discuss, and there again—­for the Emperor’s sister was Crown Princess of Greece—­conversation must have been a shade difficult.  Altogether, in spite of the Emperor’s lifelong desire to visit the Holy Places in Palestine, it was an odd moment for a Christian monarch to visit the butcher of Constantinople.  But the truth is that Wilhelm II. had a very strong reason for going to see his brother, for the fruit of German policy in Turkey was already ripening and swelling on the tree, and the minor disadvantages of visiting this murderous tyrant while still his hands were red with blood was more than compensated for by the advantages of having a heart-to-heart talk with him on other subjects.  Germany had already begun her peaceful penetration, and the real motive of the Emperor’s visit was, after swords and orders had been exchanged, to make the definite request that bodies of colonising Germans should be allowed to settle on the Sultan’s dominions in Asia Minor, and a hint no doubt was conveyed that there would be plenty of room for them now that there were so many Armenian farms unfortunately without a master.  But, like Uriah Heep, the Emperor had attempted to pluck the fruit before it was ripe, or, to use a more exact simile, before he was tall enough to reach it.  In vain he represented to Abdul Hamid the immense advantages which would result to Turkey by the establishment of those Gott-like German settlers in Asia Minor.  Out of his colossal egalo-megalomania, of which we know more now, he thought that any request which the All-Highest should deign to make must instantly be granted.  But he met with a perfectly flat refusal, and the baffled All-Highest left Constantinople in an exceedingly bad temper, which quite undid all the good that the balm in Gilead and the sacred associations of Jerusalem had done him.  It is pleasant to think of the Pan-Islamic merriment with which Abdul Hamid must have viewed the indignant exit of his Christian brother, who had come such a long way to see him, and was so tactful about the Armenian atrocities.  He might perhaps—­for those Christians were very odd pigs—­have expressed horror or remonstrance.  Not at all:  he was much too anxious to get his request granted, to make himself disagreeable.  But did his Christian brother really think that all those massacres over which Abdul Hamid had spent so much time and money, had been arranged in order to settle those nasty progressive Germans in the lands that had been so carefully depopulated?  Why, the whole point of them had been that the Armenians were too progressive and prosperous, thus constituting a menace to the central Government, and certainly Abdul Hamid was not meaning to put in their place settlers even more progressive and with a stronger backing behind them.  So off went the All-Highest back home again, very much vexed with Abdul Hamid, and possibly (if that was not sacrilegious) with himself for having been in too great a hurry.  There was more spade-work to be done yet before Turkey was ripe for open and avowed colonisation by the Fatherland.