DEAR MR. WHITMAN,—Allow me to express to you the great pleasure I felt in reading your article published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ under the title “Some German Military Writers.”[37] It is certainly highly gratifying that you, sir, whom I know as the most able writer on German affairs in England, should have come forward to give a good lesson to these overbearing gentlemen. It is in any case a most important _signum temporis_, and it must diminish the idolization of brutal force, of sad mediæval traditions. The eminent soldier who wrote the book “Unser Volk in Waffen” (General von der Goltz) is often quoted by Germans when comparisons are drawn between England and Germany’s Imperial power, and deductions are drawn therefrom of Britain’s near downfall. Well, let us hope that they are grossly mistaken, just as they were mistaken in predicting a sure victory for the poor Turks, of whom a great German once stated, in the presence of Sultan Abdul Hamid, that “_one Turkish soldier was worth three Prussians_.” The German military instructor may have succeeded in turning the goodly Turk into a Prussian, minus the Pickelhaube, but Lule-Burgas has proved a most cruel disenchantment to the glorifiers of General Bernhardi’s theories. In so far I agree with your views. But there is one point with regard to which the English must take particular care, and this is not to fall into the mistake of disregarding the necessity arising from the general situation of European armaments. Formerly the English were quite right to pity the man on the Continent forcibly made a soldier; to-day, however, you must consider the Latin saying, _Ulula cum lupis_, and you are compelled to take note of your next-door neighbours. You must approve Lord Roberts’s efforts regarding compulsory military service. If Lord Haldane finds it possible to admire all sorts of German theories and institutions, why does he make an exception with regard to universal military service, which is a genuine German invention? Yours very truly, A. VAMBÉRY. Footnote 37: In the issue of December 4, 1912. III BUDAPEST UNIVERSITY, _December 30, 1912_. DEAR MR. WHITMAN,—I have read your ably written chapter on Sultan Abdul Hamid with much interest, and I may tell you that I can neither add to nor take away anything from its contents. Of course there is a good deal I could say about the man whose favourite I was supposed to be during more than ten years, but it is impossible to lift the veil more than I did in the two essays I published in the June and July numbers of 1909 of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, in which you can find more than one episode worth reproduction.