f
Ottoman strangulation, even as the European tribes had done, and
forming themselves into separate and independent states. A ruler with
progressive ideas, one who had any perception of the internal prosperity
which alone can render an empire stable, would have made the attempt to
weld his loose and wavering domination together by encouraging and
working for the prosperity of its component peoples, so that he might,
though late in the day, give birth to a Turkey that was strong, because
its citizens were prosperous and content. Not so did Abdul Hamid; the
Turkey that he sought to establish was merely to be strong because he
had battered into a blood-stained pulp the most progressive and the most
industrious of the alien peoples over whom he ruled.

It is significant that, while yet the blood of the murdered Christians
was scarcely washed from the streets of Constantinople, the Emperor
Wilhelm II. visited his brother-sovereign at Yildiz, after making his
tour throughout the Holy Land. The two can hardly, in their intimate
conversations, have completely avoided the subject of the massacres; but
after all, that was not such an unmanageably awkward topic, for Wilhelm
II. could tactfully have reminded Abdul Hamid that his own throne also
was based on the murderous progress of the Teutonic Knights. Then there
was the war between Turkey and Greece only lately concluded to discuss,
and there again--for the Emperor's sister was Crown Princess of
Greece--conversation must have been a shade difficult. Altogether, in
spite of the Emperor's lifelong desire to visit the Holy Places in
Palestine, it was an odd moment for a Christian monarch to visit the
butcher of Constantinople. But the truth is that Wilhelm II. had a very
strong reason for going to see his brother, for the fruit of German
policy in Turkey was already ripening and swelling on the tree, and the
minor disadvantages of visiting this murderous tyrant while still his
hands were red with blood was more than compensated for by the
advantages of having a heart-to-heart talk with him on other subjects.
Germany had already begun her peaceful penetration, and the real motive
of the Emperor's visit was, after swords and orders had been exchanged,
to make the definite request that bodies of colonising Germans should be
allowed to settle on the Sultan's dominions in Asia Minor, and a hint no
doubt was conveyed that there would be plenty of room for them now that
there were so many