The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 19

THE LIFE OF MOLTKE

BY KARL DETLEV JESSEN, PH.D.

Professor of German Literature, Bryn Mawr College

To relate, in detail, the story of the life of General-Fieldmarshal Graf Helmuth von Moltke--or, as we shall briefly call him, Moltke--means to give an account of that memorable phase of modern history, perhaps, so far as Europe is concerned, the most important of the nineteenth century. This was the ascendency of Prussia, of her king and of her people, culminating in the unification and the consolidation of most of the German states into one great empire, with all its realization of military and political power, of social, economic, and, in a wide sense, of cultural eminence and efficiency.

The barest outlines, however, must suffice for the present purpose.

Moltke was born at the threshold of the century the history of which he so prominently helped to shape, on October 26, 1800, at Parchim in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. On his father's side he descended from a family of the North German gentry which had come to various degrees of prominence in some German as well as Scandinavian states.

No doubt he inherited the military instinct from this race of warriors, statesmen, and landholders; a race the characteristic traits of which indicated the line along which he was bound to develop, the field in which he was to manifest his greatest achievements. But there is just as little doubt that all the elements of character which exalted his military gifts and instincts into an almost antique n.o.bility, simplicity, and grandeur--his dignity, purity, dutifulness, his profound religious devotion, and sense of humor--came to him from his mother, who was descended from an ancient patrician family of the little republican commonwealth, the once famous Hansatown of Lubeck. How far the Huguenot strain may have influenced him, through his paternal grandmother, is hard to tell, since we know but little of Charlotte d'Olivet.

After the family had moved to Holstein, where his father failed to make a success of an agricultural undertaking for which he seems to have lacked fitness, young Moltke entered the Royal Danish Military Academy as a cadet, and there pa.s.sed his lieutenant's examination with distinction; but he sought and found a commission under the Prussian eagle. He entered the eighth grenadiers at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. A year later, in 1823, he was sent to what is now called the War Academy in Berlin. Only by the closest economy and by some outside work, partly literary, as we shall see, he managed to get along with his exceedingly small officer's pay. He distinguished himself however so much that he became, successively, a teacher at the Division School and an active military geological surveyor, and finally was taken into the General Staff of the Army. Becoming a first lieutenant in 1832, a captain in 1835, ahead of many of his comrades, he served exclusively in strategical positions. During the four years, 1835-39, he, with some comrades, was in the Turkish dominions for the purpose of organizing and drilling the Turkish Army. He witnessed, as an active partic.i.p.ant, the Turkish defeat by the insurgent Egyptians at Nisib on the Euphrates, which was brought about by the indolent obstinacy of the Turkish commander-in-chief. Like Xenophon, Moltke retreated toward and reached the Black Sea. At Constantinople he obtained honorable dismissal from the Sultan. After his return to Prussia he became chief of the General Staff of the Fourth Army Corps. In 1841 he married Mary Burt, a young relative who was partly of English extraction. The union developed into an unusually happy married life, in spite of, or partly because of, their great difference in age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOLTKE ANTON VON WERNER]

His wife, by whom he had no issue, lived to see the beginning of his great achievements and fame, but died in 1868, before his proudest triumph. Various commands led him to Italy, Spain, England, and Russia as adjutant of Prussian princes. In 1858 he was appointed chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army--the inst.i.tution which he shaped into that great strategical instrument through which were made possible, from a military point of view, the glorious successes of the three wars--1864, 1866, 1870-71--and which has become the model of all similar organizations the world over.

Side by side with the overtowering political achievement of Bismarck and the more congenial life work of Roon, the minister of war, Moltke's service to his country and his king stands unchallenged in historical significance. He has indelibly inscribed his name on the tablets of history as one of the world's greatest strategists. But he did not lay down his work until extreme old age; in 1888, as he so simply put it in his request for relief from duty, he resigned his office, because he "could no more mount a horse." He, however, still remained president of the Commission of National Defense and his last speech in the German Reichstag, of which he had been a continuous member since its establishment, he delivered on May 14, 1890. He died on April 24, 1891. The nation felt that one of its great heroes had pa.s.sed away.

In two congratulatory doc.u.ments on the occasion of Moltke's ninetieth birthday, Theodor Mommsen, the historian, has summed up the results of the great soldier's life-work--in the address presented by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and in the honorary tablet of the German cities. These inscriptions may be found in Mommsen's _Reden und Aufsaetze_. Shortly after Moltke's death, in a commemorative address at the same Academy, the historian and h.e.l.lenist Ernst Curtius reviewed Moltke's relations to historical science and his achievements in military science and in history. The Academy had appointed the Fieldmarshal an honorary member in 1860 for his great achievements in the military, geographical, and historical sciences. Professor Curtius in the address draws the outlines of Moltke's character as a student, and explains how he is indebted to the teachings of Karl Ritter, the founder of scientific geography, how he clearly develops under the influence of Niebuhr, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Buch, and Erman, the physicist. He points out how Moltke, as historian and as an expert cartographer, introduces scientific spirit and work into his great creation, the German General Staff. As a strategist, however, it remains to be said that he follows in the footsteps, puts into practice and develops the methods of General von Clausewitz, the first mind who put war on an empirical and scientific basis. Moltke was intimately acquainted with Gibbon through a nearly completed rendering into German of _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, a translation which, unfortunately, never was printed and seems to be lost even in ma.n.u.script. As his favorite books and writers Moltke mentions, among others, Littrow's _Astronomy,_ Liebig's _Agricultural Chemistry_, Clausewitz's _On War,_ Ranke, Treitschke, Carlyle. It appears, then, that his scientific equipment was of the most solid sort, enabling him to make the most valuable contributions to knowledge.

It is impossible to imagine to oneself Moltke breaking into tears, either of wrath or of despair, in great crises of his life, such as we know to have been the case with Bismarck. There is a contrast between these two men in their very makeup. There is tragedy in Bismarck's soul, in its volcanic eruptiveness and its conflicts. He is nervously high-strung in the extreme, the very embodiment, in Karl Lamprecht's terminology, of the type of "Reizsamkeit." He likes to listen to Beethoven's music and his sense of nature reveals him to be impressionable, sensitive. His gamut of emotions and feelings, and their expression, is extraordinary. Moltke, on the other hand, appears to be always in harmony with himself, he is far less impulsive than his great contemporary and friend. His feeling, always awake for nature, has no element of morbid and pathetic sentiment; in the earlier stages of its manifestation we see it slightly tinged by Romanticism. But he is at peace with nature, his great comforting mother. There is no sudden and surprising break in his mental or spiritual development. The ideal of the strategist, as antiquity saw it, appears to be consummated in his person. William James, himself an ardent pacificist, well observed that in the modern soldier there is a matter-of-factness far removed from the bluff and make-believe of modern life in general. He might have chosen Moltke as the best type of this sort of warrior. But there was much more than this scientific and dutiful soldier; there was at bottom of Moltke's nature a fine sense of proportion, an artistic vein, and, not the least element, a Christian philosophy of life just as far removed from mere perfunctory indifferentism as from c.o.c.ksure dogmatic bigotry and self-sufficiency.

We have striking evidence of this in the _Trostgedanken_, the _Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence_, which he laid down as the last literary utterance of his full and eventful career. But this is not all; for most astonishing of all in the richness of this well-rounded harmony of over ninety years of life is a lively source of humor, due more to endowment and inheritance from his mother than to her influence, as his letters to her bear witness. When war is declared in 1870 he remarks that a new vitality has entered his carca.s.s, and, on the very eve of his demise, when in the morning he had attended a session of the Upper House of the Prussian Diet, loyal to his work and task to the very last moment, he closed the last and winning game of whist he played with the quotation of that grim bit of humor characteristic of Frederick the Great and his soldiery: "_Wat seggt hei nu to sine ollen Suepers_?"

In Moltke, if in any one, the character of the man reveals the character and style of his writing. Mommsen, in his address mentioned above, characterizes him as "the man who knew how to describe, as well as how to win, battles, the master of style in his rare speeches, the clever and sympathetic investigator of and writer on manifold ethnic life, the scientific explorer of the regions on the rivers Tigris and Euphrates." It is obvious, though, that this mastery of style, this superb union of form and content, was not attained miraculously and from the start. Still, his first production, published in 1827, a tale (_Novelle_) in the style of Tieck and his followers, shows distinctive talent, and a tendency toward brevity as well as adequacy of expression, not to mention a sustained sense of harmony and proportion. The young lieutenant also published, anonymously, some poetry, and showed a clever hand in translating from foreign poets. It is a pity that most of these attempts are buried in inaccessible periodicals and have never been republished. But he left the field of poetry and fiction, so far as we know, forever with his next work, the first published under his name and in pamphlet form, a work which, though of genuine political interest and love, was at the same time intended to increase his income to the level of a living wage: _Holland and Belgium in their mutual relations; from their separation under Philip II., till their re-union under William I_. He read more than five thousand pages of sources for the preparation of this small pamphlet. It was published in 1831, and followed within a year by another one: _An account of the internal state of affairs and of the social condition of Poland_. Both writings, as in fact everything else from his pen since about 1830, had a more or less direct bearing on his military vocation; since war, according to Clausewitz, is nothing but the continuation of politics by other than diplomatic means.

But the height of his literary mastery is reached in 1841 by the publication of the _Letters on the condition and events in Turkey from the years_ 1835 _till_ 1839, the matured fruit of those eventful and adventurous but, at the same time, constructive years in the Orient.

They have been likened to Goethe's _Italian Journey_. The comparison is justified by striking resemblances. Both works have resulted from diaries and letters actually kept, Moltke's work, however, more faithfully retaining and professing its formal nature. But the resemblance is much closer, arising, in the so-called inner form, from a similarity of att.i.tude, the same wide extent of interests which may be briefly called "kulturgeschichtlich," and, above all, the scientific concern in the country and its inhabitants, to which both brought the most solid and methodical qualifications. It is true, the wealth of Italy, both of antiquity and of the Renaissance, in matters literary and artistic, so exuberantly mirrored in Goethe's book of travel, is not to be found in Moltke's work. But this lack is counterbalanced by those portions dealing with historical events which Moltke actually experienced and even influenced; events, though then unsuccessful, as far as his intentions were concerned, yet important and significant for our own time, as the recent developments on the Balkan peninsula bear ample evidence. Both, Goethe as well as Moltke, are clever and artistic in handling pencil and brush as well as their descriptive pen.

And now the style, in the narrower sense. It is natural, limpid, free from all rhetorical flourishes and wordiness, placing the right word in the right place. Xenophon, Caesar, Goethe, come to mind in reading Moltke's descriptions, historical expositions, reflections. Bookish terms and unvisual metaphors, which occur in the preceding pamphlets, though rarely enough, are entirely absent. The tendency toward military brevity and precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the c.u.mbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed. Still another point is significant, showing the writer to be of born artistic instinct. In a letter to his brother Ludwig, who was to take from Moltke's overburdened shoulders part of his laborious task of translating Gibbon, he cleverly remarks on the exuberant use of adjectives by the historian as being sometimes more obscuring than elucidating, and he simply advises the omitting of some. It is a pity that the translation seems to be lost, and with it an insight into Moltke's elaboration of his style, which a translation would reveal better than original composition. In one respect these letters about Turkey were never equalled by Moltke. Henceforth, he turned absolutely matter-of-fact, a military writer _par excellence_. Even in his letters those nice bits of humor and incidental manifestations of a subtle and fine nature sense grow scarcer and scarcer. There are two essays--_The Western Boundary_, and _Considerations in the Choice of Railway Routes_--both published in the _Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift_, in 1841, and 1843 respectively, that demonstrate this tendency toward specialization.

The bulk of his writings from then on falls into that technical series reserved for, and interesting chiefly to, the military man. Even his speeches in the Reichstag, few and far between, considering the extent of years over which they are spread, with all their excellent "Sachlichkeit," their directness and clearness, concern matters and problems that affect, more or less directly, his comprehensive duties as chief intellect of the military organization of his country. So, quite naturally, we see him very reluctantly yield to a gentle but persistent pressure to use his great literary talent for setting down some reminiscences from his life. He declined to publish personal memoirs, however, saying: "All that I have written about actual and real things ('Sachliches') which is worth preserving is kept in the archives of the General Staff. My personal reminiscences are better buried with me." He had turned objective in the highest possible degree, leaving behind all vanities and petty subjective points of view. But after his retirement he wrote, in 1887, on the basis of the great work on that subject by the General Staff and partly managed by himself, that short _History of the Franco-German War of_ 1870-71, which his nation cherishes as a precious inheritance. It is "sachlich"

throughout. Starting with a brief reflection on the origin of modern wars he relates the events from the point of view of the directing chief of staff of the army, closing the whole by one impressive sentence: "Stra.s.sburg and Metz, estranged from our country in times of weakness, had been regained, and the German Empire had come to a renewed existence." The work is a consummation, in literary form, of his motto "Erst waegen, dann wagen!" From the very threshold of his death we possess as the sum total of his philosophy of life those already mentioned _Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence_. From the point of composition and style these are highly interesting because of the fact that, beside the final version, three extant parallel versions show the gradual working out of form and thought.

Something remains to be said about Moltke the correspondent. The letters preserved or published fully justify his being ranked among the best letter writers in German literature. Here, more than elsewhere, the subtle and finer characteristics of the man, the son, the brother, the friend, the gentle and always kindly responsive nature of a thoroughly human and Christian soul are revealed. Above all, however, and side by side with Bismarck's n.o.ble letters to his fiancee and wife, stand Moltke's charming and devoted letters to Mary Burt von Moltke. I shall not venture to describe their wealth of sentiment, of charm, of love, of interest in matters big and small.

One of the long series, however, stands conspicuous among them; it is addressed to his fiancee, dated Berlin, February 13, 1842. Charming in its combination of a protective, paternal, and instructive att.i.tude with that of the lover and prospective husband, it is unique also because of the advice given about the gentle art of writing letters, an art in which the great modern strategist excelled.

_LETTERS AND HISTORICAL WRITINGS OF MOLTKE_

THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY CONDITIONS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN 1836

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.

[Moltke spent four years, from 1836 to 1839, in Turkey, and, as was his habit, sent detailed accounts of his experiences to his family.

After his return to Prussia, he collected his material, revised it, omitted all intimate family references, and published it under the t.i.tle _Letters Concerning Conditions and Events in Turkey_. The book contained sixty-seven letters. The following is the tenth letter, dated from Pera, April 7, 1836.]

For a long time it was the task of the armies of western Europe to set bounds to the Turkish sway. Today the powers of Europe seem anxious to keep the Turkish state in existence. Not so very long ago serious concern was felt lest Islam gain the upper hand in a great part of the West, as it had done in the Orient. The adherents of the prophet had conquered countries where Christianity had been rooted for centuries.

The cla.s.sic soil of the apostles, Corinth and Ephesus, Nicea (the city of synods and churches), also Antioch, Nicomedia, and Alexandria had yielded to their strength. Even the cradle of Christianity and the grave of the Saviour, Palestine and Jerusalem, did homage to the Infidels, who held their possessions against the united armies of the western knights.

It was left to the Infidels to put an end to the long existence of the Roman Empire, and to dedicate St. Sophia, where Christ and the saints had been worshipped for almost one thousand years, to Allah and his prophet. At the very time when people were wrangling about religious dogmas in Constance, when the reconciliation between the Greek and the Catholic churches had failed, and the defection of forty million people from the rule of the Pope was threatening, the Moslems advanced victoriously to Steiermark and Salzburg. The n.o.blest prince of Europe at that time, the Roman King, fled from his capital before them; and St. Stephen in Vienna came near being turned into a mosque, like St. Sophia in Byzantium.

At that time the countries from the African desert to the Caspian Sea, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, obeyed the orders of the Padisha. Venice and the German Emperors were registered among the tributaries of the Porte. From it three quarters of the coastlands of the Mediterranean took their orders. The Nile, the Euphrates, and almost the Danube had become Turkish rivers, as the archipelago and the Black Sea were Turkish inland waters. And after barely two hundred years this same mighty empire reveals to us a picture of dissolution which promises an early end.

In the two old capitals of the world, Rome and Constantinople, the same means have been employed to the same ends, the unity of the dogma to obtain unrestricted power. The vicar of St. Peter and the heir of the calif have fallen thereby into identical impotency.

Since Greece has declared her independence, and the princ.i.p.alities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia are offering only a formal recognition to the Porte, the Turks are as if banished from these, their own provinces. Egypt is a hostile power rather than a subject country; Syria with her wealth, Adana (the province of Cilicia), and Crete, conquered at the cost of fifty-five attacks and the lives of seventy thousand Mussulmans, have been lost without one sword-thrust, the booty of a rebellious pasha. The control in Tripolis, hardly recovered, is in danger of being lost again. The other African states of the Mediterranean have today no real connection with the Porte; and France in her hesitation whether she should keep the most beautiful of them as her own is looking to the cabinet of St. James rather than to the Divan at Constantinople. In Arabia finally, and in the holy cities themselves, the Sultan has had no actual authority for a long time.

Even in those countries which are left to the Porte the supreme power of the Sultan is often restricted. The people on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris show little fidelity; the _Agas_ on the Black Sea and in Bosnia obey the dictates of their personal interests rather than the orders of the Padisha; and the larger cities at a distance from Constantinople are enjoying oligarchical munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, which render them almost independent.

The Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, princ.i.p.alities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot.

The diplomacy of Europe has long engaged the Porte in wars which are not in its interest, or has forced it to make treaties of peace in which it has lost some of its provinces. During all this time, however, the Ottoman Empire had to deal with an enemy at home who seemed more terrible than all the foreign armies and navies. Selim III. was not the first Sultan to lose his throne and his life in his struggle against the Janizaries, and his successor preferred the dangers of a reformation to the necessity of trusting himself to this society. Through streams of blood he reached his end. The Turkish Sultan gloried in the destruction of the Turkish army, but he had to crave the help of an all-too-powerful va.s.sal in order to suppress the insurrection on the Greek peninsula. At this juncture three Christian powers forgot their ancient feuds. France and England sacrificed their ships and men to destroy the Sultan's fleet, and thus laid open to Russia the way to the heart of Turkey, and brought about what they had most wished to avoid.

The country had not yet recovered from these many wounds, when the Pasha of Egypt advanced through Syria, threatening destruction to the last descendant of Osman. A newly levied army was sent against the insurgents, but the generals fresh from the harem led it to destruction. The Porte applied to England and France, who were calling themselves its oldest and most natural allies, but received from them only promises. At this juncture Sultan Mahommed invoked the help of Russia, and his enemy sent him ships, money, and an army.

Then the world saw the remarkable spectacle of fifteen thousand Russians encamped on the Asiatic hills overlooking Constantinople, ready to protect the Sultan in his seraglio against the Egyptians.

Among the Turks dissatisfaction was rampant. The Ulemas saw their influence wane; the innovations had hurt countless interests, and the new taxes incommoded all cla.s.ses. Thousands of Janizaries, who were no longer permitted to call themselves such, and the relatives and friends of thousands of others who had been throttled, drowned, or shot down, were scattered through the country and the capital. The Armenians could not forget the persecution which they had recently suffered, and the Greek Christians, who const.i.tuted half of the populace of the original Turkish empire, looked upon their rulers as their enemies, and upon the Russians as fellow-believers in the same religion. Turkey at that time could not raise another army.

And just then France was laboring with her great event, England was carrying a load in her public debts, while Prussia and Austria had attached themselves more intimately than ever before to Russia, compelled to do so by the conditions of Western Europe.

Foreign armies had brought the empire to the brink of destruction; a foreign army had saved it. For this reason the Turks wished above everything else to possess an army of their own of seventy thousand regular troops. The inadequacy of this force for the protection of the extensive possessions of the Porte is apparent after one glance at the map. The very dimensions preclude the concentration of the troops, scattered through so many places, when one particular spot is in danger. The soldiers in Bagdad are 1,600 miles distant from those at Ushkodra in Albania.

This shows the great importance of establishing in the Ottoman Empire a well arranged system of militia. It presupposes, of course, that the interests of those who rule and those who are ruled are not at variance.

The present Turkish army is a new structure on an old and battered foundation. At present the Porte would have to look for its safety to its treaties rather than to its army; and the battles which will decide the survival of this State may as well be fought in the Ardennes or in the Waldai Mountains as in the Balkans.

The Ottoman monarchy needs above everything else a well ordered administration, for under present conditions it will scarcely be able to support even this weak army of seventy thousand men.

The impoverished condition of the country shows only too clearly in the lessened income of the State. In vain a number of indirect taxes have been introduced. A kind of tax on meat and meal is levied in a very primitive way on the street corners of the capital. The fishermen pay 20 per cent, of the catch in their nets. Weights and measures must be stamped anew every year; and all products of industry, from silverware and shawls to shoes and shirts, are stamped with the imperial seal. But the proceeds from these taxes are enriching only those who collect them. The riches melt before the avaricious eye of the administration, and the ruler of the most beautiful lands in three continents is drawing water with the leaky pots of the daughters of Danaus.

For the payment of its necessities the government must rely on the confiscation of property, as it pa.s.ses to new heirs or outright, on the sale of offices, and finally on presents and the miserable means of adulterating the currency.

In regard to the confiscation of money inherited by State officials, the present Sultan has declared that he will do without it. This edict, however, instead of abolishing the practice, acknowledges the correctness of the principle. Formerly the edicts of confiscation were accompanied by the death warrants of those who were to be robbed.

Today there are gentler means in use for relieving people of the surplus of their wealth.

The sale of offices continues to be the chief source of income of the State. The candidates borrow the money at a high rate of interest from some Armenian business house, while the government permits these "lease-holders" to recoup themselves by the exploitation of their provinces to whatever extent they wish. Withal, they must fear either a higher bidder, who leaves them no time to get rich, or the State, if they happen to have grown rich. The provinces know beforehand that the new pasha has come to rob them. They, therefore, prepare themselves.

Interviews are held, and if no agreement is reached, war is waged, or if an agreement is broken a revolution takes place. As soon as the pasha has settled with the _Agas_, he stands in fear of the Porte. He, therefore, combines with other pashas for mutual protection, and the Sultan must negotiate with the future neighbors of a new pasha before he can appoint him. In a very few _pashaliks_, to be sure, the beginning of a better order of things has been made, the administrative and military powers have been separated, and the taxpayers themselves have agreed to higher taxes, provided they are permitted to pay them directly into the State treasury.

Presents are as customary here as everywhere in the Orient. Without a present the man of lower station is not permitted to approach his superior. If you ask justice of a judge you must take him a gift.

Officials and officers in the army are given tips, but the man who receives most presents is the Sultan himself. The expedient of adulterating the currency has been used to the point of exhaustion.

Twelve years ago the Spanish dollar was worth seven piasters; today it is bought for twenty-one. The man who then possessed one hundred thousand dollars has discovered that today he has only thirty-three thousand. This calamity has. .h.i.t Turkey worse than it would have affected any other country, because very little money is here invested in land, and most fortunes consist of cash capital. In the civilized countries of Europe a fortune is the result of having created something of real worth. The man who wins his wealth in this way is increasing at the same time the wealth of his State. His money merely represents the abundance of goods at his disposal. In Turkey the coin itself is the thing of value, and wealth is nothing but the accidental acc.u.mulation of money within the possession of an individual. The very high rate of interest, which is here legally 20 per cent, is far from indicating any great activity of capital. It only indicates the great danger of letting money out of one's immediate possession. The criterion of wealth is the ease of its removal. The _Rajah_ will probably buy jewelry for one hundred thousand piasters in preference to investing his money in a factory, a mill, or a farm. Nowhere is jewelry better liked than here, and the jewels which, in rich families, even children of tender years are wearing are a glaring proof of the poverty of the country.

If it is one of the first duties of every government to create confidence, the Turkish administration leaves this task entirely unperformed. Its treatment of the Greeks, its unjust and cruel persecution of the Armenians, those faithful and rich subjects of the Porte, and other violent measures, are so fresh in everyone's memory that no one is willing to invest his money where it will pay interest only after many years. In a country where industry is without the element on which it thrives, commerce also must largely consist of the exchange of foreign merchandise for raw home products. The Turk actually gives ten _occas_ of his raw silk for one _occa_ of fabricated silk, the material for which is produced on his own soil.