Herbert Adams Gibbons

“ Never have I found a man more intelligently apprehensive of the possible outcome of the drama in which he was playing a part, and at the same time more determinedly hopeful to use all his ability and power to save the peace of Europe by welding together the Albanians into a nation worthy of the independence that has been given to them by the European concert. Such men as Admiral Burney are more than the glory of a nation: they are the making of a nation. ”

“ If the British university man is enjoying a position of authority and of fascinating perplexity in some colony, and feels that he has a share in shaping the destinies of the world, the German university man is not without his revenge. Deprived of one sense, has he not developed another—and a more practical one?
The young German, brought up in an overpopulated country, unable to enter a civil service which will keep him under his own flag—and remember how intensely patriotic he is, this young German, just as patriotic as the young Frenchman or the young Britisher,—must leave home. ”

“ A Briton may obey, but he questions all the same, and after the crisis is over he demands a reckoning. Authority, to the Anglo-Saxon, rests in the body politic, of which each individual is an integral—and ineffaceable—part.
The Turkish military and official cast is like that of the Germans in three things: authority rests in superiors unaccountable to those whom they command; the origin of authority is force upholding tradition; and the sparing of human life and human suffering is a consideration that must not be entertained when it is a question of advancing a political or military end. ”

“ When one considered the fickle character of the Greek people in their politics, the selfish narrowness and bitter prejudices of their leaders, the inefficiency of the army and navy, whose officers had been ruined by political activity, the emptiness of the treasury, the unpopularity of the royal family, and the general disorder throughout the country, it seems incredible that M. Venizelos should have been willing to assume the responsibility of government, let alone succeed in his self-imposed task. ”

“ A sense of nationality and a desire for racial political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula, as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. ”

“ In each Empire, the granting of a constitution was hailed with joy by the various races. These races, who had been centres of agitation, disloyalty, and weakness, were ready to co-operate with their governments in building up a large, broad, comprehensive, national life upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in both Empires, the dominant race let it soon be understood that the Constitution was to be used for a destructive policy of assimilation. In the Ottoman Empire, the Constitution was a weapon for destroying the national aspirations of subject races. ”

“ But even if the logic of the Weltpolitik, under the force of circumstances, did not push the German of every class and category to the belief that Germany must solve her great problems of the present day by force of arms, especially since her military strength is so much greater than that of her rivals, the nature of the German would make him lean towards force as the decisive argument in the question of extending his influence. For from the beginning of history the German has been a war man. He has asserted himself by force. ”

“ Already alarmed by the attack upon the liberties of the patriarchate, the Greeks began to look to Greece for help; and, in the islands of the Ægean and in Macedonia, the hope was strong that a successful war might put an end to what they were suffering.
The Greeks of Turkey are not free from the universal characteristic of human nature. You can persecute and browbeat a man, you can bully him and do him physical injury, you can refuse him a share in the government and put him in an inferior social position, and he will continue to endure it. ”

“ Turkey and Austria-Hungary, then, conspired together to create as many points of conflict as possible among the Macedonians of different races. The most devilish ingenuity was constantly exercised in stirring up and keeping alive the hatred of each race over the other. While frequently aroused to the point of making perfunctory protests, the other nations of Europe, with the exception of Russia, let Austria and Turkey do as they pleased, just as Turkey was allowed a free hand in massacring the Armenians. The laissez faire policy of the Powers was a denial of their treaty obligations. ”

“ Not even the United States, with all its annual immigration and opening up of new fields and territories, has been able to show an industrial growth comparable to that of Germany during the past forty years. In this old central Europe cities have grown almost over night. Railways have been laid down, one after the other, until the whole empire is a network of steel. Mines and factories have sprung into being as miraculously as if it had been by the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp. The population has increased more than half in forty years. ”

“ Germany has always been compelled, in her international politics, to count upon the possibility of France making an attempt to win back the lost provinces. She has sought to form alliances to strengthen her own position in Europe, and to keep France weak. France, the continued object of German hostility, has found herself compelled to ally herself with Russia, with whom she has never had anything in common, and to compound her colonial rivalries in Africa with her hereditary enemy, Great Britain. This is the first cause of the unrest in Europe that has culminated in a general European war. ”

“ One could write a whole book upon the events of the first five years of constitutional government in Turkey and could show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how from the very beginning there was no honest and loyal effort made to apply even the most rudimentary principles of constitutional government. Despotism means the subjection of a country to the will of its rulers. Constitutionalism means the subjection of the rulers to the will of the country. The Young Turks, embodied in the "Committee of Union and Progress," merely continued the despotism of Abdul Hamid. ”

“ The result of thirty years, in so far as civil officials of the Government were concerned, had been the stamping out of every man who combined ability with patriotism and devotion to an ideal. The best elements had taken the road to death, to imprisonment, or to exile, so that from the palace down to the humblest village, the Turkish civil service was composed of a set of men absolutely lacking in independence and in honour, and devoted to the master who ruled from Yildiz. But in the army, this same policy, though attempted, had not wholly succeeded. ”

“ Egypt and Syria and Mesopotamia have always cast a spell over men who have dreamed of world empires; and Islam, as a unifying force for conquest, has appealed to the imagination of others before the present German Kaiser. I have used the word "imagination" intentionally. There never has been any solidarity in the religion of Mohammed; there is none now; there never will be. The idea of community of aims and community of interests is totally lacking in the Mohammedan mind. Solidarity is built upon the foundation of sacrifice of self for others. ”

“ Young Turks, Young Persians, Young Egyptians, Young Indians, and Young Chinese have shown to Europe and America the peril—and the pity—of our western and Christian education, when it is given to eastern and non-Christian students. They are born into the intellectual life with our ideas and are inspired by our ideals, but have none of the background, none of the inheritance of our national atmosphere and our family training to enable them to live up to the standards we have put before them. Their disillusionment is bitter. They resent our attitude of superiority. ”

“ He showed how Greece was being constantly humiliated and menaced by the chauvinism of the Young Turks, how the boycott was ruining Greek shipping, how Crete itself would gradually get to like independence better than union with Greece, and how inevitable it was that the Slavs should in the course of time come to possess Thrace and Macedonia. Instead of sacrificing everything to Bulgaria, he maintained, "this is our only chance to get any part of European Turkey. We must give up our ideal, because it is impracticable. With Bulgaria, we can crush Turkey. Without Bulgaria, Turkey will crush us. ”

“ But they were men who had passed through the fire of persecution and suffering for love of their fatherland, and the renaissance of Turkey was the supreme thing in their lives. Their patriotism and enthusiasm knew no bounds. Their ambitions for Turkey may have been far in advance of their ability to serve her. But criticism is silent before patriotism which has proved its willingness to sacrifice Life for country. ”

“ Surely it was a fruitless diplomatic task to persuade Young Turkey that her officials in Tripoli and Benghazi should be forbidden to hinder the onward march of Italian "peaceable conquest." The Italian economic fabric in Tripoli, so carefully and so patiently built, seemed to be for nothing. Austria-Hungary had begun the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. No Power had successfully protested, much less the helpless Turks. So Italy began to prepare her coup. ”

“ No impartial student, who has written with sympathy concerning Great Britain's attitude in the Crimean War, can fail to give Germany just as strong justification for declaring war on Russia in 1914 as Great Britain had in 1854. But, when we come down to the narrower question of responsibility for launching the war in which almost all of Europe is now engaged, there can be no doubt that it was deliberately willed by the German Government, and that the chain of circumstances which brought it about was carefully woven by the officials of Wilhelmstrasse and Ballplatz. ”

“ If it has brought Germany inevitably into conflict with Great Britain, it is because the navy is the safeguard of commerce. The Weltpolitik is essentially a Handelspolitik. The present tremendous conflict between Great Britain and Germany is the result of commercial rivalry. It is more a question of the pocket-book than of the sacredness of treaties, if we are looking for the cause rather than the occasion of the war. It has come in spite of honest efforts to bring Great Britain and Germany together. ”

“ Every man wanted power without responsibility, prestige without work, success without sacrifice.
It was at this moment that one of the most significant events of contemporary times was helped to fruition by the state of affairs in Persia. Great Britain and Russia, rivals—even enemies—in western and central Asia, signed a convention. Their conflicting ambitions were amicably compromised. Along with the questions of Afghanistan and Thibet, this accord settled the rivalry that had done much to keep Persia a hotbed of diplomatic intrigue like Macedonia ever since the Crimean War. ”

“ Unlike the Alsatians, they have never known political freedom and cultural advantages in common with their kin across a frontier forcibly raised to cut them off; unlike the Poles, they have not been compelled to revive the nationalism of an historic past as a means of getting rid of oppression; unlike the Slavs of the Balkans, their national spirit has not been called into being by the tyranny of a race alien in civilization and ideals, because alien in religion. ”

“ We knew, however, that France was ready for the aggression. France could wait; we, no. A French attack upon our flank in the Lower Rhine might have been fatal to us. So we have been forced to pass beyond the well-founded protestations of Luxemburg and the Belgian Government. We shall recompense them for the wrong that we have thus caused them as soon as we shall have attained our military end.
"When one is as threatened as we are and when one fights for that which is most sacred to him, one can think only of one thing, that is, to attain his end, cost what it may." ”

“ The Turk, as a race, is composed of two elements, a ruling class of land-owners and military and civil officials, arrogant though courteous, corrupt though honest in private life, parasitical though self-respecting, and a peasant class, hopelessly ignorant, lacking in energy, initiative, ambition, aspirations, and ideals. The great bulk of the Turkish element in the Empire looked with the indifference of ignorance and the hostility of jealous regard for their unique position in the community upon the granting of a constitution. ”

“ The irredentism of the Balkan States led, first, to their war with Turkey; second, to their war with each other; and third, to Servia becoming the direct cause of the European war. The aspirations of none have been satisfied. Rumanian irredentism has stood between Rumania and the Triple Alliance. The irredentism of Italy has not yet led to anything, but it is so full of significance as a possible factor in bearing upon and changing the whole destinies of Europe during the winter of 1914-1915, that it cannot be overlooked in a study of contemporary national movements and wars. ”