II.
A cunning manœuvre for saving the future of Pangermanism and of Enver Pasha’s gang in Turkey has already been broached by the Germans. As it will certainly be attempted again, should it be in the interest of Berlin to push it through (and everything points that way), it becomes necessary to unmask it completely beforehand. In February, 1916, numerous Turkish agents, installed in Switzerland and apparently working through spies in the Allied countries, began to set afloat a rumour that Turkey was ready to conclude a separate peace. Enver Pasha had been assassinated (which of course was a lie), and so forth. The aim of this manœuvre was to secure in the Allied countries the assistance of those incorrigible fools, armed with the panoply of crass ignorance on the affairs of the East, who nevertheless are not always without influence on men at the head of affairs. If I am rightly informed, this clever dodge of the Turkish agents did really succeed for a time in enlisting some of the fools I speak of. In the opinion of these gentry the conclusion of a separate peace with Turkey would have been a very good move, since it would have deprived Germany of the help of her Ottoman ally, etc. These are very dangerous illusions, and it is necessary to show how and why this measure would play the game of Berlin and gravely imperil the victory of the Allies.
The Turks, greatly alarmed by the Russian successes in Armenia, see at the same time their dream of a Panislamic movement fading away. They are obliged to acknowledge to themselves that the Germans are cynically using them for their own selfish ends, are driving them along the road to famine by making a clean sweep of all their food supplies, and are sending them to slaughter for the higher interests of Pangermany. But while the mass of the Turks may very well feel their anger beginning to rise against the Germans, they are completely in the hands of the Young-Turk ringleaders, who in their turn are bound over, hand and foot, to the Germans; and more and more the Germans are masters of the organs of administration and government in Turkey. Therefore there is no counting on an effective revolt of the Turkish population, who moreover are entirely destitute of the spirit of organization. On the other hand, the Germans are far-seeing people and perfectly understand that Turkey is hastening towards a catastrophe. But to bring about a separate peace between Turkey and the Allies would be equivalent to inducing the Allies to recognize the permanence of the Ottoman empire; it would thus save that empire from disaster, and leave the door open for Berlin to re-open its old intrigues after the conclusion of a peace on the basis of the “drawn game” (see chap. V).
On the contrary, if the question of the Ottoman East is logically settled once for all, all hope of carrying out at a later time the Pangerman dream “from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf” is finally shattered. Moreover, a separate peace would also serve the turn of the Young-Turk ringleaders, for clearly nothing else could enable them to keep their hold on the reins of power, or could save them from being massacred by their fellow countrymen the day that the Ottoman crash comes. We see therefore why the rumours of a separate peace between Turkey and the Allies, which have been circulated and afterwards denied, only to be started again, at some other time, are really a Turko-German manœuvre. Besides, the Arabian journal Al-Mokattan of Cairo (22nd April, 1916) has remarked that “a separate peace with Turkey would cause Germany no uneasiness, since the retirement of Turkey from the arena would relieve Germany from the need of helping the Turks, as she does at present.” Finally, the Vossische Zeitung has confessed that “a separate peace between Turkey and the enemies of Germany would in no way prejudice Austro-German interests” (quoted by Le Journal de Genève, 25th April, 1916).
However, it is not to be supposed that the leaders of the Entente will allow themselves to be caught in the Turko-German trap. The Eastern question is a regular ulcer, which has envenomed European policy for a hundred years; it is the nightmare of the chanceries. Every attempt to reform the Ottoman empire has always failed. The fact is that this dry-rotten State has only been bolstered up by the mutual rivalries of the great powers. Since the victory of the Allies is bound to secure for the Old World a very long period of peace, that perennial source of troubles and wars, the Turkish empire, must be stopped for good. Moreover, justice in its broader aspect demands the same solution of the problem.
THE NATIONALITIES IN TURKEY.
In Turkey, as elsewhere, if the new settlement is to be endowed with a potentiality of life, the principle of nationalities must be followed as far as is practicable. Now, out of the 20 million inhabitants of the Ottoman empire, four great nationalities (see the accompanying map) account for about 18 millions. In the absence of statistics on which any reliance can be placed, it is estimated that there are in Turkey about:—
Two millions of Levantines, of Europeans, of Jews, and of miscellaneous races.
Two millions of Greeks.
Two millions of Armenians.
Eight millions of Arabs.
Six millions only of Turks.
As for the Greeks, who unfortunately do not form a coherent body (see p. 147), there are several solutions to be considered, with a view to giving them a fraction of the Ottoman empire, if they throw themselves into the struggle in the Balkans on the side of the Allies. With regard to the Arabs, they detest the Turks, who have oppressed them for centuries. The liberation of the Arabs from the Turkish yoke should therefore be carried out so far as it is at all possible. As for the Armenians, of whom several hundreds of thousands have just been massacred by the Turks, it is clearly impossible to contemplate the continuance of the remnant of this unhappy people under the iron heel of Enver Pasha, Talaat, and the rest of that gang. With regard to the six millions, or thereabouts, of Turks, who represent less than the third of the population of the Ottoman empire, they really inhabit only Anatolia, that is to say, the portion of the Ottoman empire included between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Everywhere else the Turks are merely hated officials, who, ever since the conquest by the Osmanli Sultans, have cynically sucked dry the other populations of the Ottoman empire. No doubt the Turkish peasant of Anatolia, when he is not a prey to one of those paroxysms of religious fanaticism which seize him periodically, is generally a good fellow. Very sober and long-suffering he makes an excellent soldier, but the mental apparatus of your Anatolian Turk is several centuries behind the time. He is incapable of self-government in our modern age. It is true that there are some thousands of Turks who make excellent employees in the service of the Ottoman Debt, but only on condition of their being constantly supervised and directed by European heads of departments. Among the Turks of Constantinople there is not a single group offering any serious guarantee for the guidance of the Turkish masses. If the Turkish peasant of Anatolia is undoubtedly endowed by nature with some sterling qualities, it is equally certain that the Turks of Constantinople, with few exceptions, are corrupt to the marrow of their bones. In these circumstances to imagine that a really independent Turkish empire could be set up is to nurse an absurd chimera. As for Constantinople, it is not even a Turkish city; it is essentially cosmopolitan. Its 1,200,000 inhabitants consist of Turks (43 per cent.), Armenians (18 per cent.), Greeks (17 per cent.), Jews (16 per cent.), Europeans, Levantines, and miscellaneous peoples (6 per cent.).
On the other hand, it is plain enough that this amazing war cannot close without allowing Russia to acquire a predominant position at Constantinople. Russia certainly did not want the war, but she has been compelled to wage it and to send millions of men to their death, while she has had to support a formidable financial burden. For these gigantic sacrifices Russia must receive compensation. The toll which Russia will take of Poland in return for the autonomy granted to her—a toll which is both just and conformable to the common interest of the Poles as well as of the Russians—evidently cannot repay Russia for her enormous sacrifices. That necessary compensation, therefore, Russia must look for elsewhere. Now a glance at the map, combined with a knowledge of the cosmopolitan character of Constantinople, will convince anybody that Russia cannot continue to be bottled up in the Black Sea. While it is necessary to the peace of the new Europe that the control of the Straits should be exercised under the direction of Russia on as liberal principles as possible, it is no less necessary for the West to understand that justice demands for Russia a preponderant position at Constantinople, even though the Western powers must make some undoubted sacrifices to secure that object. If the soldiers of the Tsar have given proof of unparalleled self-sacrifice, if, despite some cruel reverses, they display an inflexible tenacity, it is because they are stirred by two motives—a hatred of the Germans who have poisoned the Russian bureaucracy, and the ardent wish for the fulfilment of that hope which animates the poorest peasant in Russia, the hope of securing for Russia a free outlet on the Mediterranean. These are the feelings, the depth and power of which M. Milioukoff put into words when he said to the Duma: “We shall not end the war without securing an outlet to the open sea. The annexation of the Straits will not be a territorial annexation, for vast Russia has no need of new territories, but she cannot prosper without access to the open sea” (see Le Journal de Genève, 28th March, 1916). But in spreading the rumour of a separate peace with Turkey the Germans expect to derive the following advantage from the manœuvre. They reckon that some Allied newspapers in the West will receive the idea favourably. The Germans would immediately take advantage of that to stir up in Russia a violent storm of indignation and doubt against the Western Allies. The example of 1915 ought to serve the Allies as a warning against any imprudence in the press. It is not sufficiently known in France that last year the Germans traded largely on the apparent inactivity of the French troops, at the time when the Russians were obliged to endure their long retreat of five months. That inactivity was certainly not the effect of any ill will of the French towards their Russian allies; it was the consequence of that baneful theory of the Western front considered as the principal and exclusive theatre of war, a theory which prevented the intervention by way of Salonika, at a time when it might still have been easily effected, between May and July, 1915. Nevertheless, that apparent inactivity has been used by the Germans to excite discontent in Russia against the French, and their efforts have not been unsuccessful, for during a long time many Russians were much annoyed with the French for an inactivity which seemed to them inexplicable. This instance may help us to understand what a disastrous effect would be produced in Russia by the news that in the West the newspapers or influential circles contemplate as possible a separate peace with Turkey at the very moment when the Russian arms are more and more successful in Armenia, and when these successes not only console the soldiers of the Tsar for their former reverses, but also render the Allies a substantial service by draining the Balkan peninsula of Turkish troops, and thus facilitating the Allied offensive from Salonika Northward.
Such are the various results aimed at by the astute new dodge of a separate peace with the Ottoman empire. Surely it is only necessary to recognize them to prevent the Allies from being caught in the new Turko-German trap.