On the high frost-bound uplands of Armenia the Russians hold a strategic position from which it is impossible to dislodge them, and which will probably very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexandretta. In Mesopotamia, after that enormously important political event, the Fall of Baghdad, the union was effected between the British troops and the Russians, advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez Canal is now no longer threatened, and the British troops have been removed from there for a counter-offensive in Southern Palestine, and probably, when the psychological moment arrives, an offensive against Syria, now so sadly shattered politically. It is quite within the bounds of possibility, too, that during this war a big new Front may be formed in Western Anatolia, already completely broken up by the Pan-Hellenic Irredenta, and the Turks will be hard put to it to find troops to meet the new offensive. Arabia is finally and absolutely lost, and England, by establishing an Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war against Turkey. Meantime, on the far battlefields of Galicia and the Balkans, whole Ottoman divisions are pouring out their life-blood, fighting for that elusive German victory that never comes any nearer, while in every nook and corner of their own land there is a terrible lack of troops. Enver Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attempted to recall them, but in vain. That is a short résumé of the military situation. This is how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has placed in Germany. To a German journalist who went out two years ago to a great Turkey, striving for a "Greater Turkey," it does indeed seem a bitter irony of fate to see his sphere of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The fall of Turkey is the greatest blow that could have been dealt to German "world-politics"; it is a disappointment that will have the gravest consequences. But from the standpoint of culture, human civilisation, ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice, historical progress, the economic development of wide tracts of land of the greatest importance from their geographical position, it is one of the most brilliant results of the war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy. When I look back on how wonderfully things have shaped in the last two and a half years I am bound to admit that I am happy things have turned out as they have. If perchance any Turk who knows me happens to read these lines, I beg him not to think that my ideas are saturated with hatred of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the country and the Turkish race with those many attractive qualities that rightly appealed to a poet like Loti.