Crescent and Iron Cross, page 19 by E.F. Benson
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key and each other. But never, in the whole century of their pusillanimous cacklings, had they made a greater mistake.
Whether the Young Turks ever meant well or not, whether there was or was not a grain of sincerity in this profession of their policy, is a disputed question. There are those who say that originally they were prompted by patriotic and high-minded aims, when they proclaimed their object of 'Organisation,' and of reform. But all are agreed that it matters very little what their original aims were, so speedily did their Liberal intentions narrow down to an Ottomanisation such as Adbul Hamid had aimed at, but had been unable to accomplish before his evil sceptre 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 ea