The Turco-German Compact.

It was to end it that the Young Turks entered the war on Germany’s side; for foreign control automatically breaks down if one Great Power, and still more if a group of two Powers, stands out of the Concert, renounces responsibility for the policy of the Turkish government towards the subject peoples and the economic highways which it holds in its power, and supports that government effectively in repudiating all claim to intervention on the part of the other Powers concerned. But this was the bargain struck between Germany and the Young Turks when Turkey attacked the Allies, without provocation, in October, 1914. The Young Turks placed all their economic and military resources at Germany’s disposal. Turkish troops (including of course the due percentage of conscripts from the subject peoples), are fighting Germany’s battles on the Riga, Halicz and Dobrudja fronts. The vast undeveloped economic resources of the Empire are, in the event of victory, to be thrown open to German exploitation when peace returns. These are concessions which Turkey has always jealously refrained from making to any other Power; and the price Germany has paid for them is the guarantee of just one thing—that the Young Turks shall have a free hand to repudiate all external control and to carry through their policy of “Ottomanisation” to a finish.