May 23, 1 9 I 8 
Land & Water 
^5 
the Austrian Ambassador — he's out there waiting to^come 
in. My time is too important." 
Talaat laughed., "Come back in an hour," he said. I 
came back ; the Arab Princes had left, and we had no diffi- 
culty in arranging matters to my satisfaction. 
"Some one has got to govern Turkey; why not we?" 
Talaat once said to me. The situation had just about come 
to that. 
"I have been greatly disappointed," he would say, "at 
the failure of the Turks to appreciate democratic institu- 
tions. I hoped for it once, and I worked hard for it ; but 
they were not prepared for it." It was a country which 
the first enterprising man who came along might grab ; 
and he determined to be that man. 
Of all the Turkish pohticians I met, I regarded Talaat 
as the only one with extraordinary native ability ; he showed 
this in the measures which he took, after the murder of 
Nazim, to gain the upper hand in this distracted empire. 
He did not seize the government all at once ; he went at 
it gradually, feeling his way. He realised the weaknesses 
of his position ; he had several forces to deal with, the Revolu- 
tionary Committee which had backed him, the army, the 
foreign governments, and the several factions that made 
up what then passed for public opinion in Turkey. Any 
of these elements might destroy him, politically and physically, 
He always anticipated a violent death. 
"I do not expect to die in my bed," he told me. 
By becoming Minister of the Interior, Talaat gained control 
of the police and the administration of the provinces ; this 
gave him great patronage, which he used to strengthen his 
position with the Committee. He attempted to gain the 
support of all influential factions by gradually placing their 
representatives in the other Cabinet posts. Though he 
afterward became the man who was chiefly responsible for 
the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, at this 
time Talaat maintained the pretence that the Committee 
tood for the unionisation of all the races in the empire. 
His first Cabinet contained an Arab-Christian, a Deunme 
(Jew by^race, but Mohammedan by religion), a Circassian, 
an Armenian, an Egyptian. He made the latter Grand Vizier. 
Prince Said Halim, this new dignitary, was a cousin of the 
Khedive of Egypt ; he was an e;^eedingly vain and ambitious 
man — not ambitious so much for real power as for its trappings. 
The Young Turk programme included the reconquest of 
Egypt, and the Committee had promised Halim that, when 
this was accomplished, he was to became Khedive. 
Germany's War Preparations 
Gennany's war preparations had for years included the 
study of internal conditions in other countries ; an indis- 
pensable part of the Imperial programme had been to take 
advantage of such disorganisation as existed to push her 
schemes of penetration and conquest. What her emissaries 
have accomplished in Russia and to a smaller extent in 
Italy is now tragically apparent. Clearly such a situation 
as existed in Turkey in 1913 and 1914, provided an ideal 
opportunity of manipulations of this kind. The advantage 
of Germany's position was that Talaat needed Germany 
almost as badly as Germany needed Talaat. He and nis 
Committee needed some exterior power to organise the army 
and navy, to finance the nation, to help them reconstruct 
their industrial system, and to protect them against the 
encroachments of the encircling nations. Ignorant as they 
were of foreign countries, they needed an adviser to pilot 
them through the shoals of "international intrigue. 
Where was such a protector t9 be obtained ? Evidently 
only one of the great European Powers could perform this 
oflBce. Which one should it be ? Ten years before Turkey 
would have naturally appealed to England. But now the 
Turks regarded England as merely a nation that had 
despoiled them of Egypt, and that' had failed to protect 
Turkey from dismemberment after the Balkan wars. In 
association with Russia Great Britain controlled Persia, and 
thus constituted a constant threat — at least so the Turks 
believed— against their Asiatic dominions. England was 
gradually withdrawirig her investments from Turkey ; Eng-' 
lish statesmen believed that the task of driving the Turk 
from Europe was about complete; the whole Near-Eastern 
policy of Great Britain. hinged on maintaining the organisa- 
tion of the Balkans as it had been determined by the Treaty 
of Bucharest — a treaty which Turkey refused to regard as 
binding and which she was determined to upset. Above all, 
England had become the virtual ally of Turkey's traditional 
enemy, Russia, and there was even then a genera! belief 
which the Turkish leaders shared,- that England was willing 
Russia should inherit Constantinople and the Dardanelles. 
Though Russia was making no such pretensions, at least 
openly, the fact that she wds crowding Turkey in other 
directions made it possible that Talaat and Enver should 
look for support in that direction. Italy had just seized the 
last Turkish province in Africa, Tripoli, and at that moment 
was holding Rhodes and other Turkish islands and was known 
to cherish aggressive plans in Asia Minor. France was the 
ally of Russia and (ireat Britain, and was also constantly 
extending her influence in Syria. The personal equation 
played an important part in the ensuing drama. 
"the Ambassadors of the Elntente hardly concealed their con- 
tempt for the dominant Turkish politicians and their methods. 
Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, was a high-minded 
and cultivated English gentleman ; Bompard, the French 
Ambassador, was similarly a charming, honourable French- 
man ; and both were constitutionally disqualified from par- 
ticipating in the murderous intrigues which then comprised 
Turkish politics. Giers, the Russian Ambassador, was a 
proud and scornful diplomat of the old aristocratic regime. 
He was exceedinglv astute, but the contemptuous manner 
in which he treated the Young Turks naturally made their 
leaders incline to Germany. Indeed these three Ambassadors 
did not regard the Talaat and Enver regime as permanent. 
That many factions had risen and fallen in the last six years 
thej' knew ; and thev likewise believed that this latest usurpa- 
tion would vanish in a few months. 
Enver Pasha 
But there was one man in Turkey then who had no nice 
scruples about using such agencies as were most available 
for accomplishing his purpose. Wangenheim clearly saw 
what his colleagues had only faintly perceived, that these 
men were steadily fastening their hold on Turkey, and 
that they were looking for some strong Power that 
would recognise their position and abet them in main- 
taining it. 
As I look back the whole operation seems so clear, so 
simple, so inevitable. Germany, up to that time, was practi- 
cally the only great Power in Europe that had not appro- 
priated large slices of Turkish territory ; this gave her an 
initial advantage. Germany's representation at Constan- 
tinople was far better qualified than that of any other coun- 
try, not only by absence of scruples, but also by knowledge 
and skill, to handle this situation. Wangenheim was not 
the only capable German then on the ground. A particu- 
larly influential outpost of Pan-Germany was Paul Weitz, 
who had represented the Frankfurter Zeitnng in Turkey for 
thirty years. Weitz had the most intimate acquaintance 
with Turks and Turkish affairs ; there was not a hidden recess 
to which he could not gain admittance. He was constantly 
at Wangenheim's elbow, coaching, advising, informing. 
The German naval attache, Humann, the son of a famous 
German archseologist, had been born in Smyrna, and had 
passed practically his whole life in Turkey ; he not only 
spoke Turkish, but he could also think like a Turk ; the 
whole psychology of the people was part of his mental equip- 
ment. Moreover, Enver, one of the two tnain Turkish chief- 
tains, was Humann 's intimate friend. When I think of this 
experienced trio, Wangenheim, Weitz, and Humann, and of 
the delightful and honourable gentlemen who were opposed 
to them. Mallet, Bompard, and Giers, the events that now 
rapidly followed seem as inevitable as the orderly processes of 
nature. 
By the spring of 1914 Talaat and Enver, representing 
the Committee of Union and Progress, practically dom- 
inated the Turkish Empire. Wangenheim,' always having 
in mind the approaching war, had one inevitable move : 
which was to control Talaat and Enver. 
Early in January, 1914, Enver became Minister of War. 
At that time Enver was thirty-two years old ; hke all the 
leading Turkish politicians of the period he came of humble 
stock. His popular title, " Hero of the Revolution," shows 
why Talaat and the Committee had selected him to lead the 
army department. Enver enjoyed something of a military 
reputation though, so far as I could discover, he had never 
achieved a great mihtary success. The revolution of which 
he was one of the leaders in 1908 cost very few human lives ; 
he commanded an army in Tripoli against the Italians in 
1912— ^but certainly there was nothing Napoleonic about 
that campaign. ?^nver used to tell me himself how, in the 
second Balkan war, he had ridden all night at the head of 
his troo]5s'to the capture of Adrianoplc, and how, when he 
arrived there, the Bulgarians had abandoned it and his vic- 
tory had thus been a bloodless one. 
Mr. M orgenlhau in next week's Land & \\'ater com- 
pletes his character study of Enver Pasha, and explains in 
detail how Germany got her firm grip on Turkey. 
