“The Germans say they belong to the Turks,” he remarked, with his characteristic laugh. “At any rate, it’s very comforting for us to have them here. After the war, if the Germans win, they will forget all about it and leave the ships to us. If the Germans lose, they won’t be able to take them away from us!”
The German Government made no real pretension that the sale had been bona fide; at least when the Greek Minister at Berlin protested against the transaction as unfriendly to Greece—naïvely forgetting the American ships which Greece had recently purchased—the German officials soothed him by admitting, sotto voce, that the ownership still remained with Germany. Yet when the Entente ambassadors constantly protested against the presence of the German vessels, the Turkish officials blandly kept up the pretence that they were integral parts of the Turkish navy!
The German officers and crews greatly enjoyed this farcical pretence that the Goeben and the Breslau were Turkish ships. They took delight in putting on Turkish fezzes, thereby presenting to the world conclusive evidence that these loyal sailors of the Kaiser were now parts of the Sultan’s navy. One day the Goeben sailed up the Bosphorus, halted in front of the Russian Embassy, and dropped anchor. Then the officers and men lined the deck in full view of the enemy embassy. All solemnly removed their Turkish fezzes and put on German caps. The band played “Deutschland über Alles,” the “Watch on the Rhine,” and other German songs, the German sailors singing loudly to the accompaniment. When they had spent an hour or more serenading the Russian Ambassador, the officers and crews removed their German caps and again put on their Turkish fezzes. The Goeben then picked up her anchor and started southward for her station, leaving in the ears of the Russian diplomat the gradually dying strains of German war songs as the cruiser disappeared down stream.
I have often speculated on what would have happened if the English battle cruisers, which pursued the Breslau and the Goeben up to the mouth of the Dardanelles, had not been too gentlemanly to violate international law. Suppose that they had entered the Strait, attacked the German cruisers in the Marmora, and sunk them. They could have done this, and, knowing all that we know now, such an action would have been justified. Not improbably the destruction would have kept Turkey out of the war. For the arrival of these cruisers made it inevitable that Turkey, when the proper moment came, should join her forces with Germany. With them the Turkish navy became stronger than the Russian Black Sea Fleet and thus made it certain that Russia could make no attack on Constantinople. The Goeben and the Breslau, therefore, practically gave the Ottoman and German naval forces control of the Black Sea. Moreover, these two ships could easily dominate Constantinople, and thus they furnished the means by which the German navy, if the occasion should arise, could terrorize the Turks. I am convinced that, when the judicious historian reviews this war and its consequences, he will say that the passage of the Strait by these German ships made it inevitable that Turkey should join Germany at the moment that Germany desired her assistance, and that it likewise sealed the doom of the Turkish Empire. There were men in the Turkish Cabinet who perceived this, even then. The story was told in Constantinople—though I do not vouch for it as authentic history—that the cabinet meeting at which this momentous decision had been made had not been altogether harmonious. The Grand Vizier and Djemal, it was said, objected to the fictitious “sale,” and demanded that it should not be completed. When the discussion had reached its height Enver, who was playing Germany’s game, announced that he had already practically completed the transaction. In the silence that followed his statement this young Napoleon pulled out his pistol and laid it on the table.
“If any one here wishes to question this purchase,” he said quietly and icily, “I am ready to meet him.”
A few weeks after the Goeben and the Breslau had
BARON VON WANGENHEIM, GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO TURKEY
He was personally selected by the Kaiser to bring Turkey into line with Germany and transform that country into an ally of Germany in the forthcoming war—a task at which he succeeded. Wangenheim represented German diplomacy in its most ruthless and most shameless aspects. He believed with Bismarck that a patriotic German must stand ready to sacrifice for Kaiser and Fatherland not only his life, but his honour as well. With wonderful skill he manipulated the desperate adventurers who controlled Turkey in 1914 into instruments of Germany.
