Power began faintly to wonder whether the Young Turks
in their deposition of Abdul Hamid had not slain an
asp and hatched a cockatrice. Given that their
aims originally were sincere, we can but marvel at
the swiftness of the corruption which in little more
than a year had begun to lead them not into paths of
reform and Liberal policy, but along the road towards
which the butcher they had deposed had pointed the
way. It must have made Abdul Hamid gnaw his nails
and shake impotent hands to see those who had torn
him from his throne so soon pursuing the very policy
which he invented, and to which he nominally owed
his dethronement. Strange, too, was it that his
overthrow should come from the very quarter to which
he looked for security, for it was on the army that
each Sultan in turn had most relied for the stability
of his throne. But Abdul Hamid, in order, perhaps,
to deal more effectually with the subject races he
wished to exterminate, had introduced a system of
foreign training for the officers of his army, a course
of Potsdam efficiency, and it was just they, on whom
Sultans from time immemorial had relied, who knocked
the prop of the army away from him. Though publicly,
for the edification of Europe his deposers professed
a Liberal policy, it was not on account of Armenian
massacres that they turned him off his throne, but
because of the muddle and corruption and debility
of his rule. Herein we may easily trace the hand
of Germany, no longer publicly beckoning as when Wilhelm
II., just after the first Armenian massacres, made
his request of the Sultan for the establishment in
Turkey of German colonists, but working underground,
sapping and mining like a mole. For Germany, her
mind already fixed on securing Turkey as an instrument
of her Eastern policy, wanted a strong Turkey, and
without doubt desired to bring an end to the disorganisation
and decay of the Empire, and create and at the same
time interpenetrate an efficient state that should
be useful to her. We may take it for granted
that she, like the rest of Europe, welcomed any sign
of regeneration in the Ottoman Empire, but there was
an ulterior purpose behind that. Turkey, already
grasped by the Prussian hand, must be in that hand
a weapon fit for use, a blade on which she could rely.
She strengthened the Turkish army by the introduction
of Prussian discipline, and worked on good material.
Already she has realised her ambition in this respect,
and now controls the material which she then worked
on.
The troubled years of the Balkan wars which followed this false dawn, coupled with the loss of all the territory which remained to the Ottoman Empire in Europe, with the exception of Thrace, caused an immediate reaction from the open-minded policy of the Young Turks, if we decide to credit them at the outset with a sincere purpose. Organisation by a slightly different spelling became Ottomanisation, and the aims of the Young Turks were identified with those of the Nationalist