presses the indictment:

"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a
handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does not
become more productive if it destroys its most industrious population.
You do not advance the progress of civilisation if you drive into the
desert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wasted
opportunities, the element in your population which shows the greatest
economic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and the
greatest energy in every respect, and which was fitted by nature to
build the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own sense
of right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity of
an unpopular war may temporarily be promoted among the Turkish masses by
the destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements--the
Armenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks,
Maronites, and Jews--but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realise the
whole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economic
ruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that the
Turkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"--it is
a German writing--"by victories at the front."

"We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an American
travelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence
it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race,
striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading
place[24]."

What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his
fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?

The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for the
last thirty years. They have organised regular steamship services
between German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-German
trade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in the
Ottoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debt
was first placed under international administration, Germany held only
4.7 per cent., of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey's
creditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent., and was second only to
France[25]. Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of any
other foreign Power, have brought valuable concessions in their
train--harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, irrigation works
in the Konia oasis and the Adana plain,