water, and Gott and Allah, hand-in-hand, pledged each other in the cups
they had filled with the blood that poured from the wine-presses of
Belgium and of Armenia.

For centuries before the Osmanli Turks made their appearance in Asia
Minor, there had come from out of the misty East numerous bodies of
Turks, pushing westwards, and spreading over the Euphrates valley and
over Persia, in nomadic or military colonisations, and it is not until
the thirteenth century that we find the Osmanli Turks, who give their
name to that congregation of races known as the Ottoman Empire,
established in the north-west corner of Asia Minor. Like all previous
Turkish immigrations, they came not in any overwhelming horde, with
sword in one hand and Koran in the other, but as a small compact body
with a genius for military organisation, and the gift, which they retain
to this day, of stalwart fighting. The policy to which they owed their
growth was absorption, and the people whom they first began to absorb
were Greeks and other Christians, and it was to a Christian girl,
Nilufer, that Osman married his son Orkhan. They took Christian youths
from the families of Greek dwellers, forced them to apostatise, gave
them military training, and married them to Turkish girls. It was out of
this blend of Greek and Turkish blood, as Mr. D.G. Hogarth points out,
that they derived their national being and their national strength. This
system of recruiting they steadily pursued not only among the Christian
peoples with whom they came in contact, but among the settlements of
Turks who had preceded them in this process of pushing westwards, and
formed out of them the professional soldiery known as Janissaries. They
did not fight for themselves alone, but as mercenaries lent their arms
to other peoples, Moslem and Christian alike, who would hire their
services. This was a policy that paid well, for, after having delivered
some settlement from the depredations of an inconvenient neighbour, and