rmenia, the Turks put the leaders out of the way before they attacked
the nation as a whole; most of the Syrian bishops had been deported or
driven into hiding; by the beginning of March, 1916, it was reckoned
that 816 Arabs in Syria and 117 in Mesopotamia had already been
condemned to death with the confiscation of their property. A Turkish
officer, taking our informant for a Turk too, remarked to him: "Those
Arabs wish to get rid of us and are secretly in sympathy with our
enemies, but we mean to get rid of them ourselves before they have any
chance of translating their sympathy into action." This caps what a
Turkish gendarme in Armenia said to a Danish sister serving with the
German Red Cross: "First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, then
the Kurds[14]." Every non-Turkish nationality in the Ottoman Empire is
threatened with extermination.

But the aims of Turkish Nationalists are not limited by the Ottoman
frontiers. If they are resolved to clear their Empire of every
non-Turkish element, that is only a step towards extending it over
everything Turkish that lies outside. The Turks have not only aliens to
get rid of, but an irredenta to win.

"The Ottoman Turks," Tekin Alp reminds his readers, "now only represent
a tenth of the whole Turkish nation. There are now sixty to seventy
million Turkish subjects of various states in the world, who should
succeed in giving the nation an important place among the other Powers.
Unfortunately, there is no connexion between the separate groups, which
are distributed over great tracts of land. Their aspirations and
national institutions still divide them.... Now that the Ottoman Turks
have awakened from their sleep of centuries they do not only think of
themselves, but hasten to save the other parts of their race who are
living in slavery or ignorance....

"Turkish irredentism may be directed towards material or moral reforms
according to circumstances. If the geographical position favours the
venture, the Turks can free their brothers from foreign rule. In the
other case, they can carry it on on moral or intellectual lines.

"Irredentism, which other nations may regard as a luxury--though often a
very terrible and costly one--is a political and social necessity for
the Turks.... If all the Turks in the world were welded into one huge
community, a strong nation would be formed, worthy to take an important
place among the other nations of the world[15]."

This may be a dr