"We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an American travelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading place[24]."
What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?
The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for the last thirty years. They have organised regular steamship services between German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-German trade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in the Ottoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debt was first placed under international administration, Germany held only 4.7 per cent., of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey's creditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent., and was second only to France[25]. Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of any other foreign Power, have brought valuable concessions in their train—harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, irrigation works in the Konia oasis and the Adana plain, and the prospect, when the Bagdad Railway reaches the Tigris, of tapping the naphtha deposits of Kerkuk[26]. Dr. Rohrbach, the German specialist on the Near East, forecasts the profits of the Bagdad Railway from the results of Russian railway-building in Central Asia. He prophesies the cultivation of cotton, in the regions opened up by the line, on a scale which will cover an appreciable part of the demands of German industry, and will open a corresponding market for German wares among the new cotton-growing population[27]. "Yet the decisive factor in the Bagdad Railway," he counsels his German readers, "is not to be found in these economic considerations but in another sphere."
Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home.
"Germany's relation to Turkey," his monograph begins, "belies the doctrine that all modern understandings and differences between nations have an economic origin. We are certainly interested in the economic advancement of Turkey … but in setting ourselves to make Turkey strong we have been influenced far more by our political interests as a State among States (das politische, das staatlich-machtliche Interesse). Even our economic activity has primarily served this aim, and has in fact originated to a large extent in the purely politico-military problems (aus den unmittelbaren Machtaufgaben) which confronted the Turkish Government. Exclusively economic considerations play a very subordinate part in Turco-German relations…. Our common political aims, and Germany's interest in keeping open the land-route to the Indian Ocean, will make it more than ever imperative for us to strengthen Turkey economically with all our might, and to put her in a position to build up, on independent economic foundations, a body politic strong enough to withstand all external assaults. The means will still be economic; the goal will be of a political order[28]."
And Dr. Rohrbach formulates the political goal with startling precision. After twelve pages of disquisition on recent international diplomacy he brings his thesis to this point: the Bagdad Railway links up with the railways of Syria, and
"The importance of the Syrian railway system lies in this, that, if the need arose, it would be the direct instrument for the exercise of pressure upon England … supposing that German-Austro-Turkish co-operation became necessary in the direction of Egypt."
Written as it was in 1911, this is a remarkable anticipation of Turkish strategic railway-building since the outbreak of war; but it is infinitely remote in purpose from the economic regeneration of Western Asia, and even when the German publicists reckon in economic values they generally betray their political design.
"The special point for Germany," Dr. Wiedenfeld lays down, in discussing the agricultural possibilities of the Ottoman territories, "is that to a large extent crops can be grown here which supplement our own economic resources in important respects…. In peace time, of course, no one would think of transporting goods of such bulk as agricultural products any way but by sea; but the War has impressed on us with brutal clearness the value for us of being able on occasions of extreme necessity to import cotton from Turkey by land."
Thus Germany's economic activity in Turkey has been not for prosperity but for power, not for peace but for war. In developing Turkey, Germany is simply developing the "Central Europe" scheme of a military combine self-contained economically and challenging the world in arms[29]. Germany is concerned with Turkey, not for her splendid past and future, but for her miserable present; for Turkey—as she is, and only as she is—is a vital chequer on the chess-board where Germany has been playing her game of world power, or "des staatlich-machtlichen Interessens," as Dr. Wiedenfeld would say. Therefore Germany does not eye the lands and peoples under Ottoman dominion with a view to their common advantage and her own. She selects a "piece" among them which she can keep under her thumb and so control the square. Abd-ul-Hamid was her first pawn, and when the Young Turk Party swept him off the board she adopted them and their colour[30]; for by hook or by crook, through this agency or that, Turkey had to be commanded or Germany's play was spoilt.