by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The news and headlines from The Daily Capital Journal:

TURKS AGAINST WAR

Athens, Nov. 11. – A conspiracy against the Germans and pro-German Young Turks has been discovered in Constantinople and its leaders have been shot, according to a message received here today from the Ottoman capital.

Reports of Turkish defeated were said to have crated wild excitement in Constantinople Sunday, mobs attacking a number of German non-commissioned officers who ventured into the streets.

The dispatch gave the impression plainly that a considerable element in Turkey felt that Germany had dragged the country into what was likely to be a disastrous war, but the military authorities were reported to be keeping a tight rein on the situation.

Readers in 1914 could not have known the extent to which the energy that would drive the world’s economy through much of the coming century would depend upon oil from what had once been the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey’s decision to enter the war on the side of Germany and Austria would have consequences that reverberate to the present day. The Ottoman Empire had been steadily pushed out of Europe. Her entry into the war would cost her the balance of her territories outside of the present day boundaries of modern Turkey.

Britain and France would conspire together and against each other over Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Palestine, and the Arabian peninsula. The wounds of the Great War are largely healed today, only insofar as Europe proper is concerned; in the Middle East those wounds continue to fester.

PARLIAMENT OPENS, COLOR IS MISSING
Occasion Unusually Quiet, Officials in Khaki, King Looks Careworn

London, Nov. 11. – Parliament opened today. It was not the usual brilliant occasion. There were troops in plenty for the customary state procession but they wore sober khaki instead of the gorgeous dress uniforms which ordinarily leans color to the gatherings of the British lawmakers.

Since Guy Fawkes’ day a search of the vaults under parliament house has always been made for explosives before the lords and commons assembled, but for generations past this has been purely perfunctory. In view of the German spy scare, today it was genuine and thorough. Detectives from Scotland Yard assisted the picturesque yeomen of the guard in conducting it.

LOSS HALF A MILLION

Copenhagen, Nov. 11. – The names of 509,000 German officers and men killed, wounded and missing in August, September and early October were included in the latest casualty list issued in Berlin, it was stated in dispatches received here from the kaiser’s capital today.

RULERS RIVALS IN HANGING TINWAR ON THEIR “HEROES”
Each Is Passing Out “Orders” Until Armies Look Like Football Teams

To which the editor commented:

The rulers of Europe are passing out badges of honor, or what passes for that, with liberal hands. The czar hand out the “Order of St. George,” which is supposed to recompense the recipient for a lost leg or a missing arm. The French president hands out the “Legion of Honor,” which compensates for wounds, sickness, anything, in fact, except death. The kaiser hangs a quarter of a cent’s worth of iron on some gallant German’s breast and he is satisfied to even drink French wine or water. The Victoria Cross is not much in evidence, but it, too, is a cure-all. And all these are rewarded because they made extra efforts to assassinate each other. The human mind is surely composed of queer material when such junk handed out by royalty can satisfy it.