Henry Morgenthau

“ The ultimate significance of all this desolation was that Russia was blockaded and completely isolated from her allies. How much that one fact has meant in the history of the world for the last three years! And now England and France were seeking to overcome this disadvantage; to link up their own military resources with those of their great eastern ally, and to restore to the Dardanelles and the Marmora the thousands of ships that meant Russia’s existence as a military and economic, and even, as subsequent events have shown, as a political, Power. ”

“ All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children, must fulfil their duty so that the gleam may not fade away, but give light to us forever. How many great things can be accomplished by the arms of vigorous men, by the aid of others, of women and children!... The time for action has come. We shall all have to fight with all our strength, with all our soul, with teeth and nails, with all the sinews of our bodies and of our spirits. If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured. ”

“ How would the Government treat its resident enemies? Would it intern them, establish concentration camps, pursue them with German malignity, and perhaps apply the favourite Turkish measure with Christians—torture and massacre? Thousands of enemy subjects were then living in the Ottoman Empire. Many of them had spent their whole lives there; others had even been born on Ottoman soil. All these people, when Turkey entered the war, had every reason to expect the harshest kind of treatment. It is no exaggeration to say that most of them lived in constant fear of murder. ”

“ The twenty-years' campaign of the Kaiser to destroy England's influence and to become England's successor had finally triumphed, and the blaze in Sir Louis's chancery was really the funeral pyre of England's vanished power in Turkey. As I looked upon this dignified and yet somewhat pensive diplomat, sitting there amid all the splendours of the British Embassy, I naturally thought of how once the sultans had bowed with fear and awe before the majesty of England, in the days when Prussia and Germany were little more than names. ”

“ Arabs, bootless and shoeless, dressed in their most gaily-coloured garments, with long linen bags, containing the required five days’ rations, thrown over their shoulders, shambling in their gait and bewildered in their manner, touched shoulders with equally dispirited Bedouins, evidently suddenly snatched from the desert. A motley aggregation of Turks, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and Jews, showing signs of having been summarily taken from their farms and shops, constantly jostled one another. ”

“ Instead of a nation of nearly 20,000,000, developing happily along democratic lines, enjoying suffrage, building up their industry and agriculture, laying the foundations for universal education, sanitation, and general progress, I saw that Turkey consisted of merely so many inarticulate, ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves, with a small, wicked oligarchy at the top, which was prepared to use them in the way that would best promote its private interests. ”

“ The United States gave us a friendly reception and a home, and made us prosperous and happy. There are many millions just like us; there is no business opportunity and no social position that is not open to us. I do not believe that there is a more contented people in the world than the so-called German-Americans. We have one loyalty and one love, and that is for the United States. Take my children—they are German-Americans of the second generation. Their sympathies all through this war have been with England and her Allies. ”

“ In the early days Wangenheim had explained to me one of Germany's main purposes in forcing Turkey into the conflict. He made this explanation quietly and nonchalantly, as though it had been quite the most ordinary matter in the world. Sitting in his office, puffing away at his big black German cigar, he unfolded Germany's scheme to arouse the whole fanatical Moslem world against the Christians. Germany had planned a real "holy war" as one means of destroying English and French influence in the world. "Turkey herself is not the really important matter," said Wangenheim. ”

“ Imagine a great Government, year in and year out, maintaining this attitude toward many millions of its own subjects! And for centuries the Turks simply lived like parasites upon these overburdened and industrious people. They taxed them to economic extinction, stole their most beautiful daughters and forced them into their harems, took Christian male infants by the hundreds of thousands and brought them up as Moslem soldiers. ”

“ You look down on American missionaries, but don’t forget that it is the best element in America that supports their religious work, as well as their educational institutions. Americans are not mere materialists, always chasing money—they are broadly humanitarian, and interested in the spread of justice and civilization throughout the world. After this war is over you will face a new situation. You say that, if victorious, you can defy the world, but you are wrong. You will have to meet public opinion everywhere, especially in the United States. Our people will never forget these massacres. ”

“ As contrasted with Enver’s palace, with its innumerable rooms and gorgeous furniture, Talaat’s house was an old rickety, wooden, three-storey building. All this, I afterwards learned, was part of the setting which Talaat had staged for his career. Like many an American politician, he had found his position as a man of “the people” a valuable political asset, and he knew that a sudden display of prosperity and ostentation would weaken his influence with the Union and Progress Committee, most of whose members, like himself, had risen from the lower walks of life. ”

“ Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your goods for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne, obey the commands of the Almighty, who, in the Koran, promises us bliss in this and in the next world; embrace ye the foot of the Caliph's throne and know ye that the state is at war with Russia, England, France, and their Allies, and that these are the enemies of Islam. The Chief of the believers, the Caliph, invites you all as Moslems to join in the Holy War! ”

“ You see the vast country of Siberia and Turkestan, and Khiva and Bokhara, and the Caucasus and the Crimea, and Kazan and Ezferhan and Kosahastan, whose Moslem peoples believe in the unity of God, ground under the feet of their oppressors, who are the enemies already of our religion. You behold Persia being prepared for partition, and you see the city of the Caliphate, which for ages has unceasingly fought breast to breast with the enemies of our religion, now become the target for oppression and violence. ”

“ You have told me many times that you want to make Turkey a part of the modern progressive world. The way you are treating the Armenians will not help you to realize that ambition; it puts you in the class of backward, reactionary peoples."
"We treat the Americans all right, too," said Talaat. "I don't see why you should complain."
"But Americans are outraged by your persecutions of the Armenians," I replied. "You must base your principles on humanitarianism, not racial discrimination, or the United States will not regard you as a friend and an equal. ”

“ I had always remarked that the Turks regard practically every question as a personal matter, yet this point of view rather stunned me. It was, however, a complete revelation of Turkish mentality; the fact that, above all considerations of race and religion, there are such things as humanity and civilisation never for a moment enters their mind. They can understand a Christian fighting for a Christian and a Jew fighting for a Jew, but such abstractions as justice and decency form no part of their conception of things. ”

“ But Enver returned to his main point.
“They must never know,” he said, “that they have a friend in the United States. That would absolutely ruin them! It is far better that they starve, and in saying this I am really thinking of the welfare of the Armenians themselves. If they can only be convinced that they have no friends in other countries, then they will settle down, recognize that Turkey is their only refuge, and become quiet citizens. Your country is doing them no kindness by constantly showing your sympathy. You are merely drawing upon them greater hardships.” ”

“ Russia was the historic enemy, the nation which had given freedom to Bulgaria and Rumania, which had been most active in dismembering the Ottoman Empire, and which regarded herself as the nation that was ultimately to possess Constantinople. This fear of Russia, I cannot too much insist, was the one factor which, above everything else, was forcing Turkey into the arms of Germany. For more than half a century Turkey had regarded England as her surest safeguard against Russian aggression, and now England had become Russia’s virtual ally. ”

“ We cannot enumerate the insults we have received at the hands of these nations who desire totally to destroy Islam and drive all Mohammedans off the face of the earth. This tyranny has passed all endurable limits; the cup of our oppression is full to over-flowing. . . . In brief, the Moslems work and the infidels eat; the Moslems are hungry and suffer and the infidels gorge themselves and live in luxury. The world of Islam sinks down and goes backward, and the Christian world goes forward and is more and more exalted. The Moslems are enslaved and the infidels are the great rulers. ”

“ A GERMAN SUPERMAN AT CONSTANTINOPLE I AM writing these reminiscences of my ambassadorship at a moment when Germany’s schemes in the Turkish Empire and the Near East have achieved an apparent success. The Central Powers have disintegrated Russia, have transformed the Baltic and the Black Seas into German lakes, and have obtained a new route to the East by way of the Caucasus. Germany now dominates Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Turkey, and regards her aspirations for a new Teutonic Empire, extending from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, as practically realised. ”

“ Poor Serbia! As our train sped through her devastated districts I had a picture of what the war had meant to this brave little country. In the last two years this nation had stood alone, practically unassisted by her allies, attempting to stem the rush of Pan-German conquest, just as, for several centuries, she had stood as a bulwark against the onslaughts of the Turks. And she had paid the penalty. Many farms we passed were abandoned, overgrown with weeds and neglected, and the buildings were frequently roofless and sometimes razed to the ground. ”

“ He saw a Government which the first enterprising man who came along might seize, and he determined to be that man. Of all the Turkish politicians I met, I regarded Talaat as the only one who really had extraordinary innate ability. He had great force and dominance, the ability to think quickly and accurately, and an almost superhuman insight into men’s motives. His great geniality and his lively sense of humour also made him a splendid manager of men. He showed his shrewdness in the measures which he took, after the murder of Nazim, to gain the upper hand in this distracted Empire. ”

“ The ruling classes among the Turks, including Enver, realized that the outside world regarded them as a people who had no respect for the sacredness of human life or the finer emotions and they keenly resented this attitude. I now reminded Enver that Turkey had a splendid opportunity to disprove all these criticisms. “The world may say you are barbarians,” I argued; “show by the way you treat these alien enemies that you are not. Only in this way can you be freed permanently from the ignominy of the capitulations. Prove that you are worthy of being emancipated from foreign tutelage. ”

“ The descendants of Osman hardly resemble any people I have ever known. They do not hate, they do not love; they have no lasting animosities or affections. They only fear. And naturally they attribute to others the motives which regulate their own conduct. “How stupid you are!” Wangenheim would tell Talaat and Enver, discussing the English attitude. “Don’t you see why the English want you to keep out? It is because they fear you. Don’t you see that, with the help of Germany, you have again become a great military power? No wonder England doesn’t want to fight you!” ”

“ For years the chancellorship of the empire had been Wangenheim's laudable ambition, and he behaved now like a man who saw his prize within his grasp. The voyage of the Goeben and the Breslau was his personal triumph; he had arranged with the Turkish Cabinet for their passage through the Dardanelles, and he had directed their movements by wireless in the Mediterranean. By safely getting the Goeben and the Breslau into Constantinople, Wangenheim had definitely clinched Turkey as Germany's ally. ”