The War 203
in the British and Ottoman Empires was quite another.
It would not have been easy to reconcile the British to
a surrender of Constantinople to Tzarism. It was almost
as difficult for the Committee of Union and Progress to
rally the Turks into alliance with the German armies and
against the British fleet. The committee might have
good reasons for its policy, but to the Turk the British
had fought for a century to maintain the integrity of the
Ottoman Empire.
With the outbreak of war the British were given an
obvious opportunity of countering this conspiracy of the
committee by a naval coup de main. If, instead of con-
fiscating the two Turkish battleships, built by public
subscription in British yards, we had sent them to Con-
stantinople under British crews, we could have acquired
a position of such power and popularity that Constanti-
nople might have been converted into a second Cairo and
the Committee suppressed. But, unfortunately, it was the
Germans, holding very inferior cards, who brought off
this " grand slam }J by rushing their Goeben and Breslau
to Constantinople and there "selling" them to the
Turks. The Young Turks then easily brought off their
gunpowder treason and plot, and Turkey declared war
on November 5, 1914.
There is, therefore, no reason for the fears frequently
expressed that our earlier belligerent activities in Egypt
drove Turkey into the war against us. That had been
decided when our diplomats surrendered Constantinople
to Russia. Any chance of defeating it at the eleventh
hour disappeared when our admirals commandeered the
Turkish battleships for the Grand Fleet, But we may
fairly note that a State which embarks on such ambitious
and arbitrary diplomacy, as was the admission of Tzardom
to "Tzargrad/' must be prepared to back it promptly