In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes of the Taurus and the foot of the Armenian mountains, there will extend a modern Turkey which has finally come to rest, to concentration, to peaceful labour, after centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the suicidal policy of military adventurers, and superficial attempts at expansion coupled with neglect of the most important internal duties. The inhabitants of these lands will soon have forgotten that "Greater Turkey" has collapsed. They will be really happy at last, these people whose idea of happiness hitherto had been a veneer of material well-being obtained by toadying, while the great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt, ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an outworn militarism, oppressed by a decaying administration. Then, but not till then, the world will see what the Turkish people is capable of. Then there will be no need for pessimism about this kindly and honourable race. Then we can become honest "Pro-Turks" again.
In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not forget that the whole shore, where once stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-out Hellenic centre of civilisation. Quite independently of all political feelings towards present-day Greece, this historical fact must be taken into consideration in the final ruling. It is to be hoped that the Greek people will not have to atone for ever for the faults of their non-Greek king who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty to be a Greek and nothing but a Greek, and who has betrayed the honour and the future of the nation.
The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste by war, and emptied of men by Talaat's passion for persecution, will obtain autonomy from her conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps be linked up with all the other parts of the east, inhabited by the last remnants of the Armenian people. Armenia, with its central position and divided into three among Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may from its geographical position, its unfortunate history, and the endless sufferings it has been called upon to bear, be called the Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from the Turkish system, freed from all antagonistic Turko-Russian military principles of obstruction, linked up by railways to the west as well as the already well-developed region of Transcaucasia, with a big through trade from the Black Sea via Trapezunt to Persia and Mesopotamia, it will once more offer an excellent field of activity to the high intellectual and commercial abilities of its people, now, alas! scattered to the four winds of heaven. But they will return to their old home, bringing with them European ideas, European technique, and the most modern methods from America.
If men are lacking, they can be obtained from the near Caucasus with its narrow, over-filled valleys, inhabited by a most superior race of men, who have always had strong emigrating instincts. Even this most unfortunate country in the whole world, which the Turks of the Old Régime and of the New have systematically mutilated and at last bequeathed to Russia with practically not a man left, is going to have its spring-time.
In the south, Great Arabia and Syria will have autonomy under the protection of England and France with their skilful Islam policy; they will have the benefit of the approved methods of progressive work in Egypt, the Soudan, and India as well as the Atlas lands; they will be exposed to the influences and incitements of the rest of civilised Europe; they will probably be enriched with capital from America, where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as well as Armenian, refugees have found a home; they will provide the first opportunity in history of showing how the Arab race accommodates itself to modern civilisation on its own ground and with its own sovereign administration. The final deliverance of the Arabs from the oppressive and harmful supremacy of the Turks, now happily accomplished by the war, was one of the most urgent demands for a race that can look back on centuries of brilliant civilisation. The civilised world will watch with the keenest interest the self-development of the Arabian lands.
Even Germany, once she is at peace, will have no need to grumble at these arrangements, however diametrically opposed they may be to the now sadly shattered plans of the Pan-German and Expansion politicians. Germany will not lose the countless millions she has invested in Turkey. She will have her full and sufficient share in the European work and commercial activity that will soon revive again in the Near East. The Baghdad railway of "Rohrbach & Company" will never be built, it is true; but the Baghdad Railway with a loyal international marking off of the different zones of interest, the Baghdad Railway, as a huge artery of peaceful intercourse linking up the whole of Asia Minor and bringing peace and commercial prosperity, will all the more surely rise from its ruins. And when once the German Weltpolitik with its jealousy, its tactless, sword-rattling interference in the time-honoured vital interests of other States, its political intrigues disguised in commercial dress, is safely dead and buried, there will be nothing whatever to hinder Germany from making use of this railway and carrying her purely commercial energy and the products of her peaceful labour to the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving in return the rich fruits of her cultural activity on the soil of Asia Minor.
For the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the representative of a great national paper like the Kölnische Zeitung, could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to explain the rôle I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how I came to the decision to publish my experiences.