power of the Sublime Porte, which had so long overshadowed it, was shattered, The famous Turkish Constitution, which had served his purpose as a lightningconductor during the stormy beginning of his reign, had long since been consigned to oblivion, and its author, Midhat Pasha, to exile and death. He had made and unmade Grand Viziers and Ministers until those who held the empty titles were content to be nothing more than humble recipients of their master's orders and favours. Abdul Hamid seldom ventured forth from the seclusion of Yeldiz Kiosk, but so effectively had he gathered there into his hands the threads of the whole military and civil administration of the Empire that, as the Turks themselves used to say, not a single official between Baghdad and Scutari could change his coat without an imperial Iradé.

What exactly passed between Abdul Hamid and William II during that first visit has never yet been told, but host and guest parted mightily pleased with each other. The old Chancellor did not approve of the visit before the Emperor started. He approved of it still less when the Emperor returned full of the visions he had seen on the Bosphorus. Bismarck looked upon Constantinople as a profitable field for German statesmanship, in the service of a policy which was confined, on the principle of 'beati possidentes,' to a maintenance of Germany's hegemony in Europe. For William II Constantinople was already the bridge over which Germany was to pass out of Europe into Asia and enter upon a vast field of splendid adventure. In the following year Bismarck was dismissed, and the Emperor was free to steer his own course. The famous 'Reinsurance' Treaty with Russia was dropped; and, though various circumstances delayed for a good many years the outbreak of acute antagonism between Austria and Russia and at times even produced a temporary rapprochement between them, Austrian ascendancy in the Balkan peninsula and an ultimate advance upon Salonica became part and parcel of William II's great scheme for the creation of 'a Germanic wedge reaching from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.'

Combining with a vein of almost medieval mysticism a thorough appreciation of modern business practices, Vol. 222.-No. 442.

R

William II realised from the outset that the transformation of Germany into a World Empire, which he had set before himself as his life-work, could only be effected if economic expansion went hand in hand with political expansion. In order to bring Turkey permanently within the orbit of German world-policy, the first thing to do was to peg out Germany's claims in the domain of commerce, industry and finance. German manufacturers, German engineers, German capitalists overran Turkey. Already in 1888 the Deutsche Bank had obtained the right of working a short railway from the Bosphorus along a strip of the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora, which had originally been given to an English Company; and to this was added a concession for an extension to Angora, which, after the Emperor's visit, was pushed on with the utmost energy, and soon developed into a claim for German monopoly of railway enterprise throughout Asiatic Turkey. German trade increased by leaps and bounds. Her imports and exports, which in 1888 had not exceeded 700,000l., grew within a decade to over 3,000,000l. At Constantinople German influence was paramount, for it stuck scrupulously to its bargain never to worry the Sultan about administrative reforms or about the wrongs of his Christian subjects. On the contrary, when other Powers, and notably England, tried to curb Turkish misrule, Germany was always ready with a cold-water douche to deprecate any interference with the effective sovereignty of the Sultan.

On his side Abdul Hamid, secure in the covert support of Germany, began to cast off all restraint. He was no longer content to oppose mere inert obstruction to all projects of internal reform. The time, he thought, had arrived when he might, with impunity, teach his Christian subjects once for all to tremble and obey.' The results were written in some of the bloodiest pages of modern history. For two whole years Europe was horrified by a tale of long-drawn massacres throughout the Armenian provinces of Turkey, which culminated in 1896 in wholesale bloodshed in the very streets of Constantinople. Europe was horrified, but it was impotent. Germany was determined that the Concert of the Powers should remain, whatever happened, a' Concert des Impuissances.'

William II himself had, perhaps, some momentary qualms of conscience, for during his visit to Cowes in July 1895, just after Lord Salisbury's return to power, he alarmed that conservative statesman by unfolding vast scheme for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Possibly it was never very seriously meant. His fertile brain has often entertained almost simultaneously the most contradictory combinations. Possibly he wished merely to draw Lord Salisbury, for his most confidential moods are apt to be a mere device for probing the real sentiments of his interlocutor. On this occasion Lord Salisbury's cautious temperament induced him to eschew the honour of further confidences. The Emperor had graciously expressed a desire for another conversation on the following day. But Lord Salisbury hurried back to London, and the Emperor returned to Berlin nursing against him the double grievance of a personal slight and a diplomatic rebuff. Henceforth he put all his money on Abdul Hamid. Lord Salisbury might denounce the crimes of the Red Sultan' with unaccustomed severity at a Mansion House banquet; he might move the British Mediterranean fleet up to the Dardanelles; but, as soon as the question arose of translating menace into deeds, he found himself practically isolated. Italy alone would have followed his lead. Austria, as usual, took her cue from Berlin. Russia was absorbed in the Far-Eastern adventure into which German diplomacy was successfully elbowing her. France would not commit herself against the wishes of her Russian Ally. The wrongs of the unfortunate Armenians remained unredressed, though a few more paper reforms were added to those which already encumbered the pigeon-holes of the Sublime Porte; and Abdul Hamid remained unhurt, to enjoy the enhanced prestige which the heavy chastisement inflicted on his Christian subjects conferred upon him in the eyes of all true Believers.

The following year, 1897, added a yet greater triumph to Abdul Hamid's policy. Turkey went to war with Greece; and, though she derived little material benefit from her victories, Abdul Hamid was able to boast that, for the first time for upwards of a century, a Mahomedan Power had fought and defeated a Christian. The

Turkish victories were noised far and wide through the Islamic world; and India itself felt their effect all along the North-West frontier in the Tirah rising of 1898. In Europe Germany alone greeted with enthusiasm the success of the Turkish armies, which was a splendid advertisement for the German officers who had trained and equipped them. The Crown Princess of Greece was sister to the Emperor William; but dynastic ties were no more allowed to stand in his way than humanitarian scruples. As Prince Bülow admits in his 'Imperial Germany,' the relations of Germany with Turkey were 'not of a sentimental nature'; they served Germany's interests from the industrial, military and political points of view.' So, in the autumn of 1898, while Abdul Hamid's hands were still dripping with the blood of his Armenian subjects and the laurels of his victories over Greece were still fresh on his brow, William II, accompanied by the Empress, proceeded on a second pilgrimage to Turkey; and on this occasion a State visit to Constantinople was followed by a sensational progress through Palestine and Syria. The German Emperor entered Jerusalem as a Knight Templar, and masqueraded at the Holy Shrines of the Christian faith as the protector of Christendom. But a week later, at Damascus, he proclaimed himself with still greater emphasis the protector of Pan-Islamism, and, to quote Prince Bülow again, defined what was to be henceforth the position of Germany not merely towards Turkey, but towards Turkey and Islam.'

From that moment Germany had it all her own way at Constantinople. There was nothing that the Sultan could refuse to the mighty ruler who had for the first time publicly recognised his title as Khalif and thus endorsed the greatest of his ambitions. The German exploitation of the whole Ottoman Empire proceeded apace. Within the next twelve months the first convention was signed between Dr Siemens, Director of the Deutsche Bank, and the Sublime Porte, conceding in principle to the German Anatolian Railway Company the right to extend down to the Persian Gulf. A commission of German engineers, headed by the German Consul-General Stemrich, and including the German Military Attaché at Constantinople, was immediately

sent to report upon the land tracé, while a German cruiser visited the Persian Gulf in order to discover the most suitable point for a terminus in its waters.

The railways of European Turkey had already passed under the control of the Deutsche Bank group, which had its satellites in South Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and the new concession promised the early fulfilment of the great Pan-Germanic scheme, already known in Berlin as the B.B.B. (Berlin-Byzantium-Baghdad). It was undoubtedly a grandiose scheme; and not the least of its merits was that of inducing the Turkish Government to grant a handsome kilometric guarantee for the whole of the great trunk-line from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf and all its numerous feeders. Germany was thus able to place the financial burden on the shoulders of the Turkish taxpayers, while securing for her own people all the profits of a long succession of lucrative financial operations. The final convention for the Baghdad Railway was signed, sealed and delivered in 1902. Excepting, perhaps, the Manchurian Railway concession, which Russia had wrested some years previously from China, it was the most remarkable charter ever granted by one independent State to another. Perhaps the most effective bait held out to the Sultan was the linking up of the Baghdad system with the new railway which he was bent on building to the Sacred Cities of Medina and Mecca. What more splendid monument to the vitality of Pan-Islamism than a railway carried across inhospitable deserts to serve so pious a purpose, and built under the auspices of the Khalif with the help of contributions from contributions from the Faithful throughout the whole Mahomedan world? Nor was

that all. Designed and constructed under the supervision of German engineers, its political object was to render communications between Constantinople and the Holy Places independent of the command of the sea; and the attempt made by Abdul Hamid in 1906 to get a footing in the Sinaitic peninsula and shift the Turkish frontier closer up to the Suez Canal showed clearly enough the strategic considerations which the Sultan and his German advisers already had in mind.

No State has ever organised and controlled the power of modern finance for the prosecution of a national