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.”

Small wonder that Germany became furious; and that the Berlin newspapers burst out in denunciations of Italy’s wicked and piratical land-grabbing—­a morsel of rhetoric following so hard upon the heels of the Morocco episode that it gave joy to all who delight in hearing the pot rail at the kettle.  “The great game” is not without its humors.  But the sardonic joke of the business lies deeper than all this.  The Kaiser had openly coquetted with the Sultan upon the policy of substituting Turkey for Italy in the Triple Alliance.  Turkey has a potentially great army:  the one thing the Turk can do well is to fight.  With a suspicious eye upon Neighbor Russia, the Kaiser figured it out that Turkey would be more useful to him than Italy, especially since the Abyssinian episode had so seriously discredited the latter.  Then, of a sudden, with a poetic justice that is delicious, Italy turns around and humiliates the nation that was to take its place The whole comic situation resembles nothing more nearly than a supposedly defunct spouse rising from his death-bed to thrash the expectant second husband of his wife.