There is no end to this penetration:  German water-seekers, with divining and boring apparatus, accompanied the Turkish expedition into Sinai; Russian prisoners were sent by Germany for agricultural work in Asia Minor, to take the place of slaughtered Armenians; a German-Turkish treaty, signed January 11, 1917, gives the whole reorganisations of the economic system to a special German mission.  A Stuttgart journal chants a characteristic Lobgesang over this feat.  ‘That is how,’ it proudly exclaims, ‘we work for the liberation of peoples and nationalities.’

In the same noble spirit, we must suppose, German legal reforms were introduced in December 1916, to replace the Turkish Shuriat, and in the same month all the Turks in telegraph offices in Constantinople were replaced by Germans.  Ernst Marre gives valuable advice to young Germans settling in Turkey.  He particularly recommends them, knowing how religion is one of the strongest bonds in this murderous race, to ’trade in articles of devotion, in rosaries, in bags to hold the Koran,’ and points out what good business might be built up in gramophones.  Earlier in this year we find a ‘German Oriental Trading Company’ founded for the import of fibrous materials for needs of military authorities, and a great carpet business established at Urfa with German machinery that will supplant the looms of Smyrna.  A saltpetre factory is established at Konia by Herr Toepfer, whose enterprise is rewarded with an Iron Cross and a Turkish decoration.  The afforestation near Constantinople, ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture, is put into German hands, and in the vilayet of Aidin (April 1916) ninety concessions were granted to German capitalists to undertake the exploitation of metallic ores.  Occasionally the German octopus finds it has gone too far for the moment, and releases some struggling limb of its victim, as, for instance, when we see that, in September 1916, the German Director’s stamp for the ‘Imperial German Great Radio Station’ at Damascus has been discarded temporarily, as that station ’should be treated for the present as a Turkish concern.’

A ‘Trading and Weaving Company’ was established at Angora in 1916, an ‘Import and Export Company’ at Smyrna, a ’Trading and Industrial Society’ at Beirut, a ‘Tobacco Trading Company’ at Latakieh, an ‘Agricultural Company’ at Tripoli, a ‘Corn Exporting Company’ in Lebanon, a ‘Rebuilding Commission’ (perhaps for sacked Armenian houses) at Konia.  More curious yet will be a Tourist’s Guide Book—­a Baedeker, in fact—­for travellers in Anatolia, and the erection of a monument in honour of Turkish women who have replaced men called up for military duty.  Truly these last two items—­a guide-book for Anatolia, and a monument to women—­are strange enterprises for Turks.  A new Prussian day is dawning, it seems, for Turkish women as well, for the Tanin (April 1917) tells us that diplomas are to be conferred on ladies who have completed their studies in the Technical School at Constantinople.