THE CREED OF YOUNG TURKEY. 



Its doctrine is simple. The Turks in ancient times 

 devastated and conquered with complete success, Attila, 

 Ghengiz, Hulagu, Mangu, and Timur were never beaten; 

 but for the last 200 years the Turks have constantly been 

 beaten. Why is this? The primitive Turks were pure 

 barbarians, but unfortunately the Turks of to-day have 

 imbibed some of the vices of the people they have conquered 

 philosophy from Persia ; poetry, literature, and religion 

 from the Arabs; some tincture of the arts from the Greeks. 

 These are blots and blemishes on the rude purity and sim- 

 plicity of the Turanian race, who only knew destruction as 

 their motto. True, the degenerate Turks of the i6th, i7th, 

 and i8th centuries did not produce much, but at least, in 

 moments of forgetful ness, they allowed others to produce ; 

 Christians built their mosques and palaces, Persians made 

 it possible for Turks to express, if not understand, abstract 

 ideas, Arabs influenced Turks with the thought of a Creator 

 who was something more than a tribal Alumbo-Jumbo. 



The German professor has taught our Young Turk to 

 purge this perilous stuff from his heart and brain and 

 tongue. The creed of Yeni-Turan is back to the forest, 

 back to the tent, back to the palaeolithic state of mind ; it 

 is the grand reaction, and so strong is the taint of the 

 Turanian stock which runs through that maze of cross-bred 

 Celts, Sumerians, Hellenes, Iranians, Semites, and Cauca- 

 sians which we call the Turkish people, that Yeni-Turan 

 is a living thing which finds a responsive echo in the Turkey 

 of to-day. 



The old Turk with a turban is the negative, the young 

 Turk with a Mauser pistol is the positive; and, contrary to 

 all rules of philosophy, it is the evil principle which is posi- 

 tive, and the good, for what it is worth, which is negative. 



The violent Young Turk reactionary is the controlling 

 power, the old Turk quietist has about as much influence 

 on actual events as a decaying monument of a forgotten 

 age. The young Turk who snubbed his mother, pulled his 

 sister's hair, kicked the Armenian porter, cringed before his 

 father, gobbled up the dogmas of the German professor, 

 mastered the formulas of the Prussian military instructor, 

 and resuscitated the dormant lusts of his savage ancestors 



52 



