therefore, he had made Enver, for years his intimate associate in "U. and P." politics, Minister of War. Again he needed a strong army if he was to have any at all, and therefore he turned to the one source where he could find assistance, to Germany. Wangenheim and Talaat, in the latter part of 1913, had arranged that the Kaiser should send a military mission to reorganize the Turkish forces. Talaat told me that, in calling in this mission, he was using Germany, though Germany thought that it was using him. That there were definite dangers in the move he well understood. A deputy who discussed this situation with Talaat in January, 1914, has given me a memorandum of a conversation which shows well what was going on in Talaat's mind.
"Why do you hand the management of the country over to the Germans?" asked this deputy, referring to the German military mission. "Don't you see that this is part of Germany's plan to make Turkey a German colony—that we shall become merely another Egypt?"
"We understand perfectly," replied Talaat, "that that is Germany's programme. We also know that we cannot put this country on its feet with our own resources. We shall, therefore, take advantage of such technical and material assistance as the Germans can place at our disposal. We shall use Germany to help us reconstruct and defend the country until we are able to govern ourselves with our own strength. When that day comes, we can say good-bye to the Germans within twenty-four hours."
Certainly the physical condition of the Turkish army betrayed the need of assistance from some source. The picture it presented, before the Germans arrived, I
