TURKEY'S DOOM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 12 November 1914, Page 7

TURKEY'S DOOM.

STUMBLING TO THE END. HER FINGER IN THE HE. THE KAISER'S DEMI COUSIN. Although the cables have necessarily' been. brief, and sometimes apparently contradictory, yet it is clear tliat Turkey has had a finger in the pie. ever since the war started. What Turkey hopes to gain thereby ds a mystery,- and the mind becomes enveloped in a seemingly impenetrable fog in searching for /the ikey to it (says a writer in a Sydney paper last week). The Turk never seems to learn anything from his past misfortunes, and stumbles blindly along ] rrom one blunder to another with a complacency suggestive of mental atrophy. It is all Kismet. Every indication points to the extinction of Turkish soveregnity in Europe in the not far distant future. Exactly how far distant depends largely on the Turkß themselves. At present they seem determined to accelerate the process of eviction. Certainly thfe end will be very near if the, Sultyn declares war on the* Allies just to oblige VVilliaan 11. In that event tlie once proud Empire of Othman will perish as miserably am! ingloriously as did the Eastern Roman Empire it sirpplanted. , FRANCE'S LOST OPPORTUNITY. Until recently France was the protoctor of Eastern Christians, including those of the Turkish Empire. . The position had been conferred on the eldest daughter of the Church of the Holy gee. Naturally the appointment was officially recognised by the Catholic powers, while even Protestant countries gave it a quasi-official recognition. The job was not exactly a pleasant or profitable one, Eastern Christians being rather a quarrelsome lot, but it gave France a pretext for interfering in the ! internal atfaiis of the Ottoman Em- \ pire no other country ■possessed. The I guardianship of the traditional holy S places of Christianity in Palestine and Syria has been in the hand of mostly I French Franciscans for over two een- ; turies, while French influence easily I predominated in Turkey until 1898, or ! perhaps even a little later. Educated ' Turks all spoke French as fluently as Turkish, and the ladies of the harem spent moat of their leisure time readni<r French novels, not always, 1 am , torrv to sav. of the most improving kind. In the autumn of IS9S William 11. visited his dear cousin the Sultan \bdul Hamid at Constantinople, and from that date French influence rapidly declined throughout' the whole of turkey The Emperor had chosen for h's visit the psychological moment when Turkey was without a friend in Europe. France was .too busy makingfriend's with" Russia to bother much 1 about her old allv of the Crimea, wmle England was still wrapped i'P ln "" I polfcv of splendid isolation. Also, En-;-I lish V« w, c opinion was seething witn I indignation over the Armenian atrocities With an eve to future business, I .William 11. fairly rained orders on i Turks of high and low degree, while Uic 1 Sultan reciprocated by decorating every German in sight. The visit was welltimed, and, as might have been expected from a knowledge of the Em- | peror's nature, excellently staged. BERLIN'S NEWEST SUBURB.

The cabled statement a few days ago bv Reuters Constantinople correspondent that "angry quarrels'' have occur™ between German and Turkish a uhonties needs some explanation. One o, be immediate results of the Jmpeml visit to Constantinople was tie reoiganisation, amounting to the flermamsation, of the Turkish army. German,, loaned to Turkey a sufficient number of generals and lesser military fry to •• .. o «mill town The German garrison a small wna M l \, ~ "authorities" referred to w the cablegram are these men. They have reSed German nationals, and a tbough their pay comes from the Turkish Treasury i? is guaranteed by Germany, Turkey being" addicted .to the eminently Oriental device of paying her soldiers moX m promises. These foreign mercenaries are alleged to have quarrelled with the Turkish authorities over the Indolence and general incapacity of I the Turkish army.' The spectacle of ! these German hitlers trying to make the Turk get ft move on is sublime— I the ever-changing West up against the unchanging East, and the issue: neve „ moment in doubt. Brace 1898 Con stantinople has been little more tnan a suburb of Berlin. The numerous Gcrma"n pLias in the pay o^Turkey uho have.'so disastrously tor Turk.-) &«£■ ed Turkish military policy to «""« years, naturally pay more heed .o tLorders from the Wilhelmstrasse than to instructions from those who pay thorn One would have thought after the Balkan fiasco, and especially the defeat of Turkish arms by the French-tram d Bulgarians, that the Turk would have become dubious of the alleged "Mpwrnacy of German military methods. But Turkey never learns anything until it is I too late.

TURKEY TO-DAY

■ Since 1893 manv important things have happened in Turkey The first event of importance was the downfall of the unspeakable Hamidian regime. The writer had several opportunities o meeting the ex-Sultan Abdul Haimd, and formed" the opinion that he was not so •much- a had man, as a terribly weak man. He had not a. single intimate friend, and lived in hourly dread of assassination. The Government was in the hands of as choice a set of rascals as could possibly be imagined. - The taxes were farmed out, and probably twice as much money was collected as found its way into the treasury. The armv was ill-clad, and miserably paid, that is, when it was paid at all. The navy was in a worse condition than the army. uMisurd sums were paid for obsolete foreign warships, fit only for the scrap heap. Some of these vessels never had a crew aboard, were never docked, but were allowed to rot at their moorings in the Golden Horn. Everybody admitted the. awfulness of things generally, but put it down to the inscrutable ways of Providence. The Turk is an exceedingly pious individual, and has an incurable habit of blaming Allah for his own shortcomings. He docs not exactly put it that way, but it amounts to the same thing. It was the custom among the wealthier classes to send their sons abroad to he educated. Paris was the Mecca of most of these young men. The natural indolence of the Oriental generally, and the, Turk in particular, was fatal to continuous study, and most of them returned to Turkey with a mere smattering of Western culture. Also, a majority acquired a more intimate knowledge of western vice than of western virtue. These men were mainly respone- ■, ible for the coup d'etat that deposed