Crescent and Iron Cross

by E. F. Benson

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, cattle, as in the old days of the Sultans who absorbed the strength of the aliens, but did not exterminate them. But now the cattle were not only to be used for milk, but were to be slaughtered when advisable. Till then they must be dumb, or speak the language of their masters only, for this alone can save them from the shambles. Ahmed Sherif Bey, a prominent Nationalist, lays this down. 'It is the business of the Porte to make the Arabs forget their own language, and to impose upon them instead that of the nation that rules them. If the Porte loses sight of this duty, it will be digging its grave with its own hands, for if the Arabs do not forget their language, their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their ancient empire on the ruins of Ottomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia.'

Here, then, is the definite statement of the Nationalists' hostility to all things Arab, and we shall see how they translated it into practice. Even Moslems were but cattle for them, as also were Armenians and Greeks and Kurds. Armenians were doomed to be the first complete sacrifice on the bloody altar of the Nationalists, and, as a Turkish gendarme engaged in that sacrifice said to a Danish Red Cross nurse, 'First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, and then the Kurds.' And if he had been a Progressive Minister he would certainly have added, 'And then the Arabs.'

It was not only within the present limits of the Ottoman Empire that the Committee of Union and Progress proposed to accomplish their unitive purpose, for after having seen a glorious and exclusive Turkey arise over the depopulated territories of their alien peoples, a vaster vision, for an account of which we are indebted to Tekin Alp, opened before their prophetic eyes. Out of the 10,000,000 inhabitants of Persia they claim that one-third are of true Turkish blood, and in the new Turkey which, so they almost pathetically hope, will be established at the conclusion of the European War by the help of Wilhelm II., those Persian Turks must be incorporated into the true fold of Allah, God of Love. The province of Adarbaijan, for instance, the richest and most enlightened district of Persia, they claim, is entirely Turkish, and here the needful rectification will be made in the new atlases that bear the imprimatur of Potsdam. Similarly, all the country south of the Caucasus must rank as Turkish territory, since the Turks form from fifty to eighty per cent, of the population; all Kazan, for the same reason, is truly Turkish, with the alluvial plains of the Volga, while the Crimea, so Tekin Alp discovers, is also a lost sheep longing for the Turkish fold. All this is Turkey (or Turania) Irredenta, and, may we not add:--

'Jerusalem and Madagascar And North and South Amerikee.'

And then what a glorious future awaits the Power that Europe once thought of as a sick man. 'With the crushing of Russian despotism,' exclaims Tekin Alp, 'by the brave German, Austrian, and Turkish armies, thirty to forty million Turks will receive their independence. With the ten million Ottoman Turks this will form a nation of fifty millions, advancing towards a great civilisation which may perhaps be compared to that of Germany, in that it will have the strength and energy to rise even higher. In some ways it will be even superior to the degenerate French and English civilisations.'

The arithmetic and the enthusiasm of the foregoing paragraph are, of course, those of Tekin Alp, from whose book, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, the quotation is made. The work was published in 1915, and, appearing as it did after the beginning of the European War, it is but natural to find in it an expression not only of the Nationalist aims for Turkey, but of the Prussian aims for Turkey, or, to speak more correctly, of the dream which Prussia has induced in a hypnotised Turkey. It sets forth in fact the bait which Prussia has dangled in front of Turkey, the hunger for which has inspired the projected future which is here sketched out; and significantly enough this book has been spread broadcast over Turkey by the agency of German propagandists. The Ottomanisation of the Empire, the vision of its further extension, free from all consideration of subject peoples, was exactly the lure which was most likely to keep the Turks staunch to their Prussian masters. It will be noticed that there is no suggestion of the Turks recovering their lost provinces and kingdoms in Europe, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Servia, and the rest, for it would never do to let Fox Ferdinand awake from his hypnotic sleep of a sort of Czardom over the Balkans, or cease to dangle dreams, that included even Constantinople before the shifty eye of King Constantine So, before Turkey was spread the prospect of appropriating Russian and Persian spoils: Prussia had already given the lost Turkish kingdoms in Europe elsewhere, but would there not be a dismembered Russian Empire to dispose of? The Crimea, the province of Kazan, the province of Trans-Caucasia: all these might be held before Turkey's nose, as a dog has a piece of meat held up before it to make it beg. Then there was the province of Adarbaijan: certainly Turkey might be permitted to promise herself that, without incurring the jealousy of Austria or Bulgaria. Greedily Turkey took the bait. She gulped it down whole, and never considered that there was a string attached to it, or that, should ever the time come when Germany, the conqueror of the world, would be in a position to reward her Allies with the realisation of the dreams she had induced, the string would be pulled, and up, with retchings and vomitings, would come these succulent morsels of Russia and Persia. Indeed these bright pictures flashed on to the sheet as the visions of Nationalists are but the slides in a German magic-lantern, designed to keep Turkey amused, and it was with the same object that Ernst Marré, in his Die Türken und Wir nach dem Kriege, was bidden to make other pictures ready in case Turkey grew fractious or sleepy. 'From the ruins of antiquity,' he says, when speaking of the Ottoman Empire, 'new life will spring, if we can manage to raise the treasures which time and sand have covered.' Then he remembers that he must be less Pan-Germanic for the moment, and dangles the bait again. 'In doing this,' he adds, 'we are benefiting Turkey. The Turkish state is no united whole, and it has always been very difficult to govern. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, cannot be welded together. This is a war of liberation for Turkey.... Only by energetic interference, and by "expelling" the obstinate Armenian element could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian domination.... The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be Ottomanised.'

There is no need for further quotations, which might be multiplied indefinitely. The Prussian programme is for the moment identical with the Turkish Nationalist programme: Turkey, in order to be kept 'in with' Germany, must be encouraged to dream of depopulated Armenia (that dream has come tragically true) and of annexations in Russia and Persia. All this fitted in with the Turkish programme: Germany had scarcely to inspire, only to encourage. That encouragement she gave, for, simultaneously she was penetrating Turkey as water penetrates a sponge, and reducing it to the position of a vassal state. To keep Turkey happy she allowed the Armenian massacres to run their deadly course, and only interfered with other massacres when they did not suit her purpose. But supposing (to suppose the impossible) that a peace to the European War was dictated by Germany, how much of the future Pan-Turkish programme would be realised? Would there be a Turkey at all? I think not: there would be a Germany in Europe, and a Germany in Asia, where Turkey once was. Indeed, in all but name, they are in existence now; so complete, as we shall see, has been Germany's penetration of the Ottoman Empire. Just for the present she calls herself Turkey in those regions; that is her incognito. But Turkey as an independent Power has already ceased to exist, and Tekin Alp and the Nationalists still dream on with rainbow visions of Ottomanisation, the vistas of which stretch far into Persia and the plains of the Volga. And all the while she has been put out like a candle, and all that is left of her is the smouldering wick ready to be pinched between the horny fingers of her stepmother. There she stands, her stepmother, with her grinning teeth already disclosing the Wolf....

Whatever the end of the European War may be, in no circumstances can the dreams of the Nationalists be realised. Even if Germany and her arms were so victorious that Russia lay at her feet a mere inert carcase ready for the chopper, she would no more dream of giving Russian provinces to an independent Turkey than she would hand over to her Berlin itself. And if, as we know, Germany can never be victorious, will the Allies once more strive to keep the Sick Man alive, or leave in his ruthless power the peoples whom he is longing to exterminate? Even Tekin Alp can hardly expect that.

Here then, in brief, is the policy of New Turkey. Its subject peoples--Armenians, Arabs, Greeks, Kurds, and Jews--are to be totally unrepresented in its councils, though together they number sixty per cent, of the population of the Empire. But they are not only to be unrepresented in Government--they are, if the programme is to be carried conclusively out, to have no existence. In accordance with the plans of the murderous ruffians who to-day administer the Nationalist policy, those of the Armenians who have not fled beyond the frontiers have already been exterminated, and the same fate threatens Arabs, Greeks, and Jews. Hence, when the Allied Governments wrote their joint note to President Wilson, they stated that among their aims in the war was 'the liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks.' From that avowed determination they will never recede.