DISRUPTION OF TURKEY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 28, 3 February 1915, Page 6

DISRUPTION OF TURKEY

The co-operation of Turkey is one of the points on which Germany's calculations for the present war have not been upset. What good, it will do her is another question, but it is beyond dispute that she played her cards at Constantinople with wonderful skill and audacity. She had, of course, the additional advantage of an entire lack of any moral restraint. If no fastidious scruples have been allowed to stand in the way of German diplomacy in the West, it was not to be expected that it would be handicapped by any such embarrassment in dealing with an Eastern Power. In the secrecy Avhich is one of the legitimate resources of the diplomat the German intrigues at Constantinople were remarkably successful. It is astonishing to find that Sir Edwin Peans, who during forty years of residence in Constantinople has acquired from his practice in the consular courte, and from his special studies as author and journalist, a peculiarly intimate knowledge of the life of the capital, had so lately as October last no suspicion of Germany* designs. "The influence of the German Embassy," he then wrote, "probably representing German stqtcsmen, has been employed to persuade Turkey to remain neutral," and he expected them to succeed. Another distinguished English authority on Turkish affairs, Dr. E. J. Dillon, tells in the Contemporary Review for December of the "genuine pleasure and invincible scepticism " with which he Tead this cheerful forecast of Sir Edwin Pears. Even when the Liberalism of Europe was stirred to enthusiastic admiration by the success of the great and bloodlefls revolution which the Young Turks hwl acuom-

plisfoed Dr. Dillon was among the sceptics. The Young Turk was still a Turk, aoid no political revolution could transform the national character. This scepticism has been abundantly justified. After six years' trial of the experiment which the Young Turks, undertook with such high hopes Dr. Dillon declares " invincible stupidity" to be their main characteristic. Of the manner in which this invincible stupidity has been turned by the cleverness and truculence of the Kaiser's "mailed fist" diplomatists to their own uses, Dr. Dillon tells a most entertaining story. It is a little marred by his besetting foibles of omniscience and a too persistently sustained rhetoric, but it is an admirable bit of work nevar« thetess. The character sketches of th« Young Turks' leaders and the details of their statesmanship, and the intrigues by which they all became victims to the wily German, are not unworthy of association with the Arabian Nights or Hadii Baba. It was not really Turkey, but a province of Prussia, that declared war against the Allies, according to Dr. Dillon's reckoning. "There has been no Turkey," he says, "since the Prussophile swash-buckler of Polish descent, Enver Pasha, took over the Ministry of War, and, together with that, the entire go« I vernment of the Sultan's subjects. From that day onward the army has been the unique source of political power." The manipulation of a democracy is not a task to which the German methods readily lend themselves, but the military autocracy into which the democratic ideals of the Young Turks had degenerated suited them admirably. A political purging of the army had made it the supreme political force, and the administrator of the purge, Enver Pasha, whom Dr. Dillon describes ,as "a Pole by ex traction, a Prussian by training and sympathies, and a Turk by language and by his marriage with a daughter of the Sultan," was, as Minister of War, practically supreme. Here was obviously a splendid instrument for German designs. The part played by Enver's colleagues was mostly that of ignorance and passive? acquiescence. Even in their own departments it was not they but their dictatorial colleague that possessed the knowledge and the control. Dr. Dillon vouches for Djavid Bey, the Finance Minister, as ■i true friend of peace, and as quite ignorant of how the war to which Enver had committed the Government without consultation was to be financed. "And when German bar-gold — some three million pounds' worth— reached Constants nople, and was guarded by German soldiers in the Deutsche Bank there, the last man to hear of its arrival was Djavid, just as v the last man to hear that Turkish warships had bombarded undefended Russian towns on the Black Sea was the Marine Minister Djemal." Dr. Dillon's fondness for superlatives has led him slightly astray here, for he tells us in a subsequent passage that the Grand Vizier and his colleagues generally were equally surprised by the news i( of _ the bombardment. "That the Sultan s Ministers were in ignorance of the doings of their Prussian masters," writes Dr. Dillon, "and were basing all their calculations and their policy on the continuance of 'neutrality,' is a statement which could, if needs were, be demonstrated mathematically." The only person whom Dr. Dillon credits with a full knowledge of what Enver Pasha and his German accomplices were doing is the British Ambassador. But the object of Sir Louis Mallet was to dissemble his knowledge, to speak smooth and hopeful words and to gain time. The Allies were far from ready when the Germans first wanted Turkey to strike, and the time that was gained by the tact and long suffering of tSir Louis Mallet was invaluable.