Its fate
now depends on that of two European powers which are at war with the rest
of the former Concert. Among the last named are Turkey's two principal
creditors, holding together about seventy-five per cent. of her public
debt. In the event of the defeat of her friends, these creditors will be
free to foreclose, the debtor being certainly in no position to meet her
obligations. Allied with Christian powers, the Osmanli caliph has proved
no more able than his predecessors to unite Islam in his defence; but, for
what his title is worth, Mohammed V is still caliph, no rival claim having
been put forward. The loyalty of the empire remains where it was, pending
victory or defeat, the provinces being slow to realize, and still slower
to resent, the disastrous economic state to which the war is reducing
them.

The present struggle may leave the Osmanli Empire in one of three
situations: (1) member of a victorious alliance, reinforced, enlarged, and
lightened of financial burdens, as the wages of its sin; (2) member of a
defeated alliance, bound to pay the price of blood in loss of territory,
or independence, or even existence; (3) party to a compromise under which
its territorial empire might conceivably remain Ottoman, but under even
stricter European tutelage than of old.

The first alternative it would be idle to discuss, for the result of
conditions so novel are impossible to foresee. Nor, indeed, when immediate
events are so doubtful an at the present moment, is it profitable to
attempt to forecast the ultimate result of any of the alternatives.
Should, however, either the second or the third become fact, certain
general truths about the Osmanlis will govern the consequences; and these
must be borne in mind by any in whose hands the disposal of the empire may
lie.

The influence of the Osmanlis in their empire to-day resides in three
things: first, in their possession of Constantinople; second, in the
sultan's caliphate and his guardianship of the holy cities of Islam;
third, in certain qualities of Osmanli character, notably 'will to power'
and courage in the field.

What Constantinople means for the Osmanlis is implied in that name _Roum_
by which the western dominions of the Turks have been known ever since the
Seljuks won Asia Minor. Apart from the prestige of their own early
conquests, the Osmanlis inherited, and in a measure retain in the Near
East, the traditional prestige of the greatest empire which ever