in Turkey for three years this verdict is crushing, and Tekin Alp himself virtually admits the charge. "It is true," he writes, "that the Turkish character is usually lacking in the qualities most essential to trade or economic undertakings, but these may be acquired by a reasonable and methodical training and organisation." The only "organisation" that seems to occur to him is the Boycott, which has been popular with the Turks since the Revolution of 1908.

"The unaccommodating attitude of the Greek Government was sufficient excuse," he remarks, in reference to the Boycott of 1912. "The real motive, however, was the longing of the Turkish nation for independence in their own country. The Boycott, which was at first directed solely against the Greeks, was then extended to the Armenians and other non-Mohammedan circles, and was carried out with undiminished energy. This movement, which lasted in all its rigour for several months, caused the ruin of hundreds of small Greek and Armenian tradesmen…. The systematic and rigorous Boycott is now at an end, but the spirit it created in the people still persists…. It can now be asserted that the movement for restoring the economic life of Turkey is on the right road."

The real effects of the Boycott of 1912 are described by the German authority whose memorial has several times been cited in this article. He tells us how, under the patronage of the Young Turkish Government, associations were formed which intimidated the Moslem peasants into buying from them, when they came to market, instead of from the Christians with whom they had formerly dealt.

"The peasants came to their old dealers," the memorial continues, "lamented their fate, and asked their advice as to how they could save themselves from the hands of their fellow-countrymen. They were delighted when at last the Boycott came to an end and they could once more buy from Greeks and Armenians, where they were well served and got good value for their money."

If the Turkish Nationalists had confined themselves to economic weapons, the Turks' economic ineptitude would have prevented them from doing serious harm; but by abusing the political and military powers of the Ottoman State to perpetrate the recent atrocities they have struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of Western Asia.

"In the whole of Asia Minor, with perhaps one or two exceptions," the same German authority states, "there is not a single pure Turkish firm engaged in foreign trade…. The extermination of the Armenian population means not only the loss of from 10 to 25 per cent. of the total population of Anatolia[22], but, what is most serious, the elimination of those elements in the population which are the most highly developed economically and have the greatest capacity for civilisation…."

And this is the universal judgment of those in a position to know.

"The result of the deportations," the American Consul at Aleppo declares in an official report[23], "is that, as 90 per cent. of the commerce of the interior is in the hands of the Armenians, the country is facing ruin. The great bulk of business being done on credit, hundreds of prominent business men other than Armenians are facing bankruptcy. There will not be left in the places evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer, or any of the professional people or tradesmen, with very few exceptions, and the country will be left in a practically helpless state."

The German memorialist presses the indictment:

"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious population. You do not advance the progress of civilisation if you drive into the desert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wasted opportunities, the element in your population which shows the greatest economic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and the greatest energy in every respect, and which was fitted by nature to build the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own sense of right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity of an unpopular war may temporarily be promoted among the Turkish masses by the destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements—the Armenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and Jews—but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realise the whole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economic ruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that the Turkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"—it is a German writing—"by victories at the front."

"We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an American travelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading place[24]."

What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?

The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for the last thirty years. They have organised regular steamship services between German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-German trade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in the Ottoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debt was first placed under international administration, Germany held only 4.7 per cent., of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey's creditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent., and was second only to France[25]. Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of any other foreign Power, have brought valuable concessions in their train—harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, irrigation works in the Konia oasis and the Adana plain, and the prospect, when the Bagdad Railway reaches the Tigris, of tapping the naphtha deposits of Kerkuk[26]. Dr. Rohrbach, the German specialist on the Near East, forecasts the profits of the Bagdad Railway from the results of Russian railway-building in Central Asia. He prophesies the cultivation of cotton, in the regions opened up by the line, on a scale which will cover an appreciable part of the demands of German industry, and will open a corresponding market for German wares among the new cotton-growing population[27]. "Yet the decisive factor in the Bagdad Railway," he counsels his German readers, "is not to be found in these economic considerations but in another sphere."

Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home.

"Germany's relation to Turkey," his monograph begins, "belies the doctrine that all modern understandings and differences between nations have an economic origin. We are certainly interested in the economic advancement of Turkey … but in setting ourselves to make Turkey strong we have been influenced far more by our political interests as a State among States (das politische, das staatlich-machtliche Interesse). Even our economic activity has primarily served this aim, and has in fact originated to a large extent in the purely politico-military problems (aus den unmittelbaren Machtaufgaben) which confronted the Turkish Government. Exclusively economic considerations play a very subordinate part in Turco-German relations…. Our common political aims, and Germany's interest in keeping open the land-route to the Indian Ocean, will make it more than ever imperative for us to strengthen Turkey economically with all our might, and to put her in a position to build up, on independent economic foundations, a body politic strong enough to withstand all external assaults. The means will still be economic; the goal will be of a political