o, there was only
the possibility that Germany might find at least a commercial and
financial outlet in the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan. There was
even the possibility, had Turkey held together, that England, to
mitigate pressure elsewhere, would have conceded to an expanding and
insistent Germany, a friendly interest and control in Asia Minor. It
is true that the greatest possible development, and under the most
favoured conditions of German interests in that region, could not have
met the needs or satisfied the ever increasing necessities of Teutonic
growth; but at least it would have offered a safety valve, and could
have involved preoccupations likely to deflect the German vision, for
a time, from the true path to greatness, the Western highways of the
sea.

An occupation or colonisation of the Near East by the Germanic peoples
could never have been a possible solution under any circumstances of
the problem that faces German statemanship. As well talk of reviving
the Frank Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The occupation by the fair-haired peoples of the Baltic and North Seas
of the lands of Turk and Tartar, of Syrian and Jew, of Armenian and
Mesopotamian, was never a practical suggestion or one to be seriously
contemplated. "East is East and West is West," sings the poet of
Empire, and Englishmen cannot complain if the greatest of Western
peoples, adopting the singer, should apply the dogma to themselves.
Germany, indeed, might have looked for a considerable measure of
commercial dominance in the Near East, possibly for a commercial
protectorate such as France applies to Tunis and Algeria and hopes
to apply to morocco, or such as England imposes on Egypt, and this
commercial predominance could have conferred considerable profits on
Rhenish industries and benefited Saxon industrialism, but it could
never have done more than this. A colonisation of the realms of
Bajazet and Saladin by the fair-skinned peoples of the North, or the
planting of Teutonic institutions in the valley of Damascus, even with
the benevolent neutrality of England, is a far wider dream (and one
surely no German statesman ever entertained) than a German challenge
to the sea supremacy of England.

The trend of civilized man in all great movements since modern
civilization began, has been from East to West, not from West to East.
The tide of the peoples moved by some mysterious impulse from the
dawn of European expansion has been towards the setting s