Achmed Abdullah

“ No! I am a Prussian. I will have discipline. Discipline is going to win this war. I shall make an example of these fellows!"
Then a firing squad. Blood stippling the dusty ground.
And Gottlieb Krüger was right. Perhaps, as the months dragged along on weary, bleeding feet and there was no end to suffering and dying, it was his slogan of discipline—with its obbligato accompaniment of courtmartial and death which kept the Seventeenth as a fighting unit fully as much as the ancient fear and hatred of the Russian.
Then, one day, Mehmet el-Touati overheard a few words not meant for his ear ”

“ Moslems, peasants, pawns—they had gone forth, leaving their all behind, stabbed on the horns of Fate; with no Red Cross, no doctors, no ambulances, to look after their wounded or to ease the last agonies of their dying; with sleek, furtive-eyed Levantine government clerks stealing the pittance which the war office allowed for the sustenance of the women and children and feeble old men who tilled the fields and garnered meagre crops with their puny arms while the strong, the lusty, the bearded, were away battling for the Faith ”

“ Thus Mehmet el-Touati cheered until he was hoarse. So did the others. And hereafter foreigners—Prussians, they called themselves—took the places of the Osmanlis as officers and drill sergeants in many of the regiments, including the Seventeenth. They said that they were Moslems—which was odd, considering that their habits and customs were different from those of the Turks. But—said the priests—they belonged to a different sect, and what did that matter in the eyes of Allah, the All-Knowing?
On and away, then!
Kill, kill for the Faith! ”

“ The Turkish staff officer would not care. He would argue that one man more or less in the company was not worth the trouble of halting the column, of searching the surrounding valleys and mountains with a fine-tooth comb.
Thus—there was just one way—
And so, that night, with no hatred in his heart but with a Moslem's implacable logic guiding his hand, Mehmet el-Touati killed the Prussian officer and took the road toward his own country. ”

“ We do not want the Russian to smell the Turkish scent."
"But—" Mehmet el-Touati had pointed at a corpse that lay curled up in the middle of the road, like a dog asleep in the sun. "These people are not—"
"No. They are not Russians. They are the Armenian jackals who accompany the Russian lion in search of carrion. They are the Russian's allies. They, too, are the enemies of the Faith. Kill them. Kill the jackals first. ”

“ Yes. It is over. But our war is not! And you are going to fight for us, my friend and you are going to toe the mark and fight well. For—" he laughed unpleasantly, "remember our Prussian slogan—Discipline! Discipline!"
Mehmet el-Touati crept away, into the shadow of a horse-chestnut tree, to think. But he did not have to think long.
Only one fact stood out: the Russian was beaten; Islam was safe—and the house of the Osmanli. ”

“ Schlechte Beispiele verderben gute Sitten—bad examples spoil good morals! If we let the Kurds do what they please, some day, when we least expect it, these stolid Turks of yours will take the bit between their teeth, and then there'll be the devil to pay! ”

“ Presently, with the help of Allah, the All-Merciful, we shall nail the lion's pelt to the door of our house."
"Alhamdulillah!"
He, and the others, had accepted the explanation. They had marched—South. They had fallen on the Armenian villages with torch and rope and scimitar. They had killed. ”