chiefly, if not wholly, recruited from the peasantry of Anatolia, who, when not summoned to their country’s colours, or ordered to maltreat and massacre, are quiet, rather indolent folk, content to plough their lands and reap an exiguous but sufficient harvest.  And for their lords and governors, who, until Prussia assumed command of the Turkish armies, there will no longer be either the possibility of further conquests as in the old Osmanli days, or, in less progressive times, the necessity for securing Ottoman supremacy over the huge ill-knit lands which it governed.  But now, instead of having alien and defenceless tribes within their borders, tribes forbidden to bear arms and chafing at the Turkish yoke, they will see free peoples under the protectorates of Powers that are capable of self-defence and, if necessary, of inflicting punishment.  Russia, France, England, Italy, all allied nations, will be established in close proximity to the Turkish frontiers, and the New Turkey will be as powerless for aggression as she will be for defence, should she provoke attack.  But within their borders there may the Osmanlis dwell secure and undisturbed, so long as they conform to the habits of civilised people with regard to their neighbours, and it is a question whether, now that the military despotism which has always misguided the fortunes of this people, has no possible fields for conquest, and no need of securing security, the nation will not settle down into the quiet existence of small neutral countries.  Perhaps the last chapter of its savage and blood-stained history is already almost finished, and in years to come some little light of progress and of civilisation may be kindled in the abode where the household gods for centuries have been cruelty and hate.

Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter VII

THE GRIP OP THE OCTOPUS

It will not be sufficient for the fulfilment of the Allies’ aims as regards Turkey to free from her barbarous control the subject peoples dwelling within her borders, for Turkey herself has to be delivered from a domination not less barbaric than her own, which, if allowed to continue, would soon again be a menace to the peace of the world.  We have seen in a previous chapter how deeply set in her are Germany’s nippers, how closely the octopus-embrace envelops her, and we now have to consider how those tentacles must be unloosed from their grip, and what will be the condition of the victim, already bled white, when that has been done.  In the beginning, as we have seen, Germany obtained her hold by professing a touchingly beautiful and philanthropic desire to help Turkey to realise her national ideals, and her Pecksniffs, Tekin Alp and Herr Ernst Marre, were bidden to write parallel histories, the one describing the aims of the Nationalist party, the other the benevolent interest which Germany took in them.  Occasionally Herr Ernst Marre could not but remember that he was a German,