Soldiers were asked for as Ambassadors in preference to diplomatists of Phanariote families, although the latter had supplied for generations past the most able Turkish diplomatists. By Imperial desire a Mohammedan Turkish cavalry officer, Tewfik Pasha, a charming companion, but one completely ignorant of politics, was appointed Turkish Ambassador in Berlin, and remained there until the Turkish revolution in 1908. It is not for non-Germans to decide whether it was to the advantage of the more solid German interests in Turkey and of Turkey herself that the Sultan’s favourites were loaded with Prussian decorations. The last Grand Vizier of Abdul Hamid, Ferid Pasha, an Albanian, only a few days before his dismissal received the Grand Cross of the Black Eagle, a distinction supposed to be on a level with our Order of the Garter. There are things a Government can do which would be reprehensible if done by a private individual, but there are also things which are permissible to an individual but which a Government cannot do without imperilling those unweighable assets the correct estimation and cherishing of which was one of Bismarck’s strongest points. He would never have stooped to such little manœuvres; neither have the English nor the Russians nor even the French condescended to curry favour with the Turks by such questionable means. For years past the German official world has made a business of flattering the Turks, instead of warning them and, as true friends, insisting on the execution of the reforms upon which the public opinion of Europe insisted. This has been more particularly the case since the Græco-Turkish war of 1897, which was the moment when Germany might have been able to at least postpone the evil day of reckoning which has come in our time on the blood-stained fields of Thrace and Macedonia. Turkey’s German friends, with all the privileged insight they were allowed into her affairs, appear to have been blind to the black political outlook of the Turkish Empire which politically gifted Italians such as Mazzini and Crispi foresaw and confidently foretold half a century ago. Germany’s policy in Turkey encouraged the Turks to procrastinate and assume a truculent attitude. Hence the collapse of Turkey has been a moral blow to military Germany which might have been avoided, and which no sophistry can hide.