With the Turks in Palestine

CHAPTER III

THE GER­MAN PRO­PA­GAN­DA

So passed the days of our train­ing, swift­ly, monotonous­ly, un­til the fate­ful De­cem­ber morn­ing when the news came like a thun­der­bolt that Turkey was about to join hands with Ger­many. We had had re­ports of the war--of a kind. Copies of tele­grams from Con­stantino­ple, print­ed in Ara­bic, were cir­cu­lat­ed among us, giv­ing ac­counts of end­less Ger­man vic­to­ries. These, how­ev­er, we had laughed at as fab­ri­ca­tions of a Prus­sophile press agen­cy, and in our skep­ti­cism we had failed to give the Teu­tons cred­it for the suc­cess­es they had ac­tu­al­ly won. To us, born and bred in the East as we were, the suc­cess of Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da in the Turk­ish Em­pire could not come as an over­whelm­ing sur­prise; but its full­ness amazed us.

It may be of time­ly in­ter­est to say a few words here re­gard­ing this pro­pa­gan­da as I have seen it in Pales­tine, spread­ing un­der strong and ef­fi­cient or­ga­ni­za­tion for twen­ty years.

In or­der to re­al­ize her im­pe­ri­al­is­tic dreams, Ger­many ab­so­lute­ly need­ed Pales­tine. It was the key to the whole Ori­en­tal sit­ua­tion. No mere co­in­ci­dence brought the Kaiser to Dam­as­cus in Novem­ber, 1898,--the same month that Kitch­en­er, in Lon­don, was hailed as Gor­don's avenger,--when he ut­tered his fa­mous phrase at the tomb of Sal­adin: “Tell the three hun­dred mil­lion Moslems of the world that I am their friend!” We have all seen pho­tographs of the im­pe­ri­al fig­ure, draped in an amaz­ing burnous of his own de­sign­ing (above which the Prus­sian _Pick­el­haube_ ris­es supreme), as he moved from point to point in this por­ten­tous vis­it: we may al­so have seen Caran d'Ache's cel­ebrat­ed car­toon (a sub­ject of diplo­mat­ic cor­re­spon­dence) rep­re­sent­ing this same im­pe­ri­al fig­ure, in its Ori­en­tal tog­gery, rid­ing in­to Jerusalem on an ass.

The na­tions of Eu­rope laughed at this vis­it and its trans­par­ent pur­pose, but it was all part of the scheme which won for the Ger­mans the con­ces­sions for the Ko­nia-​Bag­dad Rail­way, and made them own­ers of the dou­ble val­ley of the Eu­phrates and Tigris. Through branch lines pro­ject­ed through the fir­man, they are prac­ti­cal­ly in con­trol of both the Syr­ian routes to­ward the Cypri­ot­ic Mediter­ranean and the Lebanon val­leys. They al­so con­trol the three Ar­me­ni­an routes of Cap­pado­cia, the Black Sea, and the trans-​Cau­casian branch of Ur­fa, Marach, and Mar­dine. (The fall of Erzerum has al­tered con­di­tions re­spect­ing this last.) They dom­inate the Per­sian routes to­ward Tau­ris and Teheran as well; and last, but not least, the Gulf branch of Zobeir. These rail­ways de­liv­ered in­to Ger­man hands the con­trol of Per­sia, whence the road to In­dia may be made easy: through Syr­ia lies the route to the Suez Canal and Egypt, which was used in Febru­ary, 1915, and will prob­ably be used again this year.

To make this Ori­en­tal dream a re­al­ity, the Ger­mans have not re­lied on their rail­way con­ces­sions alone. Their Gov­ern­ment has done ev­ery­thing in its pow­er to en­cour­age Ger­man col­oniza­tion in Pales­tine. Scat­tered all over the coun­try are Ger­man mills that half of the time have noth­ing to grind. Ger­man ho­tels have been opened in places sel­dom fre­quent­ed by tourists. Ger­man en­gi­neers ap­peared in force, sur­vey­ing, sound­ing, not­ing. All these colonists held gath­er­ings in the Arab vil­lages, when the ig­no­rant na­tives were told of the great­ness of Ger­many, of her good in­ten­tions, and of the evil machi­na­tions of oth­er pow­ers. What I state here can be cor­rob­orat­ed by any one who knows Pales­tine and has lived in it.

About the time when we first knew that Turkey would join the Ger­man­ic pow­ers came the news that the “Ca­pit­ula­tions” had been re­voked. As is gen­er­al­ly known, for­eign­ers for­mer­ly en­joyed the pro­tec­tion of their re­spec­tive con­suls. The Turk­ish Gov­ern­ment, un­der the terms of the so-​called Ca­pit­ula­tions, or agree­ments, had no ju­ris­dic­tion over an Amer­ican, for in­stance, or a French­man, who could not be ar­rest­ed with­out the con­sent of his con­sul. In the Ot­toman Em­pire, where law and jus­tice are not at a pre­mi­um, such pro­tec­tion was a whole­some and nec­es­sary pol­icy.

The re­vok­ing of the Ca­pit­ula­tions was a ter­ri­ble blow to all the Eu­ro­peans, mean­ing, as it did, the prac­ti­cal abo­li­tion of all their rights. Up­on the Arabs it act­ed like an in­tox­icant. Ev­ery boot-​black or boat­man felt that he was the equal of the ac­cursed Frank, who now had no con­sul to pro­tect him; and abus­es be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly. More­over, as if by mag­ic, the whole coun­try be­came Ger­man­ized. In all the mosques, Fri­day prayers were end­ed with an in­vo­ca­tion for the wel­fare of the Sul­tan and “Had­ji Wil­helm.” The sig­nif­icance of this lies in the fact that the ti­tle “Had­ji” can be prop­er­ly ap­plied on­ly to a Moslem who has made the pil­grim­age to Mec­ca and kissed the sa­cred stone of the Kaa­ba. In­stant death is the penal­ty paid by any Chris­tian who is found with­in that en­clo­sure: yet Wil­helm II, head of the Luther­an faith, stepped for­ward as “Had­ji Wil­helm.” His pic­tures were sold ev­ery­where; Ger­man of­fi­cers ap­peared; and it seemed as if a wind of bru­tal mas­tery were blow­ing.

The dom­inant fig­ure of this move­ment in Pales­tine was, with­out doubt, the Ger­man Con­sul at Haifa, Leutweld von Hard­egg. He trav­eled about the coun­try, mak­ing speech­es, and dis­tribut­ing pam­phlets in Ara­bic, in which it was elab­orate­ly proved that Ger­mans are not Chris­tians, like the French or En­glish, but that they are de­scen­dants of the prophet Mo­hammed. Pas­sages from the Ko­ran were quot­ed, proph­esy­ing the com­ing of the Kaiser as the Sav­ior of Is­lam.