Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/129

 of its gold to Germany could have but one end, he wrote from Aleppo. Even with Russia eliminated, Great Britain and France could not be divided and they could not be beaten. The British would conquer Palestine, would set up a Christian Government with which to hold the Suez Canal, and would isolate the remnant of the Empire from the rest of Islam—"a sound war policy made possible by our entry into the war against England, a policy whose success means irreparable loss for us and whose failure means German domination for us Falkenhayn has said repeatedly to anyone who will listen to him, that he is a German and is naturally interested first in Germany. If he can hold Palestine, he will place himself before the world and before our country as one of the great victors of the war. We shall then lose our own country and to this end, Falkenhayn will sacrifice every ounce of gold and every soldier he can squeeze out of us." But in the wake of the Russian rout, Pan-Turanianism had leaped into new life. Enver's reply was to give Falkenhayn command of the Palestine front and to exile Kemal, together with Rauf Bey, to Germany in the suite of the Crown Prince.

On Nov. 7, another revolution lifted its head amid the chaos of the Kerensky administration and Soviet Russia was born, to be attacked at once by the British Foreign Office with a vindictive hatred which has not even now run its full course.

On Jan. 5, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George, then barred from access to Soviet Russia by the bolted Straits, declared in London: "Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich