There are unhappily many signs that the butchers of Constantinople are planning further massacres. In February of this year preliminary measures were begun against the Greeks settled in Anatolia. Many were forcibly proselytised, their property was confiscated, and they were forbidden to carry on their businesses. Deportations also occurred, and all Greeks were removed from many villages in Anatolia, into the interior, presumably to 'agricultural colonies' such as those provided for Armenians. They suffered terribly from hunger and exposure, and it is estimated that ten per cent. of them died on their marches. Since then, however, there has been no more heard of any extension of those measures, and there seems to have been as yet no massacre of Greeks. It is reasonable to infer that Germany has in this case intervened. She still hoped to win Greece over to the Central European Powers, and clearly any massacre of Greeks by her own Allies was not desirable. King Constantine, among his endless vacillations and pusillanimous treacheries, probably made a firm protest on the subject. But in the kaleidoscope of war, should Greece come to the side of the Allies, it seems most probable that there will occur a wholesale massacre of Greeks. From what we know of the principles on which German Kultur is based, the most optimistic can scarcely hope that the very faintest remonstrance will emanate from Berlin.
The case of the Arabs in Syria is even more precarious. From the moment that the policy of the Young Turks was evolved, namely, to consolidate Osmanli supremacy by the weakening of its subject peoples, the Ottoman Government has been waiting for its opportunity to get rid of the 'Arab menace.' As we have seen, they began by substituting Turkish for Arabic as a written language in all official usages from the printing of the Koran and the prayers for the Sultan down to the legends on railway tickets. The Arab spirit, according to one of the spokesmen of the New Turk party, had to be suppressed, the Arab lands had to become Turkish colonies. 'It is a peculiarly imperious necessity of our existence,' we read in Jelal Noury Bey's propaganda, 'to Turkise the Arab lands, for the particularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the younger generations of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great catastrophe.' Against the Arabs the Young Turks formed and fostered a special animosity; they were powerful and warlike, and Enver, Talaat, and others saw that the idea of an Osmanli supremacy could never be realised unless very drastic measures were taken against them. The tenets of Islamism, it is true, forbade Moslems to fight Moslems, but Islamism, as a binding force, was already obsolete in the counsels of the new regime, having given place to Kultur. Of all their subject peoples, the Young Turks hated the Arabs the most, and, had not the European War intervened, there is no doubt that the Armenian massacres, already being planned, would have been followed by Arab massacres. But the armed and warlike Arabian tribes were not so easy to deal with as the defenceless Armenians, and Turkish troops could not be spared in sufficient numbers to render an Arab massacre the safe, pleasant, and lucrative pursuit that massacres should be. But Jemal the Great, black with his triumph over the Armenians at Zeitun, was Military Governor of Syria, and, the Armenian question being solved, he began to get to work on the Arab question. Owing to the expulsion of the French Missions from Syria in 1914, we have no such full or detailed information as we have from Americans in Armenia, and the following account is mainly derived from the Arabic journal _Mokattam,_ published in Cairo, the information in which is based on the account given by a Syrian refugee. It agrees with pieces of evidence that have come to hand from other sources.