n Egypt. It might even
overturn the British Empire in India. This would be the greatest
possible service any one could render Germany, and it might be one which
Germany could accomplish in no other way. If the Triple Entente was the
greatest foe of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Germanism should be its greatest
friend. Where ambition and interest coincide, co-operation is simple.

[Sidenote: Reorganization of Turkey.]

In complete accord, therefore, the Germans and the Turks undertook the
reorganization of Turkey above five years or more ago. They saw with
clear vision the real truth about Turkey. With engaging candor they laid
the blame for the deficiencies of Turkish government upon England and
France and declared them the work of intention. Turkey, they saw, was
not a nation in the European sense of the word; it was not even a single
race. It was not a geographical unit by any means, but a series of
districts on the whole geographically disconnected. Far from being an
economic unit with a single interest vital to all its inhabitants, it
produced nothing essential to the outside world which its inhabitants
could depend upon exchanging for European manufactured goods.

[Sidenote: Turkey's economic interests.]

Its economic interests were potential rather than real; its trade, the
result of its strategic position rather than of the interests and the
capacity of its population. Normally and naturally the Turk should be a
middleman, a distributor rather than a producer. He was placed in
control of the continental roads between Asia and Central Europe, and
was able to control the overland trade as soon as it emerged from the
Caucasus or the Persian Gulf, and maintain that control until the
continental highway passed into the defiles of the Balkans beyond
Adrianople. Constantinople itself, controlling the narrow passage which
formed the exit of the Black Sea, was in a position to foster or hinder
the entire trade of southern Russia with the rest of the world. In fact,
it was impossible to deny, and the Germans thoroughly well understood
it, that the trade of the East with Europe and the trade of Russia with
the rest of the world might pass through Turkey, but was not likely to
stay there.

[Sidenote: Turkey's important strategic position.]

In this important strategic position, economically valuable to others
but not to its inhabitants, had been collected a peculiar and
extraordinary conglomeration of races, creeds, and interests;