the defences of
the Dardanelles. Then came the day when Germany and Turkey were ready,
the attack was made on Odessa, and out of Constantinople we went. We
climbed into the railway carriages that took the last rays of English
influence out of the Ottoman Empire, and steep were the stairs in the
house of a stranger! Turks are not much given to laughter, but Enver
Pasha must at least have smiled on that day.

Already, of course, German influence was strong in the army, which now
was thoroughly trained in German methods, but that army might still be
called a Turkish army. Nowadays, by no stretch of language can it be
called Turkish except in so far that all Turkish efficient manhood is
helplessly enlisted in it, for there is no branch or department of it
over which the Prussian octopus has not thrown its paralysing tentacles
and affixed its immovable suckers. Army and navy alike, the wireless
stations, the submarines, the aircraft, are all directly controlled from
Berlin, and, as we have seen, the generalissimo of the forces is
Mackensen, who is absolutely the Hindenburg of the East. But thorough as
is the control of Berlin over Constantinople in military and naval
matters, it is not one whit more thorough than her control in all other
matters of national life. Never before has Germany been very successful
in her colonisation; but if complete domination--the sucking of a
country till it is a mere rind of itself, and yet at the same time full
to bursting of Prussian ichor--may be taken as Germany's equivalent of
colonisation, then indeed we must be forced to recognise her success.
And it was all done in the name and for the sake of the Pan-Turkish
ideal. Even now Prussian Pecksniffs like Herr Ernst Marre, whose
pamphlet, _Die Tuerken und Wir nach dem Kriege_, was published in 1916,
continue to insist that Germany is nobly devoting herself to the
well-being of Turkey. 'In doing this,' he exclaims in that illuminating
document, 'we are benefiting Turkey.... This is a war of liberation for
Turkey,' though omitting to say from whom Turkey is being liberated.
Perhaps the Armenians. Occasionally, it is true, he forgets that, and
naively remarks, 'Turkey is a very difficult country to govern. But
after the war Turkey will be very important as a transit country.' But
then he remembers again and says, 'We wish to give besides taking, and
we should often like to give more than we can hope to give.' Let us look
into this, and see the