Italy he had fought well and organized the Arab and
other native troops under conditions of great difficulty, winning
laurels which have not yet withered. A Pole by extraction, Enver Pasha
is a Prussian by training and sympathies, and a Turk by language and
religion and by his marriage with a daughter of the Sultan. Political
sense he has none. His one ideal was to earn the appreciation of the
Prussian military authorities, to whom he looks up as a fervid
disciple to peerless masters. German military praise melts his manhood
and turns his brain. He possesses a dictatorial temper with none of
the essential qualities of a dictator, and in the field he is
distinguished, I am told, by splendid valour without an inkling of
scientific strategy.

It was that Polish Turk and his German masters who formally made war
upon Russia, France and Britain.[75] And the Turkish nation had no
opportunity to sanction or veto their resolve. Nay, even the majority
of the Cabinet, including the Grand Vizier, had had no say on the
issue, were not even informed of what was being done until overt acts
of hostility had actually clinched the matter. Indeed, there was a
majority of Cabinet Ministers in favour of neutrality, but it was
ignored. In this way Turkey threw in her lot with the Teutons,[76] to
the astonishment of the Allies, who had hoped that a policy of
forbearance and meekness would elicit a friendly response and
frustrate the effect of the master strokes by which Germany, during a
long series of years, had consolidated her ascendancy over Turkey and
obtained the command of the Ottoman army. The childish notion that a
sudden exhibition of pacific intentions and goodwill is enough to foil
the carefully laid schemes of a clever enemy which have been maturing
for decades, is the refrain that runs through the history of our
foreign policy for the last thirty or forty years. And not only
through the history of our foreign policy. Faith in the sacramental
efficacy of an improvisation is a trait common to all the Allies, but
in the British nation it is the faith that is expected to move
mountains.

[75] November 3, 1914.

[76] On October 25, 1908, after having studied the origins of
the Turkish Revolution and the antecedents of its authors,
and while all Europe was still warmly congratulating the
Young Turks on their bloodless victory and moderation, I
dispatched the following telegraphic message to the _Daily