ABSTRACT
As the War proceeded, the Entente Powers became increasingly concerned with the prospect of Turkey’s disruption. Hitherto, in spite of the considerable shrinkage of its territory, the Ottoman Empire had maintained its essential integrity largely owing to the jealousies amongst the Powers. The old slogan of the European Concert, so vehemently championed by Palmerston, had been adopted as the basis of an agreed policy for preventing the break-up of the Sultan’s empire; and that policy had prevailed throughout the nineteenth century and up to the outbreak of the War. It had all the advantages of a self-denying ordinance without any of its drawbacks, since it had substantially achieved its professed object and yet allowed each of the Powers in turn to rob the Sultan of one or other of his coveted dominions. In the twoscore years that had elapsed between ‘Adbul-Hamid’s accession and the War of 1914, the Sultan had had to surrender several rich provinces in Asia Minor to Russia, Cyprus and Egypt to Great Britain, Tunisia to France, Libya to Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria. To say nothing of those Balkan provinces which, with the help of Russia, had succeeded in casting off the Turkish yoke.
