she would be on the victorious side (else she would not have joined it), and down went the loan with a pleasant sensation of sweetness.  A second loan was easily induced by the failure of the Dardanelles expedition, and about then the ‘ignorant’ Turkish peasant began to wonder whether the paper was quite as valuable as gold, and to prefer gold or even the ordinary silver piastre to its German equivalent.  To counteract that, as we have seen, a law was passed making it criminal to hoard gold, and, to complete the ruin, the silver piastre was called in, and a nickel token was substituted....  We can but bow our heads in reverence of the thoroughness of German swindling.

Now Turkey is completely bankrupt, and we must ask ourselves why Germany ever bargained for the repayment in gold, after the war, of the millions she had lent the Turks in paper, if she knew that Turkey could never repay her.  True, the loans had only cost her the paper the notes were printed on, so that in no case could she prove a loser, but how could she be a gainer?  The answer to that question shouts at us from every acre of Turkish soil.  The immense undeveloped riches of Turkey supply the answer.  Some indeed are already being developed, and the labour and most of the materials have been paid for by the German paper notes.  There are the irrigation works at Adana, there is the beet-sugar industry at Konia, the irrigation works in the Makischelin Valley, the mineral concessions of the Bagdad Railway, the Haidar Pasha Harbour concessions, the afforestation scheme near Constantinople, the cotton industry in Anatolia—­there is no end to them.  Turkey may not be able to pay in cash, but over all these concessions already working, and over a hundred more, of which the concessions have been granted, Germany has a complete hold, and her victim will pay in minerals and cotton and sugar and corn.  She will pay over and over and over again, as none who have the smallest knowledge of Kultur-finance can possibly doubt.  She is bled white already, and for the rest of time bloodless and white will she remain.  Only one event can possibly avert her fate, and that is the victory of the Allies.

We have been so bold as to assume that this is not an impossible contingency, and on that assumption there is a brighter future for Turkey than the Prussian domination could ever bring her.  Bankrupt she is, but, as Germany saw, she is rich in possibilities even with regard to the restricted territory to which she will surely find herself limited, and it is a pleasant chance for her that Germany has already been so busy in developing the resources of Anatolia.  For Germany may safely bet her last piece of paper money that she will not lay a finger on them.