German officers were almost as active as the Turks themselves in this mobilisation. They enjoyed it all immensely; indeed, they gave every sign that they were having the time of their lives. Bronsart, Humann, and Lafferts were constantly at Enver’s elbow, advising and directing the operations. German officers were rushing through the streets every day in huge automobiles, all requisitioned from the civilian population; they filled all the restaurants and amusement places at night and celebrated their joy in the situation by consuming large quantities of champagne--also requisitioned. A particularly spectacular and noisy figure was that of von der Goltz Pasha. He was constantly making a kind of viceregal progress through the streets in a huge and madly-dashing automobile, on both sides of which flaring German eagles were painted. A trumpeter on the front seat would blow loud, defiant blasts as the conveyance rushed along, and woe to anyone, Turk or non-Turk, who happened to get in the way! The Germans made no attempt to conceal their conviction that they owned this town. Just as Wangenheim had established a little Wilhelmstrasse in his Embassy, so had the German military men established a sub-station of the Berlin General Staff. They even brought their wives and families from Germany; I heard Baroness Wangenheim remark that she was holding a little court of her own. The Germans, however, were about the only people who were enjoying this proceeding. The requisitioning that accompanied the mobilisation really amounted to a wholesale looting of the civilian population. The Turks took all the horses, mules, camels, sheep, cows, and other beasts that they could lay their hands on, Enver telling me that they had gathered in 150,000 animals. They did it most intelligently, making no provision for the continuance of the species; thus they would leave only two cows or two mares in many of the villages. This system of requisitioning, as I shall describe, had the inevitable result of destroying the nation’s agriculture, and ultimately led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. But the Turks, like the Germans, thought that the war was destined to be a very short one, and that they would quickly recuperate from the injuries which their methods of supplying an army were causing their peasant population. The Government showed precisely the same shamelessness and lack of intelligence in the way that they requisitioned materials from merchants and shopmen. These proceedings amounted to little less than conscious highwaymanship. But practically none of these merchants were Moslems; most of them were Christians, though there were a few Jews, and the Turkish officials therefore not only provided the needs of their army, and incidentally lined their own pockets, but they found a religious joy in pillaging the infidel establishments. They would enter a retail shop, take practically all the