have begun their Crusade and shall continue until they reach their aim and goal: we shall bring down the Crescent!..."

Thus, just as it had been the Special Organization who had been responsible for both providing the theory for the Caliphate Policy, and putting it into practice for the CUP, so too, according to Cemal Kutay, it was the Organization who undertook both the preparation of the fetva proclaiming the Holy War together with the Seyhu’l- Islam’s Office, and its dangerous and difficult distribution. A committee of five religious scholars prepared the fetva: Seyhü’l-Islam Hayri Efendi, Seyh Sanusi, Mahmut Efendi, Hamdi Yazir, and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.

With what remained of the Ottoman Empire being the only Muslim lands unoccupied by enemy powers, the distribution of the cihad proclamation called for much ingenuity and daring. It was undertaken by the Special Organization together with the Germans, who, besides printing in Germany millions of copies of the proclamation in all the myriad languages of the Muslim lands, provided assistance for the groups .dispatched to every point of the compass, including submarines.

Again we learn from Cemal Kutay that Bediuzzaman together with Esref Kuscubasi, were members of a group of twenty which set off in the spring of 1915 by submarine for North Africa from Antalya on Turkey's southem coast. From another work, we have a description of this dangerous mission from the pen of Esref Bey himself:

"...We could not have got from Egypt to Tripoli. The bold way was to travel by German submarine and come up on the shores of Benghazi. We knew the endless small inlets of the coast well. Suson Pasa, who joined the meeting, gave guarantees that the German Navy would manage the matter...

"The German Naval Ministry set aside the best submarines. These would take aboard Turkish and German officers, a mobile