[Footnote 1: The harvest has now come in, and is most abundant.]
But during all these busy and tremendous months of war Germany has not only been denuding Turkey of her food supplies, for the sake of the Pan-Turkish ideal; in the same altruistic spirit she has been vastly increasing the productiveness of her new and most important colony. The great irrigation works at Konia, begun several years ago, are in operation, and the revenues of the irrigated villages have been doubled. In fact, as the report lately issued says, 'a new and fertile province has been formed by the aid of German energy and knowledge.' At Adana are similar irrigation works, financed by the Deutsche Bank. Ernst Marré gives us a most hopeful survey of them, for Adana was already linked up with the Bagdad Railway in October 1916, which was to be the great artery connecting Germany with the East. There is some considerable shortage of labour there (owing in part to the Armenian massacres, to which we shall revert presently), but the financial arrangements are in excellent shape. The whole of the irrigation works are in German hands, and have been paid for by German paper; and to get the reservoirs, etc., back into her own control, it has been agreed that Turkey, already completely bankrupt, will have to pay not only what has been spent, but a handsome sum in compensation; while, as regards shortage of labour, prisoners have been released in large numbers to work without pay. This irrigation scheme at Adana will increase the cotton yield by four times the present crop, so we learn from the weekly Arab magazine, _El Alem el Ismali_, which tells us also of the electric-power stations erected there.
The same paper (October 1916) announces to the Anatolian merchants that transport is now easy, owing to the arrival of engines and trucks from Germany, while _Die Zeit_ (February 1917) prophesies a prosperous future for this Germano-Turkish cotton combine. Hitherto Turkey has largely imported cotton from England; now Turkey--thanks to German capital on terms above stated--will, in the process of internal development so unselfishly devised for her by Germany, grow cotton for herself, and be kind enough to give a preferential tariff to Germany.
