Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  ‘The last voyage I made before coming to this country was up the Nile from Khartoum to the Equatorial lakes. In this most desperate and forbidding region I was filled with pride to think I belonged to a race whose sons, even in this inhospitable waste of waters, were struggling in the face of a thousand discouragements to introduce new forest trees and new agricultural products and ameliorate in some degree the conditions of life of the naked and miserable inhabitants. How should I have felt, if in traversing the deserts and swamps which to-day represent what was the richest and most famous tract in the world, I had thought that I was the scion of a race in whose hands God has placed, for hundreds of years, the destinies of this great country, and that my countrymen could give no better account of their stewardship than the exhibition of two mighty rivers flowing between deserts to waste themselves in the sea for nine months of the year, and desolating everything in their way for the remaining three? No effort that Turkey can make can be too great to roll away the reproach of those parched and weary lands, whose cry ascends to heaven.’

  But the harvests of Mesopotamia, when gathered in, must needs be transported, and for that railways are necessary. Water transport would, of course, carry them easily down to the Persian Gulf, but the supply will be mainly, if not wholly, wanted westwards, and it must be conveyed to the shores of the Mediterranean. Already, in preparation for world-conquest, Germany has proceeded far with her construction of the Bagdad Railway, which was intended, after her absorption of Turkey, to link up Berlin with her next Oriental objective, namely, India; the Taurus has been tunnelled, the Euphrates bridged, and but for a hiatus of a few miles the line is practically complete from Constantinople into Northern Mesopotamia. But its route was chosen for German strategic reasons, for the linking up of Berlin with Constantinople and Bagdad. This, it may be permitted to say, does not form part of the schemes of the Allies: it is to snap rather than weld such links that they have taken the field. What we want in the matter of railway transport for the harvests of Mesopotamia, and generally for our Eastern communications, is not a line that passes through Turkish and German soil, and terminates at Berlin, but one which, after the directest possible land-route, reaches the Mediterranean and terminates in suitable ports.

  The reader therefore is requested to unthink the present Bagdad Railway altogether, to ‘scrap’ it in his mind, as it will be probably scrapped on the map, since it is utterly useless for our purposes. For taking Aleppo as (roughly) the half-way house in the existent line, we find that the western half of it lies in Asia Minor, in territory which, as we shall see, will remain Turkish, while the eastern half of it makes a long detour instead of striking directly for Bagdad. After our experience with Turkey there is nothing less conceivable than that we should allow a single mile of our new Mesopotamia Railway to run through the territory of the Turks, for who knows that she might not (say when harvests are ripe and ready for delivery), on any arbitrary pretext, close or destroy the line, even as before now she has closed the Dardanelles? Besides, for our purposes, a line that goes to Constantinople (in whosoever hands Constantinople may be after the war) is out of the way and altogether unsuitable. Eastwards, again, from Aleppo the present Bagdad line is circuitous and indirect, admirably adapted to the German purposes for which it was constructed, but utterly unadapted to ours.

  Let us then ‘scrap’ the existent Bagdad route altogether, and consider not what the Germans want, but what we want, which, as has been already stated, is a direct land communication with suitable Mediterranean ports. Of those there are three obvious ones, Alexandretta, Tripoli, and Beirut, of which Beirut is a long way the first in importance and potentiality of increased importance. Two possible routes therefore would seem to suggest themselves, one running from Alexandretta to Aleppo, and thence following pretty closely the course of the Euphrates till it reaches Hit, and from there striking directly to Bagdad. Aleppo is already connected with Tripoli and El Mina (the actual port of Tripoli), and also with Beirut by branch lines making a junction at Homs, and thus all those ports will be brought together on one system. But if the reader will glance at the map, he will see that by far the most direct communication with Bagdad would be to run the railway direct from there to Homs, thus making Homs rather than Aleppo the central junction of the system. From Homs lines would run northward to Aleppo, due west to Tripoli, and south-west to Beirut. Either of those routes, in any case, would be infinitely preferable to the long loop which the present Bagdad Railway traverses, as planned on German lines and for German requirements. The new railway will thus lie exclusively in territory under French and English protectorate, and will probably be their joint enterprise and property.

  Prospectively then, as regards the fulfilment of the solemn pledge of the Allies to liberate subject peoples from the murderous tyranny of the Turks, we have discussed the future of Armenia, of Syria, of Palestine, and of Mesopotamia. All those are well defined districts, and the demarcation of their respective protectorates should not present great difficulties. But there remains, before we pass on to the problem of Constantinople, a further district less easily defined, largely inhabited by European peoples whose liberty in the future we are pledged to secure. This is the Mediterranean coastline to the south and west of Asia Minor, the towns of which have been so extensively peopled and made prosperous by Greeks and Italians. Similarly among those of our European Allies who are desirous and capable of Eastern expansion, there remains one, Italy, whose rights to partake in this Turkish partition we have not yet considered. In the shifting kaleidoscope of national war-politics, it seems at the moment of writing by no means impossible that Greece, having at length got rid of a treacherous and unstable Reuben of a monarch, may redeem her pledge to Serbia, in which case, no doubt, she too would state the terms of her desired and legitimate expansion. But these would more reasonably be concerned with the redistribution of the Balkan Peninsula, which does not come within the scope of this book, and we may prophesy without fear of invoking the Nemesis that so closely dogs the heels of seers, that Italy will legitimately claim (or perhaps has already claimed) the protectorate of this valuable littoral. Certain it is that, when peace returns, the large population of Greeks and Italians once resident (and soon again to be) on these coasts, must be given the liberty and security which they will never enjoy so long as they remain in Turkish hands, and the hands that have earned the right to be protecting Power are assuredly Italian. Along the south coast a line including the Taurus range would seem to suggest a natural frontier inland from Adana on the east to the south-west corner of Asia Minor, and from there a similar strip would pass up the coast as far as, and inclusive of, Smyrna. That at least Italy has every right to expect, and there seems no great fear that among the International Councils there will arise a dissentient voice. The inland boundary on the west coast is the difficult section of this delimitation, and into the details of that it would be both rash and inexpedient to enter.

  II

  We pass, then, to the second avowed object of the Allies, namely, the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman rule, which has proved itself so radically alien to Western civilisation. This must be taken to include not only the expulsion of the Turkish control from Thrace and Constantinople, but from the eastern side as well of the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles. At no future time must Turkey be in a position to command even partially a single yard of that momentous channel through which alone our Allies, Russia and Rumania, have access to the Mediterranean. Though this was not formally stated in the Allies’ reply to President Wilson, it is clearly part and parcel of the object in view, for while the Ottoman Empire retains the smallest control on either side of either of the Straits, she is so far able to interfere in European concerns, in which she must never more have a hand. The east shore, then, of the Straits and the Sea of Marmora, as well as the west, must be under the control of a Power, or a group of Powers, not alien to Western civilisation. Germany and her allies therefore, no less than Turkey, must be ex
cluded from the guardianship of the Straits.

  As we have had previous occasion to note, this ejection of the Turkish power from Constantinople is the absolute reversal of European and, in especial, of English policy for the last hundred years. No crime that the Ottoman Government could commit, no act of barbarism, would ever persuade us to do away with the anachronism of Turkey’s existence in Europe; but at last the seismic convulsion of the war has knocked this policy into a heap of disjected ruins, and it can never be rebuilt again on the old lines. For among our other avowed objects in prosecuting the war to its victorious end, we have pledged ourselves to uphold the right which all peoples, whether small or great, have to the enjoyment of full security and free economic development. But while Turkey can close the Straits at her own arbitrary will, or at the bidding of a superior and malevolent Power, and block the passage of ships from Russian and Rumanian ports into the Mediterranean, the economic development of both these countries is seriously menaced. Three times within the last six years has she exercised that right, and while she holds the shores of the Straits she can at any moment blockade all southern Russian ports. That such power should be in the hands of any nation is highly undesirable; that it should be in the hands of a corrupt despotism like Turkey, especially now that Germany, as things stand, can dictate to Turkey when and what she pleases, is a thing unthinkable by the most improvident of statesmen. Already we have paid dearly enough for the pusillanimity of a hundred years: it is impossible that we should ever allow a similar bill to be again presented. Whatever be the guardianship of the Straits, whoever the holder of Constantinople, it will not be Turkey.

  At the beginning of the war, and indeed till after the revolution in Russia, it was announced and stated as an axiom that on the conclusion of peace, Russia should be the door-keeper of what after all is her own lodge-gate. Subsequently, in the unhappy splits and disintegration of her Government, it was announced that she favoured peace without annexation — in other words, that she neither claimed nor desired the guardianship of Constantinople. But I think we should be utterly wrong if we regarded that as an expression of the will of the Russian people: it is far more probable that it was the expression of the will of Germany, directly inspired by German influence with a view to concluding a separate peace with Russia. As we have seen, it had its due effect in Turkey, and Talaat Bey gave vent to pious ejaculations of thanksgiving, that now all cause of quarrel with Russia was removed, and Turkey and she could be friends. It is possible that when out of the confused cries there again rises from Russia the clear call of the people’s voice, we shall find her wishing to set in order her own house before she projects herself on new missions, but, as far as the manifesto of ‘peace without territorial annexation’ goes, we shall be wise to regard it for the present with the profoundest suspicion. It sounds far more like the tones of the Central European wolf than those of Little Red Riding Hood’s proper grandmother.

  But be Russia’s decision what it may, the Turk will hold sway no longer in Thrace or Constantinople, or on the shores of the Straits of the Sea of Marmora. There is, of course, no question of deporting the whole of the Turkish population that lives in those regions, nor would it be desirable, even if it were possible, to realise Gladstone’s robust vision of seeing every Turk, ‘bag and baggage,’ clear out from the provinces they have desolated and profaned. But if not under Russia, then under the joint control of certain of the Allied Powers there will be a complete reconstruction of the administration of those districts. The headquarters of the protectorate will doubtless be at Constantinople, which will be reorganised somewhat on the lines of the Treaty Port of Shanghai, and will be open to the ships of all nations. The security of the town must be assured by a military garrison either of mixed troops of the controlling nations, or possibly by a rotation of troops drawn from the armies of each in turn. More important even than this will be the adequate control of the Straits by sea. A naval base must be formed, which by the gospel of the freedom of the seas (but not according to St. Goeben and the submarine disciples) will constitute a patrolling police force of the waters. Whether the system of fortifications and defences that lately rendered the Dardanelles impregnable shall be retained or not is a question demanding the most careful consideration. Some will hold that they should be maintained in order to insure that none but the guarantors of the freedom of the Straits shall ever take possession of them: others that they shall be utterly dismantled and destroyed, so that the closing of the Straits shall be an impossibility. The matter really turns on the question as to the extent to which the Allies will have the prudence to cut Germany’s claws when the war is over. It is eminently to be hoped that they will be cut so short that never again will they be able to show those chiselled talons beyond her velvet — that sense, in fact, will allow sentiment no word to say. Unfortunately, there are a great many people the basis of whose character consists of a washy confidence in the good intentions of everybody. Most mistakenly they call it Christianity.

  Here, then, has been outlined the effect of the Allies’ declared aims. Such territories as Turkey holds in Europe, such control as she possesses over the free passage of the Straits must pass from her, and the alien peoples, who for centuries have fainted and bled underneath her infamous yoke, must be led out of the land of bondage. As we have seen throughout preceding chapters, it was the fixed policy of the Ottoman Government to rid itself of their presence, and already it has gone far in its murderous mission. Indeed the avowed aims of the Allies, when accomplished, will do that work for her, for the Allies are determined to remove those peoples from Turkey. The difference of execution, however, consists in this, that they will not remove Arabs and Greeks and Italians and Jews, as Turkey has already done with the Armenians by the simple process of massacres, but by a process no less simple, namely, of taking out of the territories of the Ottoman Empire the districts where such peoples dwell. The Allies will accomplish, in fact, for the Turks that policy of Ottomanisation which was the aim of Abdul Hamid, and has been the aim of his more murderous successors. Turkey shall henceforth be for the Turks: she shall no more be in ‘danger’ from the defenceless nations, who at present exist within her borders. The Sultan of Turkey, in some year of grace now not far distant, will find that his Ottomanisation has been done for him, and, though his realm is curtailed, he will have his rest broken no more by the thought of Arab risings, nor will he have to devise measures that will solve the Arab question. Except for a strip along the west and south coast, all Asia Minor and Anatolia will be his from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, but Syria, Armenia, the coast of Asia Minor, Palestine, and Mesopotamia shall have passed from him. It is no dismemberment of an Empire that the Allies contemplate, for they cannot dismember limbs that never belonged to the real trunk. It was a despotic military control that the Osmanlis had established, they always regarded their subject peoples as aliens, whom they did not scruple to destroy if they exhibited symptoms of progress and civilisation. Henceforth the Turkish Government shall govern Turks, and Turks alone. That for many years has been its aim, and, by the disastrous dispensation of fate, it has been largely able to realise its purpose. Now, though by different methods, the Allies will see thorough accomplishment of it. There will be no question, of course, of turning out or of deporting Turks who live in Syria, in Armenia, in Constantinople, for the ways of the Allies are not those of Talaat and Enver and Jemal the Great. Where to-day Turks dwell, there shall they continue to dwell, but they must dwell there in peace in equal liberties and rights with the once-subject peoples whom the Allies shall have delivered. If they do not like that they can migrate, not by forced marches and under the guardianship of murderous Kurds, but in protection and security, to the lands where they can still enjoy the beneficent sway of their own governors, and be Ottomanised to the top of their bent. But Syrians and Armenians and Greeks and Jews will be Ottomanised no longer.

  The Turk was always a fighter, disciplined and courageous, and he has never lost that virtu
e of valour. But he has been a fighter because he has always lived under a military despotism which demanded his services, and it is much to be doubted whether his qualities in this regard will for the future be exercised as they have been in the past. For the Turkish armies, in so far as they have consisted of Turks, have been chiefly, if not wholly, recruited from the peasantry of Anatolia, who, when not summoned to their country’s colours, or ordered to maltreat and massacre, are quiet, rather indolent folk, content to plough their lands and reap an exiguous but sufficient harvest. And for their lords and governors, who, until Prussia assumed command of the Turkish armies, there will no longer be either the possibility of further conquests as in the old Osmanli days, or, in less progressive times, the necessity for securing Ottoman supremacy over the huge ill-knit lands which it governed. But now, instead of having alien and defenceless tribes within their borders, tribes forbidden to bear arms and chafing at the Turkish yoke, they will see free peoples under the protectorates of Powers that are capable of self-defence and, if necessary, of inflicting punishment. Russia, France, England, Italy, all allied nations, will be established in close proximity to the Turkish frontiers, and the New Turkey will be as powerless for aggression as she will be for defence, should she provoke attack. But within their borders there may the Osmanlis dwell secure and undisturbed, so long as they conform to the habits of civilised people with regard to their neighbours, and it is a question whether, now that the military despotism which has always misguided the fortunes of this people, has no possible fields for conquest, and no need of securing security, the nation will not settle down into the quiet existence of small neutral countries. Perhaps the last chapter of its savage and blood-stained history is already almost finished, and in years to come some little light of progress and of civilisation may be kindled in the abode where the household gods for centuries have been cruelty and hate.