Turkey grew fractious or sleepy. 'From the ruins
of antiquity,' he says, when speaking of the Ottoman Empire, 'new life
will spring, if we can manage to raise the treasures which time and sand
have covered.' Then he remembers that he must be less Pan-Germanic for
the moment, and dangles the bait again. 'In doing this,' he adds, 'we
are benefiting Turkey. The Turkish state is no united whole, and it has
always been very difficult to govern. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians,
Kurds, cannot be welded together. This is a war of liberation for
Turkey.... Only by energetic interference, and by "expelling" the
obstinate Armenian element could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian
domination.... The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be
Ottomanised.'

There is no need for further quotations, which might be multiplied
indefinitely. The Prussian programme is for the moment identical with
the Turkish Nationalist programme: Turkey, in order to be kept 'in with'
Germany, must be encouraged to dream of depopulated Armenia (that dream
has come tragically true) and of annexations in Russia and Persia. All
this fitted in with the Turkish programme: Germany had scarcely to
inspire, only to encourage. That encouragement she gave, for,
simultaneously she was penetrating Turkey as water penetrates a sponge,
and reducing it to the position of a vassal state. To keep Turkey happy
she allowed the Armenian massacres to run their deadly course, and only
interfered with other massacres when they did not suit her purpose. But
supposing (to suppose the impossible) that a peace to the European War
was dictated by Germany, how much of the future Pan-Turkish programme
would be realised? Would there be a Turkey at all? I think not: there
would be a Germany in Europe, and a Germany in Asia, where Turkey once
was. Indeed, in all but name, they are in existence now; so complete, as
we shall see, has been Germany's penetration of the Ottoman Empire. Just
for the present she calls herself Turkey in those regions; that is her
incognito. But Turkey as an independent Power has already ceased to
exist, and Tekin Alp and the Nationalists still dream on with rainbow
visions of Ottomanisation, the vistas of which stretch far into Persia
and the plains of the Volga. And all the while she has been put out like
a candle, and all that is left of her is the smouldering wick ready to
be pinched between the horny fingers of her stepmother. There she
stand