Trans-Caucasia: all these might be held before Turkey's nose, as a dog
has a piece of meat held up before it to make it beg. Then there was the
province of Adarbaijan: certainly Turkey might be permitted to promise
herself that, without incurring the jealousy of Austria or Bulgaria.
Greedily Turkey took the bait. She gulped it down whole, and never
considered that there was a string attached to it, or that, should ever
the time come when Germany, the conqueror of the world, would be in a
position to reward her Allies with the realisation of the dreams she had
induced, the string would be pulled, and up, with retchings and
vomitings, would come these succulent morsels of Russia and Persia.
Indeed these bright pictures flashed on to the sheet as the visions of
Nationalists are but the slides in a German magic-lantern, designed to
keep Turkey amused, and it was with the same object that Ernst Marré, in
his _Die Türken und Wir nach dem Kriege_, was bidden to make other
pictures ready in case Turkey grew fractious or sleepy. 'From the ruins
of antiquity,' he says, when speaking of the Ottoman Empire, 'new life
will spring, if we can manage to raise the treasures which time and sand
have covered.' Then he remembers that he must be less Pan-Germanic for
the moment, and dangles the bait again. 'In doing this,' he adds, 'we
are benefiting Turkey. The Turkish state is no united whole, and it has
always been very difficult to govern. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians,
Kurds, cannot be welded together. This is a war of liberation for
Turkey.... Only by energetic interference, and by "expelling" the
obstinate Armenian element could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian
domination.... The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be
Ottomanised.'

There is no need for further quotations, which might be multiplied
indefinitely. The Prussian programme is for the moment identical with
the Turkish Nationalist programme: Turkey, in order to be kept 'in with'