Crescent and Iron Cross | Page 8

a blood-stained pulp the most
progressive and the most industrious of the alien peoples over whom he
ruled.
It is significant that, while yet the blood of the murdered Christians was
scarcely washed from the streets of Constantinople, the Emperor
Wilhelm II. visited his brother-sovereign at Yildiz, after making his
tour throughout the Holy Land. The two can hardly, in their intimate
conversations, have completely avoided the subject of the massacres;
but after all, that was not such an unmanageably awkward topic, for
Wilhelm II. could tactfully have reminded Abdul Hamid that his own
throne also was based on the murderous progress of the Teutonic
Knights. Then there was the war between Turkey and Greece only
lately concluded to discuss, and there again--for the Emperor's sister
was Crown Princess of Greece--conversation must have been a shade
difficult. Altogether, in spite of the Emperor's lifelong desire to visit the
Holy Places in Palestine, it was an odd moment for a Christian
monarch to visit the butcher of Constantinople. But the truth is that
Wilhelm II. had a very strong reason for going to see his brother, for
the fruit of German policy in Turkey was already ripening and swelling
on the tree, and the minor disadvantages of visiting this murderous
tyrant while still his hands were red with blood was more than
compensated for by the advantages of having a heart-to-heart talk with
him on other subjects. Germany had already begun her peaceful
penetration, and the real motive of the Emperor's visit was, after swords
and orders had been exchanged, to make the definite request that bodies
of colonising Germans should be allowed to settle on the Sultan's
dominions in Asia Minor, and a hint no doubt was conveyed that there
would be plenty of room for them now that there were so many
Armenian farms unfortunately without a master. But, like Uriah Heep,
the Emperor had attempted to pluck the fruit before it was ripe, or, to
use a more exact simile, before he was tall enough to reach it. In vain
he represented to Abdul Hamid the immense advantages which would
result to Turkey by the establishment of those Gott-like German settlers
in Asia Minor. Out of his colossal egalo-megalomania, of which we
know more now, he thought that any request which the All-Highest
should deign to make must instantly be granted. But he met with a

perfectly flat refusal, and the baffled All-Highest left Constantinople in
an exceedingly bad temper, which quite undid all the good that the
balm in Gilead and the sacred associations of Jerusalem had done him.
It is pleasant to think of the Pan-Islamic merriment with which Abdul
Hamid must have viewed the indignant exit of his Christian brother,
who had come such a long way to see him, and was so tactful about the
Armenian atrocities. He might perhaps--for those Christians were very
odd pigs--have expressed horror or remonstrance. Not at all: he was
much too anxious to get his request granted, to make himself
disagreeable. But did his Christian brother really think that all those
massacres over which Abdul Hamid had spent so much time and
money, had been arranged in order to settle those nasty progressive
Germans in the lands that had been so carefully depopulated? Why, the
whole point of them had been that the Armenians were too progressive
and prosperous, thus constituting a menace to the central Government,
and certainly Abdul Hamid was not meaning to put in their place
settlers even more progressive and with a stronger backing behind them.
So off went the All-Highest back home again, very much vexed with
Abdul Hamid, and possibly (if that was not sacrilegious) with himself
for having been in too great a hurry. There was more spade-work to be
done yet before Turkey was ripe for open and avowed colonisation by
the Fatherland.
The episode, strictly historical, is of a certain importance, for it shows
the date at which Wilhelm II. thought that the time had come for
Germans to colonise Turkey. The peaceful penetration (which now
amounts to perforation) was even then pretty far advanced. But Abdul
Hamid seems to have seen the significance of the request, and for some
little while after that German influence had a certain set-back in Turkey.
The date of this marks an era, and Germany, 'deep patient Germany,'
set to work again, in no way discouraged, to set her cancer-nippers in
the cancer that already had begun to eat the live tissues round it.

Crescent and Iron Cross, Chapter II
THE THEORY OF THE NEW TURKS

In the year 1908 a military group in Constantinople, styling itself the
'Young Turk' party, seized and deposed Abdul Hamid, and shut him up
at Salonika, there to spend the remainder of his infamous days. They
put forth