when the war broke out. These ships were not exclusively governmental enterprises; their purchasers represented what, on the surface, appeared to be a popular enthusiasm of the Turkish people. They were to be the agencies through which Turkey was to attack Greece and win back the islands of the Ægean, and the Turkish people had raised the money to build them by a so-called popular subscription. Agents had gone from house to house, painfully collecting these small subscriptions; there had been entertainments and fairs, and, in their eagerness for the cause, Turkish women had sold their hair for the benefit of the common fund. These two vessels thus represented a spectacular outburst of patriotism that was unusual in Turkey, so unusual, indeed, that many detected signs that the Government had stimulated it. At the very moment when the war began Turkey had made her last payment to the English shipyards and the Turkish crews had arrived in England prepared to take the finished vessels home. Then, very soon before the time set to deliver them, the British Government stepped in and commandeered these dreadnoughts for the British Navy. There is not the slightest question that England had not only a legal, but a moral, right to do this; there is also no question that her action was a proper one, and that, had she been dealing with almost any other nation, such proceeding would not have aroused any resentment. But the Turkish people cared nothing for distinctions of this sort; all they saw was that they had two ships in England, which they had greatly strained their resources to purchase, and that England had now stepped in and taken them. Even without external pressure they would have resented the act, but external pressure was exerted in plenty. The transaction gave Wangenheim the greatest opportunity of his life. Violent attacks upon England, all emanating from the German Embassy, began to fill the Turkish Press. Wangenheim was constantly discoursing to the Turkish leaders on English perfidy. He now suggested that Germany, Turkey’s good friend, was prepared to make compensation for England’s “unlawful” seizure. He suggested that Turkey go through the form of “purchasing” the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_, which were then wandering around the Mediterranean, perhaps in anticipation of this very contingency, and incorporate them in the Turkish Navy in place of the appropriated ships in England. The very day that these vessels passed through the Dardanelles the _Ikdam_, a Turkish newspaper published in Constantinople, had a triumphant account of this “sale,” with big headlines calling it a “great success for the Imperial Government.”