The Osmanlis are passing at this moment as the Achaemenids passed then. They lost the last of Europe in the Balkan War, and with it their prestige as increasers of Islam; the growth of national consciousness among their subjects, not least among the Turks themselves, has loosened the foundations of their military empire, as of the other military empires with which they are allied. They forfeited the Caliphate when they proclaimed the Holy War against the Allied Powers--inciting Moslems to join one Christian coalition against another, not in defence of their religion, but for Ottoman political aggrandisement. They lost it morally when this incitement was left unheeded by the Moslem world; they lost it in deed when the Sherif of Mekka asserted his rights as the legitimate guardian of the Holy Cities, drove out the Ottoman garrison from Mekka, and allied himself with the other independent princes of Arabia. All the props of Ottoman dominion in Asia have fallen away, but nothing dooms it so surely as the breath of life that is stirring over the dormant lands and peoples once more. The cutting of the Suez Canal has led the highways of commerce back to the Nearer East; the democracy and nationalism of Europe have been extending their influence over Asiatic races. On whatever terms the War is concluded, one far-reaching result is certain already: there will be a political and economic revival in Western Asia, and the direction of this will not be in Ottoman hands. We are thus witnessing the foundation of a new era as momentous, if not as dramatic, as Alexander's passage of the Dardanelles. The Ottoman vesture has waxed old, and something can be discerned of the new forms that are emerging from beneath it; their outstanding features are worth our attention. II The new Turkish Nationalism is the immediate factor to be reckoned with. It is very new--newer than the Young Turks, and sharply opposed to the original Young Turkish programme--but it has established its ascendancy. It decided Turkey's entry into the War, and is the key to the current policy of the Ottoman Government. The Young Turks were not Nationalists from the beginning; the "Committee of Union and Progress" was founded in good faith to liberate and reconcile all the inhabitants of the Empire on the principles of the French Revolution. At the Committee's congress in 1909 the Nationalists were shouted down with the cry: "Our goal is organisation and nothing else[3]." But Young Turkish ideals rapidly narrowed. Liberalism gave way to Panislamism, Panislamism to Panturanianism, and the "Ottoman State Idea" changed from "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to the Turkification of non-Turkish nationalities by force.