ceased to sway the destinies of his kingdom. In any case this programme
earned its authors the sympathy of Europe, and probably this, and no
more than this, prompted it. They wished to establish themselves,
unquestioned and undisturbed, and did so; and I do not think we shall
be far wrong if we take the original Young Turk programme about as
seriously as we took the parody of a Parliament with which Abdul Hamid
opened (as with a blessing) his atrocious reign. The very next year
(1909) they permitted (if they did not arrange) the Armenian massacres
at Adana, and the Balance of Power began faintly to wonder whether the
Young Turks in their deposition of Abdul Hamid had not slain an asp and
hatched a cockatrice. Given that their aims originally were sincere, we
can but marvel at the swiftness of the corruption which in little more
than a year had begun to lead them not into paths of reform and Liberal
policy, but along the road towards which the butcher they had deposed
had pointed the way. It must have made Abdul Hamid gnaw his nails and
shake impotent hands to see those who had torn him from his throne so
soon pursuing the very policy which he invented, and to which he
nominally owed his dethronement. Strange, too, was it that his overthrow
should come from the very quarter to which he looked for security, for
it was on the army that each Sultan in turn had most relied for the
stability of his throne. But Abdul Hamid, in order, perhaps, to deal
more effectually with the subject races he wished to exterminate, had
introduced a system of foreign training for the officers of his army, a
course of Potsdam efficiency, and it was just they, on whom Sultans from
time immemorial had relied, who knocked the prop of the army away from
him. Though publicly, for the edification of Europe his deposers
professed a Liberal policy, it was not on account of Armenian massacres
that they turned him off his throne, but because of the muddle and
corruption and debility of his rule. Herein we may easily trace the hand
of Germany, no longer publicly beckoning as when Wilhelm II., just after