Nationalism carried to
a logical extreme is incompatible with the Ottoman pretension, and they
favour the view, so severely criticised by Tekin Alp, "that all three
groups of ideas--Ottomanism, Islamism, and the Turkish Movement--should
work side by side and together." But, with this reservation, they follow
the doctrinaires, who on their part are quite ready to press Islam into
their service. Tekin Alp candidly admits that

"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and national
impulses. They realised only too clearly that the still abstract ideals
of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the lower
classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was found more
expedient to reach these classes under the flag of religion."

This sentence reveals in a flash one motive of the Armenian
"Deportations," which followed Turkey's intervention in the War; and a
celebrated German authority, in a memorial[8] written in 1916, gives
this very explanation of their origin.

"Turkey's entry into the War," he writes, "was unwelcome to Turkish
society in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well as
to the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and the
military dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. The
proclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of the
Mohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and the
Christian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkish
chauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the War
popular with the mass of the Mohammedan population."

The evidence presented in the British Blue Book on the _Treatment of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire_[9] shows that this explanation is
correct. The Armenians were not massacred spontaneously by the local
Moslems; the initiative came entirely from the Central Government at
Constantinople, which planned the systematic extermination of the
Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire, worked out a uniform method of
procedure, despatched simultaneous orders to the provincial officials
and gendarmerie to carry it into effect, and cashiered the few who
declined to obey. The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regular
troops and gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of
_chettis_, consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by the
Government for this work; when the Armenians were gone the Turkish
populace was encouraged to plunde