the Arabs constituted the most menacing obstacle to
the spread of Ottomanisation, since they numbered in the Empire only a
million less than the Turks themselves. It was ordained by statute that
no Arab could have a seat on the Committee of Union and Progress, and
the Cabinet similarly was purged of any Greek or Armenian element. Never
any more must there be new parties in the Chamber, never any more must
Liberal ideas (to champion which the New Turk party had come into being)
be allowed to prick up their pernicious heads. For the Nationalist
party, with whom the New Turks were now identical, had taken as their
creed all that the deposed Abdul Hamid stood for, and only differed from
him in that as their schemes developed they looked forward to logical
conclusions far beyond what he had ever dreamed of. But Abdul Hamid may,
I think, be taken to be the true founder of the new Nationalism: at any
rate it was he who had first seen the possibilities of massacre as a
means of maintaining Ottoman supremacy. In the hands of Nationalists
that was to prove a more effective weapon than the printing of railway
tickets in Turkish. But already before the European War the Nationalists
had vastly extended his ideas, and had seen the danger of allowing even
Arabs to have a standing of any kind in the new state. Henceforth all
subject people were to be _rayas_, cattle, as in the old days of the
Sultans who absorbed the strength of the aliens, but did not exterminate
them. But now the cattle were not only to be used for milk, but were to
be slaughtered when advisable. Till then they must be dumb, or speak the
language of their masters only, for this alone can save them from the
shambles. Ahmed Sherif Bey, a prominent Nationalist, lays this down. 'It
is the business of the Porte to make the Arabs forget their own
language, and to impose upon them instead that of the nation that rules
them. If the Porte loses sight of this duty, it will be digging its
grave with its own hands, for if the Arabs do not forget their language,
their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their
ancient empire on the ruins of Ottomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia.'

Here, then, is the definite statement of the Nationalists' hostility to
all things Arab, and we shall see how they translated it into practice.
Even Moslems were but cattle for them, as also were Armenians and Greeks
and Kurds. Armenians were doomed to be the first complete sacrifice on