SECRETS OF THE BOSPHORUS

SECRETS OF THE
BOSPHORUS

By
Ambassador HENRY MORGENTHAU
CONSTANTINOPLE, 1913-1916
With 19 Illustrations

LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW

ERRATA
[Corrected in this etext]

Page 16, line 4, read “without” for with.

Page 18, line 13, read “Mexico” for Turkey.

Page 18, line 35, read “Humann” instead of Enver.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE ANCHOR PRESS LTD. TIPTREE ESSEX.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

AMBASSADOR HENRY MORGENTHAU requires no introduction to the British public, but the American diplomat who may with justice be termed The Searchlight of Truth at the Golden Horn, and whose Reminiscences will rank now and in years to come as historical documents of the first importance, modestly obscures in his graphic and fascinating narrative one fact which requires emphasising:

That by his shrewd grasp of enemy psychology, by his unswerving impartiality, by his tact and dignity, and unflinching courage, he frustrated again and again the evil designs and machinations of that trio of arch-schemers and villains, Wangenheim, Talaat, and Enver, against the Allies, and thus earned a debt of lasting gratitude from the British people.

PREFACE

BY this time the American people have probably become convinced that the Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence, and for this reason all eye-witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should volunteer their testimony.

I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of disclosing to my fellow-countrymen the facts which I learned while representing them in Turkey. I acquired this knowledge as the servant of the American people, and it is their property as much as it is mine.

I greatly regret that I have been obliged to omit an account of the splendid activities of the American Missionary and Educational Institutions in Turkey, but to do justice to this subject would require a book by itself. I have had to omit the story of the Jews in Turkey for the same reasons.

My thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, for the invaluable assistance he has rendered in the preparation of the book.

Henry Morgenthau.

October, 1918.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Secrets of the Bosphorus

CHAPTER I
A GERMAN SUPERMAN AT CONSTANTINOPLE

I AM writing these reminiscences of my ambassadorship at a moment when Germany’s schemes in the Turkish Empire and the Near East have achieved an apparent success. The Central Powers have disintegrated Russia, have transformed the Baltic and the Black Seas into German lakes, and have obtained a new route to the East by way of the Caucasus. Germany now dominates Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Turkey, and regards her aspirations for a new Teutonic Empire, extending from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, as practically realised. The world now knows, though it did not clearly understand this fact in 1914, that Germany precipitated the war to destroy Serbia, seize control of the Balkan nations, transform Turkey into a vassal state, and thus obtain a huge oriental empire that would form the basis for unlimited world dominion. Do these German aggressions in the East mean that this extensive programme has succeeded?

As I look upon the new map, which shows Germany’s recent military and diplomatic triumphs, my experiences in Constantinople take on a new meaning. I now see the events of these twenty-six months as part of a connected, definite story. The several individuals that moved upon the scene now appear as players in a carefully staged, superbly managed drama. I see clearly enough now that Germany had made all her plans for world dominion and that the country to which I had been accredited as American Ambassador was the foundation of the Kaiser’s whole political and military structure. Had Germany not acquired control of Constantinople in the early days of the war, it is not unlikely that hostilities would have ended a few months after the battle of the Marne. It was certainly an amazing fate that landed me in this great headquarters of intrigue at the very moment when the plans of the Kaiser, carefully pursued for a quarter of a century, were about to achieve their final success.

For the work of subjugating Turkey and transforming its army and its territory into instruments of Germany, the Emperor had sent to Constantinople an Ambassador who was ideally fitted for the task. The mere fact that Wilhelm had personally selected Baron von Wangenheim for this post shows that he had accurately gauged the human qualities needed for this great diplomatic enterprise.

The Kaiser had early selected Wangenheim as a useful instrument for his plans; he had more than once summoned him to Corfu for his vacations, and here, we may be sure, the two congenial spirits had passed many days discussing German ambitions in the East. At the time I first met him, Wangenheim was fifty-four years old; he had given a quarter of a century to the diplomatic service, he had seen service in such different places as Petrograd, Copenhagen, Madrid, Athens, and Mexico, and he had been chargé at Constantinople, several years later coming there as Ambassador. He understood completely all countries, including the United States; his first wife, indeed, had been an American, and Wangenheim, when Minister to Mexico, had intimately studied our country and acquired that admiration for our energy and progress which he frequently expressed. He had a complete technical equipment for a diplomat; he spoke German, English, and French with equal facility, he knew the East thoroughly, and had the widest acquaintance with public men. Physically he was one of the most striking persons I have ever known. When I was a boy in Germany, the Fatherland was usually symbolised as a beautiful and powerful woman—a kind of dazzling Valkyrie; when I think of modern Germany, however, the massive, burly figure of Wangenheim naturally presents itself to my mind. He was six feet, two inches tall; his huge, solid frame, his Gibraltar-like shoulders, erect and impregnable, his bold, defiant head, his piercing eyes, the whole physical structure constantly pulsating with life and activity—there stands, I would say, not the Germany which I had known, but the Germany whose limitless ambitions had transformed the world into a place of horror. And Wangenheim’s every act and every word typified this new and dreadful portent among the nations. Pan-Germany filled all his waking hours and directed his every action. The deification of his Emperor was the only religious instinct which impelled him. That aristocratic and autocratic organisation of German society which represents the Prussian system was, in Wangenheim’s eyes, something to be venerated and worshipped; with this as the ground work, Germany was inevitably destined, he believed, to rule the world. The great land-owning junker represented the perfection of mankind; “I would despise myself,” his closest associate once told me, and this represented Wangenheim’s attitude as well, “if I had been born in a city.” Wangenheim divided mankind into two classes, the governing and the governed; and he ridiculed the idea that the upper could ever be recruited from the lower. I recall with what unction and enthusiasm he used to describe the Emperor’s caste organisation of German estates; how he had made them non-transferable, and had even arranged it so that the possessors, or the prospective possessors, could not marry without the imperial consent. “In this way,” Wangenheim would say, “we keep our governing classes pure, unmixed of blood.” Like all of his social order, Wangenheim worshipped the Prussian military system; his splendid bearing showed that he had himself served in the army, and, in true German fashion, he regarded practically every situation in life from a military standpoint. I had one curious illustration of this when I asked Wangenheim one day why the Kaiser did not visit the United States. “He would like to immensely,” he replied, “but it would be too dangerous. War might break out when he was coming home and the enemy would capture him.” I suggested that that could hardly happen, as the American Government would escort its guest home with warships, and that no nation would care to run the risk of involving the United States as Germany’s ally; but he still thought that the military danger would make any such visit impossible.

Upon him, upon more than almost any diplomatic representative of Germany, depended the success of the Kaiser’s conspiracy for world domination. This German diplomat came to Constantinople with a single purpose. For twenty years the German Government had been cultivating the Turkish Empire. All this time the Kaiser had been preparing for a world war, and in this war it was destined that Turkey should play an almost decisive part. Unless Germany should obtain the Ottoman Empire as its ally, there was little chance that she could succeed in a general European war. When France had made her alliance with Russia, this placed the man-power, 170,000,000, on her side, in the event of a war with Germany. For more than twenty years Germany had striven diplomatically to detach Russia from this French alliance, but had failed. There was only one way in which Germany could make valueless the Franco-Russian alliance; this was by obtaining Turkey as an ally. With Turkey on her side, Germany could close the Dardanelles, the only practical line of communication between Russia and her Western allies. This simple act would deprive the Czar’s army of war munitions, destroy Russia economically by stopping her grain exports, her greatest source of wealth, and thus detach Russia from her partners in the world war. Thus Wangenheim’s mission was to make it absolutely certain that Turkey should join Germany in the great contest that was impending.

Wangenheim believed that, should he succeed in accomplishing this task, he would reap the reward which for years had represented his final goal—the Chancellorship of the Empire. His skill at establishing personal relations with the Turks gave him a great advantage over his rivals. Wangenheim had precisely that combination of force, persuasiveness, geniality, and brutality needed in dealing with the Turkish character. I have emphasised his Prussian qualities; yet Wangenheim was a Prussian not by birth but by development; he was a native of Thuringia, and, together with all the push, ambition, and overbearing traits of the Prussian, he had some of the softer characteristics which we associate with Southern Germany. He had one conspicuous quality, which is not Prussian at all—that is, tact; and for the most part he succeeded in keeping his less agreeable tendencies under the surface and showing only his more ingratiating side. He dominated not so much by brute strength as by a mixture of force and amiability; externally he was not a bully; his manner was more insinuating than coercive; he won by persuasiveness, not by the mailed fist, but we who knew him well understood that back of all his gentleness there lurked a terrific, remorseless ambition. Yet the impression left was not one of brutality, but of excessive animal spirits and good nature. Indeed, Wangenheim had in combination the jovial enthusiasm of a college student, the rapacity of a Prussian official, and the happy-go-lucky qualities of a man of the world. I still recall the picture of this huge figure of a man, sitting at the piano, improvising in some beautiful classic theme—and then suddenly starting to pound out uproarious German drinking songs or popular melodies. I still see him jumping on his horse on the polo grounds, spurring the splendid animal to its speediest efforts—never making sufficient speed, however, to satisfy the ambitious sportsman. Indeed, in all his activities, grave and gay, Wangenheim displayed this same restless spirit of the chase. Whether he was flirting with the Greek ladies at Pera, or spending hours over the card-table at the Cercle d’Orient, or bending the Turkish officials to his will in the interest of Germany, all life was to him a game, which was to be played more or less recklessly, and in which the chances favoured the man who was bold and audacious and willing to pin success or failure on a single throw. And this greatest game of all—that upon which was staked, as Bernhardi has expressed it, “World empire or downfall”—Wangenheim did not play languidly, as though it had been merely a duty to which he had been assigned; to use the German phrase, he was “fire and flame” for it; he had the consciousness that he was a strong man set aside to perform a mighty task. As I write of Wangenheim I feel myself affected by the force of his personality, yet I knew all the time that, like the Government which he served so loyally, he was fundamentally ruthless, shameless, and cruel. He was content to accept all the consequences of his policy, however hideous these might be. He saw only a single goal, and, with all the realism and logic that are so characteristically German, Wangenheim would brush aside all feelings of humanity and decency that might interfere with success. He accepted in full Bismarck’s famous dictum that a German must be ready to sacrifice for Kaiser and Fatherland not only his life but his honour as well.

Just as Wangenheim personified Germany, so did his colleague, Pallavicini, personify Austria. Wangenheim’s essential quality was a brutal egotism, while Pallavicini was a quiet, kind-hearted, delightfully-mannered gentleman. Wangenheim was always looking to the future, Pallavicini to the past. Wangenheim represented that mixture of commercialism and medieval lust for conquest that constitute Prussian weltpolitik; Pallavicini was a diplomat left over from the days of Metternich. “Germany wants this!” Wangenheim would insist, when an important point had to be decided. “I shall consult my Foreign Office,” the cautious Pallavicini would say, on a similar occasion. The Austrian, with little upturned grey moustaches, with a rather stiff, even slightly strutting walk, looked like the old-fashioned Marquis that was once a stock figure on the stage. I might compare Wangenheim with the representative of a great business firm which was lavish in its expenditure and which obtained its trade by generous entertaining, while his Austrian colleague represented a house that prided itself on its past achievements and was entirely content with its position. The same delight that Wangenheim took in Pan-German plans, Pallavicini found in all the niceties and obscurities of diplomatic technique. The Austrian had represented his country in Turkey many years, and was the dean of the corps, a dignity of which he was extremely proud. He found his delight in upholding all the honours of his position; he was expert in arranging the order of precedence at ceremonial dinners, and there was not a single detail of etiquette that he did not have at his fingers’ ends. When it came to affairs of State, however, he was merely a tool of Wangenheim. From the first, indeed, he seemed to accept his position as that of a diplomat who was more or less subject to the will of his more powerful ally. In this way Pallavicini played to his German colleague precisely the same part that his Empire was playing to that of the Kaiser. In the early months of the war the bearing of these two men completely mirrored the respective successes and failures of their countries. As the Germans boasted of victory after victory Wangenheim’s already huge and erect figure seemed to become larger and more upstanding, while Pallavicini, as the Austrians lost battle after battle to the Russians, seemed to become smaller and more shrinking.

The situation in Turkey in these critical months seemed almost to have been artificially created to give the fullest opportunities to a man of Wangenheim’s genius. For ten years the Turkish Empire had been undergoing a process of dissolution, and had now reached a state of decrepitude that had left it an easy prey to German diplomacy. In order to understand the situation, we must keep in mind that there was really no orderly established Government in Turkey at that time. For the Young Turks were not a Government; they were really an irresponsible party, a kind of secret society, which, by intrigue, intimidation and assassination, had obtained most of the offices of administration. When I describe the Young Turks in these words, perhaps I may be dispelling certain illusions. Before I came to Turkey I had entertained very different ideas of this organisation. As far back as 1908 I remember reading news of Turkey that appealed strongly to my democratic sympathies. These reports informed me that a body of young revolutionists had swept from the mountains of Macedonia, had marched upon Constantinople, had deposed the bloody Sultan Abdul Hamid and had established a constitutional system. Turkey, these glowing newspaper stories told us, had become a democracy, with a parliament, a responsible ministry, universal suffrage, equality of all citizens before the law, freedom of speech and of the press, and all the other essentials of a free, liberty-loving commonwealth. That a party of Turks had for years been struggling for such reforms I well knew, and that their ambitions had become realities seemed to indicate that, after all, there was such a thing as human progress. The long welter of massacre and disorder in the Turkish Empire had apparently ended; the great assassin, Abdul Hamid, had been removed to solitary confinement at Saloniki; and his brother, the gentle Mohammed V., had ascended the throne as the first constitutional sovereign of Turkey. Such had been the promise, but by the time I reached Constantinople, in 1913, many changes had taken place. Austria had annexed two Turkish provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Italy had wrenched away Tripoli; Turkey had fought two wars with the Balkan states, and had lost all her territories in Europe, except Constantinople and a small hinterland. The aims for the regeneration of Turkey that had inspired the revolution had evidently miscarried, and I soon discovered that four years of so-called democratic rule had ended with the nation more degraded, more impoverished, and more dismembered than ever before. Indeed, long before I had arrived this attempt to establish a Turkish democracy had failed. The failure was probably the most complete and the most disheartening in the whole history of democratic institutions. I need hardly explain in detail the causes of this failure. Let us not criticise too harshly the Young Turks, for there is no question that, at the beginning, they were sincere. In a speech in Liberty Square, Saloniki, in July, 1908, Enver Pasha, who was popularly regarded as the chivalrous young leader of this insurrection against a century-old tyranny, had eloquently declared that, “To-day arbitrary government has disappeared. We are all brothers. There are no longer in Turkey Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians, Rumanians, Mussulmans, Jews. Under the same blue sky we are all proud to be Ottomans.” That statement represented the Young Turk ideal for the new Turkish state, but it was an ideal which it was evidently beyond their ability to translate into a reality. The races which had been maltreated and massacred for centuries by the Turks’ could not transform themselves overnight into brothers, and the hatreds, jealousies, and religious prejudices of the past still divided Turkey into a medley of warring clans. Above all, the destructive wars and the loss of great sections of the Turkish Empire had destroyed the prestige of the new democracy. There were plenty of other reasons for the failure; but it is hardly necessary to go into them at this time.

Thus the Young Turks had disappeared as a positive, regenerating force, but they still existed as a political machine. Their leaders, Talaat, Enver, and Djemal, had long since abandoned any expectation of reforming their State, but they had developed an insatiable lust for personal power. Instead of a nation of nearly 20,000,000 developing happily along democratic lines, enjoying the suffrage, building up their industry and agriculture, laying the basis of education, sanitation, and general progress, I saw that Turkey consisted of merely so many inarticulate, ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves, with a small, wicked oligarchy at the top, which was prepared to use them in the way that would best promote their private interests. And these men were practically the same who, a few years before, had made Turkey an institutional State! A more bewildering fall from the highest idealism to the crassest materialism could not be imagined. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal were the ostensible leaders, yet back of them was the Committee, consisting of about forty men. This Committee met secretly, manipulated elections, and filled the offices with their own henchmen. It had its own building in Constantinople, and a supreme chief who gave all his time to its affairs and issued orders to his subordinates. This functionary thus ruled the party and the country something like an American city boss in our most unregenerate days. The whole organisation thus furnished a splendid illustration of what we sometimes describe as “invisible government.” This kind of irresponsible control has at times flourished in American cities mainly because the citizens have devoted all their time to their private affairs and thus neglected the public good. But in Turkey the masses were altogether too ignorant to understand the meaning of democracy, and the bankruptcy and general vicissitudes of the country had left the nation with practically no government and an easy prey to a determined band of adventurers. The Committee of Union and Progress, with Talaat Bey as the most powerful leader, constituted such a band. Besides the forty men in Constantinople, sub-committees were organised in all important cities of the Empire. These men met secretly, formulated their plans, distributed the patronage, and issued orders to their appointees, who filled nearly all the important offices. These men, like orthodox department heads in the worst days of American city government, “took orders” and made the appointments submitted to them. No man could hold an office, high or low, who was not a part of this Committee.

I must admit, however, that I do our corrupt American gangs a certain injustice in comparing them with the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal had added to their system a detail that has not figured extensively in American politics—that of assassination and judicial murder. They had wrested power from the other factions by a deed of violence. This coup d’état had taken place on January 26, 1913, not quite a year before my arrival. At that time a political group, headed by the venerable Kiamil Pasha, as Grand Vizier, and Nazim Pasha, as Minister of War, controlled the Government; they represented a faction known as the “liberal party,” which was chiefly distinguished for its enmity to the Young Turks. These men had fought the disastrous Balkan war, and, in January, they had felt themselves compelled to accept the advice of the European Powers and surrender Adrianople to Bulgaria. The Young Turks had been outside the breastworks for about six months, looking for an opportunity to return to power. The proposed surrender of Adrianople apparently furnished them this opportunity. Adrianople was an important Turkish city, and naturally the Turkish people regarded the contemplated surrender as marking still another milestone to their national doom. Talaat and Enver hastily collected about two hundred followers and marched up to the Sublime Porte, where the ministry was then sitting. Nazim, hearing the uproar, stepped out into the hall. He courageously faced the crowd, a cigarette in his mouth and his hands thrust into his pockets.

“Come, boys,” he said good-humouredly, “what’s all this noise about? Don’t you know that it is interfering with our deliberations?”

The words had hardly left his mouth, when he fell dead. A bullet had pierced a vital spot.

The mob, led by Talaat and Enver, then forced their way into the Council Chamber. They forced Kiamil, the Grand Vizier—he was more than eighty years old—to resign his post under threat of meeting Nazim’s fate.

As assassination had been the means by which these chieftains had obtained the supreme power, so assassination continued to be the instrument upon which they depended for maintaining their control. Djemal, in addition to his other duties, was Military Governor of Constantinople, and in this capacity he had control of the police; in this office he developed all the talents of a Fouché, and did his work so successfully that any man who wished to conspire against the Young Turks usually retired for that purpose to Paris or Athens. The few months that preceded my arrival had been a reign of terror. The Young Turks had destroyed Abdul Hamid’s régime only to adopt that Sultan’s favourite methods of quieting opposition. Instead of having one Abdul Hamid, Turkey now discovered that she had several. Men were arrested and deported by the score, and hangings of political offenders—opponents, that is, of the ruling gang—were common occurrences.

The weakness of the Sultan particularly facilitated the ascendancy of this Committee. We must remember that Mohammed V. was not only Sultan but Caliph—not only the temporary ruler, but also head of the Mohammedan Church. In this capacity he was an object of veneration to millions of devout Mussulmans, a fact which would have given a strong man in his position great influence in freeing Turkey from its oppressors. I presume that even those who had the most kindly feelings toward the Sultan would not have described him as an energetic, masterful man. It is a miracle that the circumstances which fate had forced upon Mohammed had not long since completely destroyed him. His brother was Abdul Hamid—Gladstone’s “great assassin”—a man who ruled by espionage and bloodshed, and who had no more consideration for his own relations than for his massacred Armenians. One of Abdul Hamid’s first acts, when he ascended the throne, was to shut up his heir-apparent in a palace, surrounding him with spies, limiting him for society to his harem and a few palace functionaries, and constantly holding over his head the fear of assassination. Naturally Mohammed’s education had been limited; he spoke only Turkish, and his only means of learning about the outside world was an occasional Turkish newspaper. So long as he remained quiescent, the heir-apparent was comfortable and fairly secure, but he knew that the first sign of revolt, or even a too curious interest in what was going on, would be the signal for his death. Hard as this preparation was, it had not destroyed what was at bottom a benevolent, gentle nature. The Sultan had no characteristics that suggested the “terrible Turk.” He was simply a quiet, easy-going, gentlemanly old man. Everybody liked him, and I do not think that he harboured ill-feeling against a human soul. He could not rule his empire, for he had had no preparation for such a difficult task; he took a certain satisfaction in his title and in his consciousness that he was a lineal descendant of the great Osman; clearly, however, he could not oppose the schemes of the men who were then struggling for the control of Turkey. In exchanging Abdul Hamid, as his master, for Talaat, Enver, and Djemal, the Sultan had not greatly improved his personal position. The Committee of Union and Progress ruled him precisely as they ruled all the rest of Turkey—by intimidation. They had shown their power when they dethroned Abdul Hamid and locked him up in a palace, and poor Mohammed naturally lived under the constant fear that they would treat him similarly. Indeed, they had already given him a sample of their power; and the Sultan had attempted on one occasion to assert his independence, and the conclusion of this episode left no doubt as to who was master. A group of thirteen “conspirators” and other criminals, some real ones, others merely political offenders, had been sentenced to be hanged. Among them was the imperial son-in-law. Before the execution could take place the Sultan had to sign the death-warrants. He begged that he be permitted to pardon the imperial son-in-law, though he raised no objection to viséing the passports of the other twelve. The nominal ruler of 20,000,000 people figuratively went down upon his knees before Talaat, but all his pleadings did not affect this determined man. Here, Talaat reasoned, was a chance to decide, once for all, who was master, the Sultan or themselves. A few days afterward the melancholy figure of the imperial son-in-law, dangling at the end of a rope in full view of the Turkish populace, visibly reminded the Empire that Talaat and the Committee were the masters of Turkey. After this tragical test of strength, the Sultan never attempted again to interfere in affairs of State. He knew what had happened to Abdul Hamid, and he feared an even more terrible fate for himself.

By the time I reached Constantinople the Young Turks thus completely controlled the Sultan. He was popularly referred to as an “iradé-machine,” a phrase which means about the same thing as when we refer to a man as a “rubber stamp.” His State duties consisted merely in performing certain ceremonies, such as receiving Ambassadors, and in affixing his signature to such papers as Talaat and his associates placed before him. This was a profound change in the Turkish system, since in that country for centuries the Sultan had been an unquestioned despot, whose will had been the only law, and who had centred in his own person all the forces and sovereignty. Not only the Sultan, but the Parliament, had become the subservient creature of the Committee, which chose practically all the members, who voted only as the predominant bosses dictated. The Committee had already filled several of the most powerful Cabinet offices with its creatures, and was reaching out for these few posts that, for several reasons, still remained in other hands.

CHAPTER II
THE “BOSS SYSTEM” IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND HOW IT PROVED USEFUL TO GERMANY

Talaat, the leading man in this band of usurpers, really had remarkable personal qualities. Naturally Talaat’s life and character proved interesting to me, for I had for years been familiar with the Boss system in my own country, and in Talaat I saw many resemblances to the crude yet able citizens who have so frequently in the past gained power in local and State politics. Talaat’s origin was so obscure that there were plenty of stories in circulation concerning it. One account said he was a Bulgarian gypsy, while another described him as a Pomak—a Pomak being a man of Bulgarian blood whose ancestors, centuries ago, had embraced the Mohammedan faith. According to this latter explanation, which I think was the true one, this real ruler of the Turkish Empire was not a Turk at all. I can personally testify that he cared nothing for Mohammedanism, for, like most of the leaders of his party, he scoffed at all religions. “I hate all priests, rabbis, and brodjas,” he once told me—brodja being the nearest equivalent the Mohammedans have for the ministers of religion. I can also testify to the fact that Talaat paid no attention to certain injunctions of his Church, especially that against drinking; he was the presiding genius of a club that met not far from the American Embassy, whose tendencies were occasionally bacchanalian. In American city politics a streetcar driver or a gas-man has not uncommonly developed great abilities as a politician, and similarly Talaat had started life as a letter-carrier. From this occupation he had risen to be a telegraph-operator at Adrianople, and of these humble beginnings he was extremely proud. I visited him once or twice at his house. Although Talaat was then the most powerful man in the Turkish Empire, his home was still the modest home of a man of the people. It was cheaply furnished; the whole establishment reminded me of a moderately-priced apartment in New York. His most cherished possession was the telegraph instrument with which he had once earned his living; I have seen him take the key and call up one of his personal friends or associates. Talaat one night told me that he had that day received his salary as Minister of the Interior; after paying his debts, he said, he had just one hundred dollars left in the world. He liked to spend part of his spare time with the rough-shod crew that made up the Committee of Union and Progress; in the interims when he was out of the Cabinet he used to occupy the desk daily at party headquarters, personally managing the party machine. Despite these humble beginnings, Talaat had developed some of the qualities of a man of the world. Though his early training had not included instruction in the use of a knife and fork—such implements are wholly unknown among the poorer classes in Turkey—Talaat could attend diplomatic dinners and represent his country with a considerable amount of dignity and personal ease. I have always regarded it as indicating his innate cleverness that, though he had had little schooling, he had picked up enough French to converse tolerably in that language. Physically he was a striking figure. His powerful frame, his huge, sweeping back and his rocky biceps emphasised that natural mental strength and forcefulness which made possible his career. In discussing matters Talaat liked to sit at his desk, with his shoulders drawn up, his head thrown back, and his wrists, twice the size of an ordinary man’s, planted firmly on the table. It always seemed to me that it would take a crowbar to pry these wrists from the board, once Talaat’s strength and defiant spirit had laid them there. Whenever I think of Talaat now I do not primarily recall his rollicking laugh, his uproarious enjoyment of a good story, the mighty stride with which he crossed the room, his fierceness, his determination, his remorselessness—the whole life and nature of the man take form in those gigantic wrists.

Talaat, like most strong men, had his forbidding, even his ferocious, moods. One day I found him sitting at the usual place, his massive shoulders drawn up, his eyes glowering, his wrists planted on the desk. I always anticipated trouble whenever I found him in this attitude. As I made request after request, Talaat, between his puffs at his cigarette, would answer “No!” “No!” “No!”

I slipped around to his side of the desk.

“I think those wrists are making all the trouble, your Excellency,” I said. “Won’t you please take them off the table?”

Talaat’s ogre-like face began to crinkle, he threw up his arms, leaned back, and gave a roar of terrific laughter. He enjoyed my method of treating him so much that he granted every request I made.

At another time I came into his room when a couple of Arab princes were present. Talaat was solemn and dignified, and refused every favour I asked. “No, I shall not do that. No, I haven’t the slightest idea of doing that,” he would answer. I saw that he was trying to impress his princely guests, to show them that he had become so great a man that he did not hesitate to “turn down” an Ambassador. So I came up nearer and spoke quietly.

“I see you are trying to make an impression on these princes,” I said. “Now if it’s necessary for you to pose, do it with the Austrian Ambassador—he’s out there waiting to come in. My affairs are too important to be trifled with.”

Talaat laughed. “Come back in an hour,” he said. I came back; the Arab princes had left, and we had no difficulty in arranging matters to my satisfaction.

“Someone has got to govern Turkey; why not we?” Talaat once said to me. The situation had just about come to that. “I have been greatly disappointed,” he would tell me, “at the failure of the Turks to appreciate democratic institutions. I hoped for it once, and I worked hard for it—but they were not prepared for it.” He saw a Government which the first enterprising man who came along might seize, and he determined to be that man. Of all the Turkish politicians I met, I regarded Talaat as the only one who really had extraordinary innate ability. He had great force and dominance, the ability to think quickly and accurately, and an almost superhuman insight into men’s motives. His great geniality and his lively sense of humour also made him a splendid manager of men. He showed his shrewdness in the measures which he took, after the murder of Nazim, to gain the upper hand in this distracted Empire. He did not seize the Government all at once; he went at it gradually, feeling his way. He realised the weaknesses of his position; he had several forces to deal with: the envy of his associates on the revolutionary committee which had backed him, the army, the foreign Governments, and the several factions that made up what then passed for public opinion in Turkey. Any of these elements might destroy him, politically and physically. He understood the dangerous path he was treading, and he always anticipated a violent death. “I do not expect to die in my bed,” he told me. By becoming Minister of the Interior, Talaat gained control of the police and the administration of the provinces, or vilayets. This gave him a great amount of patronage, which he used to strengthen his position with the Committee. He attempted to gain the support of all influential factions by gradually placing their representatives in the other Cabinet posts. Though he afterwards became the man who was chiefly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, at this time Talaat maintained the pretence that the Committee stood for the unionisation of all the races in the Empire, and for this reason his first Cabinet contained an Arab-Christian, a Deunme (a Jew by race, but a Mohammedan by religion), a Circassian, an Armenian, an Egyptian. He made the latter Grand Vizier, the highest post in the Government, a position which roughly corresponds to that of Chancellor in the German Empire. The man whom he selected for this part, which in ordinary times was the most dignified and important in the Empire, belonged to quite a different order of society from Talaat. Not uncommonly bosses in America select high-class figure-heads for mayors or even governors, men who will give respectability to their faction yet whom, at the same time, they think that they can control. It was some such motive as this which led Talaat and his associates to elevate Saïd Halim to the Grand Vizierate. Saïd Halim was an Egyptian Prince, the cousin of the Khedive of Egypt, a man of great wealth and great culture. He spoke English and French as fluently as his own tongue, and was an ornament to any society in the world. But he was a man of unlimited vanity and ambition. His great desire was to become Khedive of Egypt, and this had led him to join his political fortunes to the gang that was then ascendant in Turkey. He was the heaviest “campaign contributor,” and, indeed, he had largely furnished the Young Turks in their earliest days. In exchange they had given him the highest office in the Empire, but with the tacit understanding that he should not attempt to exercise the real powers of his office, but content himself with enjoying its dignities and holding himself in readiness for the Khedivate, when all their plans had succeeded.

Germany’s war preparations had for years included the study of internal conditions in other countries. An indispensable part of the Imperial programme had been to take advantage of such disorganisations as existed to push her schemes of penetration and conquest. What her emissaries have attempted in France, Italy, and even the United States, is apparent, and their success in Russia has greatly changed the course of the war. Clearly such a situation as that which prevailed in Turkey in 1913 and 1914 provided an ideal opportunity of manipulations of this kind. And Germany had one great advantage in Turkey which was not so conspicuously an element in other countries. Talaat and his associates needed Germany almost as badly as Germany needed Talaat. They were altogether new to the business of managing an empire. Their finances were depleted, their army and navy almost in dissolution, enemies were constantly attempting to undermine them at home, and the great Powers regarded them as seedy adventurers whose career was destined to be brief. Without strong support from an outside source, it was doubtful how long the new regime could survive. Talaat and his Committee needed some foreign Power to organise the army and navy, to finance the nation, to help them reconstruct their industrial system, and to protect them against the encroachments of the encircling nations. Ignorant as they were of foreign countries, they needed a skilful adviser to pilot them through all the channels of international intrigue. Where was such a protector to be obtained? Evidently only one of the great European Powers could perform this office. Which one should it be? Ten years before Turkey would naturally have appealed to England. But now the Turks regarded England as merely the nation that had despoiled them of Egypt, and that had failed to protect Turkey from dismemberment after the Balkan wars. In association with Russia, Great Britain now controlled Persia and thus constituted a constant threat—at least, so the Turks believed—against their Asiatic dominions. England was gradually withdrawing her investments from Turkey; English statesmen believed that the task of driving the Turk from Europe was about complete, and the whole Near-Eastern policy of Great Britain hinged on maintaining the organisation of the Balkans as it had been determined by the Treaty of Bucharest—a treaty which Turkey refused to regard as binding and which she was determined to upset. Above all, the Turks feared Russia in 1914, just as they had feared her ever since the days of Peter the Great. Russia was the historic enemy, the nation which had given freedom to Bulgaria and Rumania, which had been most active in dismembering the Ottoman Empire, and which regarded herself as the nation that was ultimately to possess Constantinople. This fear of Russia, I cannot too much insist, was the one factor which, above everything else, was forcing Turkey into the arms of Germany. For more than half a century Turkey had regarded England as her surest safeguard against Russian aggression, and now England had become Russia’s virtual ally. There was even then a general belief, which the Turkish chieftains shared, that England was entirely willing that Russia should inherit Constantinople and the Dardanelles.

Though Russia in 1914 was making no such pretensions, at least openly, the fact that she was crowding Turkey in other directions made it impossible that Talaat and Enver should look for support in that direction. Italy had just seized the last Turkish province in Africa—Tripoli—and at that moment was holding Rhodes and other Turkish islands and was known to cherish aggressive plans in Asia Minor. France was the ally of Russia and Great Britain, and was also constantly extending her influence in Syria, in which province, indeed, she had made great plans for “penetration” with railroads, colonies, and concessions. The personal equation played an important part in the ensuing drama. The Ambassadors of the Triple Entente hardly concealed their contempt for the dominant Turkish politicians and their methods. Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, was a high-minded and cultivated English gentleman; Bompard, the French Ambassador, was a similarly charming, honourable Frenchman, and both were constitutionally disqualified from participating in the murderous intrigues which then comprised Turkish politics. Giers, the Russian Ambassador, was a proud and scornful diplomat of the old aristocratic régime. He was exceedingly astute, but he treated the Young Turks contemptuously, manifested almost a proprietary interest in the country, and seemed to me already to be wielding the knout over this despised Government. It was quite apparent that the three Ambassadors of the Entente did not regard the Talaat and Enver régime as permanent, or as particularly worth their while to cultivate. That several factions had risen and fallen in the last six years they knew, and they likewise believed that this latest usurpation would vanish in a few months.

But there was one active man in Turkey then who had no nice scruples about using such agencies as were most available for accomplishing his purpose. Wangenheim clearly saw what his colleagues had only faintly perceived: that these men were steadily fastening their hold on Turkey, and that they were looking for some strong Power that would recognise their position and abet them in maintaining it. In order that we may clearly understand the situation, let us transport ourselves, for a moment, to a country that is nearer to us than Turkey. In 1913 Victoriano Huerta and his fellow-conspirators gained control of Mexico by means not unlike those that had given Talaat and his Committee the supreme power in Turkey. Just as Huerta murdered Madero, so the Young Turks had murdered Nazim, and in both cases assassination became a regular political weapon. Huerta controlled the Mexican Congress and the offices just as Talaat controlled the Turkish Parliament and the chief posts of the State. Mexico under Huerta was a poverty-stricken country, with depleted finances, exhausted industries and agriculture, just as was Turkey under Talaat. How did Huerta seek to secure his own position and rehabilitate his distracted country? There was only one way, of course: that was by enlisting the support of some strong foreign Power. He sought repeatedly to gain recognition from the United States for this reason. When we refused to deal with a murderer, Huerta looked to Germany. Let us suppose that the Kaiser had responded; he could have reorganised Mexican finances, rebuilt her railroads, re-established her industries, modernised her army, and in this way obtained a grip on the country that would have amounted to virtual possession.

Only one thing prevented Germany from doing this—the Monroe Doctrine. But there was no Monroe Doctrine in Turkey, and what I have stated as a possibility in Mexico is in the main an accurate picture of what happened in the Ottoman Empire. As I look back upon the situation, the whole thing seems so clear, so simple, so inevitable. Germany, up to that time, was practically the only great Power in Europe that had not appropriated large slices of Turkish territory, a fact which gave her an initial advantage. Germany’s representation at Constantinople was far better qualified than that of any other country, not only by absence of scruples, but also by knowledge and skill, to handle this situation. Wangenheim was not the only capable German then on the ground. A particularly influential outpost of Pan-Germany was Paul Weitz, who had represented the Frankfürter Zeitung in Turkey for thirty years. Weitz had the most intimate acquaintance with Turks and Turkish affairs; there was not a hidden recess to which he could not gain admittance. He was constantly at Wangenheim’s elbow, coaching advising, informing. The German naval attaché, Humann, the son of a famous German archæologist, had been born in Smyrna, and had passed practically his whole life in Turkey. He not only spoke Turkish, but he could also think like a Turk, and the whole psychology of the people was part of his mental equipment. Moreover, Enver, one of the two main Turkish chieftains, was on close friendly terms with Humann. When I think of this experienced trio, Wangenheim, Weitz, and Humann, and of the charming and honourable gentlemen who were opposed to them, Mallet, Bompard, and Giers, the events that now rapidly followed seem as inevitable as the orderly processes of nature. By the spring of 1914 Talaat and Enver, representing the Committee of Union and Progress, practically dominated the Turkish Empire. Wangenheim, always having in mind the approaching war, had one inevitable move: that was to control Talaat and Enver.

Early in January, 1914, Enver became Minister of War. At that time he was thirty-two years old. Like all the leading Turkish politicians of the period, he came of humble stock, and his popular title, “hero of the revolution,” shows why Talaat and the Committee had selected him as Minister of War. Enver enjoyed something of a military reputation, though, so far as I could discover, he had never achieved a great military success. The revolution of which he was one of the leaders in 1908 cost very few human lives; he commanded an army in Tripoli against the Italians in 1912—but certainly there was nothing Napoleonic about that campaign. Enver used to tell me himself how, in the second Balkan war, he had ridden all night at the head of his troops to the capture of Adrianople, and how, when he arrived there, the Bulgarians had abandoned it and his victory had thus been a bloodless one. But certainly Enver did have one trait that made for success in such a distracted country as Turkey—and that was audacity. He was quick in making decisions, always ready to stake his future and his very life upon the success of a simple adventure; from the beginning, indeed, his career had been one lucky crisis after another. His nature had a remorselessness, a lack of pity, a cold-blooded determination, of which his clean-cut handsome face, his small but sturdy figure, and his pleasing manners, gave no indication. Nor would the casual spectator have suspected the passionate personal ambition that drove him on. His friends commonly referred to him as “Napoleonlik”—the little Napoleon—and this nickname really represented Enver’s abiding conviction. I remember sitting one night with Enver, in his house; on one side hung a picture of Napoleon, on the other one of Frederick the Great, and between them sat Enver himself! This fact gives some notion of his vanity; these two warriors and statesmen were his great heroes, and I believe that Enver thought fate had a career in store for him not unlike theirs. The fact that, at twenty-six, he had taken a leading part in the revolution which had deposed Abdul Hamid naturally caused him to compare himself with Bonaparte, and several times has he told me that he believed himself to be “a man of destiny.” Enver even affected to believe that he had been divinely set apart to re-establish the glory of Turkey and make himself the great dictator. Yet, as I have suggested, there was something almost dainty and feminine in Enver’s appearance. He was the type that in America we sometimes call a matinée idol, and the word women frequently used to describe him was “dashing.” His face contained not a single line or furrow; it never disclosed his emotions or his thoughts; he was always calm, steely, imperturbable. That Enver certainly lacked Napoleon’s penetration is evident from the way in which he had planned to obtain the supreme power, for he early allied his personal fortunes with Germany. For years his sympathies had been with the Kaiser. Germany, the German Army and Navy, the German language, the German autocratic system, exercised a fatal charm upon this early preacher of Turkish democracy. When Hamid fell, Enver had gone on a military mission to Berlin, and here the Kaiser immediately detected in him a possible instrument for working out his plans in the Orient, and cultivated him in numerous ways. Afterward Enver spent a considerable time in Berlin as military attaché, and this experience still further attached him to Germany. The man who returned to Constantinople was almost more German than Turkish. He had learned to speak German fluently, he was aping Germany in all matters, he was even wearing a moustache slightly curled up at the ends; indeed, he had been completely captivated by Prussianism. As soon as Enver became Minister of War, Wangenheim flattered and cajoled the young man, played upon his ambitions, and doubtless promised him Germany’s complete support in achieving them. In his private conversation Enver made no secret of his admiration for Germany.

Thus Enver’s elevation to the Ministry of War was virtually a German victory. He immediately instituted a drastic reorganisation. Enver told me himself that he had accepted the post only on condition that he should have a free hand; and this free hand he now proceeded to exercise. The army still contained a large number of officers who inclined to the old régime rather than to the Young Turks—many of whom were partisans of the murdered Nazim. Enver promptly cashiered 268 of these, and put in their places Turks who were known as “U. and P.” men and many Germans. The Enver-Talaat group always feared a revolution that would depose them as they had thrown out their predecessors. Many times did they tell me that their own success as revolutionists had taught them how easily a few determined men could seize control of the country; they did not propose, they said, to have a little group in their army organise such a coup d’état against them. The boldness of Enver’s move alarmed even Talaat, but Enver showed the determination of his character and refused to reconsider his action, though one of the officers removed was Chukri Pasha, who had defended Adrianople in the Balkan war. Enver issued a circular to the Turkish commanders practically telling them that they must look to him for preferment alone, and that they could make no headway by playing politics with any group except that dominated by the Young Turks.

Thus, Enver’s first acts were the beginnings in the Prussiafication of the Turkish Army, but Talaat was not an enthusiastic German like his associate. He had no intention of playing Germany’s game; he was working chiefly for the Committee and for himself. But he could not succeed unless he had control of the army, and therefore he had made Enver, for years his closest associate in “U. and P.” politics, Minister of War. Again, he needed a strong army if he was to have any at all, and therefore he turned to the one source where he could find assistance—to Germany. Wangenheim and Talaat, in the latter part of 1913, had arranged that the Kaiser should send a military mission to reorganise the Turkish Army. Talaat told me that on calling in this mission he was using Germany, though Germany thought that it was using him. That there were definite dangers in the move he well understood. A deputy who discussed this situation with Talaat in January, 1914, has given me a memorandum of a conversation which shows well what was going on in Talaat’s mind.

“Why do you hand the management of the country over to the Germans?” asked this deputy, referring to the German military mission. “Don’t you see that this is part of Germany’s plan to make Turkey a German colony? That we shall become merely another Egypt?”

“We understand perfectly,” replied Talaat, “that that is Germany’s programme. We also know that we cannot put this country on its feet with our own resources. We shall, therefore, take advantage of such technical and material assistance as the Germans can place at our disposal. We shall use Germany to help us reconstruct and defend the country until we are able to govern ourselves with our own strength. When that day comes, we can say good-bye to the Germans within twenty-four hours.”

Certainly the physical condition of the Turkish Army betrayed the need of assistance from some source. The picture it presented, before the Germans arrived, I have always regarded as portraying the condition of the whole Empire. When I issued invitations for my first reception a large number of Turkish officials asked to be permitted to come in evening clothes; they said that they had no uniforms and no money with which to purchase or to hire them. They had not received their salaries for three and a half months. As the Grand Vizier, who regulates the etiquette of such functions, still insisted on full military dress, many of those officials had to absent themselves. About the same time the new German mission asked the Commander of the Second Army Corps to exercise his men, but the Commander replied that he could not do so as his men had no shoes!

Desperate and wicked as Talaat subsequently showed himself to be, I still think that he, at least then, was not a willing tool of Germany. An episode that involved myself bears out this view. In describing the relations of the great Powers to Turkey I have said nothing about the United States. In fact, we had no important business relations at that time. The Turks regarded us as a country of idealists and altruists, and the fact that we spent millions in building wonderful educational institutions in their country purely from philanthropic motives aroused their astonishment and possibly their admiration. They liked Americans and regarded us as about the only disinterested friends whom they had among the nations. But our interest in Turkey was small; the Standard Oil Company did a growing business, the Singer Company sold sewing machines to the Armenians, we bought much of their tobacco, figs, and rugs, and gathered their liquorice root. In addition to these activities, missionaries and educational experts were about our only contacts with the Turkish Empire. The Turks knew that we had no desire to dismember their country or to mingle in Balkan politics. The very fact that my country was so disinterested was perhaps the reason why Talaat discussed Turkish affairs so freely with me. In the course of these conversations I frequently expressed my desire to serve them, and Talaat and some of the other members of the Cabinet got into the habit of consulting me on business matters. Soon after my arrival, I made a speech at the American Chamber of Commerce in Constantinople; Talaat, Djemal, and other important leaders were present. I talked about the backward economic state of Turkey, and admonished them not to be discouraged. I described the condition of the United States after the Civil War, and made the point that our devastated Southern States presented a spectacle not unlike that of Turkey at that present moment. I then related how we had gone to work, realised on our resources, and built up the present thriving nation. My remarks apparently made a deep impression, especially my statement that after the Civil War the United States had become a large borrower in foreign money markets and had invited immigration from all parts of the world.

This speech apparently gave Talaat a new idea. It was not impossible that the United States might furnish him the material support which he had been seeking in Europe. Already I had suggested that an American financial expert should be sent to study Turkish finance, and in this connection I had mentioned Mr. Henry Bruère, of New York—a suggestion which the Turks had favourably received. At that time Turkey’s greatest need was money. France had financed Turkey for many years, and French bankers, in the spring of 1914, were negotiating for another large loan. Though Germany had made some loans, the condition of the Berlin money market at that time did not encourage the Turks to expect much assistance from that source.

In late December, 1913, Bustány Effendi, a Christian Arab, and Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, who spoke English fluently—he had been Turkish commissioner to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893—called and approached me on the question of an American loan. Bustány asked if there were not American financiers who would take entire charge of the reorganisation of Turkish finance. His plea was really a cry of despair and it touched me deeply. As I wrote in my diary at the time, “They seem to be scraping the box for money.” But I had been in Turkey only six weeks, and obviously I had no information on which I could recommend such a large contract to American bankers. I informed him that my advice would not carry much weight in the United States unless it were based on a complete knowledge of economic conditions in Turkey. Talaat came to me a few days later, suggesting that I make a prolonged tour over the Empire and study the situation at first hand. Meanwhile he asked if I could not arrange a small temporary loan to tide them over the interim. He said there was no money in the Turkish Treasury; if I could only get them $5,000,000, that would satisfy them. I told Talaat that I would try to get this money for them and that I would adopt his suggestion and inspect his Empire with the possible idea of interesting American investors. After obtaining the consent of the State Department I wrote to my nephew and business associate, Mr. Robert E. Simon, asking him to sound certain New York institutions and bankers on making a small short-time collateral loan to Turkey. Mr. Simon’s investigations soon disclosed that a Turkish loan did not seem to be regarded as an attractive business undertaking in New York. Mr. Simon wrote, however, that Mr. C. K. G. Billings had shown much interest in the idea; and that, if I desired, Mr. Billings would come out in his yacht and discuss the matter with the Turkish Cabinet and with me. In a few days Mr. Billings had started for Constantinople.

The news of Mr. Billings’s approach spread with great rapidity all over the Turkish capital; the fact that he was coming in his own private yacht seemed to magnify the importance and the glamour of the event. That a great American millionaire was prepared to reinforce the depleted Turkish Treasury and that this support was merely the preliminary step in the reorganisation of Turkish finances by American capitalists produced a tremendous flutter in the foreign embassies. So rapidly did the information spread, indeed, that I rather suspected that the Turkish Cabinet had taken no particular pains to keep it secret. This suspicion was strengthened by a visit which I received from the Chief Rabbi Nahoum, who informed me that he had come at the request of Talaat. “There is a rumour,” said the Chief Rabbi, “that Americans are about to make a loan to Turkey. Talaat would be greatly pleased if you would not contradict it.” Wangenheim displayed an almost hysterical interest; the idea of America coming to the financial assistance of Turkey did not fall in with his plans at all, for in his eyes Turkey’s poverty was chiefly valuable as a means of forcing the Empire into Germany’s hands. One day I showed Wangenheim a book containing etchings of Mr. Billings’s homes, pictures, and horses; he showed a great interest, not only in the horses—Wangenheim was something of a horseman himself—but in this tangible evidence of great wealth. For the next few days ambassador after ambassador and minister after minister filed into my office, each solemnly asking for a glimpse at this book! As the time approached for Mr. Billings’s arrival Talaat began making elaborate plans for his entertainment; he consulted with me as to whom we should invite to the proposed dinners, lunches, and receptions. As usual, Wangenheim got in ahead of the rest. He could not come to the dinner which we had planned, and asked me to have him for lunch, and in this way he met Mr. Billings several hours before the other diplomats. Mr. Billings frankly told him that he was interested in Turkey and that it was not unlikely that he would make the loan.

In the evening we gave the Billings party a dinner, all the important members of the Turkish Cabinet being present. Before this dinner, Talaat, Mr. Billings, and myself had a long talk about the loan. Talaat informed us that the French bankers had accepted their terms that very day, and that they would, therefore, need no American money at that time. He was exceedingly gracious and grateful to Mr. Billings and profuse in expressing his thanks. Indeed, he might well have been, for Mr. Billings’s arrival enabled Turkey at last to close negotiations with the French bankers. His attempt to express his appreciation had one curious manifestation. Enver, the second man in the Cabinet, was celebrating his wedding when Mr. Billings arrived. The progress which Enver was making in the Turkish world is evidenced from the fact that, although Enver, as I have said, came of the humblest stock, his bride was a daughter of the Turkish Imperial House. Turkish weddings are prolonged affairs, lasting two or three days. The day following the Embassy dinner Talaat gave the Billings party a luncheon at the Cercle d’Orient, and he insisted that Enver should leave his wedding ceremony long enough to attend this function. Enver, therefore, came to the luncheon, sat through all the speeches, and then returned to his bridal party.

I am convinced that Talaat did not regard this Billings episode as closed. As I look back upon this transaction I see clearly that he was seeking to extricate his country, and that the possibility that the United States would assist him in performing the rescue was ever present in his mind. He frequently spoke to me of Mr. “Beelings,” as he called him, and even after Turkey had broken with France and England and was depending on Germany for money, his mind still reverted to Mr. Billings’s visit.

CHAPTER III
“THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE KAISER”—WANGENHEIM OPPOSES THE SALE OF AMERICAN WARSHIPS IN GREECE

But even in March, 1914, the Germans had pretty well tightened their hold on Turkey. Liman von Sanders, who had arrived in December, had become the predominant influence in the Turkish Army. At first von Sanders’s appointment aroused no particular hostility, for German missions had been called in before to instruct the Turkish Army, notably that of von der Goltz; and an English naval mission, headed by Admiral Limpus, was even then in Turkey attempting the difficult task of reorganising the Turkish Navy. We soon discovered, however, that the Von Sanders military mission was something quite different from those which I have named. Even before Von Sanders’s arrival it had been announced that he was to take command of the First Turkish Army Corps, and that General Broussart von Schnellendorf was to become Chief of Staff. The appointments signified nothing less than that the Kaiser had almost completed his plans to annex the Turkish Army to his own. To show the power which von Sanders’s appointment had given him, it is only necessary to say that the First Army Corps practically controlled Constantinople. These changes clearly showed to what an extent Enver Pasha had become a cog in the Prussian system. Naturally the representations of the Entente Powers could not tolerate such a usurpation by Germany. The British, French, and Russian Ambassadors immediately called upon the Grand Vizier and protested with more warmth than politeness over von Sanders’s elevation. The Turkish Cabinet hummed and hawed in the usual way, protested that the change was not important, but finally withdrew von Sanders’s appointment as head of the First Army Corps, and made him Inspector-General. However, this did not greatly improve the situation, for this post really gave Von Sanders greater power than the one which he had held before. Thus, by January, 1914, seven months before the Great War began, Germany held this position in the Turkish Army: a German general was Chief of Staff; another was Inspector-General; scores of German officers held commands of the first importance, and the Turkish politician who was even then an outspoken champion of Germany, Enver Bey, was Minister of War.

After securing this diplomatic triumph Wangenheim was granted a vacation—he had certainly earned it—and Giers, the Russian Ambassador, went off on a vacation at the same time. Baroness Wangenheim explained to me—I was ignorant at this time of all these subtleties of diplomacy—precisely what these vacations signified. Wangenheim’s leave of absence, she said, meant that the German Foreign Office regarded the von Sanders episode as closed—and closed with a German victory. Giers’s furlough, she explained, meant that Russia declined to accept this point of view, end that, so far as Russia was concerned, the von Sanders affair had not ended. I remember writing to my family that, in this mysterious Balkan diplomacy, the nations talked to each other with acts, not words, and I instanced Baroness Wangenheim’s explanation of these diplomatic vacations as a case in point.

An incident which took place in my own house opened all our eyes to the seriousness with which von Sanders regarded this military mission. On February 18th I gave my first diplomatic dinner; General von Sanders and his two daughters attended, the general sitting next to my daughter Ruth. My daughter, however, did not have a very enjoyable time; this German Field-Marshal, sitting there in his gorgeous uniform, his breast all sparkling with medals, did not say a word throughout the whole meal. He ate his food silently and sulkily, all my daughter’s attempts to enter into conversation evoking only an occasional surly monosyllable. The behaviour of this great military leader was that of a spoiled child.

At the end of the dinner von Mutius, the German chargé d’affaires, came up to me in a high state of excitement. It was some time before he could sufficiently control his agitation to deliver his message.

“You have made a terrible mistake, Mr. Ambassador,” he said.

“What is that?” I asked, naturally taken aback.

“You have greatly offended Field-Marshal von Sanders. You have placed him at the dinner lower in rank than the foreign Ministers. He is the personal representative of the Kaiser, and as such is entitled to equal rank with the Ambassadors. He should have been placed ahead of the Cabinet Ministers and the Foreign Ministers.”

So I had affronted the Emperor himself! This, then, was the explanation of von Sanders’s boorish behaviour. Fortunately, my position was an impregnable one. I had not arranged the seating precedence at this dinner; I had sent the list of my guests to the Marquis Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador and dean of the diplomatic corps, and the greatest authority in Constantinople on such delicate points as this. The Marquis had returned the list, marking in red ink against each name the order of precedence—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. I still possess this document, as it came from the Austrian Embassy, and General von Sanders’s name appears with the numerals “13” against it. I must admit, however, that “the thirteenth chair” did bring him pretty well to the foot of the table.

I explained the situation to von Mutius and asked Mr. Panfili, conseiller of the Austrian Embassy, who was a guest at the dinner, to come up and make everything clear to the outraged German diplomat. As the Austrians and Germans were allies, it was quite apparent that the slight, if slight there had been, was unintentional. Panfili said that he had been puzzled over the question of von Sanders’s position, and had submitted the question to the Marquis. The outcome was that the Austrian Ambassador had himself fixed von Sanders’s rank at No. 13. But the German Embassy did not let the matter rest there, for afterward Wangenheim called on Pallavicini, and discussed the matter with considerable liveliness.

“If Liman von Sanders represents the Kaiser, whom do you represent?” Pallavicini asked Wangenheim. The argument was a good one, as the Ambassador is always regarded as the alter ego of his Sovereign.

“It is not customary,” continued the Marquis, “for an Emperor to have two representatives at the same Court.”

As the Marquis was unyielding, Wangenheim carried the question to the Grand Vizier. But Saïd Halim refused to assume responsibility for so momentous a decision and referred the dispute to the Council of Ministers. This body solemnly sat upon the question and rendered this verdict: von Sanders should rank ahead of the Ministers of foreign countries, but below the members of the Turkish Cabinet. Then the foreign Ministers lifted up their voices in protest. Von Sanders not only became exceedingly unpopular for raising this question, but the dictatorial and autocratic way in which he did it aroused general disgust. The Ministers declared that, if von Sanders were ever given precedence at any function of this kind, they would leave the table in a body. The net result was that von Sanders was never again invited to a diplomatic dinner. Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, took a sardonic interest in the episode. It was lucky, he said, that it had not happened at his Embassy; if it had, the newspapers would have had columns about the strained relations between England and Germany!

After all, this proceeding did have great international importance. Von Sanders’s personal vanity had led him to betray a diplomatic secret; he was not merely a drill master who had been sent to instruct the Turkish Army; he was precisely what he had claimed to be—the personal representative of the Kaiser. The Kaiser had selected him just as he had selected Wangenheim, as an instrument for working his will in Turkey. Afterward von Sanders told me, with all that pride which German aristocrats manifest when speaking of their imperial master, how the Kaiser had talked to him a couple of hours the day he had appointed him to this Constantinople mission, and how, the day that he had started, Wilhelm had spent another hour giving him final instructions. I reported this dinner incident to my Government as indicating Germany’s growing ascendancy in Turkey, and I presume the other Ambassadors likewise reported it to their Governments. The American military attaché, Major John R. M. Taylor, who was present, attributed the utmost significance to it. A month after the occurrence he and Captain McCauley, commanding the Scorpion, the American stationaire at Constantinople, had lunch at Cairo with Lord Kitchener. The luncheon was a small one, only the Americans, Lord Kitchener, his sister, and an aide making up the party. Major Taylor related this incident, and Kitchener displayed much interest.

“What do you think it signifies?” asked Kitchener.

“I think it means,” Major Taylor said, “that when the big war comes, Turkey will probably be the ally of Germany. If she is not in direct alliance, at least I think that she will mobilise on the line of the Caucasus and thus divert three Russian army corps from the European theatre of operations.”

Kitchener thought for a moment and then said, “I agree with you.”

And now for several months we had before our eyes this spectacle of the Turkish Army actually under the control of Germany. German officers drilled the troops daily—all, I am now convinced, in preparation for the approaching war. Just what results had been accomplished appeared when, in July, there was a great military review. The occasion was a splendid and a gala affair. The Sultan attended in state; he sat under a beautifully decorated tent and held a little court, and the Khedive of Egypt, the Crown Prince of Turkey, the Princes of the imperial blood and the entire Cabinet were also on hand. We now saw that, in the preceding six months, the Turkish Army had been completely Prussianised. What in January had been an undisciplined, ragged rabble was now parading with the goose-step; the men were clad in German field-grey, and they even wore a casque-shaped head-covering, which slightly suggested the German pickelhaube. The German officers were immensely proud of the exhibition, and the transformation of the wretched Turkish soldiers of January into these neatly-dressed, smartly-stepping, splendidly manœuvring troops was really a creditable military achievement. When the Sultan invited me to his tent I naturally congratulated him upon the excellent showing of his men. He did not manifest much enthusiasm; he said that he regretted the possibility of war; he was at heart a pacifist. I noticed certain conspicuous absences from this great German fête, for the French, British, Russian, and Italian Ambassadors had kept away. Bompard said that he had received his ten tickets but that he did not regard that as an invitation. Wangenheim told me, with some satisfaction, that the other Ambassadors were jealous, and that they did not care to see the progress which the Turkish Army had made under German tutelage. I did not have the slightest doubt that these Ambassadors refused to attend because they had no desire to grace this German holiday; nor did I blame them.

Meanwhile I had other evidences that Germany was playing her part in Turkish politics. In June the relations between Greece and Turkey reached the breaking-point. The Treaty of London (May 30, 1913) had left Greece in possession of the islands of Chios and Mitylene. A reference to the map discloses the strategic importance of these islands. They stand there in the Ægean Sea like guardians controlling the Bay and the great port of Smyrna, and it is quite apparent that any strong military nation which permanently held these vantage points would ultimately control Smyrna and the whole Ægean coast of Asia Minor. The racial situation made the continued retention of these islands by Greece a constant military danger to Turkey. Their population was Greek and had been Greek since the days of Homer; the coast of Asia Minor itself was also Greek; more than half the population of Smyrna, Turkey’s greatest Mediterranean seaport, was Greek; in its industries, its commerce, and its culture the city was so predominantly Greek that the Turks usually referred to it as giaour Ismir—“infidel Smyrna.” Though this Greek population was nominally Ottoman in nationality, it did not conceal its affection for the Greek fatherland, these Asiatic Greeks even making contributions to the Greek Government. The Ægean islands and the mainland, in fact, constituted Graecia Irredenta, and that Greece was determined to redeem them, precisely as she had recently redeemed Crete, was no diplomatic secret. Should the Greeks ever land an army on this Asia Minor coast, there was little question that the native Greek population would welcome it enthusiastically and co-operate with it.

Since Germany, however, had her own plans for Asia Minor, naturally the Greeks in this region formed a barrier to Pan-German aspirations. As long as this region remained Greek it formed a natural obstacle to Germany’s road to the Persian Gulf, precisely as did Serbia. Anyone who has read even cursorily the literature of Pan-Germania is familiar with the peculiar German method which German publicists have advocated for dealing with populations that stand in Germany’s way. That is, by deportation. The violent shifting of whole peoples from one part of Europe to another, as though they were so many herds of cattle, has for years been part of the Kaiser’s plans for German expansion. This is the treatment which, since the war began, Germany has applied to Belgium, to Poland, to Serbia, and its most hideous manifestation, as I shall show, has been to Armenia. Acting under Germany’s prompting, Turkey now began to apply this principle of deportation to her Greek subjects in Asia Minor. Three years afterwards the German Admiral Usedom, who had been stationed in the Dardanelles during the bombardment, told me that it was the Germans “who urgently made the suggestion that the Greeks be moved from the sea-shore.” The German motive, Admiral Usedom said, was purely military. Whether Talaat and his associates realised that they were playing the German game I am not sure, but there is no doubt that the Germans were constantly instigating them in this congenial task.

The events that followed foreshadowed the policy adopted in the Armenian massacres. The Turkish officials pounced upon the Greeks, herded them in groups and marched them toward the ships. They gave them no time to settle their private affairs, and they took no pains to keep families together. The plan was to transport the Greeks to the wholly Greek islands in the Ægean. Naturally the Greeks rebelled against such treatment, and occasional massacres were the result, especially in Phocaea, where more than fifty people were murdered. The Turks demanded that all foreign establishments in Smyrna dismiss their Greek employés—and replace them with Moslems. Among other American concerns, the Singer Manufacturing Company received such instructions, and though I interceded and obtained sixty days’ delay, ultimately this American concern had to obey the mandate. An official boycott was established against all Christians, not only in Asia Minor, but in Constantinople, but this boycott did not discriminate against the Jews, who have always been more popular with the Turks than have the Christians. The officials particularly requested Jewish merchants to put signs over their doors indicating their nationality and trade—such signs as “Abraham the Jew, tailor,” “Isaac the Jew, shoemaker,” and the like. I looked upon this boycott as illustrating the topsy-turvy national organisation of Turkey, for here we had a nation engaging in a commercial boycott against its own subjects.

This procedure against the Greeks not improperly aroused my indignation. I did not have the slightest suspicion at that time that the Germans had instigated these deportations, but I looked upon them merely as an outburst of Turkish ferocity and chauvinism. By this time I knew Talaat well; I saw him nearly every day and he used to discuss practically every phase of international relations with me. I objected vigorously to his treatment of the Greeks; I told him that it would make the worst possible impression abroad and that it affected American interests. Talaat explained his national policy; these different blocs in the Turkish Empire, he said, had always conspired against Turkey; because of the hostility of these native populations, Turkey had lost province after province—Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Tripoli. In this way the Turkish Empire had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. If what was left of Turkey was to survive, added Talaat, he must get rid of these alien peoples. “Turkey for the Turks” was now Talaat’s controlling idea. Therefore he proposed to Turkify Smyrna and the adjoining islands. Already 40,000 Greeks had left, and he asked me again to urge on American business houses to employ only Turks. He said that the accounts of violence and murder had been greatly exaggerated, and suggested that a commission be sent to investigate. “They want a commission to whitewash Turkey,” Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, told me. True enough, when this commission did bring in its report, it exculpated Turkey.

The Greeks in Turkey had one great advantage over the Armenians, for there was such a thing as a Greek Government, which naturally had a protecting interest in them. The Turks

knew that these deportations would precipitate a war with Greece; in fact, they welcomed such a war and were preparing for it. So enthusiastic were the Turkish people that they had raised money by popular subscription and had purchased a Brazilian dreadnought which was then under construction in England. The Government had ordered also a second dreadnought in England, and several submarines and destroyers in France. The purpose of these naval preparations was no secret in Constantinople. As soon as they obtained these ships, or even the one dreadnought which was nearing completion, Turkey intended to attack Greece and take back the islands. A single modern battleship like the Sultan Osman—this was the name the Turks had given the Brazilian vessel—could easily overpower the whole Greek Navy and control the Ægean Sea. As this powerful vessel would be finished and commissioned in a few months we all expected the Greco-Turkish war to break out in the fall. What could the Greek Navy possibly do in face of this impending danger?

Such was the situation when, early in June, I received a most agitated visitor. This was Djemal Pasha, the Turkish Minister of Marine, and one of the three men who then dominated the Turkish Empire. I have hardly ever seen a man who appeared more utterly worried than was Djemal on this occasion. As he began talking excitedly to my interpreter in French, his whiskers trembling with his emotions and his hands wildly gesticulating, he seemed to be almost beside himself. I knew enough French to understand what he was saying, and the news which he brought—this was the first I had heard of it—sufficiently explained his agitation. The American Government, he said, was negotiating with Greece for the sale of two battleships, the Idaho and the Mississippi. He urged that I should immediately move to prevent any such sale. His attitude was that of a suppliant; he begged, he implored that I should intervene. All along, he said, the Turks regarded the United States as their best friend. I had frequently expressed my desire to help them; well, here was the chance to show our good feeling. The fact that Greece and Turkey were practically on the verge of war, said Djemal, really made the sale of the ships an unneutral act. Still, if the transaction were purely a commercial one, Turkey would like a chance to bid. “We will pay more than Greece,” he added. He ended with a powerful plea that I should at once cable my Government about the matter, and this I promised to do.

Evidently the clever Greeks had turned the tables on their enemy. Turkey had rather too boldly advertised her intention of attacking Greece as soon as she had received her dreadnought. Both the ships for which Greece was now negotiating were immediately available for battle! The Idaho and Mississippi were not indispensable ships for the American Navy; they could not take their place in the first line of battle; they were powerful enough, however, to drive the whole Turkish Navy from the Ægean. Evidently the Greeks did not intend politely to postpone the impending war until the Turkish dreadnought had been finished, but to attack as soon as they received these American ships. Djemal’s legal point, of course, had no validity. However much war might threaten, Turkey and Greece were still actually at peace. Clearly Greece had just as much right to purchase warships in the United States as Turkey had to purchase them in Brazil or England.

But Djemal was not the only statesman who attempted to prevent the sale; the German Ambassador displayed the keenest interest. Several days after Djemal’s visit Wangenheim and I were riding in the hills north of Constantinople. Wangenheim began to talk about the Greeks—to whom he displayed a violent antipathy—about the chances of war, and the projected sale of American warships. He made a long argument about the sale, his reasoning being precisely the same as Djemal’s—a fact which aroused my suspicions that he had himself coached Djemal for his interview with me.

“Just look at the dangerous precedent you are establishing,” said Wangenheim. “It is not unlikely that the United States may some time find itself in a position like Turkey’s to-day. Suppose that you were on the brink of war with Japan; then England could sell a fleet of dreadnoughts to Japan. How would the United States like that?”

And then he made a statement which indicated what really lay back of his protest. I have thought of it many times in the last three years. The scene is indelibly impressed on my mind. There we sat on our horses; the silent, ancient forest of Belgrade lay around us, while in the distance the Black Sea glistened in the afternoon sun. Wangenheim suddenly became quiet and extremely earnest. He looked in my eyes and said:

“I don’t think that the United States realises what a serious matter this is. The sale of these ships might be the cause that would bring on a European war.”

This conversation took place on June 13; this was about six weeks before the conflagration broke out. Wangenheim knew perfectly well that Germany was rushing preparations for this great conflict, and he also knew that the preparations were not yet entirely complete. Like all the German Ambassadors, Wangenheim had received instructions not to let any crisis arise that would precipitate war until all these preparations had been finished. He had no objection to the expulsion of the Greeks, for that in itself was part of these preparations; he was much disturbed, however, over the prospect that the Greeks might succeed in arming themselves and disturbing existing conditions in the Balkans. At that moment the Balkans were a smouldering volcano. Europe had gone through two Balkan wars without becoming generally involved, and Wangenheim knew that another would set the whole continent ablaze. He knew that war was coming, but he did not want it just then. He was simply attempting to influence me at that moment to gain a little more time for Germany.

He went so far as to ask me to cable personally to the President, explain the seriousness of the situation, and to call his attention to the telegrams that had gone to the State Department on the proposed sale of the ships. I regarded his suggestion as an impertinent one and declined to act upon it.

To Djemal and the other Turkish officials who kept pressing me I suggested that their Ambassador in Washington should directly take up the matter with the President. They acted on this advice, but the Greeks again got ahead of them. At two o’clock, June 22nd, the Greek chargé d’affaires at Washington and Commander Tsouklas, of the Greek Navy, called upon the President and arranged the sale. As they left the President’s office the Turkish Ambassador entered—just fifteen minutes too late!

I presume that Mr. Wilson consented to the sale because he knew that Turkey was preparing to attack Greece and believed that the Idaho and Mississippi would prevent such an attack and so preserve peace in the Balkans.

Acting under the authorisation of Congress, the Administration sold these ships on July 8, 1914, to Fred J. Gauntlett for $12,535,276.98. Congress immediately voted the money realised from the sale to the construction of a great modern dreadnought, the California. Mr. Gauntlett transferred the ships to the Greek Government. Rechristened the Kilkis and the Lemnos, these battleships immediately took their places as the most powerful vessels in the Greek Navy, and the enthusiasm of the Greeks in obtaining them was unbounded.

By this time we had moved from the Embassy to our summer home on the Bosphorus. All the summer Embassies were located there, and a more beautiful spot I have never seen. Our house was a three-storey building, something in the Venetian style; behind it the cliff rose abruptly, with several terraced gardens towering one above the other. The building stood so near the shore and the waters of the Bosphorus rushed by so rapidly that when we sat outside, especially on a moonlight night, we had almost a complete illusion that we were sitting on the deck of a fast sailing-ship. In the daytime the Bosphorus, here little more than a mile wide, was alive with gaily-coloured craft. I recall this animated scene with particular vividness because I retain in my mind the contrast it presented a few months afterward, when Turkey’s entrance into the war had the immediate result of closing this strait. Day by day the huge Russian steamships, on their way from Black Sea ports to Smyrna, Alexandria, and other cities, made clear the importance of this little strip of water, and explained the bloody contests of the European nations, extending over a thousand years, for its possession. However, these early summer months were peaceful; all the Ambassadors and Ministers and their families were thrown constantly together; here daily gathered the representatives of all the Powers that for the last three years have been grappling in history’s bloodiest war, all then apparently friends, sitting around the same dining-tables, walking arm-in-arm upon the porches. The Ambassador of one Power would most graciously escort into dinner the wife of another whose country was perhaps the most antagonistic to his own. Little groups would form after dinner; the Grand Vizier would hold an impromptu reception in one corner, Cabinet Ministers would be whispering in another; a group of Ambassadors would discuss the Greek situation out on the porch; the Turkish officials would glance quizzically upon the animated scene and perhaps comment quietly in their own tongue; the Russian Ambassador would glide about the room, pick out someone whom he wished to talk to, lock arms and push him into a corner for a surreptitious tête-à-tête. Meanwhile our sons and daughters, the junior members of the diplomatic corps, and the officers of the several stationaires, dancing and flirting, seemed to think that the whole proceeding had been arranged solely for their amusement. And to realise while all this was going on that neither the Grand Vizier nor any of the other high Turkish officials would leave the house without outriders and bodyguards to protect them from assassination—whatever other emotions such a vibrating atmosphere might arouse, it was certainly alive with interest. I felt also that there was something electric about it all; war was ever the favourite topic of conversation; everyone seemed to realise that this peaceful, frivolous life was transitory, and that at any moment might come the spark that was to set everything aflame.

Yet, when the crisis came, it produced no immediate sensation. On June 29th we heard of the assassination of the Grand Duke of Austria and his consort. Everybody received the news calmly; there was, indeed, a stunned feeling that something momentous had happened, but there was practically no excitement. A day or two after this tragedy I had a long talk with Talaat on diplomatic matters; he made no reference at all to this event. I think now that we were all affected by a kind of emotional paralysis—as we were nearer the centre than most people, we certainly realised the dangers in the situation. In a day or two our tongues seemed to have been loosened, for we began to talk—and to talk war. When I saw von Mutius, the German chargé, and Weitz, the diplomat-correspondent of the Frankfürter Zeitung, they also discussed the impending conflict, and again they gave their forecast a characteristically Germanic touch; when war came, they said, of course the United States would take advantage of it to get all the Mexican and South American trade!

When I called upon Pallavicini to express my condolences over the Grand Duke’s death, he received me with the most stately solemnity. He was conscious that he was representing the imperial family, and his grief seemed to be personal; one would think that he had lost his own son. I expressed my abhorrence and that of my nation for the deed, and our sympathy with the aged Emperor.

“Ja, ja, es ist sehr schrecklich” (Yes, yes, it is very terrible), he answered, almost in a whisper.

“Serbia will be condemned for her conduct,” he added. “She will be compelled to make reparation.”

A few days later, when Pallavicini called upon me, he spoke of the nationalistic societies that Serbia had permitted to exist and of her determination to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said that his Government would insist on the abandonment of these societies and these pretensions, and that probably a punitive expedition into Serbia would be necessary to prevent such outrages as the murder of the Grand Duke. Herein I had my first intimation of the famous ultimatum of July 22nd.

The entire diplomatic corps attended the requiem mass for the Grand Duke and Duchess, celebrated at the Church of Sainte Marie on July 4. The church is located in the Grande Rue de Pera, not far from the Austrian Embassy; to reach it we had to descend a flight of forty stone steps. At the top of these stairs representatives of the Austrian Embassy, dressed in full uniform, with crêpe on the left arm, met us, and escorted us to our seats. All the Ambassadors sat in the front pew; I recall this with strange emotions now, for it was the last time that we ever sat together. The service was dignified and beautiful; I remember it with especial vividness because of the contrasting scene that immediately followed. When the stately, gorgeously-robed priests had finished, we all shook hands with the Austrian Ambassador, returned to our automobiles, and started on our eight-mile ride along the Bosphorus to the American Embassy. For this day was not only the day when we paid our tribute to the murdered heir of this medieval autocracy; it was also the Fourth of July. The very setting of the two scenes symbolised these two national ideals. I always think of this ambassadorial group going down those stone steps to the church to pay their respect to the Grand Duke, and then going up to the gaily-decorated American Embassy to pay their respect to the Declaration of Independence. All the station ships of the foreign countries lay out in the stream, decorated and dressed in honour of our national holiday; and the Ambassadors and Ministers called in full regalia. From the upper gardens we could see the place where Darius crossed from Asia with his Persian hosts 2,500 years before—one of those ancient autocrats the line of which is not yet entirely extinct. There also we could see magnificent Robert College, an institution that represented America’s conception of the way to “penetrate” the Turkish Empire. At night our gardens were illuminated with Chinese lanterns and good old American fireworks, lighting up the surrounding hills and the Bosphorus, and the American flag flying at the front of the house seemed almost to act as a challenge to the plentiful reminders of autocracy and oppression which we had had in the early part of the day. Not more than a mile across the water the dark and gloomy hills of Asia, for ages the birthplace of military despotisms, caught a faint, and, I think, a prophetic, glow from these illuminations.

In glancing at the little ambassadorial group at the church, and later at our reception, I was surprised to note that one familiar figure was missing. Wangenheim, Austria’s ally, was not present. This somewhat puzzled me at the time, but afterward I had the explanation from Wangenheim’s own lips. He had left some days before for Berlin. The Kaiser had summoned him to an Imperial Council, which met on July 5th, and which decided to plunge Europe into war.

CHAPTER IV
GERMANY MOBILISES THE TURKISH ARMY

In reading the August newspapers which described the mobilisations in Europe, I was particularly struck with the emphasis which they laid upon the splendid spirit that was overnight changing the civilian populations into armies. At that time Turkey had not entered the war, and her political leaders were loudly protesting their intention to maintain a strict neutrality. Despite these pacific statements, the occurrences in Constantinople were almost as warlike as those that were taking place in the European capitals. Though Turkey was at peace, her army was mobilising, merely, as we were told, as a precautionary measure. Yet the daily scenes which I witnessed in Constantinople bore few resemblances to those which were taking place in Europe. The martial patriotism of men and the sublime patience and sacrifice of women may sometimes give war an heroic aspect, but in Turkey the prospect was one of general listlessness and misery. Day by day the miscellaneous Ottoman hordes passed through the streets. Arabs, bootless and shoeless, dressed in their most gaily-coloured garments, with long linen bags, containing the required five days’ rations, thrown over their shoulders, shambling in their gait and bewildered in their manner, touched shoulders with equally dispirited Bedouins, evidently suddenly snatched from the desert. A motley aggregation of Turks, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and Jews, showing signs of having been summarily taken from their farms and shops, constantly jostled one another. Most were ragged, and many looked half-starved; everything about them suggested hopelessness and a cattle-like submission to a fate which they knew they could not avoid. There was no joy of approaching battle, no feeling that they were sacrificing themselves for a mighty cause; day by day they passed, the unwilling children of a tatterdemalion empire that was making one last despairing attempt to gird itself for action.

These wretched marchers little realised what was the power that was dragging them from the four corners of their country. Even we of the diplomatic group had not then clearly grasped the real situation. We learned afterwards that the signal for this mobilisation had not come originally from Enver or Talaat or the Turkish Cabinet, but the General Staff in Berlin and its representatives in Constantinople, Liman von Sanders and Bronsart, were really directing the variegated operation. There were unmistakable signs of German activity. As soon as the German armies crossed the Rhine work was begun on a mammoth wireless station a few miles outside of Constantinople. The materials all came from Germany by way of Rumania, and the mechanics, industriously working from daybreak to sunset, were unmistakably Germans. Of course, the neutrality laws would have prohibited the construction of a wireless station for a belligerent in a neutral country like Turkey; it was therefore officially announced that a German company was building this heaven-pointing structure for the Turkish Government and on the Sultan’s own property. But this story deceived no one. Wangenheim, the German Ambassador, spoke of it freely and constantly as a German enterprise.

“Have you seen our wireless yet?” he would ask me. “Come on, let’s ride up there and look it over.”

He proudly told me that it was the most powerful in the world—powerful enough to catch all messages sent by the Eiffel Tower in Paris! He said that it would put him in constant communication with Berlin. So little did he attempt to conceal its German ownership that several times, when ordinary telegraphic communication was suspended, he offered to let me use it to send my telegrams.

This wireless plant was an outward symbol of the close though unacknowledged association which then existed between Turkey and Berlin. It took some time to finish such an extensive station, and in the interim Wangenheim was using the apparatus on the Corcovado, a German merchant-ship which was lying in the Bosphorus opposite the German Embassy. For practical purposes, Wangenheim had a constant telephone connection with Berlin.

German officers were almost as active as the Turks themselves in this mobilisation. They enjoyed it all immensely; indeed, they gave every sign that they were having the time of their lives. Bronsart, Humann, and Lafferts were constantly at Enver’s elbow, advising and directing the operations. German officers were rushing through the streets every day in huge automobiles, all requisitioned from the civilian population; they filled all the restaurants and amusement places at night and celebrated their joy in the situation by consuming large quantities of champagne—also requisitioned. A particularly spectacular and noisy figure was that of von der Goltz Pasha. He was constantly making a kind of viceregal progress through the streets in a huge and madly-dashing automobile, on both sides of which flaring German eagles were painted. A trumpeter on the front seat would blow loud, defiant blasts as the conveyance rushed along, and woe to anyone, Turk or non-Turk, who happened to get in the way! The Germans made no attempt to conceal their conviction that they owned this town. Just as Wangenheim had established a little Wilhelmstrasse in his Embassy, so had the German military men established a sub-station of the Berlin General Staff. They even brought their wives and families from Germany; I heard Baroness Wangenheim remark that she was holding a little court of her own.

The Germans, however, were about the only people who were enjoying this proceeding. The requisitioning that accompanied the mobilisation really amounted to a wholesale looting of the civilian population. The Turks took all the horses, mules, camels, sheep, cows, and other beasts that they could lay their hands on, Enver telling me that they had gathered in 150,000 animals. They did it most intelligently, making no provision for the continuance of the species; thus they would leave only two cows or two mares in many of the villages. This system of requisitioning, as I shall describe, had the inevitable result of destroying the nation’s agriculture, and ultimately led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. But the Turks, like the Germans, thought that the war was destined to be a very short one, and that they would quickly recuperate from the injuries which their methods of supplying an army were causing their peasant population. The Government showed precisely the same shamelessness and lack of intelligence in the way that they requisitioned materials from merchants and shopmen. These proceedings amounted to little less than conscious highwaymanship. But practically none of these merchants were Moslems; most of them were Christians, though there were a few Jews, and the Turkish officials therefore not only provided the needs of their army, and incidentally lined their own pockets, but they found a religious joy in pillaging the infidel establishments. They would enter a retail shop, take practically all the merchandise on the shelves, and give merely a piece of paper in acknowledgment. As the Government had never paid for the supplies which it had taken in the Italian and Balkan Wars, the merchants hardly expected that they would ever receive anything for these latest requisitions. Afterward, many who understood officialdom, and were politically influential, did recover to the extent of 70 per cent.—what became of the remaining 30 per cent. is not a secret to those who have had experience with Turkish bureaucrats.

Thus, for most of the population, requisitioning simply meant financial ruin. That the process was merely pillaging is shown by many of the materials which the army took, ostensibly for the use of the soldiers. Thus the officers seized all the mohair they could find; on occasion they even carried off women’s silk stockings, corsets, and babies’ slippers, and I heard one case in which they reinforced the Turkish commissary with caviar and other delicacies. They demanded blankets from one merchant who was a dealer in women’s underwear; because he had no such stock, they seized what he had, and he afterward saw his appropriated goods reposing in rival establishments. The Turks did the same thing in many other cases. The prevailing system was to take movable property wherever available and convert it into cash; where the money ultimately went I do not know, but that many private fortunes were made I have little doubt. I told Enver that this ruthless method of mobilising and requisitioning was destroying his country. Misery and starvation soon began to afflict the land. Out of 4,000,000 adult male population more than 1,500,000 were ultimately enlisted, and so about a million families were left without breadwinners, all of them in a condition of extreme destitution. The Turkish Government paid its soldiers 25 cents a month, and gave the families a separation allowance of $1.20 a month. As a result, thousands were dying from lack of food and many more were enfeebled by malnutrition. I believe that the Empire has lost a quarter of its Turkish population since the war started. I asked Enver why he permitted his people to be destroyed in this way. But sufferings like these did not distress him. He was much impressed by his success in raising a large army with practically no money—something, he boasted, which no other nation had ever done before. In order to accomplish this, Enver had issued orders which stigmatised the evasion of military service as desertion, and therefore punishable with the death penalty. He also adopted a scheme by which any Ottoman could obtain exemption by the payment of about $190. Still, Enver regarded his accomplishment as a notable one. It was really his first taste of unlimited power, and he enjoyed the experience greatly.

That the Germans directed this mobilisation is not a matter of opinion but of proof. I need only instance that the Germans were requisitioning materials in their own name for their own use. I have a photographic copy of such a requisition made by Humann, the German naval attaché, for a shipload of oil-cake. This document is dated September 29, 1914. “The lot by the steamship Derindje which you mentioned in your letter of the 26th,” this paper reads, “has been requisitioned by me for the German Government.” This clearly shows that, a month before Turkey had entered the war, Germany was really exercising the powers of sovereignty at Constantinople.

CHAPTER V
WANGENHEIM SMUGGLES THE “GOEBEN” AND THE “BRESLAU” THROUGH THE DARDANELLES

On August 10th I went out on a little launch to meet the Sicilia, a small Italian ship which had just arrived from Venice. I was especially interested in this vessel because she was bringing to Constantinople my daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Wertheim, and their three little daughters. The greeting proved even more interesting than I had expected. I found the passengers considerably excited, for they had witnessed, the day before, a naval engagement in the Ionian Sea.

“We were lunching yesterday on deck,” my daughter told me, “when I saw two strange-looking vessels just above the horizon. I ran for the glasses and made out two large battleships, the first one with two queer exotic-looking towers, and the other one quite an ordinary-looking battleship. We watched and saw another ship coming up behind them and going very fast. She came nearer and nearer, and then we heard guns booming. Pillars of water sprang up in the air and there were many little puffs of white smoke. It took me some time to realise what it was all about, and then it burst upon me that we were actually witnessing an engagement. The ships continually shifted their position, but went on and on. The two big ones turned and rushed furiously for the little one, and then apparently they changed their minds and turned back. Then the little one turned around and calmly steamed in our direction. At first I was somewhat alarmed at this, but nothing happened. She circled around us with her tars excited and grinning, and somewhat grimy. They signalled to our captain many questions, and then turned and finally disappeared. The captain told us that the two big ships were Germans which had been caught in the Mediterranean and which were trying to escape from the British fleet. He says that the British ships are chasing them all over the Mediterranean, and that the German ships are trying to get into Constantinople. Have you seen anything of them? Where do you suppose the British fleet is?”

A few hours afterward I happened to meet Wangenheim. When I told him what Mrs. Wertheim had seen, he displayed an agitated interest. Immediately after lunch he called at the American Embassy with Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador, and asked for an interview with my daughter. The two Ambassadors solemnly planted themselves in chairs before Mrs. Wertheim and subjected her to a most minute, though very polite, cross-examination. “I never felt so important in my life,” she afterwards told me. They would not permit her to leave out a single detail; they wished to know how many shots had been fired, what direction the German ships had taken, what everybody on board had said, and so on. The visit seemed to give these allied Ambassadors immense relief and satisfaction, for they left the house in an almost jubilant mood, behaving as though a great weight had been taken off their minds. And certainly they had good reason for their elation. My daughter had been the means of giving them the news which they had desired to hear above everything else—that the Goeben and the Breslau had escaped the British fleet and were then steaming rapidly in the direction of the Dardanelles.

For it was those famous German ships, the Goeben and the Breslau, which my daughter had seen engaged in battle with a British scout ship!

The next day official business called me to the German Embassy. But Wangenheim’s animated manner soon disclosed that he had no interest in routine matters. Never had I seen him so nervous and so excited. He could not rest in his chair more than a few minutes at a time; he was constantly jumping up, rushing to the window, and looking anxiously out toward the Bosphorus where his private wireless station, the Corcovado, lay about three-quarters of a mile away. Wangenheim’s face was flushed and his eyes were shining; he would stride up and down the room, speaking now of a recent German victory, now giving me a little forecast of Germany’s plans, and then he would stalk to the window again for another look at the Corcovado.

“Something is seriously distracting you,” I said, rising. “I will go, and come again some other time.”

“No, no!” the Ambassador almost shouted. “I want you to stay right where you are. This will be a great day for Germany! If you will only remain for a few minutes you will hear a great piece of news—something that has the utmost bearing upon Turkey’s relation to the war.”

Then he rushed out on the portico and leaned over the balustrade. At the same moment I saw a little launch put out from the Corcovado toward the Ambassador’s dock. Wangenheim hurried down, seized an envelope from one of the sailors, and a moment afterward burst into the room again.

“We’ve got them!” he shouted to me.

“Got what?” I asked.

“The Goeben and the Breslau have passed through the Dardanelles!”

He was waving the wireless message with all the enthusiasm of a college boy whose football team has won a victory.

Then, momentarily checking his enthusiasm, he came up to me solemnly, humorously shook his forefinger, lifted his eyebrows, and said, “Of course, you understand that we have sold these ships to Turkey!

“And Admiral Souchon,” he added with another wink, “will enter the Sultan’s service!”

Wangenheim had more than patriotic reasons for this exultation; the arrival of these ships was the greatest day in his diplomatic career. It was really the first diplomatic victory which Germany had won. For years the Chancellorship of the Empire had been Wangenheim’s laudable ambition, and he behaved now like a man who saw his prize within his grasp. The voyage of the Goeben and the Breslau was his personal triumph; he had arranged with the Turkish Cabinet for their passage through the Dardanelles, and he had directed their movements by wireless in the Mediterranean. By safely getting the Goeben and the Breslau into Constantinople, Wangenheim had definitely clinched Turkey as Germany’s ally. All his intrigues and plottings for three years had now finally succeeded.

I doubt if any two ships have exercised a greater influence upon history than these two German cruisers. Not all of us at that time fully realised their importance, but subsequent developments have fully justified Wangenheim’s exuberant satisfaction. The Goeben was a powerful battle-cruiser of recent construction, the Breslau was not so large a ship, but she, like the Goeben, had the excessive speed that made her extremely serviceable in those waters. These ships had spent the few months preceding the war cruising in the Mediterranean, and when the declaration finally came they were taking on supplies at Messina. I have always regarded it as more than a coincidence that these two vessels, both of them having a greater speed than any French or English ships in the Mediterranean, should have been lying not far from Turkey when war broke out. The selection of the Goeben was particularly fortunate, as she had twice before visited Constantinople and her officers and men knew the Dardanelles perfectly. The behaviour of these crews, when the news of war was received, indicated the spirit with which the German Navy began hostilities; the men broke out into song and shouting, lifted their admiral upon their shoulders, and held a real German jollification. It is said that Admiral Souchon preserved, as a touching souvenir of this occasion, his white uniform bearing the finger-prints of his grimy sailors! For all their joy at the prospect of battle, the situation of these ships was still a precarious one. They formed no match for the large British and French naval forces which were roaming through the Mediterranean. The Goeben and the Breslau were far from their native bases; with the coaling problem such an acute one, and with England in possession of all important stations, where could they flee for safety? Several Italian destroyers were circling around the German ships at Messina, enforcing neutrality and occasionally reminding them that they could remain in port only twenty-four hours. England had ships stationed at the Gulf of Otranto, the head of the Adriatic, to cut them off in case they sought to escape into the Austrian port of Pola. The British Navy also stood guard at Gibraltar and Suez, the only other exits that apparently offered the possibility of escape. There was only one other place in which the Goeben and the Breslau might find a safe and friendly reception. That was Constantinople. Apparently the British Navy dismissed this as an impossibility. At that time, early in August, international law had not entirely disappeared as the guiding conduct of nations. Turkey was then a neutral country, and, despite the many evidences of German domination, she seemed likely to maintain her neutrality. The Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1856, as well as the Treaty of London, signed in 1871, provided that warships should not use the Dardanelles except on the special permission of the Sultan, which permission could be granted only in times of peace. In practice the Government had seldom given this permission except for ceremonial occasions. In the existing conditions it would have amounted virtually to an unfriendly act for the Sultan to have removed the ban against war vessels in the Dardanelles, and to permit the Goeben and the Breslau to remain in Turkish waters for more than twenty-four hours would have been nothing less than a declaration of war. It is, perhaps, not surprising that the British in the early days of August, 1914, when Germany had not completely made clear her official opinion that “international law had ceased to exist,” regarded these treaty stipulations as barring the German ships from the Dardanelles and Constantinople. Relying upon the sanctity of these international regulations, the British Navy had shut off every point through which these German ships could have escaped to safety—except the entrance to the Dardanelles. Had England, immediately on the declaration of war, rushed a powerful squadron to this vital spot, how different the history of the last three years might have been!

“His Majesty expects the Goeben and the Breslau to succeed in breaking through!” Such was the wireless that reached these vessels at Messina at five o’clock in the evening of August 4th. The twenty-four hours’ stay permitted by the Italian Government had nearly expired. Outside, in the Strait of Otranto, lay the force of British battle-cruisers, sending false radio messages to the Germans instructing them to rush for Pola. With bands playing and flags flying, the officers and crews having had their spirits fired by speeches and champagne, the two vessels started at full speed head on toward the awaiting British fleet. The little Gloucester, a scout boat, kept in touch, wiring constantly the German movements to the main squadron. Suddenly, when off Cape Spartivento, the Goeben and the Breslau let off into the atmosphere all the discordant vibrations which their wireless could command, jamming the air with such a hullabaloo that the Gloucester was unable to send any intelligible messages. Then the German cruisers turned south and made for the Ægean Sea. The plucky little Gloucester kept close on their heels, and, as my daughter had related, had even once audaciously offered battle. A few hours behind the British squadron pursued, but uselessly, for the German ships, though far less powerful in battle, were much speedier. Even then the British admiral probably thought that he had spoiled the German plans. The German ships might get first to the Dardanelles, but at that point stood international law across the path and barring the entrance!

Meanwhile Wangenheim had accomplished his great diplomatic triumph. From the Corcovado wireless station in the Bosphorus he was sending the most agreeable news to Admiral Souchon. He was telling him to hoist the Turkish flag when he reached the Strait, for Admiral Souchon’s cruisers had suddenly become parts of the Turkish Navy, and, therefore, the usual international prohibitions did not apply! These cruisers were no longer the Goeben and the Breslau, for, like an oriental magician, Wangenheim had suddenly changed them into the Sultan Selim and the Medilli. The fact was that the German Ambassador had cleverly taken advantage of the existing situation to manufacture a “sale.” As I have already told, Turkey had two dreadnoughts under construction in England

when the war broke out. These ships were not exclusively governmental enterprises; their purchasers represented what, on the surface, appeared to be a popular enthusiasm of the Turkish people. They were to be the agencies through which Turkey was to attack Greece and win back the islands of the Ægean, and the Turkish people had raised the money to build them by a so-called popular subscription. Agents had gone from house to house, painfully collecting these small subscriptions; there had been entertainments and fairs, and, in their eagerness for the cause, Turkish women had sold their hair for the benefit of the common fund. These two vessels thus represented a spectacular outburst of patriotism that was unusual in Turkey, so unusual, indeed, that many detected signs that the Government had stimulated it. At the very moment when the war began Turkey had made her last payment to the English shipyards and the Turkish crews had arrived in England prepared to take the finished vessels home. Then, very soon before the time set to deliver them, the British Government stepped in and commandeered these dreadnoughts for the British Navy.

There is not the slightest question that England had not only a legal, but a moral, right to do this; there is also no question that her action was a proper one, and that, had she been dealing with almost any other nation, such proceeding would not have aroused any resentment. But the Turkish people cared nothing for distinctions of this sort; all they saw was that they had two ships in England, which they had greatly strained their resources to purchase, and that England had now stepped in and taken them. Even without external pressure they would have resented the act, but external pressure was exerted in plenty. The transaction gave Wangenheim the greatest opportunity of his life. Violent attacks upon England, all emanating from the German Embassy, began to fill the Turkish Press. Wangenheim was constantly discoursing to the Turkish leaders on English perfidy. He now suggested that Germany, Turkey’s good friend, was prepared to make compensation for England’s “unlawful” seizure. He suggested that Turkey go through the form of “purchasing” the Goeben and the Breslau, which were then wandering around the Mediterranean, perhaps in anticipation of this very contingency, and incorporate them in the Turkish Navy in place of the appropriated ships in England. The very day that these vessels passed through the Dardanelles the Ikdam, a Turkish newspaper published in Constantinople, had a triumphant account of this “sale,” with big headlines calling it a “great success for the Imperial Government.”

Thus Wangenheim’s manœuvre accomplished two purposes: it placed Germany before the populace as Turkey’s friend, and it also provided a subterfuge for getting the ships through the Dardanelles and enabling them to remain in Turkish waters. All this beguiled the more ignorant part of the Turkish people, and gave the Cabinet a plausible ground for meeting the objection of Entente diplomats, but it did not deceive any intelligent person. The Goeben and Breslau might change their names, and the German sailors might adorn themselves with Turkish fezzes, but we all knew from the beginning that this sale was a sham. Those who understood the financial condition of Turkey could only be amused at the idea that she could purchase these modern vessels. Moreover, the ships were never incorporated in the Turkish Navy; on the contrary, what really happened was that the Turkish Navy was annexed to these German ships. A handful of Turkish sailors was placed on board at one time for appearance’ sake, but their German officers and German crews still retained active charge. Wangenheim, in his talks with me, never made any secret of the fact that the ships still remained German property. “I never expected to have such big cheques to sign,” he remarked one day, referring to his expenditures on the Goeben and the Breslau. He always called them “our” ships. Even Talaat told me in so many words that the cruisers did not belong to Turkey.

“The Germans say they belong to the Turks,” he remarked, with his characteristic laugh. “At any rate it’s very comforting for us to have them here. After the war, if the Germans win, they will forget all about it and leave the ships to us. If the Germans lose, they won’t be able to take them away from us!”

The German Government made no real pretension that the sale had been bonâ fide; at least, when the Greek Minister at Berlin protested against the transaction as unfriendly to Greece—naïvely forgetting the American ships which Greece had recently purchased—the German officials soothed him by admitting, sotto voce, that the ownership still resided in Germany. Yet when the Entente Ambassadors constantly protested against the presence of the German vessels, the Turkish officials blandly kept up the pretence that they were integral parts of the Turkish Navy!

The German officers and crews greatly enjoyed this farcical pretence that the Goeben and the Breslau were Turkish ships. They took particular delight in dressing themselves up in Turkish uniforms and Turkish fezzes, thereby presenting to the world conclusive evidence that these loyal soldiers of the Kaiser were now parts of the Sultan’s Navy. One day the Goeben sailed up the Bosphorus, halted in front of the Russian Embassy, and dropped anchor. Then the officers and men lined the deck in full view of the enemy Ambassador. All solemnly removed their Turkish fezzes and put on German caps. The band played “Deutschland uber Alles,” the “Watch on the Rhine,” and other German songs, the German sailors singing loudly to the accompaniment. When they had spent an hour or two serenading the Russian Ambassador, the officers and crews removed their German caps and again put on their Turkish fezzes. The Goeben then picked up her anchor and started south to her station, leaving in the ears of the Russian diplomat the gradually dying strains of German war songs as the cruiser disappeared down stream.

I have often speculated on what would have happened if the English battle-cruisers, which pursued the Breslau and Goeben up to the mouth of the Dardanelles, had not been too gentlemanly to have violated international law. Suppose that they had entered the Strait, attacked the German cruisers in the Marmora, and sunk them. They could have done this, and, knowing all that we know now, such an action would have been justified. Not improbably the destruction would have kept Turkey out of the war. For, the arrival of these cruisers made it inevitable that Turkey should join her forces with Germany’s when the proper moment came. With them the Turkish Navy became stronger than the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and thus made it certain that Russia could make no attack on Constantinople. The Goeben and the Breslau, that is, practically gave the Ottoman-German naval forces control of the Black Sea. Moreover, these two ships could easily dominate Constantinople, and thus furnish the means by which the German Navy, if the occasion arose, could terrorise the Turks. I am convinced that, when the judicious historian reviews this war and its consequences, he will say that the passage of the Strait by these German ships made it inevitable that Turkey should join Germany at the moment that Germany desired her assistance, and that they likewise sealed the doom of the Turkish Empire. There were men in the Turkish Cabinet who perceived this, even then. The story was told in Constantinople—though I do not vouch for it as authentic history—that the Cabinet Meeting at which this momentous decision had been made had not been altogether harmonious. The Grand Vizier and Djemal, it was said, objected to the fictitious “sale,” and demanded that it should be made a real one. When the discussion had reached its height Enver, who was playing Germany’s game, announced that he had already practically completed the transaction. In the silence that followed his statement this young Napoleon pulled out his pistol and laid it on the table.

“If anyone here wishes to question this purchase,” he said quietly and icily, “I am ready to meet him.”

A few weeks after the Goeben and the Breslau had taken up permanent headquarters in the Bosphorus, Djavid Bey, Minister of Finance, happened to meet a distinguished Belgian jurist, then in Constantinople.

“I have terrible news for you,” said the sympathetic Turkish statesman. “The Germans have captured Brussels.”

The Belgian, a huge figure, more than six feet high, put his arm soothingly upon the shoulder of the diminutive Turk.

“I have even more terrible news for you,” he said, pointing out to the stream where the Goeben and the Breslau lay anchored. “The Germans have captured Turkey.”

CHAPTER VI
WANGENHEIM TELLS THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR HOW THE KAISER STARTED THE WAR

But there was one quarter in which this transaction produced no appreciable gloom. That was the German Embassy. This great “success” fairly intoxicated the impressionable Wangenheim, and other happenings now aroused his furor Teutonicus to a fever-heat. The Goeben and the Breslau arrived almost at the same time that the Germans captured Liège, Namur, and other Belgian towns. And now followed the German sweep into France and the apparently triumphant rush to Paris. In all these happenings Wangenheim, like the militant Prussian that he was, saw the fulfilment of a forty years’ dream. We were all still living in the summer Embassies along the Bosphorus. Germany had a sumptuous palace, with elaborate buildings and a beautiful park, which the Sultan had personally presented to the Kaiser’s Government, yet for some reason Wangenheim did not seem to enjoy his headquarters during these summer days. A little guard-house stood directly in front of his Embassy, on the street, within twenty feet of the rushing Bosphorus, and in front of this was a stone bench. This bench was properly a resting-place for the guard, but Wangenheim seemed to have a strong liking for it. I shall always keep in my mind the figure of this German diplomat, in those exciting days before the Marne, sitting out on this little bench, now and then jumping up for a stroll back and forth in front of his house. Everybody passing from Constantinople to the northern suburbs had to pass this road, and even the Russian and French diplomats frequently went by, stiffly ignoring, of course, the triumphant ambassadorial figure on his stone bench. I sometimes think that Wangenheim sat there for the express purpose of puffing his cigar smoke in their direction. It all reminded me of the scene in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, where Tell sits in the mountain-pass, with his bow and arrow at his side, waiting for his intended victim, Gessler, to go by:

“Here through this deep defile he needs must pass;
There leads no other road to Kussnacht.”

Wangenheim would also buttonhole his friends, or those whom he regarded as his friends, and have his little jollifications over German victories. I noticed that he stationed himself there only when the German armies were winning; if news came of a reverse, Wangenheim was utterly invisible. This led me to remark that he reminded me of a toy weather-prophet, which is always outside the box when the weather is fine but which retires within when storms are gathering. Wangenheim appreciated my little joke as keenly as the rest of the diplomatic set.

In those early days, however, the weather for the German Ambassador was distinctly favourable. The good fortune of the German armies so excited him that he was sometimes led into indiscretions, and his exuberance one day caused him to tell me certain facts which, I think, will always have great historical value. He disclosed precisely how and when Germany had precipitated this war. To-day his revelation of this secret looks like a most monstrous indiscretion, but we must remember Wangenheim’s state of mind at the time. The whole world then believed that Paris was doomed, and Wangenheim reflected this attitude in his frequent declarations that the war would be over in two or three months. The whole German enterprise was evidently progressing according to programme.

I have already mentioned that the German Ambassador left for Berlin soon after the assassination of the Grand Duke, and he now revealed the cause of his sudden disappearance. The Kaiser, he told me, had summoned him to Berlin for an Imperial Conference. This meeting took place at Potsdam on July 5th. The Kaiser presided and nearly all the important Ambassadors attended. Wangenheim himself was summoned to give assurance about Turkey and enlighten his associates generally on the situation in Constantinople, which was then regarded as almost the pivotal point in the impending war. In telling me who attended this conference Wangenheim used no names, though he specifically said that among them were—the facts are so important that I quote his exact words in the German which he used—“die Haüpte des Generalstabs und der Marine” (the heads of the General Staff and of the Navy), by which I have assumed that he meant von Moltke and Von Tirpitz. The great bankers, railroad directors, and the captains of German industry, all of whom were as necessary to German war preparations as the army itself, also attended.

Wangenheim now told me that the Kaiser solemnly put the question to each man in turn: “Are you ready for war?” All replied “Yes,” except the financiers. They said that they must have two weeks to sell their foreign securities and to make loans. At that time few people had looked upon the Serajevo tragedy as something that was likely to cause war. This Conference, Wangenheim told me, took all precautions that no such suspicion should be aroused. It decided to give the bankers time to readjust their finances for the coming war, and then the several members went quietly back to their work or started on vacations. The Kaiser went to Norway on his yacht, von Bethmann-Hollweg left for a rest, and Wangenheim returned to Constantinople.

In telling me about this Conference Wangenheim, of course, admitted that Germany had precipitated the war. I think that he was rather proud of the whole performance; proud that Germany had gone about the matter in so methodical and far-seeing a way, and especially proud that he himself had been invited to participate in so momentous a gathering. I have often wondered why he revealed to me so important a secret, and I think that perhaps the real reason was his excessive vanity—his desire to show me how close he stood to the inner counsels of his Emperor and the part that he had played in bringing on this conflict. Whatever the motive, this indiscretion certainly had the effect of showing me who were really the guilty parties in this monstrous crime. The several Blue, Red, and Yellow Books which flooded Europe during the few months following the outbreak, and the hundreds of documents which were issued by German propaganda attempting to establish Germany’s innocence, have never made the slightest impression on me. For my conclusions as to the responsibility are not based on suspicions or belief or the study of circumstantial data. I do not have to reason or argue about the matter. I know. The conspiracy that has caused this greatest of human tragedies was hatched by the Kaiser and his imperial crew at this Potsdam Conference of July 5, 1914. One of the chief participants, flushed with his triumph at the apparent success of the plot, told me the details with his own mouth. Whenever I hear people arguing about the responsibility for this war, or read the clumsy and lying excuses put forth by Germany, I simply recall the burly figure of Wangenheim as he appeared that August afternoon, puffing away at a huge black cigar, and giving me his account of this historic meeting. Why waste any time discussing the matter after that?

This Imperial Conference took place on July 5th and the Serbian ultimatum was sent on July 22nd. That is just about the two weeks’ interval which the financiers had demanded to complete their plans. All the great stock exchanges of the world show that the German bankers profitably used this interval. Their records disclose that stocks were being sold in large quantities and that prices declined rapidly. At that time the markets were somewhat puzzled at this movement, but Wangenheim’s explanation clears up any doubts that may still remain. Germany was changing her securities into cash for war purposes. If anyone wishes to verify Wangenheim I would suggest that he examine the quotations of the New York stock market for these two historic weeks. He will find that there were astonishing slumps in quotations, especially on the stocks that had an international market. Between July 5th and July 22nd Union Pacific dropped from 155½ to 127½, Baltimore and Ohio from 91½ to 81, United States Steel from 61 to 50½, Canadian Pacific from 194 to 185½, and Northern Pacific from 111⅜ to 108. At that time the high protectionists were blaming the Simmons-Underwood Tariff Act as responsible for this fall in values, while other critics of the Administration attributed it to the Federal Reserve Act, which had not yet gone into effect. How little the Wall Street brokers and the financial experts realised that an Imperial Conference which had been held in Potsdam, and presided over by the Kaiser, was the real force that was then depressing the market!

Wangenheim not only gave me the details of this Potsdam Conference, but he disclosed the same secret to the Marquis Garroni, the Italian Ambassador at Constantinople. Italy was at that time technically Germany’s ally.

The Austrian Ambassador, the Marquis Pallavicini, also practically admitted that the Central Powers had precipitated the war. On August 18th, Francis Joseph’s birthday, I made the usual ambassadorial visit of congratulation. Quite naturally the conversation turned upon the Emperor, who had that day passed his eighty-fourth year. Pallavicini spoke about him with the utmost pride and veneration. He told me how keen-minded and clear-headed the aged Emperor was, how he had the most complete understanding of international affairs, and how he gave everything his personal supervision. To illustrate the Austrian Kaiser’s grasp of public events, Pallavicini instanced the present war. The previous May, Pallavicini had had an audience with Francis Joseph in Vienna. At that time, Pallavicini now told me, the Emperor had said that a European war was unavoidable. The Central Powers would not accept the Treaty of Bucharest as a settlement of the Balkan question, and only a general war, the Emperor had told Pallavicini, could ever settle that problem. The Treaty of Bucharest, I may recall, was the settlement that ended the second Balkan war.

This divided the European dominions of Turkey, excepting Constantinople and a small piece of adjoining territory, among the Balkan nations, chiefly Serbia and Greece. That treaty strengthened Serbia greatly; so much did it increase Serbia’s resources, indeed, that Austria feared that it had laid the beginning of a new European State that might grow sufficiently strong to resist her own plans of aggrandisement. Austria held a large Serbian population under her yoke in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and these Serbians desired, above everything else, annexation to their own country. Moreover, the Pan-German plans in the East necessitated the destruction of Serbia, the State which, so long as it stood intact, blocked the Germanic road to the East. It had been the Austro-German expectation that the Balkan war would destroy Serbia as a nation—that Turkey would simply annihilate King Peter’s forces. This was precisely what the Germanic plans demanded, and for this reason Austria and Germany did nothing to prevent the Balkan wars. But the result was exactly the reverse, for out of the conflict arose a stronger Serbia than ever, standing firm like a breakwater against the Germanic path.

Most historians agree that the Treaty of Bucharest made inevitable this war. I have the Marquis Pallavicini’s evidence that this was likewise the opinion of Francis Joseph himself. The audience at which the Emperor made this statement was held in May, more than a month before the assassination of the Grand Duke. Clearly, therefore, we have the Austrian Emperor’s assurances that the war would have come irrespective of the assassination at Serajevo. It is quite apparent that this crime merely served as the convenient pretext for the war upon which the Central Empires had already decided.

CHAPTER VII
GERMANY’S PLANS FOR NEW TERRITORIES, COALING STATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES

All through that eventful August and September Wangenheim continued his almost irresponsible behaviour—now blandly boastful, now depressed, always nervous and high-strung, ingratiating to an American like myself, spiteful and petty toward the representatives of the enemy Powers. He was always displaying his anxiety and impatience by sitting on the bench, that he might be within two or three minutes’ quicker access to the wireless communications that were sent him from Berlin via the Corcovado. He would never miss an opportunity to spread the news of victories; several times he adopted the unusual course of coming to my house unannounced, to tell me of the latest developments and to read me extracts from messages which he had just received. He was always apparently frank, direct, and even indiscreet. I remember his great distress the day that England declared war. Wangenheim had always professed a great admiration for England, and especially for America. “There are only three great countries,” he would say over and over again, “Germany, England, and the United States. We three should get together, then we could rule the world.” This enthusiasm for the British Empire now suddenly cooled when that Power decided to defend her treaty pledges and declared war. Wangenheim had said that the conflict would be a short one; Sedan Day (September 2nd) would be celebrated in Paris. But on August 5th I called at his Embassy and found him more than usually agitated and serious. Baroness Wangenheim, a tall, handsome woman, was sitting in the room reading her mother’s memoirs of the war of 1870. Both regarded the news from England as almost a personal grievance, and what impressed me most was Wangenheim’s utter failure to understand England’s motives. “It’s mighty poor politics on her part!” he exclaimed over and over again. His attitude was precisely the same as that of Bethmann-Hollweg with the “scrap of paper.”

I was out for a stroll on August 26th, and happened to meet the German Ambassador. He began to talk as usual about the German victories in France, repeating, as was now his habit, his prophecy that the German armies would be in Paris within a week. The deciding factor in this war, he added, would be the Krupp artillery. “And remember that this time,” he said, “we are making war. And we shall make it rücksichtslos (without any consideration). We shall not be hampered as we were in 1870. Then Queen Victoria, the Czar, and Francis Joseph interfered and persuaded us to spare Paris. But there is no one to interfere now. We shall move to Berlin all the Parisian art treasures that belong to the State, just as Napoleon took Italian art works to France.”

It is quite evident that the battle of the Marne saved Paris from the fate of Louvain.

So confidently did Wangenheim expect an immediate victory that he began to discuss the terms of peace. Germany would demand of France, he said, after defeating her armies, that she completely demobilise and pay an indemnity. “France now,” said Wangenheim, “can settle for $5,000,000,000; but if she persists in continuing the war she will have to pay $20,000,000,000.”

He told me that Germany would demand harbours and coaling-stations “everywhere.” At that time, judging from Wangenheim’s statements, Germany was not looking so much for new territory as for great commercial advantages. She was determined to be the great merchant nation, and for this she must have free harbours, the Bagdad railroad, and extensive rights in South America and Africa. Wangenheim said that Germany did not desire any more territory in which the populations did not speak German, for they had had all of that kind of trouble they wanted in Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, and other non-German countries. This statement certainly sounds interesting now in view of recent happenings in Russia. He did not mention England in speaking of Germany’s demand for coaling-stations and harbours; he must have had England in mind, however, for what other nation could have given them to Germany “everywhere”?

All these conversations were illuminating to me as Wangenheim’s revelation of the Conference of July 5th. That episode clearly proved that Germany had consciously started the war, while these grandiose schemes, as outlined by this very able but somewhat talkative Ambassador, showed the reasons that had impelled her in this great enterprise. Wangenheim gave me a complete picture of the German Empire embarking on a great buccaneering enterprise, in which the spoils of success came to be the accumulated riches of her neighbours and the world position which their skill and industry had built up through the centuries.

If England attempted to starve Germany, said Wangenheim, Germany’s response would be a simple one: she would starve France. At that time, we must remember, Germany expected to have Paris within a week, and she believed that this would ultimately give her control of the whole country. It was evidently the German plan, as understood by Wangenheim, to hold this nation as a pawn for England’s behaviour, a kind of hostage on a gigantic scale, and, should England gain any military or naval advantage, Germany would attempt to counter-attack by torturing the whole French people. At that moment German soldiers were murdering innocent Belgians in return for the alleged misbehaviour of other Belgians, and evidently Germany had planned to apply this principle to whole nations as well as to individuals.

All through this and other talks, Wangenheim showed the greatest animosity to Russia.

“We’ve got our foot on Russia’s corn,” he said, “and we propose to keep it there.”

By this he must have meant that Germany had sent the Goeben and the Breslau through the Dardanelles and so controlled the situation in Constantinople. The old Byzantine capital, said Wangenheim, was the prize which a victorious Russia would demand, and her lack of an all-the-year-round port in warm waters was Russia’s tender spot—her “corn.” At this time Wangenheim boasted that Germany had 174 German gunners at the Dardanelles, that the Strait could be closed in less than thirty minutes, and that Souchon, the German admiral, had informed him that the Straits were impregnable. “We shall not close the Dardanelles, however,” he said, “unless England attacks them.”

At that time England, although she had declared war on Germany, had played no conspicuous part in the military operations; her “contemptible little army” was making its heroic retreat from Mons. Wangenheim entirely discounted England as an enemy. It was the German intention, he said, to place their big guns at Calais, and throw their shells across the English Channel to the English coast towns; that Germany would not have Calais within the next ten days did not occur to him as a possibility. In this and other conversations at about the same time Wangenheim laughed at the idea that England could create a large independent army. “The idea is preposterous,” he said. “It takes generations of militarism to produce any thing like the German army. We have been building it up for two hundred years. It takes thirty years of constant training to produce such generals as we have. Our army will always maintain its organisation. We have 500,000 recruits reaching military age every year, and we cannot possibly lose that number, so that our army will be kept intact.”

A few weeks later civilisation was outraged by the German bombardment of English coast towns, such as Scarborough and Hartlepool. This was no sudden German inspiration, but part of their carefully-considered plans. Wangenheim told me, on September 6th, 1914, that Germany intended to bombard all English harbours, so as to stop the food supply. It is also apparent that German ruthlessness against American sea trade was no sudden decision of von Tirpitz, for on this same date the German Ambassador to Constantinople warned me that it would be very dangerous for the United States to send ships to England!

CHAPTER VIII
A CLASSIC INSTANCE OF GERMAN PROPAGANDA

In those August and September days Germany had no intention of precipitating Turkey immediately into the war. As I had a deep interest in the welfare of the Turkish people and in maintaining peace, I telegraphed Washington asking if I might use my influence to keep Turkey neutral. I received a reply that I might do this provided that I made my representations unofficially and purely upon humanitarian grounds. As the English and the French Ambassadors were exerting all their effort to keep Turkey neutral, I knew that my intervention in the same interest would not displease the British Government. Germany, however, might regard any interference on my part as an unneutral act, and I asked Wangenheim if there could be any objection from that source.

His reply somewhat surprised me, though I saw through it soon afterward. “Not at all,” he said. “Germany desires, above all, that Turkey shall remain neutral.”

Undoubtedly Turkey’s policy at that moment precisely fitted in with German plans. Wangenheim was every day increasing his ascendancy over the Turkish Cabinet, and Turkey was then pursuing the course that best served the German aims. Her policy was keeping the Entente on tenterhooks; it never knew from day to day where Turkey stood, whether she would remain neutral or enter the war on Germany’s side. Because Turkey’s attitude was so uncertain Russia was compelled to keep large forces on the Caucasus, England was obliged to strengthen her forces in Egypt and India, and to maintain a considerable fleet at the mouth of the Dardanelles. All this worked in beautifully with Germany’s plans, for these detached forces just so much weakened England and Russia on the European battle-front. I am now speaking of the period just before the Marne, when Germany expected to defeat France and Russia with the aid of her ally, Austria, and thus obtain a victory that would have enabled her to dictate the future of Europe. Should Turkey at that time be actually engaged in military operations, she could do no more toward bringing about this victory than she was doing now, by keeping considerable Russian and English forces away from the most important fronts. But, should Germany win this easy victory with Turkey’s aid, she might find her new ally an embarrassment. Turkey would certainly demand compensation, and she would not be particularly modest in her demands, which most likely would include the return of Egypt and perhaps the recession of Balkan territories. Such readjustments would have interfered with the Kaiser’s plans. Thus he had no interest in having Turkey as an active ally, except in the event that he did not win his speedily anticipated triumph. But, if Russia should make great progress against Austria, then Turkey’s active alliance would have great military value, especially if her entry should be so timed as to bring in Bulgaria and Rumania. Meanwhile Wangenheim was playing a waiting game, making Turkey a potential German ally, strengthening her army and her navy, and preparing to use her, whenever the moment arrived for using her, to the best advantage. If Germany could not win the war without Turkey’s aid, Germany was prepared to take her in as an ally; if she could win without Turkey, then she would not have to pay the Turk for his co-operation. Meanwhile the sensible course was to keep her prepared in case the Turkish forces became essential to German success.

The duel that now took place between Germany and the Entente for Turkey’s favour was a most unequal one. The fact was that Germany had won the victory when she smuggled the Goeben and the Breslau into the Sea of Marmora. The English, French, and Russian Ambassadors well understood this, and they knew that they could not make Turkey an active ally of the Entente; they probably had no desire to do so, but they did have hopes that they could keep her neutral. To this end they now directed all their efforts. “You have had enough of war,” they would tell Talaat and Enver. “You have fought three wars in the last four years; you will ruin your country absolutely if you get involved in this one.” The Entente had only one consideration to offer Turkey for her neutrality, and this was an offer to guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente Ambassadors showed their great desire to keep Turkey out of the war by their disinclination to press to the limit their case against the Breslau and the Goeben. It is true that they repeatedly protested against the continued presence of these ships, but every time the Turkish officials maintained that they were Turkish vessels.

“If that is so,” Sir Louis Mallet would urge, and his argument was unassailable, “why don’t you remove the German officers and crew?” That was the intention, the Grand Vizier would answer. The Turkish crews that had been sent to man the ships which had been built in England, he would say, were returning to Turkey, and they would be put on board the Goeben and the Breslau as soon as they reached Constantinople. But days and weeks went by; these crews came home, and still Germany manned and officered the cruisers. These backings and fillings naturally did not deceive the British and French Foreign Offices. The presence of the Goeben and the Breslau was a standing casus belli, but the Entente Ambassadors did not demand their passports, for such an act would have precipitated the very crisis which they were seeking to delay, and, if possible, to avoid—Turkey’s entrance as Germany’s ally. Unhappily, the Entente’s promise to guarantee Turkey’s integrity did not win Turkey to their side.

“They promised that we should not be dismembered after the Balkan wars,” Talaat would tell me, “and see what happened to European Turkey then.”

Wangenheim constantly harped upon this fact. “You can’t trust anything they say,” he would tell Talaat and Enver; “didn’t they all go back on you a year ago?” And then with great cleverness he would play upon the only emotion which really actuates the Turk. The descendants of Osman hardly resemble any people I have ever known. They do not hate, they do not love; they have no lasting animosities or affections. They only fear. And naturally they attribute to others the motives which regulate their own conduct. “How stupid you are!” Wangenheim would tell Talaat and Enver, discussing the English attitude. “Don’t you see why the English want you to keep out? It is because they fear you. Don’t you see that, with the help of Germany, you have again become a great military power? No wonder England doesn’t want to fight you!” He dinned this so continually in their ears that they finally believed it, for this argument not only completely explained the attitude of the Entente, but it flattered Turkish pride.

Whatever may have been the attitude of Enver and Talaat, I think that England and France were more popular with all classes in Turkey than was Germany. The Sultan was opposed to war; the heir-apparent, Youssouff Izzadin, was openly pro-Ally; the Grand Vizier, Saïd Halim, favoured England rather than Germany; Djemal, the third member of the ruling triumvirate, had the reputation of being a Francophile—he had recently returned from Paris, where the reception he had received had greatly flattered him; a majority of the Cabinet had no enthusiasm for Germany; and public opinion, so far as public opinion existed in Turkey, regarded England, not Germany, as Turkey’s historic friend. Wangenheim, therefore, had much opposition to overcome, and the methods which he took to break it down form a classic illustration of German propaganda. He started a lavish publicity campaign against England, France, and Russia. I have described the feelings of the Turks at losing their ships in England. Wangenheim’s agents now filled columns of purchased space in the newspapers with bitter attacks on England for taking over these vessels. The whole Turkish Press rapidly passed under the control of Germany. Wangenheim purchased the Ikdam, one of the largest Turkish newspapers, which immediately began to sing the praises of Germany and to abuse the Entente. The Osmanischer Lloyd, published in French and German, became an organ of the German Embassy. Although the Turkish Constitution guaranteed a free Press, a censorship was established in the interest of the Central Powers. All Turkish editors were ordered to write in Germany’s favour, and they obeyed instructions. The Jeune Turc, a pro-Entente newspaper, printed in French, was suppressed. The Turkish papers exaggerated German victories and completely manufactured others; they were constantly printing the news of Entente defeats, most of them wholly imaginary. In the evening Wangenheim and Pallavicini would show me official telegrams giving the details of military operations, but when, in the morning, I would look in the newspapers, I would find that this news had been twisted or falsified in Germany’s favour. A certain Baron Oppenheim travelled all over Turkey manufacturing public opinion against England and France. Ostensibly he was an archæologist, while in reality he opened offices everywhere from which issued streams of slanders against the Entente. Huge maps were pasted on walls, showing all the territory which Turkey had lost in the course of a century. Russia was portrayed as the nation chiefly responsible for these “robberies,” and attention was drawn to the fact that England had now become Russia’s ally. Pictures were published, showing the grasping powers of the Entente as rapacious animals, snatching away at poor Turkey. Enver was advertised as the “hero” who had recovered Adrianople; Germany was pictured as Turkey’s friend; the Kaiser suddenly became “Hadji Wilhelm,” the great protector of Islam, and stories were even printed that he had become a convert to Mohammedanism. The Turkish populace was informed that the Moslems of India and of Egypt were about to revolt and throw off their English “tyrants.” The Turkish man-on-the-street was taught to say Gott Strafe England, and all the time the motive-power of this infamous campaign was German money.

But Germany was doing more than poisoning the Turkish mind; she was appropriating Turkey’s military resources. I have already described how, in January, 1914, the Kaiser had taken over the Turkish Army and rehabilitated it in preparation for the European war. He now proceeded to do the same thing with the Turkish Navy. In August Wangenheim boasted to me that, “We now control both the Turkish Army and Navy.” At the time the Goeben and Breslau arrived, an English mission, headed by Admiral Limpus, was hard at work restoring the Turkish Navy. Soon afterward Limpus and his associates were unceremoniously dismissed. The manner of their going was really disgraceful, for not even the most ordinary courtesies were shown them. The English naval officers quietly and unobservedly left Constantinople for England—all except the Admiral himself, who had to remain longer because of his daughter’s illness.

Night after night whole carloads of Germans landed at Constantinople from Berlin; the aggregations to the population finally amounted to 3,800 men, most of them sent to man the Turkish Navy and to manufacture ammunition. They filled the cafés every night, and they paraded the streets of Constantinople in the small hours of the morning, howling and singing German patriotic songs. Many of them were skilled mechanics, who immediately went to work repairing the destroyers and other ships and putting them in shape for war. The British firm of Armstrong and Vickers had a splendid dock in Constantinople, and this the Germans now appropriated. All day and night we could hear this work going on, and we could hardly sleep because of the hubbub of riveting and hammering. Wangenheim now found another opportunity for instilling more poison into the minds of Enver, Talaat, and Djemal. The German workers, he declared, had found that the Turkish ships were in a desperate state of disrepair, and for this he naturally blamed the English naval mission. He said that England had deliberately let the Turkish Navy go to decay, and he asserted that this was all part of England’s plot to ruin Turkey! “Look!” he would exclaim, “see what we Germans have done for the Turkish Army, and see what the English have done for your ships!” As a matter of fact, all this was untrue, for Admiral Limpus had worked hard and conscientiously to improve the Navy, and had accomplished excellent results in that direction.

All this time the Germans were working at the Dardanelles, seeking to strengthen the fortifications, and preparing for a possible Allied attack. As September lengthened into October, the Sublime Porte practically ceased to be the headquarters of the Ottoman Empire. I really think that the most powerful seat of authority at that time was a German merchant-ship, the General. It was moored in the Golden Horn, near the Galata Bridge, and a permanent stairway had been built, leading to its deck. I knew well one of the most frequent visitors to this ship, an American who used to come to the Embassy and entertain me with stories of what was going on.

The General, this friend now informed me, was practically a German club or hotel. The officers of the Goeben and the Breslau and other German officers who had been sent to command the Turkish ships ate and slept on board. Admiral Souchon, who had brought the German cruisers to Constantinople, presided over these gatherings. Souchon was a man of French Huguenot extraction; he was a short, dapper, clean-cut sailor, very energetic and alert, and to the German passion for command and thoroughness he added much of the Gallic geniality and buoyancy. Naturally he gave much liveliness to the evening parties on the General, and the beer and champagne which were liberally dispensed on these occasions loosened the tongues of his fellow-officers. Their conversation showed that they entertained no illusions as to who really controlled the Turkish Navy. Night after night their impatience for action grew; they kept declaring that, if Turkey did not presently attack the Russians, they would force her to do so. They would relate how they had sent German ships into the Black Sea in the hope of provoking the Russian fleet to some action that would make war inevitable. Toward the end of October my friend told me that hostilities could not much longer be avoided; the Turkish fleet had been fitted for action, everything was ready, and the impetuosity of these kriegslustige German officers could not much longer be restrained.

“They are just like a lot of boys with chips on their shoulders. They are simply spoiling for a fight!” he said.

CHAPTER IX
GERMANY CLOSES THE DARDANELLES AND SO SEPARATES RUSSIA FROM HER ALLIES

On September 27th Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, entered my office in a considerably disturbed state of mind. The Khedive of Egypt had just left me, and I began to talk to Sir Louis about Egyptian matters.

“Let’s discuss that some other time,” he said. “I have something far more important to tell you. They have closed the Dardanelles.”

By “they” he meant, of course, not the Turkish Government, the only Power which had the legal right to take this drastic step, but the actual ruling powers in Turkey, the Germans. Sir Louis had good reason for bringing me this piece of news, since this was an outrage against the United States as well as against the Allies. He asked me to go with him and make a joint protest. I suggested, however, that it would be better for us to act separately, and I immediately started for the House of the Grand Vizier.

When I arrived a Cabinet conference was in session, and, as I sat in the ante-room, I could hear several voices in excited discussion. Among them all I could distinctly distinguish the familiar tones of Talaat, Enver, Djavid, and other members of the Government. It was quite plain, from all that I could overhear through the thin partitions, that these nominal rulers of Turkey were almost as worked up over the closing as were Sir Louis Mallet and myself.

The Grand Vizier came out in answer to my request. He presented a pitiable sight. This was, in title at least, the most important official of the Turkish Government, the mouthpiece of the Sultan himself, yet now he presented a picture of abject helplessness and fear. His face was blanched and he was trembling from head to foot. He was so overcome with his emotions that he could hardly speak. When I asked him whether the news was true that the Dardanelles had been closed he finally stammered out that it was.

“You know this means war,” I said, and I protested as strongly as I could in the name of the United States.

All the time that we were talking I could hear the loud tones of Talaat and his associates in the interior apartment. The Grand Vizier excused himself and went back into the room. He then sent out Djavid, the Minister of Finance, to discuss the matter with me.

“It’s all a surprise to us,” were Djavid’s first words—this statement being a complete admission that the Cabinet had had nothing to do with it. I repeated that the United States would not submit to closing the Dardanelles; since Turkey was at peace she had no legal right to shut the Straits to merchant ships, except in case of war. I said that an American ship laden with supplies and stores for the American Embassy was outside at that moment waiting to come in. Djavid suggested that I have this vessel unload her cargo at Smyrna; that the Turkish Government, he obligingly added, would pay the cost of transporting it overland to Constantinople. This proposal, of course, was a ridiculous evasion of the issue, and I brushed it aside.

Djavid then said that the Cabinet proposed to investigate the matter, and, in fact, they were discussing it at that moment. He told me how it had happened. A Turkish torpedo-boat had passed through the Dardanelles and attempted to enter the Ægean. The British warships stationed outside hailed the ship, examined it, and found that there were German sailors on board. The English admiral at once ordered the vessel to go back; this, under the circumstances, he had a right to do. Weber Pasha, the German general who was then in charge of the fortifications, did not consult the Turks, but he immediately gave orders to close the Straits. Wangenheim had already boasted to me, as I have said, that the Dardanelles could be closed in thirty minutes, and the Germans now made good his words. Down went the mines and the nets; the lights in the lighthouses were extinguished; signals were put up notifying all ships that there was “no thoroughfare,” and the deed, the most high-handed which the Germans had yet committed, was done. And here I found these Turkish statesmen, who alone had authority over this indispensable strip of water, trembling and stammering with fear, running hither and yon like a lot of frightened rabbits, appalled at the enormity of the German act, yet apparently powerless to take any decisive action. I certainly had a graphic picture of the extremities to which Teutonic bullying had reduced the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. And at the same moment before my mind rose the figure of the Sultan, whose signature was essential to close legally these waters, quietly dozing at his palace, entirely oblivious of the whole transaction.

Though Djavid informed me that the Cabinet might decide to reopen the Dardanelles, it never did so. This great passage-way has remained closed from September 27, 1914, to the present time. I saw, of course, precisely what this action signified. That month of September had been a disillusioning one for the Germans. The French had beaten back the invasion and had driven the German armies to entrenchments along the Aisne. The Russians were sweeping triumphantly through Galicia; already they had captured Lemburg, and it seemed not improbable that they would soon cross the Carpathians to Austria-Hungary. In those days Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador, was a discouraged, lamentable figure. He confided to me his fears for the future, telling me that the German programme of a short, decisive war had clearly failed and that it was now quite evident that Germany could only win, if she could win at all, which was exceedingly doubtful, after a protracted struggle. I have described how Wangenheim, while preparing the Turkish Army and Navy for any eventualities, was simply holding Turkey in his hand, intending actively to use her forces only in case Germany failed to crush France and Russia in the first campaign. Now that that failure was manifest, Wangenheim was instructed to use the Turkish Empire as an active ally. Hitherto, this nation of 20,000,000 had been a passive partner, being held back by Wangenheim until Germany decided that it would be necessary to pay the price of letting her into the war as a real participant. The time had come when Germany needed her men, and the outward sign that the situation had changed was the closing of the Dardanelles. Thus Wangenheim had accomplished the task for which he had been working, and in this act had fittingly crowned his achievement of bringing in the Goeben and the Breslau. Few Americans realise, even to-day, what an overwhelming influence this act had upon future military operations. Yet the fact that the war has lasted for so many years, and that the burden has been ultimately thrown on America, is explained by this closing of the Dardanelles.

For this is the element in the situation that separated Russia from her allies, that, in less than a year, led to her defeat and collapse, which in turn was the reason why the Russian revolution became possible. The map discloses that this enormous land of Russia has just four ways of reaching the seas. One is by way of the Baltic, and this the German fleet had already closed. Another is Archangel, on the Arctic Ocean, a port that is frozen over several months in the year, and which connects with the heart of Russia only by a long, single-track railroad. Another is the Pacific port of Vladivostok, also ice-bound for three months, and reaching Russia only by the thin line of the Siberian Railway, 5,000 miles long. The fourth passage was that of the Dardanelles; in fact, this was the only practicable one. This was the narrow gate through which the surplus products of 175,000,000 people reached Europe, and nine-tenths of all Russian exports and imports had gone this way for years. By suddenly closing it, Germany destroyed Russia both as an economic and a military Power. By shutting off the exports of Russian grain she deprived Russia of the financial power essential to successful warfare. What was perhaps even more fatal, she prevented England and France from getting munitions to the Russian battlefront in sufficient quantity to stem the German onslaught. As soon as the Dardanelles was closed, Russia had to fall back on Archangel and Vladivostok for such supplies as she could get from these ports. The cause of the military collapse of Russia in 1915 is now well known; the soldiers simply had no ammunition with which to fight. The larger part of 1918 Germany spent in a desperate attempt to drive a “wedge” between the French and English armies on the Western front, to separate one ally from another, and so obtain a position where she could attack each one separately. The attempt has proved to be a very difficult one. Yet the task of undoing the Franco-Russian treaty, and driving such a “wedge” between Russia and her Western associates, proved to have been an easy one. It was simply a matter, as I have described, of controlling a corrupt and degenerate Government, getting possession, while she was still at peace, of her main executions, her army, her navy, her resources, and then, at the proper moment, ignoring the nominal rulers and closing a little strip of water about twenty miles long and two or three wide! It did not cost a single human life or the firing of a single gun, yet, in a twinkling, Germany accomplished this, what probably three million men, opposed to a well-equipped Russian force, could not have brought to pass. It was one of the most dramatic military triumphs of the war, and it was all the work of German propaganda, German penetration, and German diplomacy.

In the days following this bottling up of Russia the Bosphorus began to look like a harbour which has been suddenly stricken with the plague. Hundreds of ships arrived from Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, loaded with grain, lumber, and other products, only to discover that they could go no farther. There were not docks enough to berth them, and they had to swing out into the stream, drop anchor, and await developments. The waters were a cluster of masts and smoke-stacks, and the crowded vessels became so dense that a motor-boat had difficulty in picking its way through the tangled forest. The Turks held out hopes that they might reopen the waterway, and for this reason these vessels, constantly increasing in number, waited patiently for a month or so. Then one by one they turned around, pointed their noses toward the Black Sea, and lugubriously started for their home ports. In a few weeks the Bosphorus and adjoining waters had become a desolate waste. What for years had been one of the most animated shipping points in the world was ruffled only by an occasional launch or a tiny Turkish caique, or now and then a little sailing vessel. And for an accurate idea of what this meant, from a military standpoint, we need only call to mind the Russian battlefront in the next year. There the peasants were fighting German artillery with their unprotected bodies, having no rifles and no heavy guns, while mountains of useless ammunition were piling up in their distant Arctic and Pacific ports, with no railroads to send them to the field of action.

CHAPTER X
TURKEY’S ABROGATION OF THE CAPITULATIONS—ENVER LIVING IN A PALACE, WITH PLENTY OF MONEY AND AN IMPERIAL BRIDE

Another question, which had been under discussion for several months, now became involved in the Turkish international situation. That was the matter of the capitulations. These were the treaty rights which for centuries had regulated the position of foreigners in the Turkish Empire. Turkey had never been admitted to a complete equality with European nations, and in reality she had never been an independent sovereignty. The Sultan’s laws and customs differed so radically from those of Europe and America that no non-Moslem country could think of submitting its citizens in Turkey to them. In many matters, therefore, the principle of ex-territoriality had always prevailed in favour of all citizens or subjects of countries enjoying capitulatory rights. Almost all European countries, as well as the United States, for centuries had had their own consular courts and prisons for trying and punishing crimes which their nationals committed in Turkey. We all had our schools subject, not to Turkish law and protection, but to that of the country which maintained them. Thus Robert College and the Constantinople College for Women, those wonderful institutions which American philanthropy has erected on the Bosphorus, as well as hundreds of American religious, charitable, and educational institutions, practically stood on American territory and looked upon the American Embassy as their guardian. Several nations had their own post-offices, as they did not care to submit their mail to the Ottoman postal service. Turkey, likewise, did not have unlimited power of taxation over foreigners. It could not even increase their customs taxes without the consent of the foreign Powers. In 1914 it could collect only II per cent. in tariff dues, and was attempting to secure the right to increase the amount to 14. We have always regarded England as the only free-trade country, overlooking this fact, yet this limitation in Turkey’s customs dues had practically made the Ottoman Empire an unwilling follower of Cobden. Turkey was thus prohibited by the Powers from developing any industries of her own; instead, she was forced to take large quantities of inferior articles from Europe. Against these restrictions Turkish statesmen had protested for years, declaring that they constituted an insult to their pride as a nation and also interfered with their progress. However, the agreement was a bi-lateral one, and Turkey could not change it without the consent of all the contracting Powers. Yet certainly the present moment, when both the Entente and the Central Powers were cultivating Turkey, served to furnish a valuable opportunity to make the change. And so, as soon as the Germans had started on their march toward Paris, the air was filled with reports that Turkey intended to abrogate the capitulations. Rumour said that Germany had consented as part of the bargain for Turkish co-operation, and that England had agreed to the abrogation as part of her payment for Turkish neutrality. Neither of these reports was true. What was manifest, however, was the panic which the mere suggestion of abrogation produced on the foreign population. The idea of becoming subject to the Turkish laws, and perhaps being thrown into Turkish prisons, made their flesh creep—and with good reason.

About this time I had a long conference with Enver. He asked me to call at his residence, as he was laid up with an infected toe, the result of a surgical operation. I thus had an illuminating glimpse of the Minister of War en famille. Certainly this humble man of the people had risen in the world. His house, which was in one of the quietest and most aristocratic parts of the city, was a splendid old building, very large and very elaborate. I was ushered through a series of four or five halls, and as I went by one door, the Imperial Princess, Enver’s wife, slightly opened it and peeped through at me. Farther on another Turkish lady opened her door and also obtained a fleeting glimpse of the ambassadorial figure. I was finally escorted into a beautiful room in which Enver lay reclining on a semi-sofa. He had on a long silk dressing-gown and his stockinged feet hung languidly over the edge of the divan. He looked much younger than in his uniform; he was an extremely neat and well-groomed object, with a pale, smooth face, made even more striking by his black hair, and with delicate white hands and long tapering fingers. He might easily have passed for under thirty, and, in fact, he was not much over that age. He had at hand a violin, and a piano near by also testified to his musical taste. The room was splendidly tapestried. Perhaps its most conspicuous feature was a daïs upon which stood a golden chair; this was the marriage-throne of Enver’s imperial wife. As I glanced around at all this luxury I must admit that a few uncharitable thoughts came to mind, and that I could not help pondering a question which was then being generally asked in Constantinople. Where did Enver get the money for this expensive establishment? He had no fortune of his own—his parents had been wretchedly poor—and his salary as a Cabinet Minister was only about $8,000. His wife had a moderate allowance as an Imperial Princess, but she had no private resources. Enver has never engaged in business, having been a revolutionist, military leader, and politician all his life. But here he was, living at a rate that demanded a very large income. In other ways Enver was giving evidences of great and sudden prosperity, and already I had heard much of his investments in real estate, which were the talk of the town.

Enver wished to discuss the capitulations. He practically said that the Cabinet had decided on the abrogation and he wished to know the attitude of the United States. He added that certainly a country which had fought for its independence as we had would sympathise with Turkey’s attempt to shake off these shackles. We had helped Japan free herself from similar burdens, and wouldn’t we now help Turkey? Certainly Turkey was as civilised a nation as Japan?

I answered that I thought that the United States might consent to abandon the capitulations in so far as they were economic. It was my opinion that Turkey should control her customs duties and be permitted to levy the same taxes on foreigners as on her own citizens. So long as the Turkish courts and Turkish prisons maintained their present standards, however, we could never agree to give up the judicial capitulations. Turkey should reform these judicial abuses; then, after they had established European ideas in the administration of justice, the matter could be discussed. Enver replied that Turkey would be willing to have mixed tribunals and to have the United States designate some of the judges, but I suggested that, inasmuch as American judges did not know the Turkish language or Turkish law, his scheme involved great practical difficulties. I also told him that the American schools and colleges were very dear to Americans, and that we would never consent to subjecting them to Turkish jurisdiction.

Despite our protests, the Cabinet issued its notification to all the Powers that the capitulations would be abrogated on October 1st. This abrogation was all a part of the Young Turks’ plan to free themselves of foreign tutelage and to re-establish a new country on the basis, “Turkey for the Turks.” It represented, as I shall show, what was the central point of Turkish policy, not only in the Empire’s relations to foreign Powers, but to her peoples. England’s position on this question was about the same as our own; the British Government would consent to the modification of the economic restrictions, but not the others. Wangenheim was greatly disturbed, and I think that his Foreign Office reprimanded him for letting the abrogation take place, because he blandly asked me to announce that I was the responsible person! As October 1st approached, the foreigners in Turkey were in a high state of apprehension. The Dardanelles had been closed, shutting them off from Europe, and now they felt that they were to be left at the mercy of Turkish courts and Turkish prisons. Inasmuch as it was the habit in Turkish prisons to herd the innocent and the guilty, and to place in the same room with murderers people who had been charged, but not convicted, of minor offences, and to bastinado recalcitrant witnesses, the fears of the foreign residents may well be imagined. The educational institutions were also apprehensive, and in their interest I appealed to Enver. He assured me that the Turks had no hostile intention toward Americans. I replied that he should show in unmistakable fashion that Americans would not be harmed.

“All right,” he answered. “What would you suggest?”

“Why not ostentatiously visit Robert College on October 1st, the day the capitulations are abrogated?” I said.

The idea was rather a unique one, for in all the history of this institution an important Turkish official had never entered its doors. But I knew enough of the Turkish character to understand that an open, ceremonious visit by Enver would cause a public sensation. News of it would reach the farthest limits of the Turkish Empire, and it was certain that the Turks would interpret it as meaning that one of the two most powerful men in Turkey had taken this and other American institutions under his patronage. Such a visit would exercise a more protecting influence over American colleges and schools in Turkey than an army corps. I was therefore greatly pleased when Enver promptly adopted my suggestion.

On the day that the capitulations were abrogated Enver appeared at the American Embassy with two autos, one for himself and me, and the other for his adjutants, all of whom were dressed in full uniform. I purposely made the proceeding as spectacular as possible, as naturally I wished it to have the widest publicity. On the ride up to the college I told Enver all about these American institutions and what they were doing for Turkey. He really knew very little about them, and, like most Turks, he half suspected that they concealed a political purpose.

“We Americans are not looking for material advantages in Turkey,” I said. “We merely demand that you treat kindly our children, these colleges, for which all the people in the United States have the warmest affection.”

I told him that Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge, president of the trustees of Robert College, and Mr. Charles R. Crane, president of the trustees of the Women’s College, were intimate friends of President Wilson. “These,” I added, “represent what is best in America and the fine altruistic spirit which in our country accumulates wealth and then uses it to found colleges and schools. In establishing these institutions in Turkey they are trying, not to convert your people to Christianity, but to help train them in the sciences and arts and so prepare to make them better citizens. Americans feel that the Bible lands have given them their religion, and they wish to repay with the best thing America has—its education.” I then told him about Mrs. Russell Sage and Miss Helen Gould, who had made large gifts to the Women’s College.

“But where do these people get all the money for such benefactions?” Enver asked.

I then entertained him for an hour or so with a few pages from our own “American rights.” I told him how Jay Gould had arrived in New York, a penniless and ragged boy, with a mousetrap which he had invented, and how he had died, almost thirty years afterward, leaving a fortune of about $1,000,000,000. I told him how Commodore Vanderbilt had started life as a ferryman and had become America’s greatest railroad “magnate”; how Rockefeller had begun life sitting on a high stool in a Cleveland commission house, earning six dollars a week, and had created the greatest fortune that had ever been accumulated by a single man in the world’s history. I told him how the Dodges had become our great “copper kings,” the Cranes our great manufacturers of iron pipe. Enver found these stories more thrilling than any that had ever come out of Bagdad, and I found afterward that he had retold them to almost all the important people in Constantinople.

Enver was immensely impressed also by what I said about the American institutions, especially at my statement that they also had not converted—or attempted to convert—a single Mohammedan to Christianity. He went through all the buildings and expressed his enthusiasm at everything he saw, and he even suggested that he would like to send his brother there. He took tea with Mrs. Gates, wife of President Gates, discussed most intelligently the courses, and asked us if we could not introduce the study of agriculture. The teachers he met seemed to be a great revelation.

“I expected to find these missionaries as they are pictured in the Berlin newspapers,” he said, “with long hair and hanging jaws, and hands clasped constantly in a prayerful attitude. But here is Dr. Gates talking Turkish like a native and acting like a man of the world. I am more than pleased, and thank you for bringing me.”

We all saw Enver that afternoon in his most delightful aspect. My idea that this visit in itself would protect the colleges from disturbance proved to have been a happy one. The Turkish Empire has been a tumultuous place in the last four years, but the American colleges have had no difficulties, either with the Turkish Government or with the Turkish populace.

This visit was only an agreeable interlude in events of the most exciting character. Enver, amiable as he could be on occasion, had deliberately determined to put Turkey in the war on Germany’s side. Germany had now reached the point where she no longer concealed her intentions. Once before, when I had interfered in the interest of peace, Wangenheim had encouraged my action. The reason, as I have indicated, was that, at that time, Germany wished Turkey to keep out of the war, for the German General Staff expected to win without her help. But now Wangenheim wanted Turkey in. As I was not working in Germany’s interest, but merely attempting to help the peace idea, I still kept urging Enver and Talaat to keep out. This made Wangenheim angry. “I thought that you were a neutral?” he now exclaimed.

“I thought that you were—in Turkey,” I answered.

Toward the end of October Wangenheim was leaving nothing undone to start hostilities; all he needed now was a favourable occasion.

Even after Germany had closed the Dardanelles the German Ambassador’s task was not an easy one. Talaat was not yet entirely convinced that his best policy was war, and, as I have already said, there was still plenty of pro-Ally sympathy in official quarters. It was Talaat’s plan not to seize all the Cabinet offices at once, but gradually to elbow his way into undisputed control. At this crisis the most popularly respected members of the Ministry were Djavid, Minister of Finance, a man who was Jewish by race, but Mohammedan by religion; Mahmoud Pasha, Minister of Public Works, a Circassian; Bustány Effendi, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, a Christian Arab; and Oskan Effendi, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, an Armenian—and a Christian, of course. All these leaders, as well as the Grand Vizier, openly opposed war, and all now informed Talaat and Enver that they would resign if Germany succeeded in her intrigues. Thus the atmosphere was exciting; how tense the situation was a single episode will show. Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, had accepted an invitation to dine at the American Embassy on October 20th, but he sent word at the last moment that he was ill and could not come. I called on the Ambassador an hour or two afterward and found him in his garden, apparently in the best of health. Sir Louis smiled and said that his illness had been purely political. He had received a letter telling him that he was to be assassinated that evening, this letter informing him of the precise spot where the tragedy was to take place, and the time. He therefore thought that he had better stay indoors. As I had no doubt that some such crime had been planned, I offered Sir Louis the protection of our Embassy. I gave him the key to the back gate of the garden, and, with Lord Wellesley, one of his secretaries—a descendant of the Duke of Wellington—I made all arrangements for his escape to our quarters in case a flight became necessary. Our two Embassies were so located that, in the event of an attack, he might go unobserved from the back gate of his to the back gate of ours. “These people are relapsing into the Middle Ages,” said Sir Louis, “when it was quite the thing to throw Ambassadors into dungeons,” and I think that he anticipated that the present Turks might treat him in the same way. I at once went to the Grand Vizier and informed him of the situation, insisting that nothing less than a visit from Talaat to Sir Louis, assuring him of safety, would satisfy his many friends. I could make this demand with propriety, as we had already made arrangements to take over British interests when the break came. Within two hours Talaat made such a visit. Though one of the Turkish newspapers was printing scurrilous attacks on Sir Louis, he was personally very popular with the Turks, and the Grand Vizier expressed his amazement and regret—and he was entirely sincere—that such threats had been made.

CHAPTER XI
GERMANY COMPELS TURKEY TO ENTER THE WAR

But we were all there in a highly nervous state, because we knew that Germany was working hard to produce a casus belli. Souchon frequently sent the Goeben and the Breslau to manœuvre in the Black Sea, hoping that the Russian fleet would attack. There were several pending situations that might end in war. Turkish and Russian troops were having occasional skirmishes on the Persian and Caucasian frontier. On October 29th Bedouin troops crossed the Egyptian border and had a little collision with British soldiers. On October 29th I had a long talk with Talaat. I called in the interest of the British Ambassador, to tell him about the Bedouins crossing into Egypt. “I suppose,” Sir Louis wrote me, “that this means war; you might mention this news to Talaat and impress upon him the possible results of this mad act.” Already Sir Louis had had difficulties with Turkey over this matter. When he had protested to the Grand Vizier about the Turkish troops near the Egyptian frontier, the Turkish statesman had pointedly replied that Turkey recognised no such thing as an Egyptian frontier. By this he meant, of course, that Egypt itself was Turkish territory and that the English occupation was a temporary usurpation. When I brought this Egyptian situation to Talaat’s attention he said that no Ottoman Bedouins had crossed into Egypt. The Turks had been building wells on the Sinai Peninsula to use in case war broke out with England; England was destroying these wells, and the Bedouins, said Talaat, had interfered to stop this destruction.

At this meeting Talaat frankly told me that Turkey had decided to side with the Germans and to sink or swim with them. He went again over the familiar grounds, and added that if Germany won—and Talaat said that he was convinced that Germany would win—the Kaiser would get his revenge on Turkey if Turkey had not helped him to obtain this victory. Talaat frankly admitted that fear—the motive which, as I have said, is the one that chiefly inspires Turkish acts—was driving Turkey into a German alliance. He analysed the whole situation most dispassionately; he said that nations could not afford such emotions as gratitude, or hate, or affection; the only guide to action should be cold-blooded policy.

“At this moment,” said Talaat, “it is for our interest to side with Germany; if, a month from now, it is our interest to embrace France and England, we shall do that just as readily.”

“Russia is our greatest enemy,” he continued, “and we are afraid of her. If now, while Germany is attacking Russia, we can give her a good strong kick, and so make her powerless to injure us for some time, it is Turkey’s duty to administer that kick”!

And then turning to me with a half-melancholy, half-defiant smile, he summed up the whole situation.

“Ich mit die Deutschen,” he said in his broken German.

Because the Cabinet was so divided, however, the Germans themselves had to push Turkey over the precipice. The evening following my talk with Talaat, most fateful news came from Russia. Three Turkish torpedo boats had entered the harbour of Odessa, had sunk the Russian gunboat Donetz, killing a part of the crew, and had damaged two Russian dreadnoughts. They also sank the French ship Portugal, killing two of the crew and wounding two others. They then turned their shells on the town and destroyed a sugar factory, with some loss of life. German officers commanded these Turkish vessels; there were very few Turks on board, as the Turkish crew had been given a holiday for the Turkish religious festival of Bairam. The act was simply a wanton and unprovoked one; the Germans raided the town deliberately, simply to make war inevitable. The German officers on the General, as my friend had told me, were constantly threatening to commit some such act if Turkey did not do so; well, now they had done it. When this news reached Constantinople, Djemal was playing cards at the Cercle d’Orient. As Djemal was Minister of Marine, this attack, had it been an official act of Turkey, could have been made only on his orders. When someone called him from the card-table to tell him the news Djemal was much excited. “I know nothing about it,” he replied. “It has not been done by my orders.” On the evening of the 29th I had another talk with Talaat. He told me that he had known nothing of this attack beforehand, and that the whole responsibility rested with the German, Admiral Souchon.

Whether Djemal and Talaat were telling the truth in thus pleading ignorance I do not know; my opinion is that they were expecting some such outrage as this. But there is no question that the Grand Vizier, Saïd Halim, was genuinely grieved. When M. Bompard and Sir Louis Mallet called on him and demanded their passports he burst into tears. He begged them to delay; he was sure that the matter could be adjusted. The Grand Vizier was the only member of the Cabinet whom Enver and Talaat particularly wished to placate. As a prince of the royal house of Egypt, and as an extremely rich nobleman, his presence in the Cabinet, as I have already said, gave it a certain standing. This probably explains the message which I now received. Talaat asked me to call upon the Russian Ambassador and ask what amends Turkey could make that would satisfy the Czar. There is little likelihood that Talaat sincerely wished me to patch up the difficulties; his purpose was merely to show the Grand Vizier that he was attempting to meet his wishes and, in this way, to keep him in the Cabinet. I saw M. Giers, but found him in no submissive mood. He said that Turkey could make amends only by dismissing all the German officers in the Turkish Army and Navy; he had his instructions to leave at once and he should do so. However, he would wait long enough in Bulgaria to receive their reply, and, if they accepted his terms, he would come back.

“Russia, herself, will guarantee that the Turkish fleet does not again come into the Black Sea,” said M. Giers grimly. Talaat called on me in the afternoon, saying that he had just had lunch with Wangenheim. The Cabinet had the Russian reply under consideration, he said. The Grand Vizier wished to have M. Giers’s terms put in writing; would I attempt to get it? By this time Garroni, the Italian Ambassador, had taken charge of Russian affairs, and I told Talaat that such negotiations were out of my hands, and that any further negotiations must be conducted through him.

“Why don’t you drop your mask as messenger-boy of the Grand Vizier and talk to me as Talaat?” I asked.

He laughed and said: “Well, Wangenheim, Enver, and I prefer that the war shall come now.”

Bustány, Oskan, Mahmoud, and Djavid at once carried out their threats and resigned from the Cabinet, thus leaving the Government in the hands of Moslem Turks. The Grand Vizier, although he had threatened to resign, did not do so. He was exceedingly pompous and vain, and enjoyed the dignities of his office so much that, when it came to the final decision, he could not surrender them. Thus the net result of Turkey’s entrance into the war, so far as internal politics was concerned, was to put the nation entirely in the hands of the Committee of Union and Progress, which now controlled the Government in practically all its departments. Thus the idealistic organisation which had come into existence to give Turkey the blessings of democracy had ended by becoming a tool of Prussian autocracy.

One final picture I have of these exciting days. On the evening of the 30th I called at the British Embassy. British residents were already streaming in large numbers to my office for protection, and fears of ill-treatment, even the massacre of foreigners, filled everybody’s mind. Amid all this tension I found one imperturbable figure. Sir Louis was sitting in the chancery, before a huge fireplace, with large piles of documents heaped about him in a semi-circle. Secretaries and clerks were constantly entering, their arms full of papers, which they added to the accumulations already surrounding the Ambassador. Sir Louis would take up document after document, glance through it, and almost invariably drop it into the fire. These papers contained the Embassy records for probably a hundred years. In them were written the great achievements of a long line of distinguished Ambassadors. There appeared the story of all the diplomatic triumphs in Turkey of Stratford de Redcliffe, the “Great Elchi,” as the Turks called him, who, for the greater part of almost fifty years, from 1810 to 1858, practically ruled the Turkish Empire in the interest of England. The records of other great British Ambassadors at the Sublime Porte now went, one by one, into Sir Louis Mallet’s fire. The long story of British ascendancy in Turkey had reached its close. The twenty years’ campaign of the Kaiser to destroy England’s influence and to become England’s successor had finally triumphed, and the blaze in Sir Louis’s chancery was really the funeral pyre of England’s vanished power in Turkey. As I looked upon this dignified and yet somewhat pensive diplomat, sitting there amid all the splendours of the British Embassy, I naturally thought of how once the Sultans had bowed with fear and awe before the majesty of England, in the days when Prussia and Germany were little more than names. Yet the British Ambassador, as is usually the case with British diplomatic and military figures, was quiet and self-possessed. We sat there before his fire and discussed the details of his departure. He gave me a list of the English residents who were to leave and those who were to stay, and I made final arrangements with Sir Louis for taking over British interests. Distressing in many ways as was this collapse of British influence in Turkey, the honour of Great Britain and that of her Ambassador was still secure. Sir Louis had not purchased Turkish officials with money, as had Wangenheim; he had not corrupted the Turkish Press, trampled on every remaining vestige of international law, fraternised with a gang of political desperadoes, and conducted a ceaseless campaign of misrepresentations and lies against his enemy. The diplomatic game that had ended in England’s defeat was one which English statesmen were not qualified to play. It called for talents such as only a Wangenheim possessed—it needed that German statecraft which, in accordance with Bismarck’s maxim, was ready to sacrifice for the Fatherland “not only life but honour.”

CHAPTER XII
THE TURKS ATTEMPT TO TREAT ALIEN ENEMIES DECENTLY, BUT THE GERMANS INSIST ON PERSECUTING THEM

Soon after the bombardment of Odessa I was closeted with Enver, discussing the subject which was then uppermost in the minds of all the foreigners in Turkey. How would the Government treat its resident enemies? Would it intern them, establish concentration camps, pursue them with German malignity, and perhaps apply the favourite Turkish measure with Christians—torture and massacre? Thousands of enemy subjects were then living in the Ottoman Empire. Many of them had spent their whole lives there; others had even been born on Ottoman soil. All these people, when Turkey entered the war, had every reason to expect the harshest kind of treatment. It is no exaggeration to say that most of them lived in constant fear of murder. The Dardanelles had been closed, so that there was little chance that outside help could reach these people; the capitulatory rights, under which they had lived for centuries, had been abrogated. There was really nothing between the foreign residents and destruction except the American flag. The state of war had now made me, as American Ambassador, the protector of all British, French, Serbian, and Belgian subjects. I realised from the beginning that my task would be a difficult one. On one hand were the Germans, urging their well-known ideas of repression and brutality, while on the other were the Turks, with their traditional hatred of Christians and their natural instinct to maltreat those who are helplessly placed in their power.

Yet I had certain strong arguments on my side, and I now had called upon Enver for the purpose of laying them before him. Turkey desired the good opinion of the United States, and hoped, after the war, to find support among American financiers. At that time all the Embassies in Constantinople took it for granted that the United States would be the peacemaker. If Turkey expected us to be her friend, I now told Enver, she would have to treat enemy foreigners in a civilised way.

“You hope to be reinstated as a world power,” I said. “You must remember that the civilised world will carefully watch you; your future status will depend on how you conduct yourself in war.” The more educated Turks, including Enver, realised that the outside world regarded them as a people who had no respect for the sacredness of human life or the finer emotions, and they keenly resented this attitude. I now reminded Enver that Turkey had a splendid opportunity to disprove all these criticisms. “The world may say you are barbarians,” I argued; “show by the way you treat these alien enemies that you are not. Only in this way can you be freed permanently from the ignominy of the capitulations. Prove that you are worthy of being emancipated from foreign tutelage. Be civilised—be modern!”

In view of what was happening in Belgium and Northern France at that moment, my use of the word “modern” was a little unfortunate. Enver quickly saw the point. Up to this time he had maintained his usual attitude of erect and dignified composure, and his face, as always, had been attentive, imperturbable, almost expressionless. Now in a flash his whole bearing changed. His countenance broke into a cynical smile; he leaned over, brought his fist down on the table, and said:

“Modern! No, however Turkey shall wage war, at least we shall not be ‘modern.’ That is the most barbaric system of all. We shall simply try to be decent!”

Naturally I construed this as a promise. I understood the changeableness of the Turkish character well enough, however, to know that more than a promise was necessary. The Germans were constantly prodding the Turkish officials, persuading them to adopt the favourite plan of operations against enemy aliens. Germany had revived many of the principles of ancient and medieval warfare, one of her most barbaric resurrections from the past being this practice of keeping certain representatives of the population, preferably people of distinction and influence, as hostages for the “good behaviour” of others. At this moment the German military staff was urging the Turks to keep foreign residents for this purpose. Just as the Germans held non-combatants in Belgium as security for the “friendliness” of the Belgians, and placed Belgian women and children at the head of their advancing armies, so the Germans in Turkey were now planning to use French and British residents as part of their protective system against the Allied fleet. That this sinister influence was constantly at work I well knew; it was, therefore, necessary that I should meet it immediately, and, if possible, gain the upper hand at the very start. I decided that the departure of the Entente diplomats and residents from Constantinople would really put to the test my ability to protect the foreign residents. If all the French and English who really wished to leave could safely get out of Turkey I believed that this demonstration would have a restraining influence, not only upon the Germans, but upon the underlings of the Turkish official world.

As soon as I arrived at the railroad station, the day following the break, I saw that my task was not to be a simple one. I had arranged with the Turkish authorities for two trains: one for the English and French residents, which was to leave at seven o’clock, and one for the diplomats and their staff, which was to go at nine. But the arrangement was not working according to schedule. The station was a surging mass of excited and frightened people; the police were there in full force, pushing the crowds back; the scene was an indescribable mixture of soldiers, gendarmes, diplomats, baggage, and Turkish functionaries.

One of the most conspicuous figures was Bedri Bey, Prefect of Police, a lawyer-politician, who had recently been elevated to this position, and who keenly realised the importance of his new office. Bedri was an intimate friend and political subordinate of Talaat and one of his most valuable tools. He ranked high in the Committee of Union and Progress, and aspired ultimately to obtain a Cabinet position. Perhaps his most impelling motive was his hatred of foreigners and foreign influence. In his eyes Turkey was the land exclusively of the Turks; he hated all the other elements in its population, and he particularly resented the control which the foreign Embassies had for years exerted in the domestic concerns of his country. Indeed, there were few men in Turkey with whom the permanent abolition of the capitulations was such a heartfelt issue. Naturally, in the next few months I saw much of Bedri; he was constantly crossing my path, taking an almost malicious pleasure in interfering with every move which I made in the interest of the foreigners. His attitude was half-provoking, half-jocular; we were always trying to outwit each other—I attempting to protect the French and British, Bedri always turning up as an obstacle to my efforts. The fight for the foreigners, indeed, almost degenerated into a personal duel between the Prefect of Police and the American Embassy. Bedri was capable, well-educated, very agile, and not particularly ill-natured, but he loved to toy with a helpless foreigner. Naturally he found his occupation this evening a congenial one.

“What’s all the trouble about?” I asked Bedri. “We have changed our minds,” he said, and his manner showed that the change had not been displeasing to him. “We shall let the train go that is to take the Ambassadors and their staffs, but we have decided not to let the unofficial classes leave—the train that was to take them will not go.”

My staff and myself had worked hard to get this free passage for the enemy nationals. Now apparently some influence had negatived our efforts. This sudden change in plans was producing the utmost confusion and consternation. At the station there were two groups of passengers, one of which could go and the other of which could not. The British and French Ambassadors did not wish to leave their nationals behind, and the latter refused to believe that their train, which the Turkish officials had definitely promised, would not start some time that evening. I immediately called up Enver, who substantiated Bedri’s statement. Turkey had many subjects in Egypt, he said, whose situation was causing great anxiety. Before the French and English residents could leave Turkey assurances must be given that the rights of Turkish subjects in these countries would be protected. I had no difficulty in arranging this detail, for Sir Louis Mallet immediately gave the necessary assurances. However, this did not settle the matter; indeed, it had been little more than a pretext. Bedri still refused to let the train start. The order holding it up, he said, could not be rescinded, for that would now disarrange the general schedule and might cause accidents. I recognised all this as mere Turkish evasion, and I knew that the order had come from a higher source than Bedri. Still, nothing could be done at that moment. Moreover, Bedri would let no one get on the diplomatic train until I had personally identified him. So I had to stand at a little gate and pass upon each applicant. Everyone, whether he belonged to the diplomatic corps or not, attempted to force himself through this narrow passage-way, and we had an old-fashioned Brooklyn Bridge crush on a small scale. People were running in all directions, checking baggage, purchasing tickets, arguing with officials, consoling distracted women and frightened children, while Bedri, calm and collected, watched the whole pandemonium with an unsympathetic smile. Hats were knocked off, clothing was torn, and, to add to the confusion, Mallet, the British Ambassador, became involved in a set-to with an officious Turk—the Englishman winning first honours easily; and I caught a glimpse of Bompard, the French Ambassador, vigorously shaking a Turkish policeman. One lady dropped her baby in my arms, later another handed me a small boy, and still later, when I was standing at the gate identifying Turkey’s departing guests, one of the British secretaries made me the custodian of his dog. Meanwhile, Sir Louis Mallet became obstreperous and refused to leave.

“I shall stay here,” he said, “until the last British subject leaves Turkey.”

But I told him that he was no longer the protector of the British; that I, as American Ambassador, had assumed this responsibility; and that I could hardly assert myself in this capacity if he remained in Constantinople.

“Certainly,” I said, “the Turks would not recognise me as in charge of British interests if you remain here.”

Moreover, I suggested that he remain at Dedeagatch for a few days, and await the arrival of his fellow British. If I did not succeed in getting them out of the country, then he could return. Sir Louis reluctantly accepted my point of view and boarded the train. As the train left the station I caught my final glimpse of the British Ambassador, sitting in his private car, almost buried in a mass of trunks, satchels, boxes, and diplomatic pouches, surrounded by his Embassy staff, and sympathetically watched by his first secretary’s dog.

The unofficial foreigners remained in the station several hours, hoping that, at the last moment, they would be permitted to go. Bedri, however, was inexorable. Their position was almost desperate. They had given up their quarters in Constantinople, and now found themselves practically stranded. Some were taken in by friends for the night, others found accommodation in hotels, but their situation caused the utmost anxiety. Evidently, despite all official promises, Turkey was determined to keep these foreign residents as hostages. On the one hand were Enver and Talaat, telling me that they intended to conduct their war in a humane manner, and, on the other, were their underlings, such as Bedri, behaving in a fashion that negatived all these civilised pretensions. The fact was that the officials were quarrelling among themselves about the treatment of foreigners, and the German General Staff was telling the Cabinet that they were making a great mistake in showing any leniency to their enemy aliens. Finally I succeeded in making arrangements for them to leave the following day. Bedri, in more complaisant mood, spent that afternoon at the Embassy, viséing passports. We both went to the station in the evening and started the train safely to Dedeagatch. I gave a box of candy—“Turkish Delights”—to each one of the fifty women and children on the train; it altogether was a happy party, and they made no attempt to hide their relief at leaving Turkey. At Dedeagatch they met the diplomatic corps, and the reunion that took place, I afterward learned, was extremely touching. I was made happy by receiving many testimonials of their gratitude, in particular a letter, signed by more than a hundred, expressing their thanks to Mrs. Morgenthau, the Embassy Staff, and myself.

There were still several who wished to go, and next day I called on Talaat in their behalf. I found him in one of his most gracious moods. The Cabinet, he said, had carefully considered the whole matter of English and French residents in Turkey, and my arguments, he added, had greatly influenced them. They had reached the formal decision that enemy aliens could leave or remain, as they preferred. There would be no concentration camps, civilians could pursue their usual business in peace, and, so long as they behaved themselves, they would not be molested.

“We proposed to show,” said Talaat, “by our treatment of aliens, that we are not a race of barbarians.”

In return for this promise he asked a favour of me: would I not see that Turkey was praised in the American and European Press for this decision?

After returning to the Embassy I immediately sent for Mr. Theron Damon, correspondent of the Associated Press, Doctor Lederer, correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, and Doctor Sandler, who represented the Paris Herald, and gave them interviews, praising the attitude of Turkey toward the foreign residents. I also cabled the news to Washington, London, and Paris, and to all our consuls.

Hardly had I finished with the correspondents when I again received alarming news. I had arranged for another train that evening, and I now heard that the Turks were refusing to visé the passports of those whose departure I had provided for. This news, coming right after Talaat’s explicit promise, was naturally disturbing. I immediately started for the railroad station, and the sight which I saw there increased my anger at the Minister of the Interior. A mass of distracted people filled the enclosure; the women were weeping and the children were screaming, while a platoon of Turkish soldiers, commanded by an undersized popinjay of a major, was driving everybody out of the station with the flat sides of their guns. Bedri, as usual, was there, and, as usual, he was clearly enjoying the confusion. Certain of the passengers, he told me, had not paid their income tax, and, for this reason, they would not be permitted to leave. I announced that I would be personally responsible for this payment.

“I can’t get ahead of you, Mr. Ambassador, can I?” said Bedri, with a laugh. From this we all thought that my offer had settled the matter and that the train would leave as per schedule. But then suddenly came another order holding it up again.

Since I had just had my promise with Talaat, I decided to find that functionary and learn what all this meant. I jumped into my automobile and went to the Sublime Porte, where he usually had his headquarters. Finding no one there, I told the chauffeur to drive directly to Talaat’s house. Some time before I had visited Enver in his domestic surroundings, and this occasion now gave me the opportunity to compare his manner of life with that of his more powerful associate. The contrast was a startling one. I had found Enver living in luxury in one of the most aristocratic parts of the town, while now I was driving to one of the poorer sections. We came to a narrow street, bordered by little rough, unpainted wooden houses; only one thing distinguished this thoroughfare from all others in Constantinople and suggested that it was the abiding-place of the most powerful man in the Turkish Empire. At either end stood a policeman letting no one enter who could not give a satisfactory reason for doing so. Our auto, like all others, was stopped, but we were promptly permitted to pass when we explained who we were. As contrasted with Enver’s palace, with its innumerable rooms and gorgeous furniture, Talaat’s house was an old rickety, wooden, three-storey building. All this, I afterwards learned, was part of the setting which Talaat had staged for his career. Like many an American politician, he had found his position as a man of “the people” a valuable political asset, and he knew that a sudden display of prosperity and ostentation would weaken his influence with the Union and Progress Committee, most of whose members, like himself, had risen from the lower walks of life. The contents of the house were quite in keeping with the exterior. There were no suggestions of Oriental magnificence. The furniture was cheap; a few coarse prints hung on the walls, and one or two well-worn rugs were scattered on the floor. On one side stood a wooden table, and on this rested a telegraph instrument—once Talaat’s means of earning a living, and now the means by which he communicated with his associates. In the present troubled conditions in Turkey Talaat preferred to do his own telegraphing.

Amid these surroundings I waited for a few minutes the entrance of the Big Boss of Turkey. In due time a door opened at the other end of the room, and a huge, lumbering, gaily-decorated figure entered. I was startled by the contrast which this Talaat presented to the one who had become such a familiar figure to me at the Sublime Porte. It was no longer the Talaat of the European clothes and the thin veneer of European manners; the man whom I now saw looked like a real Bulgarian gypsy. Talaat wore the usual red Turkish fez; the rest of his bulky form was clothed in thick grey pyjamas, and from this combination protruded a rotund, smiling face. His mood was half-genial, half-deprecating. Talaat well understood what pressing business had led me to invade his domestic privacy, and his behaviour now resembled that of the unrepentant bad boy in school. He came and sat down with a good-natured grin, and began to make excuses. Quietly the door opened again, and a hesitating little girl was pushed into the room, bringing a tray of cigarettes and coffee. Presently I saw that a young woman, apparently about twenty-five years old, was standing back of the child, urging her to enter. Here, then, were Talaat’s wife and adopted daughter. I had already discovered that, while Turkish women never enter society or act as hostesses, they are extremely inquisitive about their husbands’ guests, and like to get surreptitious glimpses of them. Evidently Madame Talaat, on this occasion, was not satisfied with her preliminary view, for a few minutes afterward she appeared at a window directly opposite me, but entirely unseen by her husband, who was facing in the other direction, and there she remained very quiet and very observant for several minutes. As she was in the house, she was unveiled; her face was handsome and intelligent, and it was quite apparent that she enjoyed this close-range view of an American Ambassador.

“Well, Talaat,” I said, realising that the time had come for plain speaking, “don’t you know how foolishly you are acting? You told me a few hours ago that you had decided to treat the French and English decently, and you asked me to publish this news in the American and foreign Press. I at once called in the newspaper men and told them how splendidly you were behaving. And this at your own request! The whole world will be reading about it to-morrow. Now you are doing your best to counteract all my efforts in your behalf; here you have repudiated your first promise to be decent. Are you going to keep the promises you made me? Will you stick to them, or do you intend to keep changing your mind all the time? Now let’s have a real understanding. The thing we Americans particularly pride ourselves on is keeping our word. We do it as individuals and as a nation. We refuse to deal with people as equals who do not do this. You might as well understand now that we can do no business with each other unless I can depend on your promises.”

“Now, this isn’t my fault,” Talaat answered. “The Germans are to blame for stopping that train. The German Chief of Staff has just returned and is making a big fuss, saying that we are too easy with the French and English and that we must not let them go away. He says that we must keep them for hostages. It was his interference that did this.”

That was precisely what I had suspected. Talaat had given me his promise, then Bronssart, head of the German Staff, had practically countermanded his orders. Talaat’s admission gave me the opening which I had wished for. By this time my relations with Talaat had become so friendly that I could talk to him almost as I could talk to my own son.

“Now, Talaat,” I said, “you have got to have someone to advise you in your relations with foreigners. You must make up your mind whether you want me or the German Staff. Don’t you think you will make a mistake if you place yourself entirely in the hands of the Germans? The time may come when you will need me against the Germans.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked, watching for my answer with intense curiosity.

“The Germans are sure to ask you to do many things you don’t want to do. If you can tell them that the American Ambassador objects, my support may prove useful to you. Besides, you know we all expect peace in a few months. You know that the Germans really care nothing for Turkey, and certainly you have no claims on the Allies for assistance. There is only one nation in the world that you can look to as a disinterested friend, and that is the United States.”

This fact was so apparent that I hardly needed to argue it in any great detail. However, I had another argument that struck still nearer home. Already the struggle between the war department and the civil powers had started. I knew that Talaat, although he was Minister of the Interior and a civilian, was determined not to sacrifice a little of his authority to Enver, the Germans, and the representatives of the military.

“If you let the Germans win this point to-day,” I said, “you are practically in their power. You are now the head of affairs, but you are still a civilian. Are you going to let the military, represented by Enver and the German Staff, over-rule your orders? Apparently that is what has happened to-day. If you submit to it, you will find that they will be running things from now on. The Germans will put this country under martial law; then where will you civilians be?”

I could see that this argument was having its effect on Talaat. He remained quiet for a few moments, evidently pondering my remarks. Then he said, with the utmost deliberation:

“I am going to help you.”

He turned around to his table and began working his telegraph instrument. I shall never forget the picture; this huge Turk, sitting there in his grey pyjamas and his red fez, working industriously his own telegraph key, his young wife gazing at him through a little window, and the late afternoon sun streaming into the room. Evidently the ruler of Turkey was having his troubles, and, as the argument went on over the telegraph, Talaat would bang his key with increasing irritation. He told me that the pompous major at the station insisted on having Enver’s written orders, since orders over the wire might easily be counterfeited. It took Talaat some time to locate Enver, and then the dispute apparently started all over again. A piece of news which Talaat received at that moment over the wire almost ruined my case. After a prolonged thumping of his instrument, in the course of which Talaat’s face lost its geniality and became almost savage, he turned to me and said:

“The English bombarded the Dardanelles this morning and killed two Turks!”

And then he added:

“We intend to kill three Christians for every Moslem killed!”

For a moment I thought that everything was lost. Talaat’s face reflected only one emotion—hatred of the English. Afterward, when reading the Cromer report on the Dardanelles, I found that the British Committee stigmatised this early attack a mistake, as it gave the Turks an early warning of their plans. I can testify that it was a mistake for another reason, for I now found that these few stray shots almost destroyed my plans to get the foreign residents out of Turkey. Talaat was enraged, and I had to go over much of the ground again, but finally I succeeded in pacifying him once more. I saw that he was vacillating between his desire to punish the English and his desire to assert his own authority over that of Enver and the Germans. Fortunately the latter motive gained the ascendancy. At all hazard, he was determined to show that he was boss.

We remained there more than two hours, my involuntary host pausing now and then in his telegraphing to entertain me with the latest political gossip. Djavid, the Minister of Finance, he said, had resigned, but had promised to work for them at home. The Grand Vizier, despite his threats, had been persuaded to retain his office. Foreigners in the interior would not be molested unless Beirut, Alexandretta, or some unfortified port were bombarded, but, if such attacks were made, they would exact reprisals of the French and English. Talaat’s conversation showed that he had no particular liking for the Germans. They were overbearing and insolent, he said, constantly interfering in military matters, and treating the Turks with disdain.

Finally the train was arranged. Talaat had shown several moods in this interview; he had been by turns sulky, good-natured, savage, and complaisant. There is one phase of the Turkish character which Westerners do not comprehend, and that is its keen sense of humour. Talaat himself greatly loved a joke and a funny story. Now that he had re-established friendly relations and redeemed his promise, Talaat became jocular once more.