November 7, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
13 
the Ottoman countries, and could easily be forced to labour. 
It is true that the early Sultans gave their subject peoples 
and the Europeans in the Empire certain rights, but these 
in themselves really reflected the contempt in which all 
non-Moslems were held. I have already described the 
"Capitulations," under which foreigners in Turkey had their 
own courts, prisons, post-offices, and other institutions. Yet 
the early Sultans gave these privileges not from a spirit of 
tolerance, but merely because they looked upon the Christian 
nations as unclean and, therefore, unfit to have any contact 
with the Ottoman administrative and judicial system. The 
Sultans similarly erected the several peoples, such as the 
Greeks and the Armenians, into separate "millets," or 
nations, not because they desired to promote their inde- 
pendence and welfare, but because they regarded them as 
vermin, and, therefore, disqualified for membership in the 
Ottoman State. The attitude of the Government toward 
their Christian subjects was illustrated by certain regula- 
tions which limited their freedom of action. The buildings 
in which Christians lived should not be conspicuous and 
their churches should have no belfry. Christians could not 
ride a horse in the city, for that was the exclusive right of the 
noble Moslem. The Turk had the right to test the sharp- 
ness of his sword upon the neck of any Christian. 
Parasitic Governors 
Imagine a great government, year in and year out, main- 
taining this attitude toward many millions of its own sub- 
jects ! And for centuries the Turks simply lived like para- 
sites upon these overburdened and industrious people. 
They ta.xed them to economic extinction, stole their most 
beautiful daughters and forced them into their harems, 
took Christian male infants by the hundreds of thousands 
and brought them up as Moslem soldiers. I have no inten- 
tion of describing the terrible vassalage and oppression that 
went on for five centuries ; my purpose is merely to em- 
phasise this innate attitude of the Moslem Turk to people 
not of his own race and religion — that they are not human 
beings with rights, but merely chattels, which may be per- 
mitted to live when they promote the interest of their masters, 
but which may be pitilessly destroyed when they have ceased 
to be useful. This attitude is intensified by a total disregard 
for human life and an intense delight in physical human suf- 
fering, which are the not unusual quahties of primitive peoples. 
Such were the mental characteristics of the Turk in his 
days of military greatness. In recent times his attitude 
toward foreigners and his subject peoples had superficially 
changed. His own military decline, and the ease with which 
the infidel nations defeated his finest armies, had apparently 
given the haughty descendants of Osman a respect at least 
{or their prowess. The rapid disappearance of his own 
Empire in a hundred years, the creation out of the Ottoman 
Empire of new States like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and 
Rumania, and the wonderful improvement which had fol- 
lowed the destruction of the Turkish yoke in these benighted 
lands, may have increased the Ottoman hatred for the 
unbeliever, but at least they had a certain influence in opening 
his eyes to his importance. Many Turks also now received 
their education in European universities ; they studied in 
their professional schools, and they became physicians, 
surgeons, lawyers, engineers, and chemists of the modern 
kind. However much the more progressive Moslems might 
despise their Christian associates, they could not ignore the 
fact that the finest things, in this temporal world at least, 
were the products of European and American civilisation. 
And now that one development of modern history which 
seemed to be least understandable to the Turk began to force 
itself upon the consciousness of the more intelligent and 
progressive. Certain leaders arose who began to speak 
surreptitiously of such things as "Constitutionalism," 
"Liberty," "Self-Government," and to whom the Declara- 
tion of Independence contained certain truths that might 
have a value even for Islam. These daring spirits began to 
dream of overturning the autocratic Sultan and of sub- 
stituting a parliamentary system for his irresponsible rule. 
I have already' described the rise and fall of this Young 
Turk movement under such leaders as Talaat, Enver, Djemal, 
and their associates in the Committee of Union and Progress. 
The point which I am emphasising here is that this movement 
presupposed a complete transformation of Turkish mentality, 
especially in its attitude toward subject peoples. No longer, 
under the reformed Turkish State, were Greeks, Syrians, 
Armenians, and Jews to be regarded as "filthy Giaours." 
All these peoples were henceforth to have equal rights 
and equal duties. A general love feast now followed the 
establishment of the new regime, and scenes of almost frenzied 
reconciliation, in which Turks and Armenians embraced 
each other publicly, apparently signalised the absolute union 
of the once antagonistic peoples. The Turkish leaders, 
such as Talaat and Enver, visited Christian churches and 
sent forth prayers of thanksgiving for the new order, and 
went to Armenian cemeteries to shed tears of retribution 
over the bones of the martyred Armenians who lay there. 
Armenian priests reciprocally paid their tributes to the 
Turks in Mohammedan mosques. Enver Pasha visited 
several Armenian schools, telling the children that the old 
days of Moslem-Christian strife had passed for ever, and 
that the two peoples were now to live together as brothers 
and sisters. There were cynics who smiled at all these 
demonstrations, and yet one development encouraged even 
them to believe that an earthly Paradise had arrived. All 
tlirough the period of domination only the master Moslem 
had been permitted to bear arms and serve in the Ottoman 
Army. To be a soldier was an occupation altogether too 
manly and glorious for the despised Christian. But now 
the Young Turks encouraged all Christians to arm and 
enrolled them in the army on an equality with Moslems. 
These Christians fought, both as officers and soldiers, in the 
Italian and the Balkan wars, winning high praise from 
Turkish generals for their valour and skill. Armenian leaders 
had figured conspicuously in the Young Turk movement ; 
these men apparently believed that a constitutional Turkey 
was possible. They were conscious of their own intellectual 
and industrial superiority to the Turks, and knew that they 
could prosper in the Ottoman Empire if left alone, whereas, 
under European control, they would have greater difficulty 
in meeting the competition of the more rigorous European 
colonists who might come in. With the deposition of the 
Red Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and the establishment of a con- 
stitutional system, the Armenians now, for the first time 
in several centuries, felt themselves to be free men. 
But, as I have already described, all these aspirations 
vanished like a dream. Long before the European War 
began the Turkish democracy had disappeared. The power 
of the new Sultan had gone, and the hopes of regenerating 
Turkey on modern lines had gone also, leaving only a group 
of individuals, headed by Talaat and Enver, actually in 
possession of the State. Having lost their democratic aspira- 
tions, these men now supplanted it with a new national 
conception. In place of a democratic constitutional State 
they resurrected the idea of Pan-Turkism ; in place of equal 
treatment of all Ottomans, they decided to establish a country 
exclusively for Turks. I have called this a new conception ; 
yet it was new only to the individuals who then controlled 
the destiny of the Empire, for, in reality, it was merely an 
attempt to revive the most barbaric ideas of their ancestors. 
It represented, as I have said, merely an atavistic reversion 
to the original Turk. We now saw that the Turkish leaders, 
in talking about liberty, equality, fraternity, and constitu- 
tionalism, were merely children repeating phrases ; that 
they had used the word "democracy" merely as a ladder 
by which to climb to power. After five hundred years' 
close contact with European civilisation, the Turk remained 
precisely the same individual as the one who had emerged 
from the steppes of Asia in the Middle Ages. 
When the Turkish Government abrogated the Capitula- 
tions, and in this way freed themselves from the domination 
of the foreign Powers, they were merely taking one step 
toward realising this Pan-Turkish ideal. I have alluded to 
the difficulties which I had with them over the Christian 
schools. Their determination to uproot these — or, at least, 
to transform them into Turkish institutions — was merely 
another detail in the same racial progress. Similarly, they 
attempted to make all foreign business houses employ only 
Turkish labour, insisting that they should discharge their 
Greek, Armenian, and Jewish clerks, stenographers, work- 
men, and other employees. At one time they showed a 
disposition to make all foreign houses keep their books in 
Turkish, the idea being to furnish employment exclusively 
for Turks and to train them in modern business methods. 
I had some difficulty in arranging a compromise by which 
they could keep them in both French and Turkish. The 
Ottoman Government even refused, to have, any dealings 
with the representative of the largest Austrian munition 
maker unless he admitted a Turk as a partner. They 
developed a mania for suppressing all languages except 
Turkish. For decades French had been the accepted 
language of foreigners in Constantinople ; all street-signs were 
printed in both French and Turkish. One morning the 
astonished foreign residents discovered that all these French 
signs had been removed and that the names of streets, the 
directions on street cars, and other public notices, appeared 
only in those strange Turkish characters, which very few of 
them understood. 
{To be continued) 
