The amputation and limitation of Turkey, even if they do not succeed in altering the real Turkish point of view—and this, so far as the relationship to the Christians is concerned, is the same, from the Pasha down to the poorest Anatolian peasant—will at least have a tremendously beneficial effect. The possibilities in the Turkish race will come to flower. "The worst patriots," I once dared to say in one of my articles in spite of the censorship, "are not those who look for the future of the nation in concentrated cultural work in the Turkish nucleus-land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the Caucasus and down into the sands of the African desert in their search for a 'Greater Turkey.'" And in connection with the series of lectures I have already mentioned about Anatolian hygiene and social politics, I said, with quite unmistakable meaning: "Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity on her own original ground, in the nucleus-land of the Ottomans, of proving her capability and showing that she has become a really modern, civilised State."
My earnest wish is that all the Turks' high intellectual abilities, brought to the front by this war, may be concentrated on this beautiful and repaying task. Intensive labour and the concentration of all forces on positive work in the direction of civilisation will have to take the place of corrupt rule, boundless neglect, waste, the strangulation of all progressive movements, political illusions, the unquenchable desire for conquest and oppression. This is what we pray for for Anatolia, the real New Turkey after the war. In other districts, also, now fully under European control, the pure Turkish element will flourish much more exceedingly than ever before under the beneficent protection of modern, civilised Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turkish Power has vanished. But new life springs out of ruin and decay; the history of mankind is a continual change.
Russia, too, after war, will no longer be what she seemed to terrified Turkish eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled by "world-politics": a colossal creature, stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow up her smaller neighbours; a country ruled by a dull, unthinking despotism.
From the standpoint of universal civilisation it is to be hoped that the solution of the problem of the Near East will be to transform the Straits between the Black Sea and Aegea, together with the city of Constantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into a completely international stretch with open harbours. Then we need no longer oppose Russian aspirations. If England, the stronghold of Free Trade and of all principles of freedom of intercourse, and France, the land of culture, interested in Turkey to the extent of millions, were content to leave Russia a free hand in the Straits; if Roumania, shut in in the Black Sea, did not fear for her trade, but was willing to become an ally of Russia in full knowledge of the Entente agreement about the Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident what guarantee with regard to international freedom modern Russia will have to give after the war, and even the Germans have nothing to fear. Of course the German anti-European "Antwerp-Baghdad" dream will be shattered. But once Germany is at peace, she will probably find that even the Russian solution of the Straits question benefits her not a little. The final realisation of Russia's efforts, justifiable both historically and geographically, to reach the Mediterranean at this one eminently suitable spot, will certainly contribute in an extraordinary degree to remove the unbearable political pressure from Europe and ensure peace for the world.
Just a few parting words to the German "World-politicians." Very often, as I have said, I heard during my stay in Constantinople expressions of anxiety on the part of Germans that all German interests, even purely commercial ones, would be gravely endangered in the victorious New Turkey, which would spring to life again with renewed jingoistic passions and renewed efforts at emancipation. And more than once—all honour to the feelings of justice and the sound common sense of those who dared to utter such opinions—I was told by Germans, in the middle of the war, and with no attempt at concealment, that they fully agreed it was an absolute necessity for Russia to have the control of the only outlet for her enormous trade to the Mediterranean, and that commercially at any rate the fight for Constantinople and the Straits was a fight for a just cause.
Now, let us take these two points of view together. From the purely German standpoint, which is better?—a victorious and self-governing Turkey imbued with jingoism and the desire for emancipation, practically closed to us, even commercially, or an amputated Turkey, compelled to appeal for European help and European capital to recover from her state of complete exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of all their fine phrases and the German help they had to accept for all their inward distaste of it, hate us from the very depths of their heart; a Turkey which, even if Russia,—as a last resort!—is allowed to become mistress of the Dardanelles with huge international guarantees, would, in the Anatolia that is left to her, capable of development as it is, and rich in national wealth, offer a very considerable field of activity for German enterprise? The short-sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting for the victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-Turkism against the modern, civilised States of the Entente, who had no wish at all that Germany should not fare as well as the rest in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can perhaps answer my question. They should have asked themselves this, and foreseen the consequences before they yielded weakly to Turkish caprices and themselves stirred up the Turks against Europe.
As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit, in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No" before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement about the war in Constantinople and elsewhere were not required to show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the bitter end."
Never, however—and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of the World-politician—have I ever heard a single one of those Germans, who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them, to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist were Turkey victorious.
Luckily for mankind, history has decided otherwise. After the war, the huge and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will be carried down to the then open seaports between Europe and Asia; the wealth of Odessa and the Pontus ports, enormously increased and free to develop, will be concentrated on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and the whole hitherto neglected city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata to Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha, will become an earthly paradise of pulsing life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury and elegance of the Crimea will move southwards to these shores of unique natural beauty and mild climate which form the bridge between two continents and between two seas. Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the war, under Turkish régime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth.
Never, even after another hundred years of Turkish rule, would that unique coast ever have become what it can be and what it must be—one of the very greatest centres of international intercourse and the Riviera of the East, not only in beauty of landscape, but in luxury and wealth. The greatest stress in this connection is to be laid on the lively Russian impetus that will spring from a modernised Russia, untrammelled by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced as I am that Russia after the war will no longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared by Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey, I am prepared to give this impetus full play, as being the best possible means for the further development of Constantinople.