… A strong Turkey, it goes without saying, will never claim political sovereignty over the Islamic subjects of other powers. …"
In his latest pamphlet, Deutschland und der Islam, Becker confesses his recent conversion and argues that his long-cherished notions were wrong. He, as well as Grothe, dwells at length on the two visits paid by Emperor William to Sultan Abdulhamîd (1889 and 1898), the second one combined with what Grothe calls "a political pilgrimage to the Holy Land." The world has considered these visits, the first of which took place one year after the concession of the Anatolian railway, that is to say in 1889, as overgorgeous demonstrations of Germany's industrial and commercial interest in Turkey. The way it was done made many, even in Germany, shrug their shoulders. First of all Abdulhamîd, the "blood-drinking"
