THE REASON FOR TURKEY'S 



DEBACLE. 



By PROFESSOR ARMINIUS VAMB^RY. 



T is almost sixty years since I first lose all its power ? The disaster pre- 



came into personal contact with sents itself to us as a riddle, but as a 



Turkey, but in a literary connec- riddle the solution of which is not 



tion the country has been known difficult when we grasp the motives 



to me even longer. At that time which have for so long been preparing 



the Turkish world on the Bosphorus the process of decay. Naturally the 



shone in the brilliant hght of Western fatal blow did not come all at once, 



admiration and esteem. The gentleness, It manifested itself in different phases 



the hospitality, and the courtesy of and forms. 



the people were extolled, amazement As an eye-witness of the events of 

 was expressed at the tolerance now shown the reform period, it became clear to 

 by severely maligned Islam, and a me that the number of persons deceived 

 specially rich meed of ' praise was be- and misled in Europe was much greater 

 stowed upon the Turkish soldiers, whose than in Turkey, for we have never been 

 bravery, endurance, and enthusiasm particularly blessed with persons who 

 were represented as incomparable, really know the land and the people of 

 I can well understand the enthusiasm the Near East. We did not trouble 

 with which David Urquhart wrote and much about the progress of the Turkish 

 published his work, "The Spirit of the reform period; we accepted tinsel for 

 East." the true metal, and if here and there 

 Sixty years is certainly but a short voices were raised to point out the 

 period of time, a fleeting moment, in decay already present, and to draw 

 the passage of history. Yet when I attention to the inevitable danger, they 

 compare the picture of that day with w^ere decried as intentionally hostile to 

 the most recent events I cannot help Turkey, and so were otherwise un- 

 seeing that the amazement and admira- heeded. Each member of the Diplo- 

 tion with which the world now regards matic Corps at the Golden Horn pur- 

 the latest events in the Balkans, and sued his own great or small political 

 considers the colossal change that has and economic ends. Speculation as to 

 taken place, are fully justified. Hitherto the future of the reform movement 

 the history of the world has had very few seemed an idle affair to them ; and if 

 such sudden catastrophes to chronicle, the West was rudely awakened out of 

 How has it been possible that a nation, its indifference by occasional surprises — 

 a community, a state, and especially an as, for example, by the catastrophe of 

 army which has been admired every- 1876, by the Armenian massacres, and 

 where, should so suddenly sink and by the revolution of the Young Turks — 



