Deutschland Über Allah

Again, the Deutsche Orientbank has made many extensions, and is already financing cotton and wool trade for after the war. The establishment of this provoked much applause in German financial circles, who find it to be an instance of the “far-reaching and powerful Germano-Austrian unity, which replaces the disunion of Turkish finance.” This is profoundly true, especially if we omit the word “Austrian,” inserted for diplomatic reasons. Again we find Germany advancing £3,000,000 of German paper to the Turkish Government in January, 1917 for the payment of supplies they have received from Krupp’s works and (vaguely) for interest to the German financial minister. This too, we may conjecture, is to be redeemed after the war in gold.

In March of this year we find in the report of the Ottoman Bank a German loan of £1,000,000 for the purchase of agricultural implements by Turkey, and this is guaranteed by house-taxes. In all up to that month, as was announced in the Chamber of Deputies at Constantinople, Germany had advanced to Turkey the sum of £142,000,000, entirely, it would seem, in German paper, to be repaid at various dates in gold. The grip, in fact, is a strangle-hold, all for Turkey’s good, as no doubt will prove the “New Conventions” announced by Zimmermann in May, 1917, to take the place of the abolished Capitulations, “which left Turkey at the mercy of predatory Powers who looked for the disruption of the Ottoman Empire.” Herr Zimmermann does not look for that: he looks for its absorption. And sees it.

The industrial development of Turkey by this benevolent and disinterested Power has been equally thorough and far-reaching, though Germany here has had a certain amount of competition by Hungary to contend against, for Hungary considered that Germany was trespassing on her sphere of interest. But she has been able to make no appreciable headway against her more acute partner, and her application for a monopoly of sugar-production was not favourably received, for Germany already had taken the beet industry well in hand. In Asia Minor the acreage of cultivation early in 1917 had fallen more than 50 per cent, from that under crops before the war, but owing to the importation of machinery from the Central Powers, backed up by a compulsory Agricultural Service law, which has just been passed, it is hoped that the acreage will be increased this year by something like 30 per cent. The yield per acre also will be greatly increased this year, for Germany has, though needing artificial manure badly herself, sent large quantities into Turkey, where they will be more profitably employed. She has no fear about securing the produce. This augmented yield will, it is true, not be adequate to supply the needs of Turkey, who for the last two years has suffered from very acute food shortage, which in certain districts has amounted to famine and wholesale starvation of the poorer classes. But it is unlikely that their needs will be considered at all, for Germany’s needs (she the fairy godmother of the Pan-Turk ideal) must obviously have the first call on such provisions as are obtainable. Thus, though in February, 1917, there was a daily shortage in Smyrna of 700 sacks of flour, and the Arab and Greek population was starving, no flour at all was allowed to be imported into Smyrna. But simultaneously Germany was making huge purchases of fish, meat, and flour in Constantinople (paid for in German paper), including 100,000 sheep. Yet such was the villainous selfishness of the famine-stricken folk at Adrianople that when the trains containing these supplies were passing through a mob held them up and sold the contents to the inhabitants. That, however, was an isolated instance, and in any case a law was passed in October, 1916, appointing a military commission to control all supplies. It enacts that troops shall be supplied first, and specially ordains that the requirements of German troops come under this head. (Private firms have been expressly prohibited from purchasing these augmented wheat supplies, but special permission was given in 1915 to German and Austro-Hungarian societies to buy.) A few months later we find that there are a hundred deaths daily in Constantinople from starvation and 200 in Smyrna, where there is a complete shortage of oil. But oil is still being sent to Germany, and during 1916 five hundred reservoirs of oil were sent there, each containing up to 15,000 kilogrammes. But Kultur must be supplied first, else Kultur would grow lean, and the Turkish God of Love will look after the Smyrniotes. It is no wonder that he blockade of Germany does not produce the desired result a little quicker, for food is already pouring in from Turkey, and when the artificial manures have produced their early harvest the stream will become a torrent.

But during all these busy and tremendous months of war Germany has not only been denuding Turkey of her food supplies, for the sake of the Pan-Turkish ideal; in the same altruistic spirit she has been vastly increasing the productiveness of her new and most important colony. There is a great irrigation work going on in Konia, and another at Adana financed by the Deutsche Bank. Ernst Marre gives us a capital account of this, for Adana was already linked up with the Bagdad railway in October, 1916, which was to be the great artery connecting Germany with the East. There is some considerable shortage of labour there (owing in part to the Armenian massacres, to which we shall revert presently), but the financial arrangements are in excellent shape. The whole of the irrigation works are in German hands and have been paid for by German paper; and to get the reservoirs, &c., back into her own control it has been agreed that Turkey, already completely bankrupt, will have to pay not only what has been spent, but a handsome sum in compensation; while, as regards shortage of labour, prisoners have been released in large numbers to work without pay. This irrigation scheme at Adana will increase the cotton yield by four times the present crop, so we learn from the weekly Arab magazine, El Alem el Ismail, which tells us also of the electric-power stations erected there.

The same paper (October, 1916) announces to the Anatolian merchants that transport is now easy, owing to the arrival of engines and trucks from Germany, while Die Zeit (February, 1917) prophesies a prosperous future for this Germane-Turkish cotton combine. Hitherto Turkey has largely imported cotton from England; now Turkey – thanks to German capital on terms above stated – will, in the process of internal development so unselfishly devised for her by Germany, grow cotton for herself, and be kind enough to give a preferential tariff to Germany.

A similarly bright future may be predicted for the irrigation scheme at Konia, where will arise a sugar-beet industry. Artesian wells have been sunk, and there is the suggestion to introduce Bulgarian labour in default of Turkish. As we have seen, Hungary attempted to obtain a monopoly with regard to sugar, but Germany has been victorious on this point (as on every other when she competes with Hungary) and has obtained the concession for a period of thirty years. A similar irrigation scheme is bringing into cultivation the Makischelin Valley, near Aleppo, and Herr Wied has been appointed as expert for irrigation plant in Syria.

Indeed, it would be easier to enumerate the industries and economical developments of Turkey over which Germany has not at the present moment got the control than those over which she has. In particular she has shown a parental interest in Turkish educational questions. She established last year, under German management, a school for the study of German in Constantinople; she has put under the protection of the German Government the Jewish institution at Haifa for technical education in Palestine; from Sivas a mission of schoolmasters has been sent to Germany for the study of German methods. Ernst Marre surmises that German will doubtless become compulsory even in the Turkish intermediate (secondary) schools. In April, 1917, the first stone of the “House of Friendship” (!) was laid at Constantinople, the object of which institution is to create among Turkish students an interest in everything German, while earlier in the year arrangements were made for 10,000 Turkish youths to go to Germany to be taught trades. These I imagine were unfit for military service. With regard to such a scheme Haul Haled Bey praises the arrangement for the education of Turks in Germany. When they used to go to France, he tells us, “they lost their religion” (certainly Prussian Gott is nearer akin to Turkish Allah) “and returned home unpatriotic and useless. In Germany they will have access to suitable religious literature” (Gott!) “and must adopt all they see good in German methods without losing their original characteristics.” Comment on this script is needless. The hand is the hand of Halil Haled Bey, but the voice is the voice of Prussia! Occasionally, but rarely, Austrian competition is seen. Professor Schmoller, in an Austrian quarterly review, shows jealousy of German influence, and we find in October, 1916, an Ottoman-Austrian college started at Vienna for 250 pupils of the Ottoman Empire. But Germany has 10,000 in Berlin. At Adana (where are the German irrigation works) the German-Turkish Society has opened a German school of 300, while, reciprocally, courses in Turkish have been organised at Berlin for the sake of future German colonists. In Constantinople the Tanin announces a course of lectures to be held by the Turco-German Friendship Society. Professor von Marx, of Munich, discoursed last April on foreign influence and the development of nations, with special reference to Turkey and the parallel case of Germany.

So much for German education, but her penetrative power extends into every branch of industry and economics. In November, 1916, a Munich expert was put in charge of the College of Forestry, and an economic society was started in Constantinople on German lines with German instructors. Inoculation against small-pox; typhoid, and cholera was made compulsory; and we find that the Turkish Ministers of Posts, of Justice, and of Commerce, figureheads all of them, have as their acting Ministers Germans. In the same year a German was appointed as expert for silkworm breeding and for the cultivation of beet. Practically all the railways in Asia Minor are pure German concerns by right of purchase. They own the Anatolian railway concession (originally British), with right to build to Angora and Konia; the Bagdad railway concession, with preferential rights over minerals; they have bought the Mersina-Adana railway, with right of linking up to the Bagdad railway; they have bought the Smyrna-Cassaba railway, built with French capital. They have secured also the Haidar Pasha Harbour concession, thereby controlling and handling all merchandise arriving at railhead from the interior of Asia Minor. Meantime railway construction is pushed on in all directions under German control, and the Turkish Minister of Finance (August, 1916) allocates a large sum of paper German money for the construction of ordinary roads, military roads, local government roads, all of which are new to Turkey, but which will be useful for the complete German occupation which is being swiftly consolidated. To stop the mouths of the people, all political clubs have been suppressed by the Minister of the Interior, for Prussia does not care for criticism. To supply German ammunition needs, lead and zinc have been taken from the roofs of mosques and door-handles from mosque gates, and the iron railings along the Champs de Mars at Pera have been carted away for the manufacture of bombs. A Turco-German convention signed in Berlin in January of this year permits subjects of one country to settle in the other while retaining their nationality and enjoying trading and other privileges. In Lebanon Dr. König has opened an agricultural school for Syrians of all religions. In the Horns district the threatening plague of locusts in February, 1917, was combated by Germans; and a German expert, Dr. Bucher, had been already sent to superintend the whole question. For this concerns supplies to Germany, as does also the ordinance passed in the same month that two-thirds of all fish caught in the Lebanon district should be given to the military authorities (these are German) and that every fish weighing over 6oz. in the Beirut district should be Korban also. The copper mines at Anghana Maden, near Diarbekr, are busy exporting their produce into Germany.

There is no end to this penetration: German water-seekers, with divining and boring apparatus, accompanied the Turkish expedition into Sinai; Russian prisoners were sent by Germany for agricultural work in Asia Minor, to take the place of slaughtered ‘Armenians; a German-Turkish treaty, signed January 11, 1917, gives the whole reorganisation of the economic system to a special German mission. A Stuttgart journal chants a characteristic “Lobgesang” over this feat. “That is how,” it proudly exclaims, “we work for the liberation of peoples and nationalities.”

In the same noble spirit, we must suppose, German legal reforms were introduced in December, 1916, to replace the Turkish Shuriat, and in the same month all the Turks in telegraph offices in Constantinople were replaced by Germans. Ernst Marre, in his “Turks and Germans after the War” (1916), gives valuable advice to young Germans settling in Turkey. He particularly recommends them, knowing how religion is one of the strongest bonds in this murderous race, to “trade in articles of devotion, in rosaries, in bags to hold the Koran,” and points out what good business might be built up in gramophones. Earlier in this year we find a “German Oriental Trading Company” founded for the import of fibrous materials for needs of military authorities, and a great carpet business established at Urfa with German machinery that will supplant the looms at Smyrna. A saltpetre factory is established at Konia by Herr Toepfer, whose enterprise is rewarded with an Iron Cross and a Turkish decoration. The afforestation near Constantinople ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture is put into German hands, and in the vilayet of Aidin (April, 1916) ninety concessions were granted to German capitalists to undertake the exploitation of metallic ores. Occasionally the German octopus finds it has gone too far for the moment and releases some struggling limb of its victim, as, for instance, when we see that in September, 1916, the German Director’s stamp for the “Imperial German Great Radio Station” at Damascus has been dis-carded temporarily, as that station “should be treated for the present as a Turkish concern.”

A “Trading and Weaving Company” was established at Angora in 1916, an “Import and Export Company” at Smyrna, a “Trading and Industrial Society” at Beirut, a “Tobacco Trading Company” at Latakieh, an “Agricultural Company” at Tripolis, a “Corn Exporting Company” in Lebanon, a “Rebuilding Commission” (perhaps for sacked Armenian houses) at Konia. More curious yet will be a Tourist’s Guide Book – a Baedeker, in fact – for travellers in Konia and the erection of a monument in honour of Turkish women who have replaced men called up for military duty. Truly these last two items – a guide book for Anatolia and a monument to women – are strange enterprises for Turks. A new Prussian day is dawning, it seems, for Turkish women as well, for the Tanin (April, 1917) tells us that diplomas are to be conferred on ladies who have completed their studies in the Technical School at Constantinople.

It is needless to multiply instances of German penetration: I have but given the skeleton of this German monster that has fastened itself with tentacles and suckers on every branch of Turkish industry. There is none round which it has not cast its feelers – no Semitic moneylender ever obtained a surer hold on his victim. In matters naval, military, educational, legal, industrial, Germany has a strangle-hold. Turkey’s life is already crushed out of her, and, as we have seen, it has been crushed out of her by the benevolent Kultur-mongers who, among all the Great Powers of Europe, sacrificed their time and their money to the achievement of the Pan-Turkish ideal. Silently and skilfully they worked, bamboozling their chief tool, Enver Pasha, even as Enver Pasha bamboozled us. As long as he was of service to them they retained him; for his peace of mind at one time they stopped up all letter-boxes in Constantinople because so many threatening letters were sent him. But now Enver Pasha seems to have had his day; he became a little autocratic and thought that he was the head of the Pan-Turkish ideal. So he was, but the Pan-Turkish ideal had become Pan-Prussian, and he had not noticed the transformation. Talaat Bey has taken his place; it is he who in May, 1917, was received by the Emperor William, by King Ludwig, and by the Austrian Emperor, and he who is the mouthpiece of the German efforts to make a separate peace with Russia. Under Czardom, he proclaimed, the existence of Turkey was threatened, but now the revolution has made friendship possible, for Russia no longer desires territorial annexation. And, oh, how Turkey would like to be Russia’s friend! Enver Pasha has been thrown aside for contumacy, and I cannot but think it curious that when on April 2, 1917, he visited the submarine base at Wilhelmshaven he was very nearly killed in a motor-accident. But it may have been an accident. Since then I cannot find that he has taken any more active part in Pan-Turkish ideals than to open a soup-kitchen in some provincial town.

I have left to the end of this essay the question of Germany’s knowledge of and complicity in the Armenian massacres. From the tribune of the Reichstag on January 15, 1916, there was made a definite denial of the existence of such massacres at all; on another subsequent occasion it was stated that Germany could not interfere in Turkish internal affairs.

In view of the fact that there is no internal affair appertaining to Turkey in which Germany has not interfered, the second of these statements may be called insincere. But the denial of the massacres is a deliberate lie. Germany – official Germany – knew all about them, and she permitted them to go on. The proofs of this are here shortly stated.

(1) In September, 1915, four months before the denial of the massacres was made in the Reichstag, Dr. Martin Niepage, higher grade teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, prepared and sent, in his name and that of several of his colleagues, a report of them to the German Embassy at Constantinople. In that report he gives a terrible account of what he has seen with his own eyes, and also states that the country Turks’ explanation with regard to the origination of those measures is that it is “the teaching of the Germans.” The German Embassy at Constantinople therefore knew of the massacres, and knew also that the Turks attributed them to orders from Germany. Dr. Niepage also consulted, before sending his report, with the German Consul at Aleppo, Herr Hoffman, who told him that the German Embassy had been already advised in detail about the massacres from the consulates at Alexandretta, Aleppo, and Mosul, but that he welcomed a further protest on the subject.

(2) These reports, or others like them, had not gone astray, for in August, 1915, the German Ambassador in Constantinople made a formal protest to the Turkish Government about the massacres.

There is, then, no doubt that the German Government, when it officially denied the massacres, was perfectly cognisant of them. It was also perfectly capable of stopping them, for they were not local violences, but wholesale murders organised at Constantinople. Germany had indeed already given assurances that such massacres should not occur. She had assured the Armenian Katholikos at Adana that so long as Germany had any influence in Turkey he need not fear a repetition of the horrors that had taken place under Abdul Hamid. Had she, then, no influence in Constantinople, or how was it that she had obtained complete control over all Turkish branches of government? The same assurance was given by the German Ambassador in April, 1915, to the Armenian Patriarch and the President of the Armenian National Council.

So, in support of the Pan-Turkish ideal and in the name of the Turkish Allah, the God of Love, Germany stood by and let the infamous tale of lust and rapine and murder be told to its end. The Turks had planned to exterminate the whole Armenian race except some half-million, who would be deported penniless to work at agricultural developments under German rule, but this quality of Turkish mercy was too strained for Major Pohl, who proclaimed that it was a mistake to spare so many. But he was a soldier, and did not duly weigh the claims of agriculture.

The choice was open to Germany; Germany chose, and let the Armenian massacres go on. But she was in a difficulty. What if the Turkish Government retorted (perhaps it did so retort), “You are not consistent. Why do you mind about the slaughter of a few Armenians? What about Belgium and your atrocities there?”

And all the ingenuity of the Wilhelmstrasse would not be able to find an answer to that.

I do not say that Germany wanted the massacres, for she did not. She wanted more agricultural labour, and I think that, if only for that reason, she deprecated them. But she allowed them to go on when it was in her power to stop them, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not wash clean her hand from that stinking horror.

Here, then, are some of the problems which those who, at the end of the war, will have to deal with the problem of Turkey must tackle. It is just as well to recognise that at the present moment Turkey is virtually and actually a German colony, and the most valuable colony that Germany has ever had. It will not be enough to limit, or rather abolish, the supremacy of Turkey over aliens and martyrised peoples; it will be necessary to abolish the supremacy of Germany over Turkey. To do this the victory of our Allied Nations must be complete, and Germany’s octopus monopoly of Turkish industries severed. Otherwise we shall immediately be confronted with a Germany that already reaches as far as Mesopotamia. That is done now; and that, before there can come any permanent peace for Europe, must be undone. Nothing less than the complete release of that sucker and tentacle embrace will suffice.