PREFACE
SINCE this book went to press the Powers of Europe have grappled in a struggle that is shaking the western hemisphere.
Turkey, after wobbling for weeks on the brink of hostilities, has been pushed over by her Turco-German war-party. The whole incident shows how a strong military clique can drive an unstable government to disaster.
,. Turkey's attitude towards the British, who have guaranteed the integrity of her empire for more than half a century, is largely the outcome of Teutonic intrigue, but our action in retaining her two new battleships (the Sultan Osman and the Reshadieh} had more to do with it than most of us imagine. The subscription for those ships was a religious matter, to which all classes had contributed their utmost. We should not like our subscriptions for a new cathedral to be arbitrarily diverted to the building of a mosque.
By the law of nations we were justified in our embargo on those battleships, but sentiment is impervious to logic, and popular feeling in Turkey became violently Anglophobe, though many of her greatest men realized what her departure from neutrality would mean.