paper money depreciating a single piastre in value? That sounded very good sense to Turkey, who was equally convinced that she would be on the victorious side (else she would not have joined it), and down went the loan with a pleasant sensation of sweetness. A second loan was easily induced by the failure of the Dardanelles expedition, and about then the 'ignorant' Turkish peasant began to wonder whether the paper was quite as valuable as gold, and to prefer gold or even the ordinary silver piastre to its German equivalent. To counteract that, as we have seen, a law was passed making it criminal to hoard gold, and, to complete the ruin, the silver piastre was called in, and a nickel token was substituted.... We can but bow our heads in reverence of the thoroughness of German swindling.

Now Turkey is completely bankrupt, and we must ask ourselves why Germany ever bargained for the repayment in gold, after the war, of the millions she had lent the Turks in paper, if she knew that Turkey could never repay her. True, the loans had only cost her the paper the notes were printed on, so that in no case could she prove a loser, but how could she be a gainer? The answer to that question shouts at us from every acre of Turkish soil. The immense undeveloped riches of Turkey supply the answer. Some indeed are already being developed, and the labour and most of the materials have been paid for by the German paper notes. There are the irrigation works at Adana, there is the beet-sugar industry at Konia, the irrigation works in the Makischelin Valley, the mineral concessions of the Bagdad Railway, the Haidar Pasha Harbour concessions, the afforestation scheme near Constantinople, the cotton industry in Anatolia—there is no end to them. Turkey may not be able to pay in cash, but over all these concessions already working, and over a hundred more, of which the concessions have been granted, Germany has a complete hold, and her victim will pay in minerals and cotton and sugar and corn. She will pay over and over and over again, as none who have the smallest knowledge of Kultur-finance can possibly doubt. She is bled white already, and for the rest of time bloodless and white will she remain. Only one event can possibly avert her fate, and that is the victory of the Allies.

We have been so bold as to assume that this is not an impossible contingency, and on that assumption there is a brighter future for Turkey than the Prussian domination could ever bring her. Bankrupt she is, but, as Germany saw, she is rich in possibilities even with regard to the restricted territory to which she will surely find herself limited, and it is a pleasant chance for her that Germany has already been so busy in developing the resources of Anatolia. For Germany may safely bet her last piece of paper money that she will not lay a finger on them.

The Turkey of the future is to be for the Turks; not for the persecuted Armenians, nor for the Arabs, nor for the Greeks, and assuredly it is not to be for the Prussians. While the war lasts, Germany may draw supplies from the fields her artificial manures have enriched, and from the acres that her paper money has planted, but after that no more. Her Ottomanising work will be over. Such development (and it is far from negligible) as she has done in Syria will be continued under French protection for the Arabs, such as she has done in Mesopotamia under English protection, and such as she has done in Anatolia will be continued by the Turks to drag them out of the utter insolvency that she has brought them to. Never before has a country so justly and so richly deserved the repudiation of a debt incurred by the confidence trick. Not a civilised Government in the world would dream of enforcing payment, any more than a magistrate would enforce a payment to some thimble-rigger returning from a race-meeting.

The roar of battle still renders inaudible all voices save its own, but already the dusk begins to gather over the halls where sit the War-lord and those who, for the realisation of their monstrous dreams, loosed hell upon the world, and in the growing dusk there begin to steal upon the wall the letters of pale flame that to them portend the doom, and to us give promise of dawn. Faintly they can see the legend Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin....

THE END