The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting Germany--The Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The social necessity for this deliverance--Anatolia, the new Turkey after the war; forecasts about the Turkish race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany, at peace, benefits too--Farewell to the German "World Politicians"--German interests in a victorious and in a defeated Turkey--The German-Turkish treaty--A paradise on earth--The Russian commercial impulse--The new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of civilisation--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation of Germany 258 Appendix 283 TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE CHAPTER I At the outbreak of war in Germany--The German "world-politicians" (_Weltpolitiker_)--German and English mentality--The "place in the sun"--England's declaration of war--German methods in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine--Prussian arrogance--Militaristic journalism. Anyone who, like myself, set foot on German soil for the first time after years of sojourn in foreign lands, and more particularly in the colonies, just at the moment that Germany was mobilising for the great European war, must surely have been filled, as I was, with a certain feeling of melancholy, a slight uneasiness with regard to the state of mind of his fellow-countrymen as it showed itself in these dramatic days of August in conversations in the street, in cafés and restaurants, and in the articles appearing in the Press. We Germans have never learnt to think soundly on political subjects. Bismarck's political heritage, although set forth in most popular form in his _Thoughts and Recollections_, a book that anyone opposing this war from the point of view rather of prudence than of ethics might utilise as an unending source of propaganda, has not descended to our rulers in any sort of living form. But an unbounded political _naïveté_, an incredible lack of judgment and of understanding of the point of view of other peoples, who have their _raison d'être_ just as much as we have, their vital interests, their standpoint of honour--have not prevented us from trying to carry on a grand system of _Weltpolitik_ (world politics). The average everyday German has never really understood the English--either before or during the war; in the latter's colonial policy, which, according to pan-German ideas, has no other aim than to snatch from us our "place in the sun"; in their conception of liberty and civilisation, which has entailed such mighty sacrifices for them on behalf of their Allies; when we trod Belgian neutrality underfoot and thought England would stand and look on; at the time of the debates about universal service, when practically every German, even in the highest political circles, was ready to wager