by the Moslem world; they lost it
in deed when the Sherif of Mekka asserted his rights as the legitimate
guardian of the Holy Cities, drove out the Ottoman garrison from Mekka,
and allied himself with the other independent princes of Arabia. All the
props of Ottoman dominion in Asia have fallen away, but nothing dooms it
so surely as the breath of life that is stirring over the dormant lands
and peoples once more. The cutting of the Suez Canal has led the
highways of commerce back to the Nearer East; the democracy and
nationalism of Europe have been extending their influence over Asiatic
races. On whatever terms the War is concluded, one far-reaching result
is certain already: there will be a political and economic revival in
Western Asia, and the direction of this will not be in Ottoman hands.

We are thus witnessing the foundation of a new era as momentous, if not
as dramatic, as Alexander's passage of the Dardanelles. The Ottoman
vesture has waxed old, and something can be discerned of the new forms
that are emerging from beneath it; their outstanding features are worth
our attention.

II

The new Turkish Nationalism is the immediate factor to be reckoned
with. It is very new--newer than the Young Turks, and sharply opposed to
the original Young Turkish programme--but it has established its
ascendancy. It decided Turkey's entry into the War, and is the key to
the current policy of the Ottoman Government.

The Young Turks were not Nationalists from the beginning; the "Committee
of Union and Progress" was founded in good faith to liberate and
reconcile all the inhabitants of the Empire on the principles of the
French Revolution. At the Committee's congress in 1909 the Nationalists
were shouted down with the cry: "Our goal is organisation and nothing
else[3]." But Young Turkish ideals rapidly narrowed. Liberalism gave way
to Panislamism, Panislamism to Panturanianism, and the "Ottoman State
Idea" changed from "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to the
Turkification of non-Turkish nationalities by force.

"The French Ideal," writes the Nationalist Tekin Alp in _Thoughts on the
Nature and Plan of a Greater Turkey_, "is in contradiction to the needs
and conditions of the age." By contrast, "the Turkish national movement
does not exhibit the failings of the earlier movements. It is in every
way adapted to the intellectual standard and feelings of the nation. It
also keeps pace with the ideas of the age, which h