Crescent and Iron Cross

by E. F. Benson

In the same noble spirit, we must suppose, German legal reforms were introduced in December 1916, to replace the Turkish Shuriat, and in the same month all the Turks in telegraph offices in Constantinople were replaced by Germans. Ernst Marré gives valuable advice to young Germans settling in Turkey. He particularly recommends them, knowing how religion is one of the strongest bonds in this murderous race, to 'trade in articles of devotion, in rosaries, in bags to hold the Koran,' and points out what good business might be built up in gramophones. Earlier in this year we find a 'German Oriental Trading Company' founded for the import of fibrous materials for needs of military authorities, and a great carpet business established at Urfa with German machinery that will supplant the looms of Smyrna. A saltpetre factory is established at Konia by Herr Toepfer, whose enterprise is rewarded with an Iron Cross and a Turkish decoration. The afforestation near Constantinople, ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture, is put into German hands, and in the vilayet of Aidin (April 1916) ninety concessions were granted to German capitalists to undertake the exploitation of metallic ores. Occasionally the German octopus finds it has gone too far for the moment, and releases some struggling limb of its victim, as, for instance, when we see that, in September 1916, the German Director's stamp for the 'Imperial German Great Radio Station' at Damascus has been discarded temporarily, as that station 'should be treated for the present as a Turkish concern.'

A 'Trading and Weaving Company' was established at Angora in 1916, an 'Import and Export Company' at Smyrna, a 'Trading and Industrial Society' at Beirut, a 'Tobacco Trading Company' at Latakieh, an 'Agricultural Company' at Tripoli, a 'Corn Exporting Company' in Lebanon, a 'Rebuilding Commission' (perhaps for sacked Armenian houses) at Konia. More curious yet will be a Tourist's Guide Book--a Baedeker, in fact--for travellers in Anatolia, and the erection of a monument in honour of Turkish women who have replaced men called up for military duty. Truly these last two items--a guide-book for Anatolia, and a monument to women--are strange enterprises for Turks. A new Prussian day is dawning, it seems, for Turkish women as well, for the Tanin (April 1917) tells us that diplomas are to be conferred on ladies who have completed their studies in the Technical School at Constantinople.

It is needless to multiply instances of German penetration: I have but given the skeleton of this German monster that has fastened itself with tentacles and suckers on every branch of Turkish industry. There is none round which it has not cast its feelers--no Semitic moneylender ever obtained a surer hold on his victim. In matters naval, military, educational, legal, industrial, financial, Germany has a strangle-hold. Turkey's life is already crushed out of her, and, as we have seen, it has been crushed out of her by the benevolent Kultur-mongers, who, among all the Great Powers of Europe, invested their time and their money in the achievement of the Pan-Turkish ideal. Silently and skilfully they worked, bamboozling their chief tool, Enver Pasha, even as Enver Pasha bamboozled us. As long as he was of service to them they retained him; for his peace of mind at one time they stopped up all letter-boxes in Constantinople because so many threatening letters were sent him. But now Enver Pasha seems to have had his day; he became a little autocratic, and thought that he was the head of the Pan-Turkish ideal. So he was, but the Pan-Turkish ideal had become Pan-Prussian, and he had not noticed the transformation. Talaat Bey has taken his place; it was he who, in May 1917, was received by the Emperor William, by King Ludwig, and by the Austrian Emperor, and he who was the mouthpiece of the German efforts to make a separate peace with Russia. Under Czardom, he proclaimed, the existence of Turkey was threatened, but now the revolution has made friendship possible, for Russia no longer desires territorial annexation. And, oh, how Turkey would like to be Russia's friend! Enver Pasha has of late been somewhat out of favour in Berlin, and I cannot but think it curious that when, on April 2, 1917, he visited the submarine base at Wilhelmshaven, he was very nearly killed in a motor accident. But it may have been an accident. Since then I cannot find that he has taken any more active part in Pan-Turkish ideals than to open a soup-kitchen in some provincial town, and lecture the Central Committee of the Young Turks on the subject of internal affairs in Great Britain. I do not like lectures, but I should have liked to hear that one.

I have left to the end of this chapter the question of Germany's knowledge of, and complicity in the Armenian massacres. From the tribune of the Reichstag, on January 15, 1916, there was made a definite denial of the existence of such massacres at all; on another subsequent occasion it was stated that Germany could not interfere in Turkish internal affairs.

In view of the fact that there is no internal affair appertaining to Turkey in which Germany has not interfered, the second of these statements may be called insincere. But the denial of the massacres is a deliberate lie. Germany--official Germany--knew all about them, and she permitted them to go on. A few proofs of this are here shortly stated.

(1) In September 1915, four months before the denial of the massacres was made in the Reichstag, Dr. Martin Niepage, higher grade teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, prepared and sent, as we have seen, in his name, and that of several of his colleagues, a report of the massacres to the German Embassy at Constantinople. In that report he gives a terrible account of what he has seen with his own eyes, and also states that the country Turks' explanation with regard to the origin of these measures is that it was 'the teaching of the Germans.' The German Embassy at Constantinople therefore knew of the massacres, and knew also that the Turks attributed them to orders from Germany. Dr. Niepage also consulted, before sending his report, with the German Consul at Aleppo, Herr Hoffman, who told him that the German Embassy had been already advised in detail about the massacres from the consulates at Alexandretta, Aleppo, and Mosul, but that he welcomed a further protest on the subject.

(2) These reports, or others like them, had not gone astray, for in August 1915, the German Ambassador in Constantinople, Baron Wangenheim, made a formal protest to the Turkish Government about the massacres.

There is, then, no doubt that the German Government, when it officially denied the massacres, was perfectly cognisant of them. It was also perfectly capable of stopping them, for they were not local violences, but wholesale murders organised at Constantinople. In support of this view I find an independent witness stating that 'there is no Turk of standing who will not readily declare that it would have been perfectly possible for Germany to have vetoed the massacres had she chosen.' Germany had indeed already given assurances that such massacres should not occur. She had assured the Armenian Katholikos at Adana that so long as Germany has any influence in Turkey he need not fear a repetition of the horrors that had taken place under Abdul Hamid. Had she, then, no influence in Constantinople, or how was it that she had obtained complete control over all Turkish branches of government? The same assurance was given by the German Ambassador in April 1915, to the Armenian Patriarch and the President of the Armenian National Council.

So, in support of the Pan-Turkish ideal, and in the name of the Turkish Allah, the God of Love, Germany stood by and let the infamous tale of lust and rapine and murder be told to its end. The Turks had planned to exterminate the whole Armenian race except some half-million, who would be deported penniless to work on agricultural developments under German rule, but this quality of Turkish mercy was too strained for Major Pohl, who proclaimed that it was a mistake to spare so many. But he was a soldier, and did not duly weigh the claims of agriculture.

The choice was open to Germany; Germany chose, and let the Armenian massacres go on. But she was in a difficulty. What if the Turkish Government retorted (perhaps it did so retort), 'You are not consistent. Why do you mind about the slaughter of a few Armenians? What about Belgium and your atrocities there?'