h
strategic railway-building since the outbreak of war; but it is
infinitely remote in purpose from the economic regeneration of Western
Asia, and even when the German publicists reckon in economic values they
generally betray their political design.

"The special point for Germany," Dr. Wiedenfeld lays down, in discussing
the agricultural possibilities of the Ottoman territories, "is that to a
large extent crops can be grown here which supplement our own economic
resources in important respects.... In peace time, of course, no one
would think of transporting goods of such bulk as agricultural products
any way but by sea; but the War has impressed on us with brutal
clearness the value for us of being able on occasions of extreme
necessity to import cotton from Turkey by land."

Thus Germany's economic activity in Turkey has been not for prosperity
but for power, not for peace but for war. In developing Turkey, Germany
is simply developing the "Central Europe" scheme of a military combine
self-contained economically and challenging the world in arms[29].
Germany is concerned with Turkey, not for her splendid past and future,
but for her miserable present; for Turkey--as she is, and only as she
is--is a vital chequer on the chess-board where Germany has been playing
her game of world power, or "des staatlich-machtlichen Interessens," as
Dr. Wiedenfeld would say. Therefore Germany does not eye the lands and
peoples under Ottoman dominion with a view to their common advantage and
her own. She selects a "piece" among them which she can keep under her
thumb and so control the square. Abd-ul-Hamid was her first pawn, and
when the Young Turk Party swept him off the board she adopted them and
their colour[30]; for by hook or by crook, through this agency or that,
Turkey had to be commanded or Germany's play was spoilt.

Germany's control over Turkey depends upon the maintenance of a corrupt
minority in power--too weak and corrupt to remain in it without
Germany's guarantee, and corrupt enough, when secured in it, to put it
at Germany's disposal. A free hand at home in return for servitude in
diplomacy and war--the deal is called "Hegemony," and is as old as
Ancient Greece. By her hegemony over the Ottoman Government Germany
threatens the British and Russian Empires from all the Ottoman
frontiers; and with the free hand that is their price the Young Turks
inflict on all lands and peoples within those frontiers whatever evils
c