The Ottomanisation of religion and language, then, was among the pacific methods of spreading Pan-Turkism through the Empire.  A monstrous idol was set up, a Hindenburg idol, in front of which all peoples and languages, not Christians alone, but Moslems, were bound to prostrate themselves.  Indeed it was against Arabs mainly that these provisions were directed, for the Arabs constituted the most menacing obstacle to the spread of Ottomanisation, since they numbered in the Empire only a million less than the Turks themselves.  It was ordained by statute that no Arab could have a seat on the Committee of Union and Progress, and the Cabinet similarly was purged of any Greek or Armenian element.  Never any more must there be new parties in the Chamber, never any more must Liberal ideas (to champion which the New Turk party had come into being) be allowed to prick up their pernicious heads.  For the Nationalist party, with whom the New Turks were now identical, had taken as their creed all that the deposed Abdul Hamid stood for, and only differed from him in that as their schemes developed they looked forward to logical conclusions far beyond what he had ever dreamed of.  But Abdul Hamid may, I think, be taken to be the true founder of the new Nationalism:  at any rate it was he who had first seen the possibilities of massacre as a means of maintaining Ottoman supremacy.  In the hands of Nationalists that was to prove a more effective weapon than the printing of railway tickets in Turkish.  But already before the European War the Nationalists had vastly extended his ideas, and had seen the danger of allowing even Arabs to have a standing of any kind in the new state.  Henceforth all subject people were to be rayas, cattle, as in the old days of the Sultans who absorbed the strength of the aliens, but did not exterminate them.  But now the cattle were not only to be used for milk, but were to be slaughtered when advisable.  Till then they must be dumb, or speak the language of their masters only, for this alone can save them from the shambles.  Ahmed Sherif Bey, a prominent Nationalist, lays this down.  ’It is the business of the Porte to make the Arabs forget their own language, and to impose upon them instead that of the nation that rules them.  If the Porte loses sight of this duty, it will be digging its grave with its own hands, for if the Arabs do not forget their language, their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their ancient empire on the ruins of Ottomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia.’

Here, then, is the definite statement of the Nationalists’ hostility to all things Arab, and we shall see how they translated it into practice.  Even Moslems were but cattle for them, as also were Armenians and Greeks and Kurds.  Armenians were doomed to be the first complete sacrifice on the bloody altar of the Nationalists, and, as a Turkish gendarme engaged in that sacrifice said to a Danish Red Cross nurse, ’First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, and then the Kurds.’  And if he had been a Progressive Minister he would certainly have added, ’And then the Arabs.’