anointed, and enthroned. Power passed from the Crown, not, as
expected, to the people and its representatives, but into the hands of a
youthful adventurer, in German pay, who has led his country from one
folly to another.

Turkey did not want to fight, but she had no choice, and so she was
dragged in by the heels. She has lost much besides her independence. The
crafty German has drained her of supplies while giving naught in return.
The German's policy is to strive throughout for a weak Turkey. The
weaker Turkey can be made, the better will it be for Germany, which
hopes still, no matter what may happen elsewhere, so to manipulate
things as to dominate the Ottoman Empire after the war.

Turkey is still a rich country, in spite of her enormous sacrifices in
the past decade. She has been exploited from end to end by the German
adventurer, who will continue the process of bleeding so long as there
is safety in the method; but Turkey is beginning to ask herself, as does
the figure of the fat Pasha in the cartoon: "And is this all the
compensation I get?" An Iron Cross does not pay for the loss of half a
million good soldiers. Yet that is the exact measure of Turkey's reward.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

[Illustration: THE ORDER OF MERIT

TURKEY: "And is this all the compensation I get?"]

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THE MARSHES OF PINSK

In what are we most like our kinsmen the Germans, and in what most
unlike? I was convicted of Teutonism when first, in Germany, I ate "brod
und butter," and found the words pronounced in an English way, slurred.
But if we are like the Germans in the names of simple and childish
things, we grow more unlike them, we draw farther apart from them, as we
grow up. We love war less and less, as they love it more. We love our
word of honour more and more as they, for the love of war, love their
word less.

There is no nation in the world more unlike us; because there is no war
so perfect, so conscious, so complete as the German. And being thus
all-predominant, German war is the greatest of outrages on life and
death. We English have a singular degree of respect for the dead. It has
no doubt expressed itself in some slight follies and vulgarities, such
as certain funeral customs, not long gone by; but such respect is a
national virtue and emotion. No nation loving war harbours that virtue.
And in noth