Already, as early as 1898, the Kaiser had
announced at Damascus that the "three hundred millions of Mussulmans who
live scattered over the globe may be assured that the German Emperor will
be at all times their friend."
This speech, made immediately after the Armenian massacres, has been very
properly reprobated by all who are revolted at such atrocities. But the
indignation of Englishmen must be tempered by shame when they remember
that it was their own minister, still the idol of half the nation, who
reinstated Turkey after the earlier massacres in Bulgaria and put back
the inhabitants of Macedonia for another generation under the murderous
oppression of the Turks. The importance of the speech in the history of
Europe is that it signalled the advent of German influence in the Near
East. That influence was strengthened on the Bosphorus after the Turkish
revolution of 1908, in spite of the original Anglophil bias of the Young
Turks, and as some critics maintain, in consequence of the blundering
of the British representatives. The mission of Von der Goltz in 1908
and that of Liman von Sanders in 1914 put the Turkish army under German
command, and by the outbreak of the war German influence was predominant
in Constantinople. This political influence was, no doubt, used, and
intended to be used, to further German economic schemes.
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