At this meeting Talaat frankly told me that Turkey had decided to side with the Germans and to sink or swim with them. He went again over the familiar grounds, and added that if Germany won--and Talaat said that he was convinced that Germany would win--the Kaiser would get his revenge on Turkey if Turkey had not helped him to obtain this victory. Talaat frankly admitted that fear--the motive which, as I have said, is the one that chiefly inspires Turkish acts--was driving Turkey into a German alliance. He analysed the whole situation most dispassionately; he said that nations could not afford such emotions as gratitude, or hate, or affection; the only guide to action should be cold-blooded policy. “At this moment,” said Talaat, “it is for our interest to side with Germany; if, a month from now, it is our interest to embrace France and England, we shall do that just as readily.” “Russia is our greatest enemy,” he continued, “and we are afraid of her. If now, while Germany is attacking Russia, we can give her a good strong kick, and so make her powerless to injure us for some time, it is Turkey’s duty to administer that kick”! And then turning to me with a half-melancholy, half-defiant smile, he summed up the whole situation. “_Ich mit die Deutschen_,” he said in his broken German. Because the Cabinet was so divided, however, the Germans themselves had to push Turkey over the precipice. The evening following my talk with Talaat, most fateful news came from Russia. Three Turkish torpedo boats had entered the harbour of Odessa, had sunk the Russian gunboat _Donetz_, killing a part of the crew, and had damaged two Russian dreadnoughts. They also sank the French ship _Portugal_, killing two of the crew and wounding two others. They then turned their shells on the town and destroyed a sugar factory, with some loss of life. German officers commanded these Turkish vessels; there were very few Turks on board, as the Turkish crew had been given a holiday for the Turkish religious festival of _Bairam_. The act was simply a wanton and unprovoked one; the Germans raided the town deliberately, simply to make war inevitable. The German officers on the _General_, as my friend had told me, were constantly threatening to commit some such act if Turkey did not do so; well, now they had done it. When this news reached Constantinople, Djemal was playing cards at the Cercle d’Orient. As Djemal was Minister of Marine, this attack, had it been an official act of Turkey, could have been made only on his orders. When someone called him from the card-table to tell him the news Djemal was much excited. “I know nothing about it,” he replied. “It has not been done by my orders.” On the evening of the 29th I had another talk with Talaat. He told me that he had known nothing of this attack beforehand, and that the whole responsibility rested with the German, Admiral Souchon.