Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  These Jewish settlers then were left in peace; from minuteness they escaped the notice of the Young Turk party in its schemes for the complete Ottomanisation of the Empire, and, until the present year 1917, no mention of ‘the Jewish question’ was propounded. But it will he remembered that in 1915, certain Jewish refugees, taking warning from the Armenian massacres, fled to Egypt, and there founded a Zionist mule-corps, which served under the English in the Gallipoli campaign. It seems very probable that it was this that directed the attention of Jemal the Great to the Jewish colonies in Palestine: possibly it was merely that he was a more thorough Ottomaniser than his colleagues in Constantinople. In any case he ordered the ‘deportation’ of all Jews from Jaffa, Gaza, and other agricultural districts. All Jews were commanded to leave Jaffa within forty-eight hours, no means of transport was given them, and they were forbidden to take with them either provisions or any of their belongings. Eight thousand Jews were evicted from Jaffa alone, and their houses were pillaged, and they robbed, maltreated, and many were murdered. Thus, and in no other way had the massacres of the Armenians begun, and, that there should be no mistake about it, Jemal threatened them explicitly with the fate of the Armenians. Next day Ludd was evacuated also; the evacuation of Haifa and Jerusalem was threatened, and artillery was sent to Jerusalem. There can be no doubt in fact that Jemal planned and began to carry out a massacre of all Jews.

  At that point the Germans intervened, and for the present (but only for the present, for so long in fact as Germany has complete control over all Turkish internal affairs, in which she protested she could not meddle) the Jewish colonies in Palestine seem to be safe.[] The German chief of the General Staff telegraphed to Berlin that the ‘military considerations’ on which Jemal based his deportations did not exist, and Herr Cohn in the Reichstag drew the Imperial Chancellor’s attention to this. How seriously the menace was regarded in Germany, and how far the deportations had gone may be gathered from his words, ‘Is the Imperial Chancellor prepared to influence the Turkish Government in such a manner as to prevent with certainty — so far as this is still possible — a repetition in Palestine of the Armenian atrocities?’ This was sufficient: Germany, who could not dream of interfering in Turkish internal affairs when only the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was concerned, sent her order, and, for the present, Jemal the Great has been unable to proceed with the solution of the Jewish question in Turkey, which he had just discovered. We need not yet in fact give Jemal his Jew. But some sort of explanation to soothe the exasperation of the Turks in not being allowed to murder when and how and where they pleased, was thought advisable, and the explanation (an extraordinarily significant one) was given in an inspired paragraph of the Frankfurter Zeitung not long after. ‘The valuable structure of Zionist cultural work, in which the German Empire must have well founded interest in view of future and very promising trade relations, will, it is very much to be hoped, be preserved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary. Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine where practically no Turks dwell.’

  This view seems to be borne out by subsequent events, for the Jews evacuated from Jaffa have been permitted to return owing to the intervention of the Spanish Government. It is not hard to guess who prompted that.

  We may take it, then, that with regard to the projected Jewish massacres, quite clearly foreshadowed by the schemes of deportation from Jaffa and Gaza, Germany has made strong representations to the Ottoman Government. She did not do so (indeed she officially refused to do so) when the Armenian massacres began, for she could not interfere in Turkey’s internal affairs. But now she has discovered that Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine, and thus, with amazing astuteness, has provided herself with a reason for interfering, while still not giving up the policy of non-interference in Turkish affairs, for Turkey, she has discovered, has no affairs in Palestine. At the same time she guards herself from diplomatic defeat by the hope that Zionist cultural work will be saved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary. In other words, supposing Jemal the Great got completely out of hand, and proceeded to indiscriminate massacre of the Jews, Germany would doubtless accept his plea that military requirements had made it necessary.... And we were once so ignorant as to assure ourselves that Germany had no notions of diplomacy!

  The full significance of her intervention on behalf of the Jews, when neither the extermination of the Armenians, the persecution of the Arabs, nor the deportation of the Greeks moved Germany to any decided action or energetic protest, must be left, in so far as it concerns the future, to another chapter. But as regards the present and the past it will be useful to consider here what has prompted her to make a protest (which we may regard, so long as her foot is on the neck of the Turks, as having been successful) against these projected massacres. Certainly it was not humanity; it was not the faintest desire to save innocent people in general from being murdered wholesale, for in the similar case of the Armenians, her bowels of compassion were not moved. Or, possibly, if we incline to lenience, we may say that she was sorry for the Armenians, but could not then risk a disagreement with their murderers who were her allies, whereas now, feeling herself more completely dominant over the Turks than she then did, she could risk being peremptory, especially since there was that saving clause about military requirements. For during the Armenian massacres, the Dardanelles expedition was still on the shores of Gallipoli, and the menace to Constantinople acute. It was possible that if she opposed a firm front to the Armenian massacres, the Turks, already on the verge of despair with regard to saving the capital from capture, might have made terms with the Allies. But now no such imminence of danger threatened them, and, with Germany’s domination over them vastly more secure than it had been in 1915, she could afford to treat them less as allies and more as a conquered people. This alone might have accounted for her unprecedented impulse of humanity in the minds of those who still attribute such instincts to her, but she had far stronger reasons than that for wanting to save the Jews of Palestine.

  Her policy with regard to them is set forth in a pamphlet by Dr. Davis Treitsch, called Die Jüden der Türkei, published in 1915, which is a most illuminating little document. These Jewish colonies, as we have seen, came from Russia, and as Germany realised, long before the war, they might easily form a German nucleus in the Near East, for they largely consisted of German-speaking Jews, akin in language and blood to a most important element in her own population. ‘In a certain sense,’ says Dr. Treitsch, ‘the Jews are a Near Eastern element in Germany and a German element in Turkey.’ He goes on with unerring acumen to lament the exodus of German-speaking Jews to the United States and to England. ‘Annually some 100,000 of these are lost to Germany, the empire of the English language and the economic system that goes with it is being enlarged, while a German asset is being proportionately depreciated.... It will no longer do simply to close the German frontiers to them, and in view of the difficulties which would result from a wholesale migration of Jews into Germany itself, Germans will only be too glad to find a way out in the emigration of those Jews to Turkey — a solution extraordinarily favourable to the interests of all three parties concerned.’

  Here, then, is the matter in a nutshell: Germany, wide-awake as ever, saw long ago the advantage to her of a growing Jewish population from the Pale in Turkey. She was perhaps a little overloaded with them herself, but in this immigration from Russia to Palestine she saw the formation of a colony that was well worth German protection, and the result of the war, provided the Palestinian immigrants were left in peace, would be to augment very largely the number of those settling there. ‘Galicia,’ says Dr. Treitsch, ‘and the western provinces of Russia, which between them contain more than half the Jews in the world, have suffered more from the war than any other region. Jewish homes have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, and there is no doubt whatever that, as a result of the war,
there will be an emigration of East European Jews on an unprecedented scale.’ This emigration, then, to Palestine was, in Germany’s view, a counter-weight to the 100,000 annually lost to her through emigration to America and England. With her foot on Turkey’s neck she had control over these German-speaking Jews, and saw in them the elements of a German colony. Her calculations, it is true, were somewhat upset by the development of the Zionist movement, by which those settlers declared themselves to have a nationality of their own, and a language of their own, and Dr. Treitsch concedes that. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘in addition to Hebrew, to which they are more and more inclined, the Jews must have a world-language, and this can only be German.’

  This, then, in brief, and only up to the present, is the story of how the Jewish massacres were stayed. The Jews were potential Germans, and Germany, who sat by with folded hands when Arabs and Armenians were led to torture and death, put up a warning finger, and, for the present, saved them. In her whole conduct of the war, nothing has been more characteristic than her ‘verboten’ to one projected massacre and her acquiescence in others. But, as for her having saved the Jews out of motives of humanity, ‘Credant Judaei!’

  CHAPTER V: DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH

  It was commonly said at the beginning of this war that, whatever Germany’s military resources might be, she was hopelessly and childishly lacking in diplomatic ability and in knowledge of psychology, from which all success in diplomacy is distilled. As instances of this grave defect, people adduced the fact that, apparently, she had not anticipated the entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her treatment of Belgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced to be not a crime merely, but a blunder of the stupidest sort. It is perfectly true that Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in the light of innumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the psychology of civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till now, at any rate, of ‘having got the hang of it’ at all. But critics of her diplomacy failed to see the root-fact that she did not understand it merely because it did not interest her. It was not worth her while to master the psychology of other civilised nations, since she was out not to understand them, but to conquer them. She had all the information she wanted about their armies and navies and guns and ammunition neatly and correctly tabulated. Why, then, since this was all that concerned her, should she cram her head with irrelevant information about what they might feel on the subject of gas-attacks or the torpedoing of neutral ships without warning? As long as her fumes were deadly and her submarines subtle, nothing further concerned her.

  But Europe generally made a great mistake in supposing that Germany could not learn psychology, and the process of its distillation into diplomacy when it interested her. The psychology of the French and English was a useless study, for she was merely going to fight them, but for years she had been studying with an industry and a patience that put our diplomacy to shame (as was most swiftly and ignominiously proven when it came into conflict with hers) the psychology of the Turks. For years she had watched the dealings of the Great Powers with Turkey, but she had never really associated herself with that policy. She sat quietly by and saw how it worked. Briefly it was this. For a hundred years Turkey had been kept alive in Europe by the sedulous attentions of the Physician Powers, who dared not let him die for fear of the stupendous quarrels which would instantly arise over his corpse. So there they all sat round his bed, and kept him alive with injections of strychnine and oxygen, and, no less, by a policy of rousing and irritating the patient. All through the reign of Abdul Hamid they persevered: Great Britain plucked his pillow from him, so to speak, by her protectorate of Egypt; Russia tweaked Eastern Rumelia from him; France deprived him of his hot-water bottle when she snatched at the Constantinople quays, and they all shook and slapped him when he went to war with Greece in 1896, and instantly deprived him of the territory he had won in Thessaly. That was the principle of European diplomacy towards Turkey, and from it Germany always held aloof.

  But from about the beginning of the reign of the present German Emperor, German or rather Prussian diplomacy had been going quietly about its work. It was worth while to study the psychology of the Turks, because dimly then, but with ever-increasing distinctness, Germany foresaw that Turkey might be a counter of immense importance in the great conflict which was assuredly drawing nearer, though as yet its existence was but foreshadowed by the most distant reflections of summer lightning on a serene horizon. But if Turkey was to be of any profit to her, she wanted a strong Turkey who could fight with her (or rather for her), and she had no use for the Sick Man whom the other Powers were bent on keeping alive, but no more. Her own eventual domination of Turkey was always the end in view, but she wanted to dominate not a weak but a strong servant. And her diplomacy was not less than brilliant simply from the fact that on the one hand it soothed Turkey instead of irritating, and, on the other, that it went absolutely unnoticed for a long time. Nobody knew that it was going on. She sent officers to train the Turkish army, well knowing what magnificent material Anatolia afforded, and she had thoroughly grasped the salient fact that to make any way with Oriental peoples your purse must be open and your backshish unlimited. ‘There is no God but backshish, and the Deutsche Bank is his prophet.’

  For years this went on very quietly, and all over the great field of the Ottoman Empire the first tiny blades of the crop that Germany was sowing began to appear. To-day that crop waves high, and covers the whole field with its ripe and fruitful ears. For to-day Turkey is neither more nor less than a German colony, and more than makes up to her for the colonies she has lost and hopes to regain. She knows that perfectly well, and so do any who have at all studied the history and the results of her diplomacy there. Even Turkey itself must, as in an uneasy dream, be faintly conscious of it. For who to-day is the Sultan of Turkey? No other than William II. of Germany. It is in Berlin that his Cabinet meets, and sometimes he asks Talaat Bey to attend in a strictly honorary capacity. And Talaat Bey goes back to Constantinople with a strictly honorary sword of honour. Or else he gives one to William II. from his soi-disant master, the Sultan, or takes one back to his soi-disant master from his real master. For no one knows better than William II. the use that swords of honour play in deeds of dishonour.

  The object of this chapter is to trace and mount the hewn and solid staircase of steps by which Germany’s present supremacy over Turkey was achieved.

  Apart from the quiet spade-work that had been going on for some years, Germany made no important move till the moment when, in 1909, the Young Turk party, after the forced abdication of Abdul Hamid, proclaimed the aims and ideals of the new regime. At once Germany saw her opportunity, for here, with her help, might arise the strong Turkey which she desired to see, instead of the weak Turkey which all the other European Powers had been keeping on a lowering diet for so long (desirous only that it should not quite expire), and from that moment she began to lend, or rather let, to Turkey in ever-increasing quantities, the resources of her scientific and her military knowledge. It was in her interests, if Turkey was to be of use to her, that she should educate, and irrigate, and develop the unexploited treasures of human material, of fertility and mineral wealth; and Germany’s gold, her schools, her laboratories were at Turkey’s disposal. But in every case she, as in duty bound to her people, saw that she got very good value for her outlay.

  Here, then, was the great psychological moment when Germany instantly moved. The Young Turks proclaimed that they were going to weld the Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole, and by a piece of brilliant paradoxical reasoning Germany determined that it was she who was going to do it for them. In flat contradiction of the spirit of their manifestoes, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference! They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born Turkish babe, and they nu
rsed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it arose from its cradle a baby no more, but a great Prussian guardsman who shouted, ‘Deutschland über Allah!’

  Only once was there a check in the growth of the Prussian infant, and that was no more than a childish ailment. For when the Balkan wars broke out the Turkish army was in the transitional stage. Its German tutors had not yet had time to inspire the army with German discipline and tradition; they had only weeded out, so to speak, the old Turkish spirit, the blind obedience to the Ministers of the Shadow of God. The Shadow of God, in fact, in the person of the Sultan, had been dragged out into the light, and his Shadow had grown appreciably less. In consequence there was not at this juncture any cohesion in the army, and it suffered reverse after reverse. But a strong though a curtailed Turkey was more in accordance with Prussian ideas than a weak and sprawling one, and Germany bore the Turkish defeats very valiantly. And that was the only set-back that this Pan-Prussian youngster experienced, and it was no more than an attack of German measles which he very quickly got over. For two or three years German influence wavered, then recovered, ‘with blessings on the falling out, that all the more endears.’

  It is interesting to see how Germany adapted the Pan-Turkish ideal to her own ends, and, by a triumphant vindication of Germany’s methods, the best account of this Pan-Turkish ideal is to be found in a publication of 1915 by Tekin Alp, which was written as German propaganda and by Germany disseminated broadcast over the Turkish Empire. An account of this movement has already been given in Chapter II., as far as the Turkish side of it is concerned, and it remains only to enumerate the German contribution to the fledging of this new Turkish Phoenix. The Turkish language and the Turkish Allah, God of Love, in whose name the Armenians were tortured and massacred, were the two wings on which it was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among them a Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen branches of it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a Turkish Guiji or gymnastic club, and an Izji or boy scouts’ club. A union of merchants worked for the same object in districts where hitherto trade had been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared on their shops that only Turkish labour was employed. Religious funds also were used for similar economic restoration.