Sire,--Surely the course of human affairs is often strange and perplexing. When we formed the Committee of Union and Progress and deposed the wretched ABDUL from the Sultanate no sane man can have thought that you and I should ever be friends. ABDUL was your friend; you and yours had lavished upon him and his creatures all your arts for the purpose of obtaining influence and promoting the interest--forgive me for saying it--not so much of Turkey as of the German Empire. When therefore we emerged, and ABDUL with his system retired, all your beautiful schemes seemed to be shattered into pieces so small that no human ingenuity could avail to pick them up and fit them together again. Yet lo and behold, the impossible has happened. ABDUL remains in darkness, I and my colleagues are in power, and you and I are even more closely knit together than is altogether desirable for me and those whom (indirectly, perhaps, but not the less effectively) I help to govern. I am entitled therefore to have a heart-to-heart talk with my bosom-friend, and, anyhow, whether I am entitled or not, that is what I propose to have. You may tell me in your genial way that I am only an upstart, but I answer that I occupy my position not because my father and my grandfather were big men, but because I myself, through my own plans and by my own strength, did certain things which in my judgment had to be done. What I now feel, O my friend, is this: I am beginning to doubt whether in all this tremendous confusion of fighting I have made the right choice. It wasn't _necessary_ for us Turks to fight at all; it wasn't even desirable. We had suffered a severe set-back in the first Balkan War, and in the second we were only just able, owing to the consummate folly of that silly knave, your friend, TSAR FERDINAND, to snatch a brand or two from the burning. What we wanted was rest, and had it not been for you we might have had it--yes, and our wounds might have been healed and our finances restored, while others endured privation and loss.