Italy Declares Was on the Ottomans

Italy needed to solidify her national sentiment at home, in the face of growing socialism and clever clericalism.

Continuing The Turkish-Italian War (A.D. 1911),
our selection from Italy in Tripoli by William T. Ellis and War Correspondents published in around 1911. The selection is presented in five installments for 5-minute daily reading. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Turkish-Italian War (A.D. 1911).

Time: 1911
Place: Tripoli

The disgruntled and disappointed Britons have comforted themselves with prophecy — how often have I heard them at it in the cosmopolitan cafes of Constantinople! — the burden of their melancholy lay being that some day Turkey would learn who is her real friend. That is the British way. They believe in their divine right to the earth and the high places thereof. They are annoyed and rather bewildered when they see Germany cutting in ahead of them, especially in the commerce of the Orient; any Englishman “east of Suez” can give a dozen good reasons why Germany is an incompetent upstart; but however satisfactory and soothing to the English soul this line of philosophy may be, it drives no German merchantmen from the sea and no German drummers from the land. The supineness of the British in the face of the German inroads into their ancient preserves is amazing to an American, who, as one of their own poets has said,

Turns a keen, untroubled face Home to the instant need of things.

In this case, however, the proverbial luck of the British has been with them. The steady decline of their historic prestige in the near East was suddenly arrested by Italy’s declaration of war. For more than a generation Turkey has been the pampered enfant terrible of international politics, violating the conventions and proprieties with impunity; feeling safe amid the jealousies of the players of “the great game.” Every important nation has a bill of grievances to settle with Turkey; America’s claim, for instance, includes the death of two native-born American citizens, Rogers and Maurer, slain in the Adana massacre, under the constitution. Nobody has been punished for this crime, because, forsooth, it happened in Turkey. Italy made a pretext of a cluster of these grievances, and startled the world by her claims upon Tripoli, accompanied by an ultimatum. Turkey tried to temporize. Pressed, she turned to Germany with a “Now earn your wages. Get me out of this scrape and call off your ally.”

And Germany could not. With the taste of Morocco dirt still on his tongue, the Kaiser had to take another unpalatable mouthful in Constantinople. His boasted power, upon which the Turks had banked so heavily, and for the sake of which they had borne so much humiliation, proved unequal to the demand. He could not help his friend the Sultan. Italy would have none of his mediation; for reasons that will hereinafter appear.

Then came Britain’s vindication. The Turks turned to this historic and preeminent friend for succor. The Turkish cabinet cabled frantically to Great Britain to intercede for them; the people in mass-meeting in ancient St. Sophia’s echoed the same appeal. For grim humor, the spectacle has scarcely an equal in modern history. Besought and entreated, the British, who no doubt approved of Italy’s move from the first, declined to pull Turco-German chestnuts out of the fire. “Ask Cousin William to help you,” was the ironical implication of their attitude. Well did Britain know that if the situation were saved, the Germans would somehow manage to get the credit of it. And if the worst should come, Great Britain could probably meet it with Christian fortitude! For in that eventuality the Bagdad Railway concession would be nullified, and Britain would undoubtedly take over all of the Arabian Peninsula, which is logically hers, in the light of her Persian Gulf and Red Sea claims. The break-up of Turkey would settle the Egyptian question, make easy the British acquisition of southern Persia, and put all the holy places of Islam under the strong hand of the British power, where they would be no longer powder-magazines to worry the dreams of Christendom. Far-sighted moves are necessary in “the great game.”

Small wonder that Germany became furious; and that the Berlin newspapers burst out in denunciations of Italy’s wicked and piratical land-grabbing — a morsel of rhetoric following so hard upon the heels of the Morocco episode that it gave joy to all who delight in hearing the pot rail at the kettle. “The great game” is not without its humors. But the sardonic joke of the business lies deeper than all this. The Kaiser had openly coquetted with the Sultan upon the policy of substituting Turkey for Italy in the Triple Alliance. Turkey has a potentially great army: the one thing the Turk can do well is to fight. With a suspicious eye upon Neighbor Russia, the Kaiser figured it out that Turkey would be more useful to him than Italy, especially since the Abyssinian episode had so seriously discredited the latter. Then, of a sudden, with a poetic justice that is delicious, Italy turns around and humiliates the nation that was to take its place The whole comic situation resembles nothing more nearly than a supposedly defunct spouse rising from his deathbed to thrash the expectant second husband of his wife.

Here “the great game” digresses in another direction, that takes no account of Turkey. Of course, it was more than a self-respecting desire to avenge affronts that led Italy to declare war against Turkey; and also more than a hunger for the territory of Tripoli. Italy needed to solidify her national sentiment at home, in the face of growing socialism and clever clericalism. Even more did she need to show the world that she is still a first-class power. There has been a disposition of late years to leave her out of the international reckoning. Now, at one skillful jump, she is back in the game — and on better terms than ever with the Vatican, for she will look well to all the numerous Latin missions in the Turkish Empire, and especially in Palestine. These once were France’s special care, and are yet, to a degree; but France is out of favor with the Church, and steadily declining from her former place in the Levant, although French continues to be the “lingua franca” of merchandising, of polite society, and of diplomacy, in the Near East.

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