Crescent and Iron Cross by E. F. Benson

Author:E. F. Benson [Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey, Armenian question, Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany, Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

This view seems to be borne out by subsequent events, for the Jews evacuated from Jaffa have been permitted to return owing to the intervention of the Spanish Government. It is not hard to guess who prompted that.

We may take it, then, that with regard to the projected Jewish massacres, quite clearly foreshadowed by the schemes of deportation from Jaffa and Gaza, Germany has made strong representations to the Ottoman Government. She did not do so (indeed she officially refused to do so) when the Armenian massacres began, for she could not interfere in Turkey's internal affairs. But now she has discovered that Pan-Turkish ideals have no sort of meaning in Palestine, and thus, with amazing astuteness, has provided herself with a reason for interfering, while still not giving up the policy of non-interference in Turkish affairs, for Turkey, she has discovered, has no affairs in Palestine. At the same time she guards herself from diplomatic defeat by the hope that Zionist cultural work will be saved from destruction so far as purely military requirements do not make it necessary. In other words, supposing Jemal the Great got completely out of hand, and proceeded to indiscriminate massacre of the Jews, Germany would doubtless accept his plea that military requirements had made it necessary.... And we were once so ignorant as to assure ourselves that Germany had no notions of diplomacy!

The full significance of her intervention on behalf of the Jews, when neither the extermination of the Armenians, the persecution of the Arabs, nor the deportation of the Greeks moved Germany to any decided action or energetic protest, must be left, in so far as it concerns the future, to another chapter. But as regards the present and the past it will be useful to consider here what has prompted her to make a protest (which we may regard, so long as her foot is on the neck of the Turks, as having been successful) against these projected massacres. Certainly it was not humanity; it was not the faintest desire to save innocent people in general from being murdered wholesale, for in the similar case of the Armenians, her bowels of compassion were not moved. Or, possibly, if we incline to lenience, we may say that she was sorry for the Armenians, but could not then risk a disagreement with their murderers who were her allies, whereas now, feeling herself more completely dominant over the Turks than she then did, she could risk being peremptory, especially since there was that saving clause about military requirements. For during the Armenian massacres, the Dardanelles expedition was still on the shores of Gallipoli, and the menace to Constantinople acute. It was possible that if she opposed a firm front to the Armenian massacres, the Turks, already on the verge of despair with regard to saving the capital from capture, might have made terms with the Allies. But now no such imminence of danger threatened them, and, with Germany's domination over them vastly more secure

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