A GERMAN JOURNALIST IN TURKEY.*
THE writer of this book is a German who has spent many years abroad, chiefly in South Africa. He hastened home on the outbreak of the war, to join the colours, but was invalided out of the Army after six months' active service on the Eastern Front. He then obtained a position on the staff of the Cologne Gazette and went to Constantinople in the spring of 1915 as special correspondent. After nearly two years in Turkey, he found himself so completely at variance with the views of his paper that he resigned the post and obtained permission to go to Switzerland for reasons of health. There he relieved his conscience by publishing this effective indict- ment of the Turkish Government.
His opening chapter gives us a vivid impression of the country to which he returned in August, 1914. No German reaching home at that dramatic moment, after many years in foreign lands, could, he says, escape a sense of melancholy foreboding, almost of dismay, at the " mentality " of his countrymen as it was revealed in the Press and in the casual talk of restaurants and cafes. [In the following extracts we have translated direct from the original. The translations were made before we saw the English version published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton] :- "Germans have never learned to think correctly in politics. . . • Our incredible inability to distinguish between the attainable and the unattainable, and to comprehend another nation's ways of thinking, our extraordinary political simplicity (Naiveteit), does not restrain us from embarking upon world-wide political adventures. The average German has never understood the English ; he has never been able to grasp either their colonial system, which he thinks is merely designed to deprive him of his place in the sun, or their con- ception of freedom and civilization. He believed that we could trample Belgium's neutrality underfoot and that Great Britain would look calmly on. He was absolutely convinced, even in high political circles, that the attempt to enforce conscription would result in revo- lution. He saw in the British people nothing but a greedy, cowardly spirit, unready for any sacrifice. All the more dull and heavy the fearful weight of the English declaration of war fell that memor- able August evening on the soul of the German people, the victim of political miscalculation."
When the Berliners had recovered from the first shock and were proposing to send a force of police to arrest the British Army, and later on when the German military successes seemed to justify the scoffers who knew nothing of England, those who had spent their lives abroad warned their friends against such optimism. From the hour of England's intervention, it was plain to the writer that Germany had lost the war. About this time he witnessed " the absurd scenes acted on the Potzdamer Platz when some Japanese, as presumably the hereditary foes of Russia, and therefore the predestined allies of Germany, were enthusiastically carried shoulder high by worthy Berliners. A few days later Japan sent us an ultimatum about Kiao-chau. The same incapacity for taking wide views led us recently to believe that Mexico and Japan would side with us against America, and blinded us to the effect our methods might have upon other neutrals, such as China and the South American States."
Dr. Stuermer arrived in Constantinople by no means wanting in goodwill to the Turks. Ho knew the high opinion of them held by many men who are thoroughly familiar with the Near East; he had read Pierre Loti ; and he endeavoured to extend the sympathy he felt (and still feels) for the people to their rulers, undeterred by the parting word of an old colleague who knew the country well. " Turkey," the latter said, " is a galvanized frog; it will show signs of life just so long as the war lasts and we Germans go on galvanizing it ; you will find that the Young Turks are morally bankrupt." For nearly a year after Dr. Stuermer's arrival the fight for the Dardanelles dominated the situation. Twice during that period archives and treasures were hurriedly despatched to Asia Minor as the fall of the city seemed imminent. " A facetious German officer assured me he was engaging a window from which his family might view the entry of the Allied forces." Dr. Stuermer was in Gallipoli for a few weeks, and learned to know and admire the Turkish soldier; he also made the acquaintance of the few prisoners that were taken, and began to ask himself disturbing questions about culture and free- • Two Years of War Seen at Constantinople. By Dr. Homy Stuermer, ex-Corre- spondent of the Cologne Gazelle at Constantinople, 1915-19113. London : Hodder and Stoughton. [(is. net.]
dom. He came back to Constantinople soon after the beginning of the Armenian tragedy, and discovered with horror that " in this movement of Chauvinistic bestiality, unique in the later history of human development," the German Government was plainly an accomplice. He does not repeat the dreadful details which he heard from German Rod Cross doctors and nurses, from officials of the Baghdad Railway, from the American Embassy, and occasionally from the Turks themselves. They aro well known in Switzerland, where many of the fugitives have found shelter, and from his own knowledge he considers the worst tales are not exaggerated. He occupies himself rather in explaining the attitude of the German Government. It was due, he declares, to a mixture of cowardice and short-sighted stupidity :- " To cowardice, in the first place. We held the Turkish Govern- ment financially and politically firmly in our hands ; we could certainly have constrained them to observe some elementary prin- ciples of humanity had we wished to do so. Enver and Talaat, who as Minister of tho Interior and virtually Dictator of Turkey, was directly responsible, had no longer any ohoice but to follow Germany unconditionally. If a word had been spoken on behalf of the Armenians, they would have obeyed, with gnashing of teeth no doubt, but without delay. There aro hundreds of examples to prove that the German Embassy never showed the least con- sideration for Turkish interests or sentiment where our own interests were concerned, and invariably carried its point."
But the German Government were afraid apparently of putting a finger between the bark and the tree, and the agony of the helpless victims—they numbered perhaps half - a -mill ion—lef t them unmoved. The acquiescence of Germany in a crime as infamous as any which history records was as stupid as it was base :-
" The rising tido of Chauvinism was not hidden from our Government, and no man capable of a little foresight could doubt, even in the summer of 1915, that Turkey would go with us only as long as she needed our military and financial help, that there would be no room for us, not oven economical room, in a victorious truly Turkish Turkey. In spite of the continual lamentations over this disagreeable but well-known fact, we allowed a cultivated, progressive people, numbering a million and a half, conspicuously open to European ideas, which would have been the best possible counterpoise to the Young Turkish element with its nationalist hatred of foreigners, to disappear, leaving the remnant that sur- vived the ghastly catastrophe our deadly foes for ever. The Armenians have always been sympathetic towards Germany, and they waited hopefully for us to speak the word that would have saved them ; hopefully at first, then tremblingly. . . . Their hatred of us now is justly inextinguishable, as the German trader in the East will discover so long as a single Armenian exists."
Dr. Stuermer emphasizes the fact that the spirit which inspires the Young Turkish rulers is the spirit not of religious but of race fanaticism. The Pan-Islamic idea has been renounced in favour of the Pan-Turkish purely racial movement. The design of a Holy War directed against certain infidels abroad, while other infidels were dominating Turkey itself at home, indicates the absence of any true religious fanaticism :—
" The Committee of Union and Progress is composed of successful adventurers, parvenus without any political or historical training, too uneducated to understandthe significance of Pan-Islamism from a statesman's point of view ; from the time that they came into power they treated the Arabs with incredible tactlessness and offensive arrogance. . . . There was a time in the second Balkan War, just after the fall of Adrianople, when a reconciliation might have been effected, and a great Syrian and Arabic deputation came to congratulate the Sultan. But their reception was of a very discouraging nature and the occasion passed. The Arabic lands have been lost to Turkey by the greedy Pan-Turkish ambitions of the Committee. The curious egotism which makes it almost impossible for Germans to believe themselves unwelcome in any society, has for a long time sustained them in a complacent belief in the per- manence of their present relations with Turkey ; by this timo probably their disillusionment is fairly complete. The intense, deep- rooted nationalism of the Young Turks does not prevent them from making what they can out of their German ally, or from adopting any technical or administrative methods which have proved profit- able in Europe. It reveals itself mainly in two directions—in the struggle for a greater Turkey and in the measures taken to get rid of all the non-Turkish elements in the country ; the latter movement may be traced from the abolition of the Capitulations to the Armenian massacres. The first step, the abolition of the Capitulations, affected Germany as much as any other nation ; for a long time she was silent on the painful subject, and did not formally recognize the accomplished fact till 1916, when her military understanding with Turkey, for better or worse, was firmly established. In the summer of 1915 the language question came up. At the end of the year, by Talaat'a orders, all French and English signs and inscriptions disappeared, even in Pere, where only one in a hundred can read Turkish. Unintelligible Turkish flourishes replaced the French notices in tramcars and police instructions, the Turks preferring to let the Levantine public pluck flowers in the park and break its legs in leaping out of the wrong car, rather than concede a trifle to the general comfort."
Dr. Stuermer, however severely he condemns his Government, by no means despairs of his country. He consoles himself in exile with happy dreams of a reconciled Germany abandoning her envious schemes, her " tactless interference in the vital interests of other nations," and her " political intrigues disguised as commercial
enterprises," and carrying the products of her peaceful labours to the shores of the Persian Gulf. He has given us all an interesting and courageous book, and we must not grudge him his dreams.
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