Indeed, it would be easier to enumerate the industries and economical developments of Turkey over which Germany has not at the present moment got the control than those over which she has. In particular she has shown a parental interest in Turkish educational questions. She established last year, under German management, a school for the study of German in Constantinople; she has put under the protection of the German Government the Jewish institution at Haifa for technical education in Palestine; from Sivas a mission of schoolmasters has been sent to Germany for the study of German methods. Ernst Marré surmises that German will doubtless become compulsory even in the Turkish intermediate (secondary) schools. In April 1917, the first stone of the 'House of Friendship' was laid at Constantinople, the object of which institution is to create among Turkish students an interest in everything German, while earlier in the year arrangements were made for 10,000 Turkish youths to go to Germany to be taught trades. These I imagine were unfit for military service. With regard to such a scheme Halil Haled Bey praises the arrangement for the education of Turks in Germany. When they used to go to France, he tells us, 'they lost their religion' (certainly Prussian Got is nearer akin to Turkish Allah) 'and returned home unpatriotic and useless. In Germany they will have access to suitable religious literature' (Gott!) 'and must adopt all they see good in German methods without losing their original characteristics.' Comment on this script is needless. The hand is the hand of Halil Haled Bey, but the voice is the voice of Potsdam. Occasionally, but rarely, Austrian competition is seen. Professor Schmoller, in an Austrian quarterly review, shows jealousy of German influence, and we find, in October 1916, an Ottoman-Austrian college started at Vienna for 250 pupils of the Ottoman Empire. But Germany has 10,000 in Berlin. At Adana (where are the German irrigation works) the German-Turkish Society has opened a German school of 300, while, reciprocally, courses in Turkish have been organised at Berlin for the sake of future German colonists. In Constantinople the Tanin announces a course of lectures to be held by the Turco-German Friendship Society. Professor von Marx discoursed last April on foreign influence and the development of nations, with special reference to Turkey and the parallel case of Germany. A few months later we find Hilmet Nazim Bey, official head of the Turkish press, proceeding to Berlin to learn German press methods. A number of editors of Turkish papers will follow him, and soon, no doubt, the Turkish press will rival Cologne and Frankfort.
So much for German education, but her penetrative power extends into every branch of industry and economics. In November 1916, a Munich expert was put in charge of the College of Forestry, and an economic society was started in Constantinople on German lines with German instructors. Inoculation against small-pox, typhoid, and cholera was made compulsory; and we find that the Turkish Ministers of Posts, of Justice, and of Commerce, figureheads all of them, have Germans as their acting Ministers. In the same year a German was appointed as expert for silkworm breeding and for the cultivation of beet. Practically all the railways in Asia Minor are pure German concerns by right of purchase. Germany owns the Anatolian railway concession (originally British), with right to build to Angora and Konia; the Bagdad railway concession, with preferential rights over minerals; they have bought the Mersina-Adana Railway, with right of linking up to the Bagdad Railway; they have bought the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, built with French capital. They have secured also the Haidar Pasha Harbour concession, thereby controlling and handling all merchandise arriving at railhead from the interior of Asia Minor.[10] Already on the Bagdad Railway the big tunnels of Taurus and Amanus are available for narrow-gauge petrol-driven motors, and the broad-gauge line will soon be complete. Meanwhile railway construction is pushed on in all directions under German control, and the Turkish Minister of Finance (August 1916) allocated a large sum of German paper money for the construction of ordinary roads, military roads, local government roads, all of which are new to Turkey, but which will be useful for the complete German occupation which is being swiftly consolidated. To stop the mouths of the people, all political clubs have been suppressed by the Minister of the Interior, for Prussia does not care for criticism. To supply German ammunition needs, lead and zinc have been taken from the roofs of mosques and door-handles from mosque-gates, and the iron railings along the Champs de Mars at Pera have been carted away for the manufacture of bombs. Not long after eight truck-loads of copper were sent to Germany: these, I imagine, represent the first produce of copper roofs and utensils. A Turco-German convention signed in Berlin in January of this year, permits subjects of one country to settle in the other while retaining their nationality and enjoying trading and other privileges. In Lebanon Dr. König has opened an agricultural school for Syrians of all religions. In the Homs district the threatening plague of locusts in February 1917 was combatted by Germans; and a German expert, Dr. Bucher, had been already sent to superintend the whole question. For this concerns supplies to Germany, as does also the ordinance passed in the same month that two-thirds of all fish caught in the Lebanon district should be given to the military authorities (these are German), and that every fish weighing over six ounces in the Beirut district should be Korban also. The copper mines at Arghana Maden, near Diarbekr, are busy exporting their produce into Germany; the coal-mines at Rodosto will very soon be making a large output.[11]
The balance-sheets for 1916 of certain of those railways in which the Deutsche Bank has an interest have come to hand. They show a very disagreeable degree of prosperity. The Anatolia Railway Company has large profits with a gross revenue of 25,737,995 marks. The profit on the Haidar-Pasha-Angora Line has risen from 42,566 francs per kilometre to 45,552. The Mersina-Tarsus-Adana Railway has paid 6 per cent. on its preference shares, and 3 per cent. on its ordinary shares. The Haidar Pasha Harbour Company has paid 8 per cent.
Later in this year we find three trains daily leaving Constantinople for Germany, laden with coal and military supplies.
There is no end to this penetration: German water-seekers, with divining and boring apparatus, accompanied the Turkish expedition into Sinai; Russian prisoners were sent by Germany for agricultural work in Asia Minor, to take the place of slaughtered Armenians; a German-Turkish treaty, signed January 11, 1917, gives the whole reorganisations of the economic system to a special German mission. A Stuttgart journal chants a characteristic
Lobgesang
over this feat. 'That is how,' it proudly exclaims, 'we work for the liberation of peoples and nationalities.'