were commanded to leave Jaffa within forty-eight hours, no means of transport was given them, and they were forbidden to take with them either provisions or any of their belongings.  Eight thousand Jews were evicted from Jaffa alone, and their houses were pillaged, and they robbed, maltreated, and many were murdered.  Thus, and in no other way had the massacres of the Armenians begun, and, that there should be no mistake about it, Jemal threatened them explicitly with the fate of the Armenians.  Next day Ludd was evacuated also; the evacuation of Haifa and Jerusalem was threatened, and artillery was sent to Jerusalem.  There can be no doubt in fact that Jemal planned and began to carry out a massacre of all Jews.

At that point the Germans intervened, and for the present (but only for the present, for so long in fact as Germany has complete control over all Turkish internal affairs, in which she protested she could not meddle) the Jewish colonies in Palestine seem to be safe.[1] The German chief of the General Staff telegraphed to Berlin that the ’military considerations’ on which Jemal based his deportations did not exist, and Herr Cohn in the Reichstag drew the Imperial Chancellor’s attention to this.  How seriously the menace was regarded in Germany, and how far the deportations had gone may be gathered from his words, ’Is the Imperial Chancellor prepared to influence the Turkish Government in such a manner as to prevent with certainty—­so far as this is still possible—­a repetition in Palestine of the Armenian atrocities?’ This was sufficient:  Germany, who could not dream of interfering in Turkish internal affairs when only the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was concerned, sent her order, and, for the present, Jemal the Great has been unable to proceed with the solution of the Jewish question in Turkey, which he had just discovered.  We need not yet in fact give Jemal his Jew.  But some sort of explanation to soothe the exasperation of the Turks in not being allowed to murder when and how and where they pleased, was thought advisable, and the explanation (an extraordinarily significant one) was given in an inspired paragraph of the Frankfurter Zeitung not long after.  ’The valuable structure of Zionist cultural work, in which the German Empire must have well founded interest in view of future and very promising trade relations, will, it is very much to be hoped, be preserved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary.  Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine where practically no Turks dwell.’

[Footnote 1:  This view seems to be borne out by subsequent events, for the Jews evacuated from Jaffa have been permitted to return owing to the intervention of the Spanish Government.  It is not hard to guess who prompted that.]