As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit, in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No" before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement about the war in Constantinople and elsewhere were not required to show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the bitter end." Never, however--and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of the World-politician--have I ever heard a single one of those Germans, who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them, to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist were Turkey victorious.