gain time in which to effect her mobilisation.  This she did, with complete success, and our Ambassador telegraphed to England stating his perfect confidence in the sincerity with which the Grand Vizier professed his friendship for England.  All through those weeks of August and September this confidence appeared to continue unabated.  The Moderate party in Turkey—­that is to say, the hoodwinking party—­were reported to be daily gaining strength, and it was most important that the Allies should give them every assistance, and above all not precipitate matters.  All was going well:  all we had to do was to wait.  So we waited, still blindly confident in the sincerity of Turkey’s friendship for England, while the mobilisation of the Turkish forces proceeded merrily.  By the end of September this was nearly complete, and quite suddenly the Ambassador informed the Foreign Office that Turkey appeared to be temporising.  That was perfectly true, but the period of temporisation was nearly over, and by mid-October Turkey had something like 800,000 men under arms, and for nine weeks Enver Pasha had had his signed treaty with Germany in his pocket.  Possibly this diplomatic procrastination was useful to us, for it enabled us to bring troops from India in security, and send others to Egypt.  But without doubt it was useful to the Turks, for it enabled them to mobilise their armies, and to strengthen enormously the defences of the Dardanelles.  Then came the day when Germany and Turkey were ready, the attack was made on Odessa, and out of Constantinople we went.  We climbed into the railway carriages that took the last rays of English influence out of the Ottoman Empire, and steep were the stairs in the house of a stranger!  Turks are not much given to laughter, but Enver Pasha must at least have smiled on that day.

Already, of course, German influence was strong in the army, which now was thoroughly trained in German methods, but that army might still be called a Turkish army.  Nowadays, by no stretch of language can it be called Turkish except in so far that all Turkish efficient manhood is helplessly enlisted in it, for there is no branch or department of it over which the Prussian octopus has not thrown its paralysing tentacles and affixed its immovable suckers.  Army and navy alike, the wireless stations, the submarines, the aircraft, are all directly controlled from Berlin, and, as we have seen, the generalissimo of the forces is Mackensen, who is absolutely the Hindenburg of the East.  But thorough as is the control of Berlin over Constantinople in military and naval matters, it is not one whit more thorough than her control in all other matters of national life.  Never before has Germany been very successful in her colonisation; but if complete domination—­the sucking of a country till it is a mere rind of itself, and yet at the same time full to bursting of Prussian ichor—­may be taken as Germany’s equivalent of colonisation, then indeed we must be forced to recognise her success.