IV.
The Pangerman plan of 1911 provides that the results of the “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” scheme should be made the most of even in the furthest points of the Far East. Facts to hand and well-known Pangerman programmes enable us to form an idea of what help Germany meant to find in Asia during the war, and what profit would have accrued to her afterwards from the said scheme, if she had succeeded in finally carrying it out.
William II. tried to play the Panislamic card, which is one of the leading trumps of the Pangerman game. In a word, the object was to stir up a Panislamic movement, both political and military, which would help Germany to vanquish the Entente powers, since these hold among their possessions numerous Moslem subjects: France, particularly in Tunis, Algiers and Morocco; Italy in Libya; Russia in the Crimea and in the Caucasus, in the region of Kazan, in Central Asia and in Siberia; England in Egypt, in India, in Burma, in the Straits Settlements and in the greater part of her African Colonies.
As Panislamism is ostensibly founded on the restoration and considerable extension of the influence and powers of the Sultan of Constantinople, Commander of the Faithful, it could not fail to flatter deeply the neo-nationalism of the Turks, which has manifested itself particularly since the failure of the Allies at the Dardanelles. The result is that, thanks to Panislamism, the Kaiser’s interests have been well served by the Sultan’s Moslem subjects; a clever propaganda has dazzled their eyes with a prospect of the restoration of a great empire, even greater than in days of old.
ASIATIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE SCHEME “FROM HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF.”
The Panislamic movement, minutely and long prepared during peace by Germany, was started by her as soon as hostilities began. On the advice of Berlin, the Sultan proclaimed, as early as the end of 1914, the Jehad or Holy War. No doubt the Moslem insurrection has not become general, but the Islamic agitation has nevertheless yielded local results, which will be better understood after the war, and which have hampered the Allies in India, in Egypt, in Libya and in the French possessions of North Africa. Particularly in April, 1915, an insurrection of British Indian troops at Singapore very nearly succeeded. About the same time in Siam, numerous German officers, with the assistance of Indian and Burmese revolutionaries, had begun to muster a small army of 16,000 men, who, after being armed, were to attack British Burma. This Islamic agitation was threatening to assume serious proportions, when the success of the Russians in Armenia and in Persia fortunately checked it by striking a heavy blow at the prestige of the Sultan, the Commander of the Faithful.
Nevertheless, what Berlin has already attempted to achieve with the help of Islam, should serve the Allies as a strong warning of what Germany would certainly do in time to come, if the future peace left her the necessary means. As soon as the Turco-German junction had been effected across Serbia in October, 1915, the Panislamic policy of the Kaiser assumed a more decided form. At the behest of the Kaiser, his familiar spirit at Constantinople, Enver Pacha, who then was all-powerful, mobilized the whole of such of his Ottoman subjects as were able to carry the arms provided for them, which only at the beginning of 1916 began to pour in from the Central Empires, after communications had been established across invaded Serbia. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were systematically massacred, in order to eliminate a non-Moslem population, which thwarted the Turco-German plans for the future. As to the military and Panislamic activity of the Turks, directed by the Germans, it has endeavoured to radiate from Constantinople in many directions towards Egypt, the Caucasus, Persia, Central-Russian Asia, Afghanistan and India.
After the war, if by our hypothesis, peace were made on the basis of a “Drawn Game,” that is to say, if the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” were carried out, all these other plans would be taken up again. How would the Turks free themselves from the German clutches? Their financial position binds them entirely to Germany. Such large personal advantages as the Kaiser’s agents would inevitably offer to all Turks whose help would be considered useful, would suffice to ensure Berlin’s predominance in the Sultan’s Empire, that classical land of backsheesh (see map, p. 95).