Night and day, year in and year out, with all kinds of chessmen, and with an infinite variety of byplays, "the great game" is played in Constantinople. The fortunes of the players vary, and there are occasional—very occasional—open rumpuses; but the players and the stakes remain the same. Nobody can read the newspaper telegrams from Tripoli and Constantinople intelligently who has not some understanding of the real game that is being carried on; and in which an occasional war is only a move.
The bespectacled professor of ancient history is best qualified to trace the beginning of this game; for there is no other frontier on the face of the globe over which there has been so much fighting as over that strip of water which divides Europe from Asia, called, in its four separate parts, the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles, and the Aegean Sea. Centuries before men began to date their calendars "A.D.," the city on the Bosporus was a prize for which nations struggled. All the old-world dominions—Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Roman—fought here; and for hundreds of years Byzantium was the capital of the Roman and Christian world. The Crusaders and the Saracens did a choice lot of fighting over this battle-ground; and it was here that the doughty warrior, Paul of Tarsus, broke into Europe, as first invader in the greatest of conquests. Along this narrow line of beautiful blue water the East menacingly confronts the West. Turkey's capital, as a sort of Mr.-Facing-Both-Ways, bestrides the water; for Scutari, in Asia, is essentially a part of Greater Constantinople. That simple geographical fact really pictures Turkey's present condition: it is rent by the struggle of the East with the West, Asia with Europe, in its own body.
"The great game" of to-day, rather than of any hoary and romantic yesterday, holds the interest of the modern man. Player Number One, even though he sits patiently in the background in seeming stolidity, is big-boned, brawny, hairy, thirsty Russia. Russia wants water, both here and in the far East. His whole being cries from parched depths for the taste of the salt waters of the Mediterranean and the China Sea. At present his ships may not pass through the Dardanelles: the jealous Powers have said so. But Russia is the most patient nation on earth; his "manifest destiny" is to sit in the ancient seat of dominion on the Bosporus. Calmly, amid all the turbulence of international politics, he awaits the prize that is assuredly his; but while he waits he plots and mines and prepares for ultimate success. A past master of secret spying, wholesale bribery, and oriental intrigue, is the nation which calls its ruler the "Little Father" on earth, second only to the Great Father in heaven. If one is curious and careful, one may learn which of the Turkish statesmen are in Russian pay.
Looming larger—apparently—than Russia amid the minarets upon the lovely Constantinople horizon is Germany, the Marooned Nation. Restless William shrewdly saw that Turkey offered him the likeliest open door for German expansion and for territorial emancipation. So he played courtier to his "good friend, Abdul Hamid," and to the Prophet Mohammed (they still preserve at Damascus the faded remains of the wreath he laid upon Saladin's tomb the day he made the speech which betrayed Europe and Christendom), and in return had his vanity enormously ministered to. His visit to Jerusalem is probably the most notable incident in the history of the Holy City since the Crusades. Moreover, he carried away the Bagdad Railway concession in his carpet-bag. By this he expects to acquire the cotton and grain fields of Mesopotamia, which he so sorely needs in his business, and also to land at the front door of India, in case he should ever have occasion to pay a call, social or otherwise, upon his dear English cousins.
True, the advent of the Turkish constitution saw Germany thrown crop and heels out of his snug place at Turkey's capital, while that comfortable old suitor, Great Britain, which had been biting his finger-nails on the doorstep, was welcomed smiling once more into the parlor. Great was the rejoicing in London when Abdul Hamid's "down-and-out" performance carried his trusted friend William along. The glee changed to grief when, within a year—so quickly does the appearance of the chess-board change in "the great game"—Great Britain was once more on the doorstep, and fickle Germany was snuggling close to Young Turkey on the divan in the dimly lighted parlor. Virtuous old Britain professed to be shocked and horrified; he occupied himself with talking scandal about young Germany, when he should have been busy trying to supplant him. Few chapters in modern diplomatic history are more surprising than the sudden downfall and restoration of Germany in Turkish favor. With reason does the Kaiser give Ambassador von Bieberstein, "the ablest diplomat in Europe," constant access to the imperial ear, regardless of foreign-office red tape. During the heyday of the Young Turk party's power, this astute old player of the game was the dominant personality in Turkey.
The disgruntled and disappointed Britons have comforted themselves with prophecy—how often have I heard them at it in the cosmopolitan cafes of Constantinople!—the burden of their melancholy lay being that some day Turkey would learn who is her real friend. That is the British way. They believe in their divine right to the earth and the high places thereof. They are annoyed and rather bewildered when they see Germany cutting in ahead of them, especially in the commerce of the Orient; any Englishman "east of Suez" can give a dozen good reasons why Germany is an incompetent upstart; but however satisfactory and soothing to the English soul this line of philosophy may be, it drives no German merchantmen from the sea and no German drummers from the land. The supineness of the British in the face of the German inroads into their ancient preserves is amazing to an American, who, as one of their own poets has said,
Turns a keen, untroubled face
Home to the instant need of things.
In this case, however, the proverbial luck of the British has been with them. The steady decline of their historic prestige in the near East was suddenly arrested by Italy's declaration of war. For more than a generation Turkey has been the pampered enfant terrible of international politics, violating the conventions and proprieties with impunity; feeling safe amid the jealousies of the players of "the great game." Every important nation has a bill of grievances to settle with Turkey; America's claim, for instance, includes the death of two native-born American citizens, Rogers and Maurer, slain in the Adana massacre, under the constitution. Nobody has been punished for this crime, because, forsooth, it happened in Turkey. Italy made a pretext of a cluster of these grievances, and startled the world by her claims upon Tripoli, accompanied by an ultimatum. Turkey tried to temporize. Pressed, she turned to Germany with a "Now earn your wages. Get me out of this scrape, and call off your ally."
And Germany could not. With the taste of Morocco dirt still on his tongue, the Kaiser had to take another unpalatable mouthful in Constantinople. His boasted power, upon which the Turks had banked so heavily, and for the sake of which they had borne so much humiliation, proved unequal to the demand. He could not help his friend the Sultan. Italy would have none of his mediation; for reasons that will hereinafter appear.
Then came Britain's vindication. The Turks turned to this historic and preeminent friend for succor. The Turkish cabinet cabled frantically to Great Britain to intercede for them; the people in mass-meeting in ancient St. Sophia's echoed the same appeal. For grim humor, the spectacle has scarcely an equal in modern history. Besought and entreated, the British, who no doubt approved of Italy's move from the first, declined to pull Turco-German chestnuts out of the fire. "Ask Cousin William to help you," was the ironical implication of their attitude. Well did Britain know that if the situation were saved, the Germans would somehow manage to get the credit of it. And if the worst should come, Great Britain could probably meet it with Christian fortitude! For in that eventuality the Bagdad Railway concession would be nullified, and Britain would undoubtedly take over all of the Arabian Peninsula, which is logically hers, in the light of her Persian Gulf and Red Sea claims. The break-up of Turkey would settle the Egyptian question, make easy the British acquisition of southern Persia, and put all the holy places of Islam under the strong hand of the British power, where they would be no longer powder-magazines to worry the dreams of Christendom. Far-sighted moves are necessary in "the great game."