4 J 8 Shefket Pasha Assassinated [ l 9^Z 



and half destroyed ourselves, was essentially in its origin an Eastern, 

 not a Western War, and the inclusion in it of Turkey to its immense 

 prolongation was due to our blundering diplomacy at Constantinople. 

 Had England been reasonably ambassadored there and free in her 

 dealings with the Porte from the evil counsels of her sad confederate 

 the Czar, it is impossible she should have failed to retain the Ottoman 

 goodwill, once so strong for her and even as lately as the days of the 

 revolution of 1908. But Egypt always had forbidden. The obstinacy 

 of remaining on in occupation there in spite of right and law and 

 promises, and now the Russian partnership, which regarded the dis- 

 pute in the Balkans with Russian eyes and the dismemberment of 

 Turkey as a crusade — these were the true obstacles to peace. That 

 Grey was beginning in the early summer of 1913, as I have said, to 

 suspect the danger of general war to which his policy of Entente was 

 leading in the East there are several indications, and I give here a 

 single entry from my diary, the last of importance of that year : 



" nth June. — H. arrived, bringing the ill news of Shefket Pasha's 

 assassination at Constantinople. This is, doubtless, the result of the 

 Russian intrigue there, Shefket being head of the Young Turk Party, 

 and the most capable military leader of the Independent Ottoman policy 

 allied with Germany. How far our diplomacy is responsible for the 

 deed I cannot say. Grey seems of late to have withdrawn from his 

 Russian Alliance, but Fitzmaurice's influence is probably still supreme 

 at our Embassy, and one cannot help remembering that the intrigue of 

 a year ago which caused Shefket's resignation of the Ministry of War 

 and replaced Kiamil in power, was an Anglo-Russian intrigue, also 

 that it closely preluded the Balkan war. I connect the present assas- 

 sination with Kiamil's return the other day to Constantinople. Kiamil 

 arrived there suddenly, and though allowed to land, was kept by 

 Shefket, a prisoner in his own house, till he could be shipped back to 

 Smyrna, whence he had come. This new coup d'etat would seem to 

 synchronize with the re-opening of the war in the Balkans, Russia's 

 object being, as always, to prevent any settlement of the Turkish ques- 

 tion which should keep her fleet permanently out of the Mediterranean. 

 This may be the first move in it. H — , who has just come from 

 Paris, declares that people there all believe in the imminence for them 

 of an European War." 



The assassination of Shefket Pasha here recorded proved a great 

 misfortune for the chances of that peaceful period which I was hoping 

 for for the Caliphate, in order to give the Young Turk's regime at 

 Constantinople time to consolidate its administration and effect its 

 reforms on a basis of Liberal pan-Islamism, which I had come to see 

 was the only possible one for an Empire so divided in race and speech 

 as was the Ottoman, and where the bond of nationality had for so many 



