Bey to attend in a strictly honorary
capacity. And Talaat Bey goes back to Constantinople with a strictly
honorary sword of honour. Or else he gives one to William II. from his
_soi-disant_ master, the Sultan, or takes one back to his _soi-disant_
master from his real master. For no one knows better than William II.
the use that swords of honour play in deeds of dishonour.

The object of this chapter is to trace and mount the hewn and solid
staircase of steps by which Germany's present supremacy over Turkey was
achieved.

Apart from the quiet spade-work that had been going on for some years,
Germany made no important move till the moment when, in 1909, the Young
Turk party, after the forced abdication of Abdul Hamid, proclaimed the
aims and ideals of the new regime. At once Germany saw her opportunity,
for here, with her help, might arise the strong Turkey which she
desired to see, instead of the weak Turkey which all the other European
Powers had been keeping on a lowering diet for so long (desirous only
that it should not quite expire), and from that moment she began to
lend, or rather let, to Turkey in ever-increasing quantities, the
resources of her scientific and her military knowledge. It was in her
interests, if Turkey was to be of use to her, that she should educate,
and irrigate, and develop the unexploited treasures of human material,
of fertility and mineral wealth; and Germany's gold, her schools, her
laboratories were at Turkey's disposal. But in every case she, as in
duty bound to her people, saw that she got very good value for her
outlay.

Here, then, was the great psychological moment when Germany instantly
moved. The Young Turks proclaimed that they were going to weld the
Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole, and by a piece
of brilliant paradoxical reasoning Germany determined that it was she
who was going to do it for them. In flat contradiction of the spirit of
their manifestoes, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived
and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of
the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference!
They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born
Turkish babe, and they nursed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and
soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it
arose from its cradle a baby no more, but a great Prussian guardsman who
shouted, 'Deutschland ue