Again, the Deutsche Orientbank has made many extensions, and is already financing cotton and wool trade for after the war. The establishment of this provoked much applause in German financial circles, who find it to be an instance of the 'far-reaching and powerful Germano-Austrian unity, which replaces the disunion of Turkish finance.' This is profoundly true, especially if we omit the word 'Austrian' inserted for diplomatic reasons. Again we find Germany advancing £3,000,000 of German paper to the Turkish Government in January 1917, for the payment of supplies they have received from Krupp's works and (vaguely) for interest to the German Financial Minister. This, too, we may conjecture, is to be redeemed after the war in gold.
In March of this year we find in the report of the Ottoman Bank a German loan of £1,000,000 for the purchase of agricultural implements by Turkey, and this is guaranteed by house-taxes. In all up to that month, as was announced in the Chamber of Deputies at Constantinople, Germany had advanced to Turkey the sum of £142,000,000, entirely, it would seem, in German paper, to be repaid at various dates in gold. The grip, in fact, is a strangle-hold, all for Turkey's good, as no doubt will prove the 'New Conventions' announced by Zimmermann in May 1917, to take the place of the abolished Capitulations, 'which left Turkey at the mercy of predatory Powers who looked for the disruption of the Ottoman Empire.' Herr Zimmermann does not look for that: he looks for its absorption. And sees it.
The industrial development of Turkey by this benevolent and disinterested Power has been equally thorough and far-reaching, though Germany here has had a certain amount of competition by Hungary to contend against, for Hungary considered that Germany was trespassing on her sphere of interest. But she has been able to make no appreciable headway against her more acute partner, and her application for a monopoly of sugar-production was not favourably received, for Germany already had taken the beet industry well in hand. In Asia Minor the acreage of cultivation early in 1917 had fallen more than 50 per cent. from that under crops before the war, but owing to the importation of machinery from the Central Powers, backed up by a compulsory Agricultural Service Law, which has just been passed, it is hoped that the acreage will be increased this year by something like 30 per cent. The yield per acre also will be greatly increased this year, for Germany has, though needing artificial manures badly herself, sent large quantities into Turkey, where they will be more profitably employed. She has no fear about securing the produce. This augmented yield will, it is true, not be adequate to supply the needs of Turkey, who for the last two years has suffered from very acute food shortage, which in certain districts has amounted to famine and wholesale starvation of the poorer classes. But it is unlikely that their needs will be considered at all, for Germany's needs (she, the fairy godmother of the Pan-Turk ideal) must obviously have the first call on such provisions as are obtainable. Thus, in the new preserved meat factory at Aidin, the whole of the produce is sent to Germany. Thus, too, though in February 1917 there was a daily shortage in Smyrna of 700 sacks of flour, and the Arab and Greek population was starving, no flour at all was allowed to be imported into Smyrna. But simultaneously Germany was making huge purchases of fish, meat, and flour in Constantinople (paid for in German paper), including 100,000 sheep. Yet such was the villainous selfishness of the famine-stricken folk at Adrianople that, when the trains containing these supplies were passing through, a mob held them up and sold the contents to the inhabitants. That, however, was an isolated instance, and in any case a law was passed in October 1916, appointing a military commission to control all supplies. It enacts that troops shall be supplied first, and specially ordains that the requirements of German troops come under this head. (Private firms have been expressly prohibited from purchasing these augmented wheat supplies, but special permission was given in 1915 to German and Austro-Hungarian societies to buy.) A few months later we find that there are a hundred deaths daily in Constantinople from starvation, and two hundred in Smyrna, where there is a complete shortage of oil. But oil is still being sent to Germany, and during 1916 five hundred reservoirs of oil were sent there, each containing up to 15,000 kilogrammes. Similarly during this summer the price of fruit has gone up in Smyrna, for the Germans have reopened certain factories for preserving it and turning it into jam, which is being sent to Germany. The sugar is supplied from the new beet-fields of Konia. But Kultur must be supplied first, else Kultur would grow lean, and the Turkish God of Love will look after the Smyrniotes. It is no wonder that the blockade of Germany does not produce the desired result a little quicker, for food is already pouring in from Turkey, and when the artificial manures have produced their early harvest the stream will become a torrent.[9]
The harvest has now come in, and is most abundant.
But during all these busy and tremendous months of war Germany has not only been denuding Turkey of her food supplies, for the sake of the Pan-Turkish ideal; in the same altruistic spirit she has been vastly increasing the productiveness of her new and most important colony. The great irrigation works at Konia, begun several years ago, are in operation, and the revenues of the irrigated villages have been doubled. In fact, as the report lately issued says, 'a new and fertile province has been formed by the aid of German energy and knowledge.' At Adana are similar irrigation works, financed by the Deutsche Bank. Ernst Marré gives us a most hopeful survey of them, for Adana was already linked up with the Bagdad Railway in October 1916, which was to be the great artery connecting Germany with the East. There is some considerable shortage of labour there (owing in part to the Armenian massacres, to which we shall revert presently), but the financial arrangements are in excellent shape. The whole of the irrigation works are in German hands, and have been paid for by German paper; and to get the reservoirs, etc., back into her own control, it has been agreed that Turkey, already completely bankrupt, will have to pay not only what has been spent, but a handsome sum in compensation; while, as regards shortage of labour, prisoners have been released in large numbers to work without pay. This irrigation scheme at Adana will increase the cotton yield by four times the present crop, so we learn from the weekly Arab magazine,
El Alem el Ismali
, which tells us also of the electric-power stations erected there.
The same paper (October 1916) announces to the Anatolian merchants that transport is now easy, owing to the arrival of engines and trucks from Germany, while Die Zeit (February 1917) prophesies a prosperous future for this Germano-Turkish cotton combine. Hitherto Turkey has largely imported cotton from England; now Turkey--thanks to German capital on terms above stated--will, in the process of internal development so unselfishly devised for her by Germany, grow cotton for herself, and be kind enough to give a preferential tariff to Germany.
A similarly bright future may be predicted for the sugar-beet industry at Konia, where are the irrigation works already referred to. Artesian wells have been sunk, and there is the suggestion to introduce Bulgarian labour in default of Turkish. As we have seen, Hungary attempted to obtain a monopoly with regard to sugar, but Germany has been victorious on this point (as on every other where she competes with Hungary), and has obtained the concession for a period of thirty years. She reaped the first-fruits this last spring (1917), when, on a single occasion, 350 trucks laden with sugar were despatched to Berlin. A similar irrigation scheme is bringing into cultivation the Makischelin Valley, near Aleppo, and Herr Wied has been appointed as expert for irrigation plant in Syria. There has been considerable shortage of coal, but now more is arriving from the Black Sea, and the new coal-fields at Rodosto will soon be giving an output.