For the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the representative of a great national paper like the K?lnische Zeitung, could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to explain the r?le I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how I came to the decision to publish my experiences. As far as my post on the K?lnische Zeitung is concerned, I accepted it and went to Turkey although I was from the very beginning against German "World-politics" of the present-day style at any rate (not against German commercial and cultural activity in foreign countries) and against militarism—as was only to be expected from one who had studied colonial politics and universal history unreserved[Pg 284]ly, and had spent many years studying in the English, French, and German colonies of Africa—and although I was quite convinced that Germany's was the crime of setting the war in motion. Besides, my "anti-militarism" is not of a dogmatic kind, but refers merely to the relations customary between civilised nations—witness the fact that I took part in the Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-West Africa as a volunteer.
I hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for my extra-European leanings, a sphere of labour less absorbed by German militarism, and opportunity for independent study, and surely no one will take it amiss that I seized such a chance, certainly unique in war-time, in spite of my political views.
Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the background to begin with, so as to be able to form my own opinion, of course doing my uttermost at the same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken. In spite of everything I had to witness, it was quite easy to reconcile all oppositions, until that famous day when my wife denounced Germany to my face. From that moment I became an enemy of pres[Pg 285]ent-day Germany and began to think of one day publishing the whole truth about the system. Until then I had contented myself with never saying a good word about the war, as one can easily find for oneself from a perusal of my various articles in the K?lnische Zeitung during 1915-16, dated from Constantinople and marked (a small steamship).
That dramatic event which finally alienated me from the German cause took place just after the end of a severe crisis in my relationship with German-Turkish Headquarters. Some slight hints I had given of Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and jingoism in a series of articles appearing from February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title "Turkish Economic Problems," so far as they were possible under existing censorship conditions, was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine that Headquarters would certainly be furious with a journalist whose articles appeared one fine day, literally translated, in the Matin under the title: "Situation insupportable en Turquie, décrite par un journaliste allemand" ("Insufferable situation in Turkey, described by a German journalist"), and cropped up[Pg 286] once more on June 1st, in the Journal des Balcans, I was three times over threatened with dismissal. My paper sent a confidential man to hold an inquiry, and after a month he made a confidential report, which resulted in my being allowed to remain. But the fact that the same journalist that wrote such things was married to a Czech was too much for my colleagues, who were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part in the pay of the Young Turkish Committee, whose politics they praised, regardless of their own inward convictions, like the representative of the Berliner Tageblatt, to get material benefit or make sure of their own jobs. I gleaned many humorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded as a "dangerous character that must be got rid of," and my wife (who was far too young ever to worry about politics) as a "Russian spy"—perhaps because, with the justifiable pride and reserve of her race, she did not attempt to cultivate the society of the German colony. That began the period of intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did not succeed in damaging me, although matters went so far as a denunciation[Pg 287] of me before the "Prevention of Espionage Department" of the General Staff in Berlin. My paper, after they had given me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had arranged for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all that had taken place, thought it was better to give me the chance of changing and offered me a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.
However, I was now quite finished with Germany, or rather with its politics; it would have been a moral impossibility for me to write another single word in the editorial line; so I refused the offer and applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916, to the end of the war (by telegram about the middle of August). It was granted me with an expression of regret.
Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917), I severed all connection with my paper by mutual consent from October 1st, 191............