DRAGGING TURKEY IN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 141, 11 December 1914, Page 7

DRAGGING TURKEY IN

A "PROMISE" TO GERMANY HOW IT WAS MADE AND KEPT (Received December 11. 10 a.m.) PETROGRAD, 10th December. The Bourse Gazette states that Turkey, unable to pay her State officials, sent Fethi Bey to Berlin to interview Herr yon Bethmann-Hollweg, Imperial Chancellor. Later, Fethi Bey saw the Kaiser, who offered to pay £150,000 from the Privy Purse, on condition that Turkey entered into the war immediately. Fethi Bey did not give the promise, but the Germans forthwith cabled -to the German warships Goeben and Breslau, ordering them to bombard the Russian coast. The Turkish Ministry learnt of the action from the newspapers, and were highly perturbed. They went to see the German Ambassador, who replied that Fethi Bey had given a promise to the Kaiser, and it musj; be kept DREAMS OF THE YOUNG TURKS (Times and Sydney Sun Services.) (Received December 11, 8 a.m.) LONDON, 10th December. A mass of Arabic and Turkish correspondence intercepted at Cairo shows that the Young Turks are filled with dreams of regaining Crimea, Batoum, Turkestan, and Roumelia, and especially Salonika, driving the British from Egypt, and colonising India Some Ottoman statesmen preferred attacking Greece, but Germany insisted on war with Russia, in order to harass Britain. [Crimea was held by the Turks from 1475 to 1774, when it received its independence, but in 1783 the Russians captured the peninsula, and have . since retained it. Batoum was ceded by Turkey to Russia in 1878. Turkestan was the original country of the Turks in Central Asia. Eastern Roumelia is included in Bulgaria. From 1393 Bulgaria was under the suzerainty of Turkey, which she threw off in 1908. As the result of the war of 1912-13, Bulgaria gained Western and Northern Thrace (part of Turkey). Salonika was taken from the Venetians by the Turks in 1430. It was the headquarters of the Young Turk movement in 1908. The Greeks took it in 1712.] BRITISH IN COMPLETE CONTROL OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES LONDON, 10th Decem^jr. Official. — "The 10th Mahrattas, assisted by an armed steamer, on sth December drove the enemy across the Tigris, opposite Kurnah, with heavy losses. We captured two guns. "Another force from Bussorah, under General Try, captured Masera, opposite Kurnah, on 7th December, cleared the left bank of the Tigris, and captured three guns. The combined British forces crossed the river on Bth December, and occupied Kurnah on 9th December. "One British officer was killed, and three wounded. Forty of the Indiana were killed, and 1&0 wounded "The British are now in complete control of the Tigris and Euphrates to the sea, and of the richest part of the fertile delta of the Shat-el-Arab.