Armenian farms unfortunately without a master. But,
like Uriah Heep, the Emperor had attempted to pluck the fruit before it
was ripe, or, to use a more exact simile, before he was tall enough to
reach it. In vain he represented to Abdul Hamid the immense advantages
which would result to Turkey by the establishment of those Gott-like
German settlers in Asia Minor. Out of his colossal egalo-megalomania, of
which we know more now, he thought that any request which the
All-Highest should deign to make must instantly be granted. But he met
with a perfectly flat refusal, and the baffled All-Highest left
Constantinople in an exceedingly bad temper, which quite undid all the
good that the balm in Gilead and the sacred associations of Jerusalem
had done him. It is pleasant to think of the Pan-Islamic merriment with
which Abdul Hamid must have viewed the indignant exit of his Christian
brother, who had come such a long way to see him, and was so tactful
about the Armenian atrocities. He might perhaps--for those Christians
were very odd pigs--have expressed horror or remonstrance. Not at all:
he was much too anxious to get his request granted, to make himself
disagreeable. But did his Christian brother really think that all those
massacres over which Abdul Hamid had spent so much time and money, had
been arranged in order to settle those nasty progressive Germans in the
lands that had been so carefully depopulated? Why, the whole point of
them had been that the Armenians were too progressive and prosperous,
thus constituting a menace to the central Government, and certainly
Abdul Hamid was not meaning to put in their place settlers even more
progressive and with a stronger backing behind them. So off went the
All-Highest back home again, very much vexed with Abdul Hamid, and
possibly (if that was not sacrilegious) with himself for having been in
too great a hurry. There was more spade-work to be done yet before
Turkey was ripe for open and avowed colonisation by the Fatherland.

The episode, strictly historical, is of a certain importance, for it
shows the date at which Wilhelm II. thought that the time had come for
Germans to colonise Turkey. The peaceful penetration (which now amounts
to perforation) was even then pretty far advanced. But Abdul Hamid seems
to have seen the significance of the request, and for some little while
after that German influence had a certain set-back in Turkey. The date
of this marks an era, and German