BY E.F.  BENSON

Crescent and Iron Cross, Preface

In compiling the following pages I have had access to certain sources of official information, the nature of which I am not at liberty to specify further.  I have used these freely in such chapters of this book as deal with recent and contemporary events in Turkey or in Germany in connection with Turkey:  the chapter, for instance, entitled ’Deutschland ueber Allah,’ is based very largely on such documents.  I have tried to be discriminating in their use, and have not, as far as I am aware, stated anything derived from them as a fact, for which I had not found corroborative evidence.  With regard to the Armenian massacres I have drawn largely on the testimony collected by Lord Bryce, on that brought forward by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee in his pamphlet The Murder of a Nation, and The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, and on the pamphlet by Dr. Martin Niepage, called The Horrors of Aleppo.  In the first chapter I have based the short historical survey on the contribution of Mr. D.G.  Hogarth to The Balkans (Clarendon Press, 1915).  The chapter called ‘Thy Kingdom is Divided’ is in no respect at all an official utterance, and merely represents the individual opinions and surmises of the author.  It has, however, the official basis that the Allies have pledged themselves to remove the power of the Turk from Constantinople, and to remove out of the power of the Turk the alien peoples who have too long already been subject to his murderous rule.  I have, in fact, but attempted to conjecture in what kind of manner that promise will be fulfilled.

Fresh items of news respecting internal conditions in Turkey are continually coming in, and if one waited for them all, one would have to wait to the end of the war before beginning to write at all on this subject.  But since such usefulness as this book may possibly have is involved with the necessity of its appearance before the end of the war, I set a term to the gathering of material, and, with the exception of two or three notes inserted later, ceased to collect it after June 1917.  But up to then anything that should have been inserted in surveys and arguments, and is not, constitutes a culpable omission on my part.

E.F.  BENSON

Crescent and Iron Cross, Contents

CHAPTER I

THE THEORY OF THE OLD TURKS

CHAPTER II

THE THEORY OF THE NEW TURKS

CHAPTER III

THE END OF THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

CHAPTER IV

THE QUESTION OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE

CHAPTER V