y increased this year, for Germany
has, though needing artificial manures badly herself, sent large
quantities into Turkey, where they will be more profitably employed. She
has no fear about securing the produce. This augmented yield will, it is
true, not be adequate to supply the needs of Turkey, who for the last
two years has suffered from very acute food shortage, which in certain
districts has amounted to famine and wholesale starvation of the poorer
classes. But it is unlikely that their needs will be considered at all,
for Germany's needs (she, the fairy godmother of the Pan-Turk ideal)
must obviously have the first call on such provisions as are obtainable.
Thus, in the new preserved meat factory at Aidin, the whole of the
produce is sent to Germany. Thus, too, though in February 1917 there was
a daily shortage in Smyrna of 700 sacks of flour, and the Arab and
Greek population was starving, no flour at all was allowed to be
imported into Smyrna. But simultaneously Germany was making huge
purchases of fish, meat, and flour in Constantinople (paid for in German
paper), including 100,000 sheep. Yet such was the villainous selfishness
of the famine-stricken folk at Adrianople that, when the trains
containing these supplies were passing through, a mob held them up and
sold the contents to the inhabitants. That, however, was an isolated
instance, and in any case a law was passed in October 1916, appointing a
military commission to control all supplies. It enacts that troops shall
be supplied first, and specially ordains that the requirements of German
troops come under this head. (Private firms have been expressly
prohibited from purchasing these augmented wheat supplies, but special
permission was given in 1915 to German and Austro-Hungarian societies to
buy.) A few months later we find that there are a hundred deaths daily
in Constantinople from starvation, and two hundred in Smyrna, where
there is a complete shortage of oil. But oil is still being sent to
Germany, and during 1916 five hundred reservoirs of oil were sent there,
each containing up to 15,000 kilogrammes. Similarly during this summer
the price of fruit has gone up in Smyrna, for the Germans have reopened
certain factories for preserving it and turning it into jam, which is
being sent to Germany. The sugar is supplied from the new beet-fields of
Konia. But Kultur must be supplied first, else Kultur would grow lean,
and the Turkish God of Love will look aft