It was that Polish Turk and his German masters who formally made war upon Russia, France and Britain.[75] And the Turkish nation had no opportunity to sanction or veto their resolve. Nay, even the majority of the Cabinet, including the Grand Vizier, had had no say on the issue, were not even informed of what was being done until overt acts of hostility had actually clinched the matter. Indeed, there was a majority of Cabinet Ministers in favour of neutrality, but it was ignored. In this way Turkey threw in her lot with the Teutons,[76] to the astonishment of the Allies, who had hoped that a policy of forbearance and meekness would elicit a friendly response and frustrate the effect of the master strokes by which Germany, during a long series of years, had consolidated her ascendancy over Turkey and obtained the command of the Ottoman army. The childish notion that a sudden exhibition of pacific intentions and goodwill is enough to foil the carefully laid schemes of a clever enemy which have been maturing for decades, is the refrain that runs through the history of our foreign policy for the last thirty or forty years. And not only through the history of our foreign policy. Faith in the sacramental efficacy of an improvisation is a trait common to all the Allies, but in the British nation it is the faith that is expected to move mountains. [75] November 3, 1914. [76] On October 25, 1908, after having studied the origins of the Turkish Revolution and the antecedents of its authors, and while all Europe was still warmly congratulating the Young Turks on their bloodless victory and moderation, I dispatched the following telegraphic message to the _Daily Telegraph_-- "Most unwillingly do I give utterance to facts and impressions calculated to introduce a jarring note into the harmonious optimism of Western peoples, who confidently augur great things of the young Ottoman nation, and discern no difficulties likely to become formidable dangers to the new-born State. But a knowledge of all the essential data is indispensable to correct the diagnosis without which the malady cannot be successfully treated. Emancipation, then, has produced a beneficent enthusiasm for the political ideals of Europe in minds hitherto impermeable to Western notions, but has neither transformed the national character nor supplied the revolutionary movement with the requisite constructive forces. _Neither can it break the fateful continuity of Turkish history nor avert the defects of the destructive causes that have been operative here for generations._"