acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

A BRITISH OPPORTUNITY 457
highway ran, seemed to have passed almost irrevocably
into German keeping, and with it the making
of a vast Empire that could not fail to be uncompromisingly
hostile to the British. Somewhat like these
must have been the reflections of any English traveller
who saw this part of Turkey-in-Asia and the port of
Alexandretta in years immediately before the war.
But with war has come another turn of the wheel,
and with it yet another British opportunity if rightly
grasped. There is now a truer perception of the
importance of the Near and Middle East,—a more
general understanding of what German ambition
aimed at achieving in these regions. These rich
undeveloped areas of Western Asia, so close to
Europe, so comparatively easy of access to the
crowded States of Central Europe, and forming as
it were a three-way bridge uniting three continents,
have come to be understood as having real value in
a world rapidly filling up with population. Perhaps,
too, it is realised at last that German Asiatic ambitions
formed the main root from which the war
sprang ; that the great and fruitful prize rewarding
Germanic victory in Europe was to be found not
in Europe but in the East. And much more it is
realised that for the good of mankind, other than
German, the German bid for world dominion must
be defeated.
And yet is it sufficiently realised that great and
visible Allied successes east and west in Europe might
still leave the Central Powers the true victors, if they
retained their broad highway to the East ? The
German armies might be blasted out of France and
Belgium, the French might secure the whole left
bank of the Rhine, and Poland and Russian provmces
be freed of German invaders ; but if after these
mighty efforts a peace of exhaustion or compromise
followed the Allied triumphs and left the Germanic
Powers still holding the way to the East, the war
would end with a Germanic victory. In a word, the
final and most conclusive test of Allied success or