Turkey did not want to fight, but she had no choice, and so she was dragged in by the heels. She has lost much besides her independence. The crafty German has drained her of supplies while giving naught in return. The German's policy is to strive throughout for a weak Turkey. The weaker Turkey can be made, the better will it be for Germany, which hopes still, no matter what may happen elsewhere, so to manipulate things as to dominate the Ottoman Empire after the war.
Turkey is still a rich country, in spite of her enormous sacrifices in the past decade. She has been exploited from end to end by the German adventurer, who will continue the process of bleeding so long as there is safety in the method; but Turkey is beginning to ask herself, as does the figure of the fat Pasha in the cartoon: "And is this all the compensation I get?" An Iron Cross does not pay for the loss of half a million good soldiers. Yet that is the exact measure of Turkey's reward.
RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.
The Marshes of Pinsk
THE MARSHES OF PINSK, NOVEMBER, 1915.
The Kaiser said last spring: "When the leaves fall you'll have peace." They have!
In what are we most like our kinsmen the Germans, and in what most unlike? I was convicted of Teutonism when first, in Germany, I ate "brod und butter," and found the words pronounced in an English way, slurred. But if we are like the Germans in the names of simple and childish things, we grow more unlike them, we draw farther apart from them, as we grow up. We love war less and less, as they love it more. We love our word of honour more and more as they, for the love of war, love their word less.