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Ghazi Osman Pacha

TURKISH MEMORIES

BY

SIDNEY WHITMAN

AUTHOR OF

“GERMAN MEMORIES” etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE

NEW YORK: CHAS. SCRIBNER’S SONS

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

MCMXIV

Printed in England

INSCRIBED

TO THE MEMORY OF

AHMED MIDHAT EFFENDI

LATE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE

IMPERIAL OTTOMAN BOARD

OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN

CONSTANTINOPLE

PREFACE

Our aim should be neither to mock, to bewail, nor

to denounce men’s actions, but to understand them.

Spinoza

The following pages are the outcome of several prolonged visits to Constantinople, Macedonia, and Asiatic Turkey, covering a period of twelve years, from 1896 to 1908. Several of these were made under exceptional circumstances and embody experiences such as do not often fall to the lot of a traveller, some of which, I venture to think, are of lasting public interest.

Anyone who has had personal relations with an autocrat—in this case the spiritual head of a faith in which in the course of centuries thousands of millions of human beings have lived and died—ought to have much to tell worth recounting. There were also the surroundings of the Monarch to be observed. Many a trait of deep human interest presented itself to him who was a privileged visitor: for instance, the ups and downs of fortune as they affected the all-powerful favourite whose good offices—as in the time of a Madame de Pompadour—powerful Sovereigns did not think it beneath their dignity to strive and compete for. Such a man I have seen in disgrace, shunned by those who had hitherto prostrated themselves before him. Finally, I have met him in the streets of London, living under an assumed name in fear of assassination.

At one time it has been my lot to sleep on couches covered with the costliest products of the Turkish loom; at another on the bare floor in a dirty wayside han (camel shed), with camels and oxen as bedfellows, typhus and small-pox hovering around us. Hospitality has been extended to me in the underground mud-hut of the fierce, though hospitable, Kurdish chieftain, armed to the teeth, and next morning I have beheld the snow-capped summit of Mount Ararat, peering seventeen thousand feet high through the clouds. I have seen the streets of Constantinople bathed in the sunshine of summer, and a few hours later besmeared with blood. The life of the people has presented itself to me in the workshop of the artisan, with the boatman on the Bosphorus, with the soldier on the march, and I have felt at home in such company. To all this may be added many opportunities of entering into the spirit and thought of a people usually so exclusive that Europeans may live for years in Turkey without ever having an opportunity of gaining the confidence of a single Mohammedan in any walk of life.

Our quick-living age is so full of transient impressions that “to-day” has become the avowed enemy of “yesterday.” Men who but recently played a prominent part in the world are forgotten; they are obliged to die in order to reveal the fact that they were until just now still living. If the material of my book is partly concerned with the things of yesterday, the incidents and characters which it displays may at least claim to illustrate a series of abiding human truths.

If it is only now, after a lapse of years, that I have decided to issue these fragments of my memories, the delay is due to the fact that as long as the ex-Sultan was on the throne my personal relations with him and with those around him formed an obstacle which seemed to check my pen. My narrative might perhaps have been discounted under the suspicion that it was influenced by undue partiality or tainted by motives of self-interest. Now that things have so completely changed there can be but little danger of such an interpretation of my motives.

In describing certain traits of Turkish character I have intentionally dwelt by preference on those which are brightest, because prejudice and detraction have created an impression which calls for a correction of values. My book, therefore, does not lay claim to judicial impartiality. My aim has been to show by a recital of actual experiences that the Mohammedan Turk, whose religion is that of sixty millions of British subjects, is far better than his repute. I have written in frank sympathy with his sterling human qualities, and with a keen sense of the injustice he has long suffered from Christian opinion in Europe.

The Governor of Constantinople one day in 1896 said to me: “England was for us once a garden full of roses, a subject of pleasant thought, sight, and memory. Now, alas! a serpent has entered and brought discord between us.”

In the course of my work a trifling incident led me into a correspondence with the late Professor Arminius Vambéry, whose letters, full of insight into Turkish affairs and goodwill towards England, will be found reprinted in the [Appendix]. I am also indebted to my friend Lieutenant-Colonel H. P. Picot, who was H.B.M.’s Military Attaché in Teheran from 1893–1900, for a short contribution which will likewise be found in the Appendix, p. [294].

From many mementoes in my possession I have chosen the autographed portrait of Ghazi Osman Pasha for reproduction as being that of the hero of a people whose fine qualities no one who is acquainted with them can fail to admire.

S. W.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

Not oft I’ve seen such sight nor heard such song,

As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.

Byron, Childe Harold, Canto xi.

In the spring of 1896, at a time when public attention centred on the Armenian troubles, the Sultan of Turkey sent a confidential emissary to London for the purpose of sounding the Marquis of Salisbury on the situation without the knowledge of the Turkish Ambassador. He endeavoured to obtain an interview with the Prime Minister, but without success. The Turkish Ambassador was anything but pleased at this Palace manœuvre, and did his best to prevent his master’s agent being received. Costaki Pasha, with whom I was on friendly terms, told me that it was bad enough to be kept waiting for one’s salary, but it was adding insult to injury to have your position undermined by unauthorized missions.

The Sultan’s emissary informed me during his stay that the Sultan was most anxious to ascertain Prince Bismarck’s opinion on the Armenian question, and if possible to learn what the Prince would advise him to do in reference to the embarrassing situation in Crete, and he begged me to assist him in this matter.

Shortly afterwards I paid a visit to Prince Bismarck at Friedrichsruh (June 26, 1896). After referring to the action of the Greek Committees which were fomenting trouble throughout the Levant, the Prince expressed his disapproval of the fire-eating Greek Press and the folly of its European backers, who, as he asserted, were at the bottom of the whole disturbance. It was on this occasion that the Prince, in answer to a question, made the since oft-quoted sarcastic remark that “he took less interest in the island of Crete than in a molehill in his own garden.” Referring to the Sultan and his troubles, Bismarck put his hands up to his ears, extending the open palms outwards, so as to imitate the attitude of a hare and to convey the idea of the Sultan’s timidity in face of a situation which called for exceptional nerve and strength of purpose.

On my return to London in the beginning of July, I received a request from the proprietor of the New York Herald to come to Paris. On my arrival he asked me whether I would be willing to go to Constantinople to represent his paper there for a couple of months. Sixteen years previously I had visited Turkey as a tourist, and I thought I should like to see the country again. So I accepted the offer on the spot.

We owe to a popular writer the assertion that there is something fundamentally different in character between the East and the West, which makes mutual understanding difficult and assimilation impossible. The English traveller who is inclined to accept this axiom may begin to detect the Eastern flavour of things as soon as he leaves the frontier of the German Empire behind him and passes through the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy on his way to Constantinople. Monarchs and statesmen may come and go, laws may be promulgated and the ballot-box may be adopted, but the character of a people is not materially changed even by such measures as compulsory education and universal military service. The East has adopted some of the machinery of Western life, but the Eastern remains an Eastern still. Institutions unsuited to a people’s traditions and character may only jeopardize its fortunes:

A thousand years scarce serve to form a State,

An hour may lay it in the dust: and when

Can man its shattered splendour renovate,

Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

Childe Harold, Canto xi, stanza lxxxiv.

Should you arrive at Vienna on a Saturday, you will have to wait there twenty-four hours if you intend to take the Orient Express to Constantinople, for it leaves Vienna on Sunday evening, and even in that short time you may feel a subtle change in the atmosphere of life. You ask a sedate-looking official in the bureau of your hotel up to what o’clock on Sunday morning the shops in the town remain open, as you want to purchase a few travelling necessaries. “Till mid-day, sir,” is the decisive reply. Instinctively warned by past experience, you turn to the hallporter, who usually embodies the brain power of a Viennese hotel, and in order to make sure you put the same question to him. “The shops are not open at all, sir, on Sundays,” is his reply: and so indeed it turns out to be.

You stroll towards the Leopoldstadt with the intention of taking lunch at the old “Goldener Lamm,” now called the Hotel National, long renowned as the hostelry patronized by European crowned heads as far back as the Vienna Congress in 1815. You grip the brass handle of a glass door on which the inviting word “Entrée” is affixed in large white enamelled letters. You tug at it in vain and are ultimately warned off by a man signalling frantically from the inside that it is not a door at all, but only the window of an apartment—and that the real entrance to the Hôtel is a few yards to the left. You now recollect that when you were there last—some seven years previously—that blessed word “Entrée” was already there, and that you—and doubtless many others ever since—were warned off, the proprietor not having deemed it worth while to do away with the misleading letters.

It is still Sunday, and you wish to post a registered letter. This can only be done at the Central Post Office during certain hours of the afternoon. You drive there, holding your letter in readiness, together with a “krone” to pay the registration fee, and wait your turn patiently. For without patience, that supposed Christian virtue (which, by the way, I subsequently acquired myself and discovered to be of Mohammedan origin), it is of little use starting on a journey to the East. At last your turn comes and you patiently watch the registering clerk, after slowly copying the address of your letter into a book, retire to the back of his capacious office. You notice that he is engaged in earnest consultation with a colleague. At last, he comes forward with an air of embarrassment and explains apologetically that he is in a “difficulty” as to providing the change out of the small coin you have handed him. Finally, he asks whether you would mind accepting a postage stamp of the value of ten heller (one penny) in part discharge of the sum due to you.

All this happens within twenty-four hours! You know now that you are well on your way to the East, where a minimum value of time and an element of fiction mixed up with every action or statement of fact constitute two of the many differences between the easy-going East and the matter-of-fact West. But there are compensations in the altered aspect of life, and one is the deep impression which Constantinople produces on the stranger by its gorgeous variety of colouring, its movement, and its polyglot chaos.

Constantinople with its five hundred gardens and palaces, its six hundred and eighty mosques, minarets, and towers rising above the sea in the form of a huge amphitheatre, offers to the eye a truly fascinating panorama. Byron extolled its position as incomparable to anything he had ever seen. That great traveller and student of nature, Alexander von Humboldt, thought Salzburg, Naples, and Constantinople the three most beautiful sites in the world. Such is its mysterious charm that “a Sea of Impressions stirs the soul—as a balmy breeze plays gently upon a cornfield in bloom. An intoxicating aroma is wafted towards us. All the wonders of the Eastern World seem to float before our vision—fables and palaces of the Arabian Nights.”

But if Constantinople must ever possess an attraction for the traveller by virtue of its unique situation, a deeper interest lies in its unrivalled historical associations, covering two thousand five hundred years of the world’s history. From the days of Darius, Alcibiades, and Justinian—when the corn-laden galleys from the Black Sea glided swiftly past the shore opposite Seraglio Point—down to the present time, Constantinople has always been the object of desire of ambitious rulers of nations.

Seen on a summer morning from a window on the upper floor of the Pera Palace Hotel, the city presents a dazzling picture of kaleidoscopic beauty. We are several hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is early morn, and a thick grey fog conceals the waters of the Golden Horn as well as the land. Gradually, as if awakening from a dream, the sharp angles of prominent buildings, the tips of tall minarets, the curved outlines of stately mosques, emerge through the mist between clusters of dark cypresses, dotted in stray patches away to the horizon. The rays of the rising sun strike a few windows here and there. These glisten with a peculiar iridescence, as if lighted by electricity—peeping through the impenetrable haze still dimming the ground. Something ghost-like pervades the scene. Fancy conjures up the vain anger of Polyphemus, the deriding jeers of Ulysses.

Rooks caw overhead as they circle through the air. Chanticleer crows on a patch of green meadow-land. Dogs bark with unwonted anger as three bears, led by their keepers, thread their way through the crowd—well accustomed to such sights. Resounding above all, the trumpet call from the Cavalry Barracks vibrates, mingling with the shouts of hawkers in the street. Fog-horns and the siren’s moan from ships at anchor swell the chorus, and between whiles the tinkling of bells of passing mules and horses is distinctly heard. Droves of black sheep, followed by Thracian shepherds in picturesque garb, and numbers of horses of Anatolian breed, ridden by barefooted boys, pass by. Amid this pandemonium, bricklayers are at work on the roof of a seven-storied building, run up in such primitive fashion that you wonder the whole structure does not collapse and bury them among its wreckage. Yet cobblers and tailors are unconcernedly plying their craft in the basement, completing a picture which, if witnessed on the stage or described in a story-book, would strike us as a fanciful realization of a mythical world.

But lo! the sun! Mosques, minarets, and cypresses float out of the grey mist as it lifts slowly off land and water. Turkish ironclads become substantial things as they lie at anchor in the Golden Horn alongside the battered old wooden hulks of Navarino’s bloody memory. At first the iron prows only are visible, tipped with light. But as the sun grows more powerful and plays on the water, streaks of silver quiver serpent-like—a veritable Greek fire—round the hulls, until finally the ironclads themselves appear majestically before the vision like antediluvian monsters.

An old disused Turkish cemetery is spread out in front of us with its mournful grove of cypresses. Not so very long ago the whole space from the Hôtel down to the water’s edge was one huge graveyard containing the dead of centuries. Théophile Gautier tells us that the Turk loves to be near his dead. To-day only a stray gravestone is left here and there to mark the resting-place of some pious personage hallowed for his faith, his virtues, and on no account to be desecrated by the removal of his bones. Farther away is the suburb of Cassim Pasha, on its fringe the Marine Ministry, and close by, on a hill, the Marine Hospital. Adjoining this, still farther to the right, is the Ters Hanè, the Turkish Government dry-dock on the banks of the Golden Horn. And if the eye takes a wider sweep to the right, the asylum of the poor, Fakir Hanè, comes into view—a noble structure beautifully situated, handsomely endowed by Sultan Abdul Hamid, and, with true Turkish charity, devoted to the poor of all creeds alike. Then there are the Cavalry Barracks, the Greek High School, the so-called Phanar—another instance of Abdul Hamid’s munificence. Finally, as we survey the scene from left to right, the cupolas and minarets of five different mosques, each erected in honour of some noted Sultan—Bajezid, Suleiman, Schah-Zadè, Mahmud, Selim—come into the picture and crown the horizon.

This, in faint outline, is the panorama of life and colour which, once witnessed, is stamped for all time on the memory. Yet the imagination is, perhaps, even more deeply stirred by the same scene deprived of its cacophonic noise and its bright colouring in the mysterious stillness of a summer night.[^[1]] Thousands of twinkling lights tell of the unchecked life of the city. The starlit heavens speak a language of their own. They whisper of the transitoriness, the vanity, the futility of what the human heart clings to, and, as if to emphasize the sadness of it all, the twang of a harp and a guitar breaks the silence. The dulcet accents of a woman’s voice—a Mignon of this Eastern land—ring out to their accompaniment. The musicians are gipsies—that mysterious race of nomads, wanderers like ourselves towards a distant bourne.

[1]. On great occasions, such as the Sultan’s birthday, the contrast of day and night is still further heightened by the illumination of the warships in the Golden Horn and other craft in the Bosphorus.

CHAPTER II
THE ARMENIAN OUTBREAK IN CONSTANTINOPLE (August 1896)

There is no sure foundation set in blood;

No certain life achieved by other’s death.

Shakespeare, King John

Much that I shall have to say in the course of the next few chapters might be unintelligible, or at least liable to be misunderstood, if I were not to explain the circumstances under which I went to Constantinople as Correspondent of the New York Herald. My visit was, as indicated in the previous chapter, in direct connexion with the so-called “Armenian Atrocities,” and my mission was due to the shrewdness of one man, a great newspaper proprietor.

For some time past the diplomatic and consular representatives of the Powers at Constantinople had sent alarming reports to their respective Governments, and these, passing into the Press, and supplemented by harrowing accounts from the foreign newspaper correspondents in Constantinople, had fanned a flame of resentment directed against the Turks as Mohammedans. This was more particularly the case in England and the United States of America.[^[2]] The proprietor of the New York Herald, almost alone among newspaper magnates, had the discernment to perceive that the Armenian question was in the main a political one—in some respects similar to that of Bulgaria a generation previously—and that whatever might be the shortcomings of the Turkish Government and its local Administration, there was little or no reason for assuming that the disturbances had their source in religious fanaticism directed against the Christian as such; whilst evidence was accumulating that a vast Armenian conspiracy, nurtured in Russia and encouraged by the Nonconformist element in England, obscured the real issue, to which there were two sides. Mr. Gordon Bennett saw the chance of a journalistic “score” in giving the Turks an opportunity of making their own version of things known to the world—a chance which had been denied to them by the great English newspapers.

[2]. See English Blue Books for the years 1895–1896.

This was my first experience as a Special Correspondent abroad, and before starting, Mr. Gordon Bennett had given me his ideas of the duties of such as follows: “The Special Correspondent of a great newspaper possesses for the time being something of the influence of an Ambassador from one nation to another. Now, according to an axiom of Machiavelli, an Ambassador should endeavour to make himself persona grata with those to whom he is accredited, if only thereby to gain the best opportunities for obtaining every possible information and to be able to report events in a broad impartial spirit. The correspondent should give his sources wherever possible, and allow the reader to form his own opinion on the facts submitted. The views of the paper itself should be found in the editorial columns. The correspondent is to take no side, and to express no opinions of his own. In many cases it would appear that the matter sent to the papers by their correspondents in Turkey is biased against the Turks. This implies an injustice against which even a criminal on trial is protected.”

Having stated this much, I may add that it would be an error to suppose that it was expected of me to palliate or gloss over the gravity of any excesses which might have taken place, for such would only have frustrated the object in view. As a matter of fact, no foreign correspondent in Constantinople gave more unvarnished accounts than those published by the New York Herald of the terrible events which subsequently took place in the Turkish capital.

One of the salient features of Constantinople is the prevalence of idle gossip, and I had not been there many days before I became aware that my presence and its supposed purpose formed a topic of interest to people whose very existence was unknown to me. One day, entering the Club de Constantinople, near the Pera Palace Hotel, I was addressed in English by a fat, sallow-faced, beardless individual, who told me with the blandest of smiles that he had heard I had come to Constantinople to “write up the Turks,” and that I was to be paid neither more nor less than one million francs to do so. He asked me quite ingenuously whether this was indeed the case.

With such an auspicious opening it could not be a matter for surprise that before long the Herald correspondent became an object of curiosity to the large colony of “gobe-mouches” who supplied current gossip in the guise of personal news to Embassies and newspaper correspondents.

A conviction had gained ground in diplomatic circles, intensified by the Press in general, that the Turkish Government was, if not actually unwilling, at all events unable to prevent the recurrence of massacres. The agitation on the part of the Armenian Committees in the different capitals of Europe had been carried on to such purpose that there was hardly an American or English newspaper which had a good word left to say of the Turks, let alone of the Turkish Government. A horde of adventurers of various nationalities, déclassés of every sphere of life, cashiered officers among the rest, who had left their native country for its good, were eking out a precarious livelihood by providing newspaper correspondents, if not also Embassies, with backstair information. Others were in the pay of the Sultan or his chamberlains, at the same time acting as spies, watching and reporting the doings of people of note in the capital in the interests of the Palace.

Thus whenever a stray communication, signed with some pseudonym, appeared in a newspaper, it was at once assumed that it emanated from a tainted source. For such was the prejudiced state of Anglo-Saxon feeling against the Turks at this particular period—much to the delight of England’s rivals on the spot—that it was quite sufficient to be known as a philo-Turk to be credited with some kind of rascality.

My letters of introduction opened all doors to me, so that, had there been any news to get hold of, I was favourably placed to obtain it, more particularly from official Turkish sources. I was, therefore, much disappointed at the meagre information procurable, either at the Sublime Porte or at the Palace itself, since I had openly stated that my one desire was to be put in a position to get hold of important items of news, if possible earlier than my competitors, and to give the Turkish side, or version, of events as they took place. This was the only favour asked, and I was extremely surprised at the helplessness of the Turks to avail themselves of a powerful organ of publicity ready to give them fair play. Instead of meeting me in a sensible spirit, one of the first things the Turkish authorities did was to confiscate the New York Herald. Mr. Whittaker, the Times correspondent, whom I informed of what had taken place, said: “They are hopelessly dense. Tell them that if they want the truth told they must let a correspondent manage things in his own way.” But this the authorities were either disinclined to do or incapable of doing all the time I was in Constantinople. Thus almost every bit of news I obtained came to me independently of Turkish sources, and was the result of my own individual efforts. Powerlessness on the part of the official Turks to avail themselves of an influential journal anxious to show them to the world in their true colours (surrounded by enemies and slanderers as they were on all sides, in the face of a serious crisis) was confessed to me one day in pathetic terms by Mehmet Izzet Bey, one of the Sultan’s translators, in the words: “Mon cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne; nous ne savons pas nous défendre.”

I had been some weeks in Constantinople, and there was no sign of anything unusual being about to happen; nothing which would have justified me in continuing to idle away my time in that city. So I wrote to Mr. Bennett asking him to allow me to return home. But, as it soon became apparent, this was only the lull before the storm. On the afternoon of August 26, a Mr. Whittall, an English resident, volunteered to accompany me on a shopping expedition to the Bazaar in Stamboul. We took the funicular tunnel railway from Pera down to Galata, but had no sooner alighted at the latter station than we were witnesses of an extraordinary scene.

Everybody was in a state of wildest excitement. We were hustled out of the station, the iron gates of which were immediately shut, turning us, as it were, into the street, where on all sides the iron shutters of the shops were being hastily put up with a deafening din. Every door was closed against us, and we just managed to find shelter on some steps leading down into a cellar so as to survey the scene. All this happened with incredible rapidity. Simultaneously, a shrieking and gesticulating savage crowd, of the type seen unloading ships in the harbour, came along from the left, surging on towards the Galata Bridge. They were armed with what, as far as I could make out, were wooden laths, such as might have been split off from cases, or legs wrenched off tables and chairs, and were in hot pursuit of a couple of Armenians who, covered with blood, were running immediately in front of them, evidently flying for life. They passed so rapidly that it was difficult to distinguish between the pursued and the pursuers. The rattle of musketry was incessant; it played an accompaniment to the dramatic scene, and seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the Ottoman Bank, into which, as we only heard later in the day, a band of Armenian revolutionists had forced an entry, overpowered the personnel in charge, barricaded the doors, and begun throwing bombs and firing revolver shots out of the windows on to the crowd in the street.

Led by curiosity and the natural desire of a correspondent to see what was going on, we crept along, skirting the side of the houses in the direction of the firing, until we reached the corner of a narrow street leading up to the Ottoman Bank. From here we saw some Turkish soldiers standing in front of the Bank building and firing in the direction of the windows, from which came shots in return. Half-way between them and where we stood we could distinguish a number of dead bodies on the ground.

On our way up the hill, back to the hotel, we passed several more dead lying either in the road or in the side streets. Nobody came near them, as would have been the case in many European countries; no curiosity was shown: they lay prone as if death had been the result of some sudden cataclysm, or shock, which had subsided as suddenly as it came.

The pavement as well as the middle of the streets showed big patches of blood, proving that the massacres, which apparently had started among the harbour population of Galata and Stamboul, had spread to the heights of Pera. I took a walk through the Grande Rue de Pera and the adjoining thoroughfares, in which every shop was closed, but did not meet a soul. Had it not been for the dogs, which struck me as being unusually depressed, Constantinople might have been a deserted city, and this state of things lasted for several days. Such was the tension of nerves that when I returned to the hotel I found the messenger boy who had shown me the way to the telegraph office near the British Embassy, and whom I had subsequently lost sight of, in tears. He had spread the report that I had been murdered. As a matter of fact no Europeans ran any appreciable risk of harm during those days, except, perhaps, through the accident of an Armenian bomb exploding in the street in their immediate vicinity. At night a table was placed in the hall of the hotel, on which were placed a number of revolvers, so that each guest might take one up to his room, and have a weapon with which to defend himself. But for the dull thud of the bekdji’s (night watch) wooden staff striking the pavement an uncanny stillness prevailed, as of a dead city. During that night and the subsequent ones the dead were taken in carts past our hotel and hastily interred in the Armenian cemetery on the way to Tschishly.

Early next morning I went out with the correspondent of the Times. We visited the Ottoman Bank, from whence the Armenian conspirators had, only a few hours before, been taken away. Everything was in the greatest disorder. Pools of blood on the first floor and in the basement remained as evidence of what had taken place during the previous twenty-four hours. We were shown a heap of blood-stained coins. On the second floor we saw a table still littered with the remnants of the last meal of the Armenians. The staff of the Bank had escaped through the roof when the Armenians made their attack.

We thence wended our way to the Galata Bridge, upon which dense crowds had congregated, the Turkish guard being doubled at the head of the bridge, the wooden planks of which were dotted with a spray of blood spots. In the afternoon a friend took me to a house near the Galata Tower. We climbed up to the roof, from which we obtained a bird’s-eye view of the harbour, and saw a crowd rushing from all directions towards the quay—apparently on the alert to renew the outbreak.

I went up to the Palace in the afternoon and found everybody in a state of great excitement. There could be no doubt of the helplessness of the authorities in the face of the action of the mob; but great stress was laid on the provocation given by the Armenian conspirators, which nobody could have foreseen and which the Armenian Patriarch Osmanian had publicly repudiated and denounced. The Turkish officials were indignant that it should be said the movement was inspired by hatred of the Christians as such, and the Sultan’s second secretary proceeded to draw up a list for my information of the large number of Armenians who occupied some of the best paid Ministerial posts and were among the Sultan’s own staff of Court officials. The list I was assured ran to about twenty per cent. of the higher employees at Constantinople. The Keeper of the Sultan’s Civil List—Ohannes Effendi—was an Armenian, as was also the chief Censor of the Press.

Next morning I went by steamer to Buyukdere to see the Russian Ambassador, M. de Nelidow, who, through his chief dragoman, M. Maximow, had negotiated the escape of the Armenian bank-breakers. M. Maximow had gone up to the Palace, and by his language, the like of which had never been heard in the decorous precincts, frightened the Palace officials. There was some talk at the time of the British Fleet being ordered up to Constantinople, a rumour which I mentioned to the Russian Ambassador. It did not appear to please him, for he exclaimed rather excitedly: “Oh, par exemple! Nous ne rendrons jamais la clef de notre maison”—a remark the significance of which has never been absent from my thoughts from that day to this in connexion with Turkey and her future.

I then called on Abraham Pasha at his summer residence, also at Buyukdere. I had made his acquaintance a few weeks previously at the Sultan’s Palace, and had been his guest at the Cercle d’Orient. A great landowner and sportsman, as I could see the trophies in the hall of his palatial konak, he was reputed to be the wealthiest and most influential Armenian notability in Turkey, and had always been on the very best terms with Abdul Hamid. He had even had the honour of entertaining his predecessor, Abdul Aziz, at his country seat. I found him in bed, guarded by a body of armed retainers, in a state of great trepidation. “What is this? What is it all coming to? It is really too bad!” he ejaculated as I was ushered into his bedroom. As a matter of fact Armenians had been killed at Buyukdere. So great was the terror among the Armenians of position that one of the wealthiest, the banker Azarian, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction from the London house of Rothschild, closed his place of business and fled to the Prinkipo Islands. It was a novel sensation to see millionaires, thus exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, being pursued like rats, and if caught knocked on the head as little better than vermin.

The most extraordinary feature of this popular rising against the Armenians, at least from an ethnological point of view, was the discrimination exercised by the mob in seeking their victims. Thus, to a stranger, it would be often difficult enough to distinguish between an Armenian and a Greek, an Italian, or a Jew, at least by the cast of his features; and among Armenians there are Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Greek Churchmen. Yet those who belonged to the Orthodox Greek Church, and were thus supposed to be implicated in the revolutionary propaganda fomented in Russia, were sought out and hounded to death. Hardly any Roman Catholic Armenians were molested, for they were reported to have refrained from revolutionary activity. How the unlettered crowd of Kurds, Lazis, and other Turkish tribes constituting the lower classes of Galata were able to exercise such discrimination still remains a mystery to me.

In the midst of the massacres going on in broad daylight a Jewish money-changer in one of the streets of Galata was assailed by a crowd and was on the point of being felled to the ground. In his abject terror the man called out: “For God’s sake, let me go! I am not an Armenian; I am a Hebrew.” The mob, though in a frenzy of passionate excitement, desisted for a moment, and the man’s assertion proving to be true, the crowd released him. The terror-stricken wretch rushed away, leaving the contents of his stall, a mass of gold and silver coins, strewn on the pavement. Several Turks forming part of the murderous crowd pursued him, crying out: “Come back and pick up your money; we don’t want to rob you.”

It is only fair to state that the German colony stood practically alone in not succumbing to the prevailing panic. Even on the 26th of August, when, in the first hours of consternation, public offices of every other nationality were closed, the German Post Office, which is situated close to the Ottoman Bank—in the very centre of the disturbance—remained open and sent off its post-bags as usual. Bearing the German flag aloft, the officials took the sacks of letters over the Galata Bridge to the railway station in Stamboul, where the massacres were at their height. I mention this fact, even after this lapse of time, because the cool-headedness of the Germans on this occasion was one of the contributory causes which, from that time onwards, made them rise in the favour of the Sultan and the officials at the Palace at the expense of the influence of other nationalities, who, for the time being, had apparently lost all sense of proportion. This incident derives its significance not so much from the presence of mind which the Germans displayed as from the fact that it showed that they alone, among the foreign element, were conversant with the political nature of this outbreak, and refused to believe and to be influenced by its supposed religious origin. The Germans knew that as Christians or foreigners they had nothing to fear, whereas the agitation carried on in England by Canon McColl and the Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent Nonconformists, had had the effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as thirsting for the blood of the Christian. Thus, when the crisis came, those who had allowed their minds to be dominated by these personages failed to show that calmness and self-possession which are otherwise marked characteristics of the English race when suddenly assailed by peril.

Only a few English families, such as the Whittalls, merchant princes who have lived in Smyrna and Constantinople for generations, and whose name is a household word among the Turks, did not lose their heads. They even exercised their influence to afford shelter to the Armenians whose lives were in danger.

Through a mere chance, brought about, moreover, by my ignorance of the conditions of the Press censorship prevailing at the time at Constantinople, I was enabled to secure a “score” for the New York Herald. For twenty-four hours that paper was the only one in the outside world which had the news of the Armenian attack on the Ottoman Bank and the massacres in Constantinople which were its immediate sequel. This came about as follows: Foreign newspaper correspondents in Constantinople, aware by experience of the difficulties put in their way by the censorship when forwarding news unfavourable to the authorities, were in the habit of sending their contributions by post to Philippopolis, the Bulgarian frontier town, where each of them kept a running account at the post office. From thence their communications were forwarded by telegraph to their destination; a procedure which, for newspaper purposes, involved a loss of twenty-four hours. This I was unaware of, and thus ingenuously sent my telegram direct from Constantinople to Paris, where it arrived the same evening, its contents appearing in Paris and New York the next morning, before the same item of news had even reached Philippopolis. It was afterwards stated that this priority was due to favouritism granted me as correspondent of the New York Herald; but this was not the case. It was simply an oversight on the part of the Press censor, probably due to the extraordinary excitement prevailing generally in Constantinople at the time. In proof of this, I may mention that the telegram I sent off the next day was stopped; indeed, it did not reach its destination at all, and the one I sent on the day after arrived in Paris containing the obviously exaggerated statement that twenty thousand Armenians had been massacred. Any favouritism I was credited with must in this last case have led to the publication of a piece of news very damaging to the Turks. Most of the other assertions made about that time respecting my activity as representative of the New York Herald had no better foundation in fact. The story that the Press censor had been discharged for stopping one of my telegrams was as baseless as the rest. As a matter of fact he retained his post until his death, and when I was last in Constantinople, in 1908, his son, also an Armenian, had been appointed his successor.

One day, immediately following upon the attack on the Ottoman Bank, the police discovered a large quantity of explosive bombs of different sizes in the cellar of a house in Pera, which, it was said, had been brought there with Russian connivance. Now, although the correspondents of the different European papers were invited to inspect the find, which was afterwards publicly exhibited at the Arsenal (Tophanè), such was the general disinclination to admit any fact which could tell in favour of the great provocation the Turks had received from the Armenian revolutionists that hardly any publicity was given to this discovery of bombs.

One morning during the Armenian disturbances a card was brought to me bearing the name of his Excellency Ahmed Midhat Effendi, Vice-Président du Bureau Impérial de Santé Publique (Sanitary Administration of the Ottoman Empire).

A tall, broad-shouldered, black-bearded man, in the prime of life, of imposing bearing and with flashing dark eyes, wearing the fez and dressed in the conventional black coat of high Turkish officials, termed Stambolin, without any decoration, gold braid, or other indication of his status, was shown in. He told me that he had come on the part of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan to place himself at my disposal, in case I should require his services, either to give me introductions, or to serve me as guide and interpreter, as he possessed a perfect command of the French language. He said the Sultan had read several of my communications to the New York Herald, and was pleased that there had come to Constantinople a correspondent who was ready and able to make allowances for the great provocation the Turkish authorities had received from the Armenian revolutionaries, and to treat Turkish affairs from an impartial standpoint.

As this gentleman will be mentioned several times in the course of these pages—for to my subsequent relations with him I am indebted for much of my insight into the Turkish character—a few words concerning him may not be out of place. The story of his early life and of his subsequent relations with Sultan Abdul Hamid is an interesting one, and calculated to throw a sympathetic light on the character of the Sovereign. Born of humble parents in the Island of Rhodes, his father was either a dealer in cloth, or, like President Andrew Johnson, a tailor; and he himself was apprenticed to the calling. Being, however, imbued with a taste for literature, Ahmed Midhat went into journalism and subsequently politics. Here he came into contact with the Young Turkish Movement of Midhat Pasha, and became implicated in the movement which led to the impeachment of that statesman in 1877. One day the Sultan sent for Ahmed Midhat, as he afterwards told me, and quite charmed him by his gracious manner, turning him from an opponent to a champion, convinced that his master’s one aim was the good of his country, so that he finally burst forth with the declaration that the Sultan could reckon on him as one of his devoted slaves. “I do not want you as a slave; I ask you to be my friend,” the Sultan replied, finally captivating the generous-minded, confiding man. Ahmed Midhat thus became an ardent and sincerely convinced adherent of the Hamidian régime, and from all accounts he was one of the few who never turned their influence to unworthy ends. His position as part proprietor of the Terdjumani Hakkikat, a Turkish newspaper, secured him independence. In his spare time he turned to literature, and eventually became known and honoured throughout the Turkish Empire as a regenerator of the Turkish language. He had been to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo and other literary notabilities, and several of his novels—of an almost childlike simplicity of thought—were translated into French and German. When I made his acquaintance he was the virtual head of the administration of public health, and one of the very few Turks who were given a private seal, which assured that whatever communication he might wish to make to the Sultan would immediately reach His Majesty. In spite of all these advantages Midhat was hardly ever to be met at the Palace. His private life was in harmony with his public conduct. He lived with his family in his own konak at Beikos, on the Bosphorus, not far from the Black Sea, under plain but patriarchal conditions, and there I was his guest on several occasions. He had two wives and sixteen children, six of whom were Christians he had taken into his family because they were poor and destitute and had brought up as his own. I asked him how he came to take such a course, and why he had not preferred to adopt Mohammedans. “They were my neighbours,” he said. “They were poor and had nobody to look after them, and I do not believe in proselytism. They are good and grateful; that is sufficient.”

I paid repeated visits to different Turkish mosques on the Mohammedan Sunday (our Friday). There had been statements in English newspapers referring to the Sultan’s unpopularity, and I discussed these with Ahmed Midhat. He said the suggestion that the Sultan had no following was not true, but I might easily convince myself, as there was no surer indication of the people’s feeling on this point than the popular attendance at the mosques. During the last months of Abdul Aziz’s reign the mosques had been quite deserted, for the people were disgusted with a Sultan-fainéant—a drone who only lived for self-indulgence; whereas the present Sultan was venerated as a Sultan—“travailleur qui travaillait jour et nuit pour le bonheur de son peuple. In spite of the disastrous war of 1877, and even of these latest disturbances, the Sultan was beloved by his people.” In every case I found the mighty Aja Sophia in Stamboul crowded with worshippers; all classes mixed up promiscuously, the pasha kneeling next the Hamal, the common soldier beside the field-officer. An atmosphere of earnest devotional fervour pervaded the scene. Its sincerity was emphasized by children unconcernedly playing about the recesses of the building, and sundry old men—to all appearances beggars or cranks—moving along the aisle in and out of the kneeling crowd, unmolested. Looking up to the mosaic inlaid dome of the building, the outline of the figure of Christ was distinctly visible through the covering of whitewash, paint, or gilt which had in all probability been laid over it after the taking of Constantinople, when the Christians made their last stand in this very building.

In order to prove to me how baseless were the fables regarding the Mohammedan desecration of Christian churches, Ahmed Midhat drove me some days later to the Kariè mosque, where the fresco figures of the saints of the Byzantine church, though somewhat dilapidated, were still plainly recognizable on the walls.

Shortly after the news had spread to Europe of the attack on the Ottoman Bank and the subsequent massacre of Armenians, a number of artists of illustrated newspapers arrived in Constantinople, commissioned to supply the demand for atrocities of the Million-headed Tyrant. Among these was the late Mr. Melton Prior, the renowned war correspondent. He was a man of a strenuous and determined temperament, one not accustomed to be the sport of circumstances, but to rise superior to them. Whether he was called upon to take part in a forced march or to face a mad Mullah, he invariably held his own and came off victorious. But in this particular case, as he confided to me, he was in an awkward predicament. The public at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no women or children had suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been desecrated. As an old admirer of the Turks and as an honest man, he declined to invent what he had not witnessed. But others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of women and children being massacred in a church.

The weeks following the outbreak of the Armenian conspiracy were of a somewhat trying nature. It was long before things regained their normal character. The clang of the closing of the iron shutters of the shops reacted on the nervous system of the inhabitants of Pera for years. Even after twelve years Turkish soldiers, who were ordered to patrol the streets of Pera after the massacres, were still to be seen in the Grande Rue de Pera at night doing the same drudgery.

In the course of my journalistic work I had occasion to visit the Gumysch Soujou Hospital, situated near the German Embassy. About forty Turkish soldiers were lying there, wounded by Armenian bombs or revolver shots during the street fighting. I wrote an article dealing with this subject and a description of the wounded, which must have been of a sympathetic character, for it was subsequently translated and reproduced in the Turkish newspapers. I was told that it had attracted the notice of the Sultan and that he would like to see me before I left Constantinople; but weeks passed by and I heard no more of the matter. It was the second week in October, and I was about to return home.

I was on the point of leaving Constantinople when a messenger from the Palace brought me word that Izzet Bey, the Sultan’s second secretary, wanted to see me at once. On arriving at the Palace he came towards me, smiling, with the words: “Sa Majesté vous offre un dîner and wishes to see you before you leave Constantinople.” I returned to the hotel in order to don evening dress for the occasion, and on coming back to the Palace at about seven o’clock in the evening, I was ushered into a room in the centre of which stood a table already set for dinner, which was served and cooked in French style in contradistinction to the usual mode of the Palace. Wines of various kinds, including champagne, were handed round, presumably for my sole benefit, since the other guests only drank water. This gave the entertainment a somewhat incomplete character. After dinner Izzet Bey took me aside, and again expatiated on the great services I was supposed to have rendered to his country. “Mon cher, un milliard ne pourrait pas vous recompenser pour ce que vous avez fait pour nous,” were his words. I was then, and am still, conscious only of having acted in a fair and sympathetic spirit where others had persistently given a one-sided account of events. I replied to that effect, adding that as correspondent of the Herald I could not think of accepting any remuneration from anybody. Izzet Bey continued that the Sultan wanted to know something about my position in life, as he took an interest in me and would like me to come to Constantinople permanently and enter his service in a suitable capacity. He then asked me to follow him, as the Sultan would like to see me at once. It was about nine o’clock in the evening when we wended our way towards the one-storied villa-like white stucco structure where the Sultan habitually received visitors. We passed through a glass door into a spacious hall, in which stood groups of tall men clad in black frock-coats cut close up to the neck in Turkish fashion, and wearing fezes. These were apparently the Sultan’s body-servants. What struck me more particularly was that they wore no uniform or any insignia of office or distinctive mark, or bore any arms. Indeed, there was not a single armed or uniformed person about; a plain civilian attire was evidently de rigueur in the immediate vicinity of the Sovereign. There was something distinctly impressive in this simplicity. It suggested a striking contrast to the glittering pomp and circumstance surrounding some other monarchs. I still recall the deferential attitude of this little knot of Imperial servants towards the humble mortal who for the moment was lifted upon a pinnacle of earthly distinction by the desire of the Padishah to shake hands with him. My position reminded me of the French Ambassador who told the Russian Emperor Paul that an important personage in his empire took a great interest in a certain matter, whereupon the autocrat interrupted him sharply with the words: “There is nobody of importance in my empire except the man with whom I am now conversing, and only as long as I speak to him is he important.”

But an autocrat must not be kept waiting beyond the bare second which is required to leave one’s goloshes outside the door. This done, we passed through to the right into a brilliantly illuminated apartment, the floor of which was covered with a costly Turkish carpet; the chime of a beautiful grandfather clock heralded our arrival. The Sultan came towards me as I entered the room, shook hands, and led the way to a sofa, in front of which stood a small tabouret with coffee-cups and some cigarettes. Two gilt chairs were placed opposite the sofa, apparently for the occasion—to which he motioned us—whilst he himself sat down on the sofa and handed me a cigarette. He faced us resting both his hands on the hilt of his sword—for he was clad in the uniform of a Turkish General—with the Star of the Order of Imtiaz in brilliants suspended from his neck. I noticed then, as on subsequent occasions, that the Sultan wore a single ring. It was a large emerald. So much has been written in depreciation of this extraordinary man that I cannot resist the temptation of reiterating the impression of kindliness and sincerity which he made on me. In saying this I make all allowance for our common human weakness in crediting those of exalted station who are kind to us with every virtue, whilst viewing askance others who neglect us. But the fact remains that Abdul Hamid, without any physical advantage to speak of—rather the reverse, for the features and figure might without much imagination have been supposed to belong to a Galata money-changer—possessed an exceptional charm of manner, a simple dignity and grace of bearing, which were calculated to, and indeed did, gain the sympathies of those who were brought into contact with him. There was something in his look and in the even-toned balance of his sympathetic voice when addressing his secretary which betrayed the habit of command, the exaction of implicit, even slavish, obedience during a lifetime. It interested me to note the attitude of extreme deference of those surrounding him. Thus Izzet Bey only sat on the extreme edge of his chair with his hands crossed flat on his chest and his head bent low while the Sultan told him in Turkish what he desired should be communicated to me. The Sultan wished to thank me for the sympathetic manner in which I had written on Turkish subjects, and expressed his gratitude that for once a journalist had come to Constantinople apparently free from those prejudices against the Turks which were a source of so much trouble and annoyance to him.

Rightly or wrongly, the Sultan seemed to think that he was under a personal obligation to me which he did not deem sufficiently liquidated by the bestowal of decorative distinctions. He suggested that I should leave the New York Herald, come to Constantinople, and enter his service. He wished me to remain attached to his person in some capacity or other. I replied that I could not see my way to enter his service, as it seemed to me that he had already too many people round him who drew big salaries for doing little or nothing, and that at my time of life I had no desire to come to Constantinople and live there. I added that wherever I might happen to be I should always take pleasure in endeavouring to secure fair play for Turkey and her ruler—a promise I have since faithfully kept.

“Well then,” rejoined the Sultan, smiling good-humouredly, “if you will not enter my service, come and see me again as a friend and be my guest whenever you return to Constantinople; I shall always be glad to see you.”

Knowing that I was about to leave Constantinople and that I was personally acquainted with Prince Bismarck, His Majesty asked me to take a case of china ornaments—a pair of vases and a painted plaque—from the Imperial porcelain factory as a present from him to the Prince. The Sultan desired me to assure the Prince of his friendly regard and to tell him that he hoped he would always exercise his great influence in favour of Turkey, a country to which Moltke, his illustrious countryman, had in days gone by rendered valuable service. This commission I subsequently carried out on my way home through Germany.

When I left the Sultan and walked out into the open air, into the balmy calm of a starlit autumn evening, not a soul was to be seen. The splashing of water from a fountain which issued from a wall on the left was the only break of silence around, except the sound of our feet as they pressed the loose gravel. Nor did I meet a guard or soldier or any living soul as I passed the porter’s lodge out of the Palace. As far as I could tell there would have been nothing to prevent a determined band of half a dozen armed men from entering the Palace and kidnapping the Sultan there and then, as others had entered the Ottoman Bank, the porters of which, in their picturesque Albanian costume, were armed to the teeth.

I left Constantinople the next day, the 12th of October.

CHAPTER III
THE OUTBREAK OF THE GRÆCO-TURKISH WAR

Beauteous Greece,

Torn from her joys, in vain with languid arm

Half raised her lusty shield.

Dyer

In the winter of 1896–97 I had been acting as Special Correspondent for the New York Herald in Vienna, when, towards the end of February, things began to wear a sinister aspect between Turkey and Greece. Thus I left for Salonica on March 8, in order to await there the development of events. On that day Greece finally declined to accede to the demand of the Great Powers to recall Colonel Vassos from Crete. Thereupon Turkey began to mobilize her forces, and to push them forward towards the southern frontier of Thessaly. It was only subsequently, when Greece had also concentrated nearly all her forces on her northern frontier, and Greek volunteers, armed by the Ethnike Hetairia,[^[3]] together with Greek regular troops, repeatedly made incursions into Macedonia, that Turkey declared war. Even then, however, there were hopes of peace left, for Turkey was still inclined to listen to the urgent request of the Great Powers not to assume the offensive.

[3]. A secret Greek political organization with Pan-Hellenistic aims to the activity of which the disturbances in Crete and the outbreak of the Græco-Turkish war were partly due.

At Salonica I had a dull time, living in a state of suspense, with nothing to do but read the newspapers at the Club on the quay, or gaze at the snow-capped crest of Mount Olympus across the bay. A few warships appeared now and then in the offing. The largest ironclad of the Italian navy, the Duilio, anchored in front of the city, and it was a treat to visit it and to note the spick-and-span efficiency of the ship.

Rumours of the wildest kind from all manner of unreliable sources—mostly of Greek origin—reached us daily. They tended to show that whatever might be the forces at the disposal of the Turks, Ananias with his hosts was on the side of the Greeks. His artillery was firing its missiles, and these travelled with incredible velocity to the ends of the earth. We learnt from more reliable sources, however, of raids over the frontier undertaken by the Greek Ethnike Hetairia, with whom were the Greek regulars, and who were reported to have committed various acts of pillage and murder, even in the neighbourhood of Salonica, whose Greek population made no secret of its sympathies with the Greek cause. It was not safe to go about after dark, although one felt inclined to risk much to partake of the decently cooked food and that collective social and convivial life which the Germans—here, as elsewhere in Turkey—maintained in the Kegel Club at the Hôtel Colombo.

The Jewish element of Salonica accounts for nearly half the total population, and affords interest to the student of race and character. These Hebrews are in strong contrast with their co-religionists elsewhere, especially in Russia; not only as regards status, but also in appearance. They are fine, strong, handsome men and women. Jews are met with in almost every sphere of life—more particularly among the artisans and the working classes; nearly all the Salonica boatmen are Jews. Some of the Salonica Jews rise to high positions in different branches of the Turkish Administration and invariably give satisfaction. They are “très bien vus par les Turcs,” as a high Turkish official told me; for the Turks, in spite of their supposed fanaticism, have always treated the Jews with kindness, and this at a period when Christian Spain burned them at the stake. I was told that the Jews of Salonica had only recently celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of their arrival in Turkey from Spain, from which country they were banished in 1490. On this occasion they had sent an address to the Sultan expressing their grateful attachment to Turkey and her Sovereign. Prayers were offered up in every synagogue of the Turkish Empire, and £T50,000 was collected for benevolent purposes under the auspices of a Committee presided over by the Grand Rabbi.

It was at Salonica that I first came into contact with that survival of the fierce spirit of proselytism of former ages, the Anglo-Saxon missionary element. Never do I remember to have met such implacable hatred for the Mohammedans as that which seemed to animate the wife of the Anglo-Saxon missionary, bent on converting them, together with the Jews, to the religion of Love. She set me thinking whether she and her husband might not have been more profitably engaged in the slums of the great cities at home than among the industrious and sober population of Salonica. An honest, hard-working Christian missionary who is kind-hearted and humane in a Mohammedan sense may still do good work in that part of the world, let alone in Asiatic Turkey, as I subsequently convinced myself, particularly in the application of hygiene, since this and medical science particularly are lamentably backward. But only harm can come from the spirit of hatred which I now saw manifested for the first time.

An English working-man of an ill-conditioned type was staying at my hotel. I used to meet him in the café sipping his tea, with an unsightly mongrel dog as his companion. He told me he had come from Lancashire, and was engaged as foreman at some textile works situated on the quay. He had also been in the United States. I asked him how he liked America. He flared up and, pointing to his dog, replied: “You see that ere little dorg! Well, I’d rather see ’im dead than in America,” bringing his clenched fist down on the marble table with savage emphasis. This was significant, but not the only testimony since vouchsafed to me of the antagonism between the British trade-union spirit and the conditions of labour in the United States.

There was an English public-house in Salonica, on the quay, facing the harbour. It was kept by an English widow, but only opened its shutters on the rare occasions when the English squadrons put into the bay, when it did a brisk business.

One continuous stream of Turkish troops from Albania and Asia Minor passed through Salonica, arriving by sea, and, for the most part, disembarking in the dead of the night. I was often awakened by the dull, plaintive chant of these wild children of Asia, or of the untamed sons of the Albanian hills in their white skull-caps, whose voices mingled with the sounds of the waves beating against the stone quay, along which they marched on their way to the railway station.

I had been in Salonica about ten days when I received a telegram from Mr. Bennett asking me to proceed to the Turkish headquarters at Elassona, not as War Correspondent, for which vocation at my time of life I scarcely felt fitted, but to report on the real state of affairs, concerning which so many rumours were afloat.

I called on the Vali, who gave me the necessary permit and deputed a Circassian officer named Mehmet to be my escort. I engaged a Roumanian, one Hermann Chary, who had formerly been in the service of General Gordon in Egypt, and, I believe, in India as well. He had since drifted to Salonica, and was commissionaire at the Hôtel Impérial on the quay, where I was staying. Even now I often call this man to mind when I read in our newspapers of the extraordinary linguistic accomplishments of some of our leading statesmen who speak French with a Parisian accent or are wonderful German “scholars.” Here was a man who spoke some nine or ten languages fluently, but had to be content to earn five francs a day as interpreter in a third-rate hotel, and was delighted with the chance I offered him of better employment. He accompanied me later in the same capacity on my journey through Armenia.

We left Salonica on March 20—a Saturday—and our departure for Elassona was marked by the following childlike flourish of trumpets in the Journal de Salonique (March 22):

“Mr. Sidney Whitman, Correspondent of the New York Herald, left our city last Saturday for Elassona in order to follow the operations of the troops. The local authorities of Sorovitch have gracefully placed a military escort at the disposal of the American journalist, which will accompany him to the frontier.

“Mr. Whitman is one of those rare correspondents of foreign newspapers who have appreciated without malevolence the attitude of the Imperial Ottoman Government in the various incidents which have happened of recent years.

“We may be sure that again to-day he will keep the innumerable readers of the New York Herald correctly informed as regards the imposing military forces of Turkey, the admirable discipline of her troops, their valour, their bravery, and their irreproachable conduct. The American paper has sent another correspondent to the Greek Camp, and a third one to Constantinople. It is always by telegraph that these gentlemen communicate with their paper. One can thus form an idea of the enormous expenditure which the New York Herald incurs in order to justify its reputation as the best and most promptly informed journal.”

We proceeded by rail to Karaferia, which left us about eighty miles to Elassona by road, and took the road to Sorovitch, where we spent the night as guests of a pasha and reached our destination in the evening of the next day. As we came nearer to Elassona we passed a large number of troops on the road, for they were all converging towards that point, not merely from Salonica, but also from the port of Katerina, where 1200 horses and mules were disembarked daily by army contractors. Many of the men we saw were cavalry, clad in the most fantastic style. Some of them rode mules, and, in addition to a belt full of cartridges round their waist and shoulders, carried a pickaxe, a knife, charcoal for lighting a fire, and a supply of flour, sugar, rice, barley, and beans. Their foot-covering was the so-called “Tcharik,” consisting of a piece of untanned leather tied with string to the ankle and leg. The villages we passed through offered next to no accommodation; swallows built their nests in the dilapidated tenements. In this truly desolate and wholly uncultivated country it was difficult to imagine it had ever formed part of the dominions of Philip and Alexander of Macedonia. But what its economic possibilities might become under reasonable conditions was brought home to us when our energetic interpreter provided a large glass bottle of excellent red wine, holding a full gallon, which, bottle and all, he had purchased in the village of Kossona for thirteen pence in English money!

The Herald at that time was regarded by the Turks as one of the few foreign newspapers ready to give them fair play, and this ensured me a kindly welcome from everybody—from the generalissimo of the Turkish forces, Edhem Pasha, down to the humblest subaltern.

Elassona is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated on the banks of the River Xerias, on the western slope of Mount Olympus, and is supposed to be identical with the Oloosson mentioned by Homer.

Quarters were assigned to me, my interpreter, and the Circassian officer, Mehmet, in the house of the mayor of the town, which had been vacated. All the rooms were left empty but for a bare couch or two. Nor did I see anybody in the house during my stay except now and then a stray devout Mohammedan kneeling on a carpet in one of the rooms, solitary and silent, engaged in prayer.

Edhem Pasha, who received me shortly after my arrival, was still in the prime of life, and looked what he was, a fine representative of the high-bred Turk. He was simple, courteous, benevolent, and endowed with that innate dignity which Orientals seem capable of uniting even with humble station. I must assume that a favourable report had preceded us, for he welcomed me at our first meeting in his konak, attended by some officers of his staff, almost as a friend, playing with his “tisbe” between his fingers while he talked. Throughout my stay of eight days he continued to show me every kindness in his power. He even consented to be photographed at my request, with one of his officers on either side of him. This was the photograph which afterwards made the round of the illustrated newspapers of the world; for I never met with any other, the high-class Turk rarely posing before the camera. But with all his amiability there was a deal of punctilio about the Turkish Commander-in-Chief. He could be inexorable at times. Later, when war was declared and a host of correspondents appeared on the scene, some of these gentlemen arrayed themselves in military uniform. Edhem Pasha promptly informed them that, although they might possibly be entitled to wear such costume in their own country, they were only accredited to him as newspaper correspondents, and as such would not be allowed to appear in uniform.

Fifty-five thousand Turkish soldiers were said to be quartered in and around that primitive old town. Not a single woman was to be seen; not a drop of wine or spirits could be procured for love or money. We were told that twenty years before, during the Russo-Turkish war, twenty-four thousand Turkish soldiers died here of typhus and dysentery.

Riding towards the camp, we met soldiers everywhere, some of them leisurely sitting by the roadside cooking their meals. As we rode past them an aide-de-camp of the Sultan turned to me and, pointing to the Albanian Redifs, said: “These fellows know no greater delight than that of being called upon to fight, and, if needs be, to die for the Sultan.”

One afternoon I rode out, accompanied by Mehmet Tscherkess, a young Turkish major who had served in the Prussian Guards, and who was, besides, an aide-de-camp of the Sultan and my interpreter to the Meluna Pass, which formed the frontier towards Greece at that particular point. When the war broke out three weeks later some fierce fighting took place here. A small block-house on a summit marked the Turkish boundary-line, and a couple of hundred yards away a similar structure denoted the Greek border, where we could discern a group of Greek soldiers. The Sultan’s aide-de-camp suggested that I should walk over and have a talk with the Greeks; which I did, accompanied by my dragoman. We were met half way by a Greek cavalry officer. He told us that he had been trained at the French cavalry school of Saumur, and in manner and conversation he certainly reminded us more of a Frenchman than a Greek. To a casual remark of mine he replied light-heartedly—even truculently—that war was inevitable, as also was the defeat of the Turks! Looking down into the valley, the far-famed vale of Tempè lay before us, through which Pompey rode a fugitive, flying from the fateful field of Pharsalia. We could just perceive Larissa in the distance. The little white tents of the Greek forces lay spread out at our feet and were plainly visible amid a landscape more advanced in the verdure of spring and bearing far more signs of cultivation and closer habitation than that we had passed through in Macedonia. We parted on good terms. I rejoined the Turkish officers, and rode leisurely back to Elassona.

On leaving Elassona the Turkish Commander-in-Chief had prepared a little surprise for us. We started on horseback at about five o’clock in the morning, as it was reckoned that it would take all day to do the forty miles to Katerina, on the coast. After riding for about an hour, and turning a sharp angle of the road, we beheld a squadron of Turkish cavalry drawn up at the salute to bid the representatives of the New York Herald a parting good-bye. Even to-day I cannot think of this little incident without the reflection how grateful the Turks were for the smallest proof of fairness towards them, and how rarely they got it. We rode on leisurely all day, and so scorching was the sun, although we were only in March, that when I rose next morning in the little Greek inn at Katerina I found the skin had peeled off my ears on to the pillow. From Katerina a Turkish Government torpedo-boat brought us back to Salonica.

War had not yet broken out, but every indication of its inevitability was about us. The hotels were crowded with war correspondents, who had arrived from all parts and were feverishly active, getting ready to proceed to join the Turkish forces, buying horses, prancing about, testing their purchases in the street in front of the hotel, engaging servants, and laying in a stock of provisions. The English public-house I have mentioned did a brisk trade. Among the necessities of the situation was that of obtaining permission from the authorities to be allowed to proceed to Headquarters. Nor was this an easy matter for the representatives of those papers which for years past had relentlessly vilified the Hamidian régime.

One day Mr. J. P. Blunt, the British Consul-General at Salonica, a strong philo-Turk, said to me at the Club: “I want to introduce you to the correspondent of the Times.” “I am sorry,” I replied jokingly, “but I have made it a rule never to allow myself to be introduced to any countryman of mine on the Continent.” Experience had taught me, as it must have taught others, that—speaking of the type of Englishmen one is likely to come across on the Continent—if they are in what, according to their lights, is a superior position to your own, they do not desire to make your acquaintance. If, on the other hand, they want something from you, or their status is inferior to yours, it is for them to be introduced to you. Mr. Blunt smiled good-humouredly and added that the Times correspondent, who had just arrived from London, had heard of my good relations with the Turkish authorities, and would be very glad if I could afford him some assistance, as he intended to proceed to Elassona the very next morning.

This being the case, I declared my readiness to assist him to the best of my ability. Mr. Blunt thereupon brought Mr. Bigham to my hotel. He was a son of the present Lord Mersey, and impressed me as possessing an equipment which would carry him far under modern conditions of getting on in the world—a view which, I am glad to say, has since been borne out. He wielded a ready journalistic pen, spoke and read Turkish, drank tea and mineral waters, and was evidently as hard as nails. He also wrote a book on his experiences as a war correspondent in the campaign, and very kindly sent me a copy of it after the war was over. I gave him a letter of introduction to Edhem Pasha, allowed my Roumanian interpreter to accompany him, and finally prevailed upon the Governor-General of Salonica to permit the Circassian officer, Mehmet, who had been my companion, to serve as his escort on his journey. The result was that Mr. Bigham arrived at the Turkish Headquarters well in advance of all the other correspondents at that time in Salonica, including that redoubtable but genial philo-Turk, the late Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett.

The Græco-Turkish war afforded what will probably be the last opportunity, at least in Europe, for a fair heyday outing to those belonging to what G. B. Shaw might well have described as, next to that of royalty, “a decaying industry”—the profession of war correspondent.

Among other arrivals at Salonica were several German officers in the Turkish service, notably the late Grumbkow Pasha, on their way from Constantinople to the front. They appeared more eager for the fray than the Turks themselves, like Sir Walter Scott’s

Great Chatham with his sabre drawn

Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;

Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,

Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.

This eagerness for bloodshed on the part of men whose country was at peace with the Greeks made a disagreeable impression upon my mind. I was therefore not sorry when a few days later I heard that they had been summoned back to Constantinople, the Russian Ambassador having protested against foreigners in the Turkish service being allowed to fight in the cause of the Infidel against the Orthodox Greek Hellenes.

On April 17—it was a Sunday—war was formally declared, and the Greek flag was hauled down from the Greek Consulate. The streets were crowded with people of every creed and nationality as they would be on a holiday. The day is fixed on my memory by the absence of every vestige of rowdyism, such as might well have been anticipated from the fact that Salonica contained a large Greek population who had never made a secret of their sympathies with their countrymen. I had repeatedly witnessed the small Greek shopkeepers eagerly scanning the Greek newspapers for the latest news, and this in the presence of their Turkish customers without the latter taking the slightest notice. When the flag was taken down from the Greek Consulate it was as if an immense load of uncertainty was lifted from the minds of all. Now at least people knew where they were, and both Greeks and Turks seemed to enjoy the end of the long period of uncertainty.

I left Salonica for Constantinople on the steamer Policevera on April 19 in the queerest company, for the vessel carried sixteen hundred sheep and only one passenger—myself. At times my travelling companions tried to prevent me from getting on deck, for they filled the whole of the deck and pressed against the cabin door.

In Constantinople there was outwardly little evidence of the country being at war. The only unusual feature was the crowd of Greeks that blocked the entry to the French Embassy, which had undertaken their protection whilst the war lasted. I remained nearly a month in the Turkish capital, during which not a single instance of offence or personal violence to the Greek population came to my knowledge, although the modern Greeks are among the most demonstrative of races, and are not accustomed to put a curb on their feelings in Turkey.

One evening a dense crowd gathered at the railway station and awaited for hours the departure of the train which was to take Ghazi Osman Pasha to the seat of war. His arrival from the Palace, where he was said to be in close consultation with the Sultan, was expected every minute. At last the carriage of the national hero of Turkey drew up. There was no cheering or shouting of any kind such as would have been the case in some countries—a solemn, almost a mournful silence prevailed. The waiting-room and all the roads leading to the railway station were crowded with Turks, but no “Hurrah!” or “Down with the Greeks!” was heard. Many were engaged in earnest prayer, which they read aloud from little books. Children were lifted up for the venerable warrior to kiss, and old white-bearded men shed tears as Osman kissed their children. It was a touching sight.

One day the Sultan sent me word that he would like me to visit the hospital for the wounded—it was temporarily fitted up in the grounds of the Palace. Marshal Shefket Pasha, the commander of Yildiz, together with two Turkish surgeons, one a pasha, was deputed to accompany me. The wounded were constantly arriving from the seat of war, and were lodged in airy ground-floor sheds, and obviously had every care. I could see by the elaborate surgical appliances and the scrupulous cleanliness everywhere that the operation-rooms, painted white, excluded every particle of dust. They were treated according to the latest scientific principles, and down to the common soldier they had everything that money and goodwill could provide. There was no complaining: Turkish and European doctors vied with each other in caring for the wounded. Several German surgeons had come expressly for the purpose, and had given their services gratuitously. How highly the Sultan appreciated this spontaneous action of strangers is, I think, shown by the fact that he bestowed the Gold Imtiaz Medal, one of the highest Turkish distinctions, which was only given by the Sultan for special services rendered him personally, and which many much-decorated pashas did not possess, on these foreign surgeons.

The Sultan next expressed a wish that I might inspect the “Bazar de Secours” started by him to raise funds for the invalids and the families of the victims of the war. It was a large one-storied building which had been specially erected at his expense a short distance from the Palace, and which was to be opened in a few days to the public. We are sometimes able to estimate the taste, and even the very character, of the inmates of a house by the articles it contains. So also on this occasion the collection of heterogeneous objects exhibited for sale spoke a language of its own. To begin with, almost every third article, and these the most costly, was a gift from the Sultan himself; many others were from members of his household and the fine old Turkish families generally. This war, in which the Christian Greek had hounded the public opinion of Europe against the Mohammedan Turk, deeply stirred the feelings of the Turkish people; and when the news of repeated victories came to hand, the Sultan may be said to have stood on the pinnacle of his popularity. Also, the invitation to contribute to the bazaar met with a ready response from the Turkish upper classes. The ladies of the harem, the wife of the Khedive of Egypt, of the Sheikh ul Islam, and of nearly all the pashas in the capital sent valuable presents. The donations included beautiful old swords, daggers, and yatagans inlaid with precious stones; gorgeous silver-gilt saddle harness, horse trappings, gold boxes and caskets inlaid with precious stones; Gobelins, priceless old embroideries and shawls, gold-framed looking-glasses, and trinkets came from the ladies of the harem. Even a copy of the Koran, bound in leather and ornamented with brilliants, in a gold box inlaid with pearls, was among the collection of gifts. The Emperor of Austria sent a Louis XV cabinet. The German Emperor, the Sultan’s friend, sent some samples of the Berlin china works; but more interesting than these were about a dozen prints of Professor Knackfuss’s well-known composition, inspired by His Majesty and with an inscription in his own handwriting: “People of Europe, protect your holiest possessions.” Each of these costly works of art bore the autographed Imperial signature R.I., and were to be offered for sale to the public for the benefit of the wounded. Alas! no purchasers were tempted; for when I came again to Constantinople I was told that the Sultan himself had bought and paid a fancy price for the lot—for the benefit of the wounded.

Poor Abdul Hamid! Here in this bazaar were childlike faith and genuine human nature to be seen in close propinquity with cheap, hollow unreality: the latter soon to be exposed to the world in its true colours.

Among the many notabilities who were brought to Constantinople by the events of the war was General Nelson Miles, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, whose acquaintance I had the privilege of making. I also met Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, on his return from the seat of war, flushed with victory; for, as already mentioned, he was an ardent pro-Turk. He was most indignant at the action of the Ambassadors of the Great Powers, who, headed by Sir Philip Currie, had made a protest to the Porte against the “atrocities” alleged to have been committed by the Turkish soldiery in Thessaly. He related how the English newspaper correspondents who were with the Turks as well as he himself felt their sense of fair play outraged by these false charges, and how they had drawn up a report and sent it by telegram from Thessaly to the British Ambassador at Constantinople. He gave me a copy, of which I append a translation; for even at this distance of time—in the winter of Turkish sorrow and misfortune—it is of interest, as affording strong testimony in favour of the much maligned Turkish soldier.

To His Excellency, The Ambassador of Great Britain, Constantinople.

“We are able to give personal testimony to the admirable conduct of the Ottoman soldier as well as the constant and most successful efforts of the Turkish officers to prevent pillage and to protect the Christian inhabitants in every way. The Greeks, who are returning to their homesteads in very great numbers, declared themselves very satisfied with their treatment. The Greek inhabitants of the surrounding villages have sent deputations to solicit the protection of the Turkish troops.

“After the departure of the Greek military authorities from Larissa the Greek Governor liberated the prisoners from the penitentiary and provided them with rifles. These latter, together with other lawless elements, did a deal of damage and pillage at Larissa during the twenty-four hours which elapsed before the arrival of the Turkish troops. The truth of this statement is confirmed by the Greek inhabitants, as also by the Greek priests.

“Only one Greek village, Deliler, has been partially burnt, and this was due to the obstinate fight last Friday in the place itself. Several houses have been demolished here and there from whence shots had been fired on the Turkish soldiery. But the discipline and conduct of the Turkish Army have been admirable, and can be most favourably compared with that of the best troops of the world. All the Europeans with the Army are of this opinion.

“Signed by:

E. Ashmead-Bartlett, M.P.; Clive Bigham, Correspondent of the Times; Geo. R. Montgomery, Correspondent of the Standard; W. Peel, Special Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph; H. A. Gwynne, Special Correspondent of Reuter’s Agency; G. W. Steevens, Correspondent of the Daily Mail; Hamilton Weldon, Special Correspondent of the Morning Post.”

Before leaving Constantinople I received an invitation from Sir Philip and Lady Currie to a garden party in the beautiful grounds of the British Embassy overlooking the Golden Horn. On such occasions politics were taboo. Everybody who was anybody was present, and a more charming host and hostess it would be difficult to imagine than the British Ambassador and Lady Currie; both since, alas! gone from hence. Among the guests was an old Englishman, once, as I was told, the gardener of the British Embassy in Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s time, and whose son is now one of the most prosperous English traders of Constantinople.

CHAPTER IV
JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY

The Pontic Sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont.

Shakespeare, Othello

In the beginning of September 1897 I was taking a “rest cure” at Marienbad when I received a telegram from the proprietor of the New York Herald asking me to join him on his yacht Namouma at Venice. On my arrival he informed me that he had been to Constantinople and had an interview with the Sultan. In the course of it he had suggested to His Majesty that he should send an expedition into Armenia to verify the facts connected with the disturbances of the last two years, and allow the New York Herald to be represented on the occasion.

The Sultan was favourably disposed to the idea, and proposed that I should be the person selected to accompany the expedition. To this Mr. Bennett had, as he told me, demurred; not that he had any reason to doubt my reliability, but the fact remained that it was already known in America that I had had personal relations with the Sultan. This in itself would make it desirable that somebody else should report on this particular subject. It was finally agreed with the Sultan that a member of the New York staff of the paper, the late Dr. George H. Hepworth, should be the correspondent, the Sultan making his final consent dependent upon my accompanying the expedition as well.

Mr. Bennett continued that he had long desired to place his readers in a position to judge things for themselves from information gathered on the spot, and that this matter was one of exceptional interest to the American public, owing to the fact that the Sultan had hitherto declined to allow any newspaper correspondent whatsoever to traverse Armenia, let alone to offer facilities for so doing.

“You will render the Herald a great service in accompanying the expedition,” he added, “for unless you go it will not start.”

It is not often that any man has an opportunity of visiting an unknown country and at one and the same time of obliging an autocratic ruler and a great newspaper proprietor. I therefore accepted Mr. Bennett’s suggestion, it being distinctly understood that I was to hold what in legal language is termed a “watching brief” on behalf of the Turks, and that I should not be called upon to write at all unless a controversy arose. In such a case, Mr. Bennett said that Dr. Hepworth and I could fight it out in the columns of the Herald, which would act as impartial bottle-holder. Fortunately the necessity did not arise to submit to such an ordeal. The last words Mr. Bennett said to me on leaving were: “In this matter you can look upon yourself as the Sultan’s man.” And here I may add that, being firmly convinced injustice had been done to the Turks, at least as regards the imputing to them of religious persecution, I willingly undertook the task offered me of seeing “fair play” given to them.

Some weeks elapsed before Dr. Hepworth came from New York and reached Paris, from whence we started together for Constantinople. On our way we broke our journey at Vienna. In travelling on to Belgrade we gave up our sleeping berths to the King of Servia and his father, ex-King Milan, who both travelled by our train, the Orient express. On our arrival at the Servian capital early next morning we witnessed their official reception at the station by the authorities, who looked very much like a gathering of peasants at a country fair. King Alexander did not present a sympathetic appearance; but there was a touch of human nature in the expression of poor Milan which enlisted our sympathy.

We arrived in Constantinople about the middle of October, and encountered at the outset the dilatory tactics which marked the execution of every project emanating directly from his temporizing Majesty. This seemed to depress Dr. Hepworth very much; but as I had known cases of Turkish Ambassadors being kept dawdling about Constantinople for months after they had been appointed to their post, the delay did not surprise me. When, however, one week succeeded another without any decisive step being taken, or any date being appointed for our departure from Constantinople, we were driven to the conclusion that there must be some special cause for the delay. This proved to be the case. Information had reached the Sultan that Dr. Hepworth was really an American clergyman with a strong bias in favour of the missionary element, that he had contributed articles to the Herald fiercely condemning the Turkish Government for its treatment of the Armenians, and that he had written editorial sermons for that paper regularly every Sunday for many years past. Under these circumstances the Sultan hesitated to place it within his power to enter Armenia. Such was the information vouchsafed to me by a secretary of the Sultan, accompanied by a request that I should come up to the Palace and have an interview with His Majesty.

Munir Pasha, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, was present as interpreter on the occasion, and in the course of the audience confirmed what I have just stated. I could not deny that Dr. Hepworth, though a journalist by profession, had in early years been a clergyman, and that he still wrote short sermons in the form of editorials in the Sunday number of the New York Herald. For all this, I assured the Sultan that, though Dr. Hepworth’s sympathies were undoubtedly with the Armenians, this did not necessarily imply unfairness of mind; whereas, if the information to be obtained in Anatolia should turn out to be of a nature to exculpate the Turkish authorities from complicity in what had taken place, Dr. Hepworth, as an honest man, would report accordingly. The very fact of his known sympathy with the Armenians would then double the weight of his testimony. I succeeded in convincing the Sultan; he even agreed that our route should take any direction Dr. Hepworth might decide upon. Nothing was to be hidden or disguised from us, and in case of any difficulty arising I was always to be at liberty to telegraph directly to His Majesty without let or hindrance on the part of the officials accompanying the expedition. The Sultan concluded: “You have already given me substantial proof of your impartiality. Render me this service, and I will grant you any favour you like to ask of me.”

To this I impulsively replied, somewhat quixotically as it strikes me to-day, that he might rely on me doing my best in the interests of truth and justice without any consideration of reward entering into the matter on my part. As a matter of fact, I neither solicited nor subsequently received the slightest remuneration from the Sultan or anybody else for a task the arduous and perilous nature of which I was far from realizing at the time, and the outcome of which was a journalistic triumph for the New York Herald.

The impression I gained from this interview was that the Sultan was sincere in his wish to get to know the true state of affairs. He believed that the revolutionary activity of the Armenians, connived at by Russia, had been the primary cause of the massacres in Asia Minor as in Constantinople, and that the governors of the different provinces had done their best to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Abdul Hamid is not the only autocrat who has found it an impossible task to get at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For it goes without saying that His Majesty’s estimate of what had taken place was based on partial and incomplete information. On the other hand, our journey furnished us with abundant evidence that the Sultan’s views were not without some justification, and that, as a rule, the governors of the different provinces we traversed were men of tried capacity and integrity. Viewed from this distance of time, there can be no doubt that the policy of the Sultan in excluding foreign journalists from Armenia was a mistaken one. It resulted in a one-sided version of the events becoming generally accepted—the lie with twenty-four hours’ start, according to Napoleon, is immortal—and it gave opportunities for “writing up” atrocities without any of the extenuating features which provoked them obtaining publicity.

It is not my purpose to render an exact account of our journey, for such would fill a volume. This was done at the time by the late Dr. Hepworth,[^[4]] who did not very long survive the fatigues of the journey, which at his time of life, he being then over sixty years of age, was a most arduous undertaking. My aim will be to give some incidents of our journey, the impressions which have remained in my mind as illustrative of the aspect of the country we passed through as we saw it, and the conversations we had with the people we came in contact with.

[4]. “Through Armenia on Horseback.” By the Rev. George H. Hepworth. London and New York, 1898.

The ostensible object of the expedition was to report upon the schools in the different provinces to be traversed, but behind this was obviously the intention of obtaining information outside the usual official channels with regard to the disturbances which had taken place in the year 1895 in that mysterious country which Europeans are in the habit of calling Armenia, although the number of Armenians distributed over an area about as large as France and Germany combined, making every allowance for the unreliability of statistics, can scarcely exceed a million and a half, whereas in the Russian provinces bordering on Asiatic Turkey there are probably even more, of whom, however, the world never hears anything. The route of our journey, as drawn up with the Sultan’s approval, would take us through Anatolia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and Syria. We were to proceed by sea to Trebizond, and starting from thence to reach Erzeroum; from there to push on to Van, thence to Bitlis, to Diarbekir, and to Biredschik on the Euphrates; thence to Aintab in Syria, and on to Alexandretta, where we would take ship back to Constantinople. By this route we would traverse four out of the five so-called Armenian vilayets;[^[5]] Erzeroum, Van, Bitlis, and Diarbekir, leaving Mamuret ül Aziz out of our itinerary. This plan was carried out with the exception that we omitted Van owing to the severity of the weather and the uncertainty of being able to keep within the projected time limit. Little did we realize what hardships we were to experience, although we had been warned at Constantinople that such a journey—never an easy one, and usually undertaken in the spring, summer, or autumn—involved very serious risks in the depth of winter, when snowstorms or floods might possibly keep us for weeks together in remote places. The chance of being attacked by Kurdish tribes, of catching some disease owing to the lack of all hygienic conditions in the country, the primitive nature of the accommodation, sleeping on the bare floor side by side with camels, buffaloes, oxen, horses, and dogs all in a state far removed from cleanliness, lastly the unaccustomed food: these were all matters for consideration.

[5]. The term vilayet is derived from the Arabic ejalet, and signifies a governorship—an area—a district such as would be administered by a pasha; thus a so-called “pasha tik,” or staathoudership. Hence the term “Vali” stands for the administrator of a vilayet. The vilayet of Erzeroum, for instance, has an area of nearly 50,000 square kilometres, with 645,000 inhabitants.

On a black windy November morning we started in the Austrian Lloyd steamer Daphne, and steamed through the Bosphorus, on our way to the Black Sea, our destination being Trebizond. Our little party was quite representative in its character. His Excellency Sirry Bey, one of the secrétaires traducteurs of the Palace, was in charge of the expedition. Halid Bey, his secretary, a fat, good-natured, harmless young Turk, was always busy taking notes. Two colonels of cavalry, aides-de-camp of the Sultan, were attached to the expedition, and six sergeants of cavalry (Suwarie Tschaoush) formed a military escort in case of unforeseen contingencies. One of these officers, Colonel Tewfik Bey, was an easy-going, lymphatic cavalryman, whose big travelling portmanteau was a horse’s entire load by itself, although all the other members of the expedition restricted themselves to small hand-bags in consideration of the difficulties of transport. The other officer, Colonel Rushti Bey, was the most interesting personality of our party, as a specimen of the aristocratic, carefully brought up Turk. A young fair-headed, handsome man, he was indefatigable—the first up and on horseback in the morning and never seeming to tire. He did not smoke or touch any wine or spirits. His bearing was chivalrous, and though not given to expansiveness, he was a man of the kindliest disposition. We had a Doctor Wallisch, a Hungarian in the Turkish service, on board, who was on his way to an appointment in Van. Fortunately for the party we managed to persuade him to accompany us on the whole of our journey. Our interpreter, Hermann Chary, an excitable little Roumanian Jew, who spoke eight or ten languages, was the same man I had picked up in Salonica in the spring of the year.

We encountered very rough weather in the Black Sea, which interfered with our enjoyment of the fine scenery on the shore of Asia with its forest-clad hills, some of them already covered with snow. This journey in the company of staunch Moslems who would spread their little rugs on the deck at sunrise and sunset, and pray silently with their faces turned towards Mecca, was a new sensation to Dr. Hepworth and myself. An awkward incident took place one day during the voyage. The cooking on board as well as the bill of fare was “Frank” (i.e. European), and on one occasion roast pork formed an item of the menu. So cunningly was it prepared that none of us was able to detect it except Dr. Hepworth, whose partiality for pork was so strong that his first request on entering a restaurant in Paris, Vienna, or Constantinople was for a pork chop, and when he had made it disappear, for another pork chop. In the ecstasy of a delighted palate he proclaimed aloud that we were partaking of his favourite dish, “roast pork”! Never shall I forget the dismay that spread over the faces of the Turks present when this disclosure was made. In order to save the situation I tried to make out that Dr. Hepworth was mistaken, but finally we all lapsed into silence as the best way out of the difficulty, since the defilement was beyond question.

The weather continued so rough that we were a long time in doubt whether we should be able to stop on our way, as nowhere along the coast was there a sheltered harbour. Only with great difficulty did we disembark for a few hours at Kerasoun and at Samsoun, the seat of large tobacco factories. At Samsoun we reviewed the school-children and saw for the first time a primitive type of plough, and carts with solid wooden wheels drawn by oxen—varying probably little from those in use in the time of Abraham.

Trebizond is picturesquely situated on the shore of the Black Sea at the mouth of the River Moutschka, at the base of a chain of mountains rising gradually to an altitude of 1600 metres, culminating in the thickly wooded Kotal Dagh, 3410 metres high. Even here there is no harbour, and in stress of weather ships have to seek refuge at Platana, two hours and a half distant by steam. The city forms the starting-point of the caravans to Persia; but these have now strong competitors in the Russian railway from Batoum and the caravans from the Persian Gulf. In consequence of these developments the traffic of the interior is declining. Yet Trebizond remains, next to Smyrna, the most important city of Asiatic Turkey, and previous to the Armenian disturbances of the years 1895–96 contained a population of 35,000 inhabitants. At that time, however, a large migration to Russia and Constantinople began, and this was still in progress when we arrived there. More than half of the population consisted of Moslems, with 8000 Greeks and 6000 Armenians, the lower classes being the so-called Lazis, an unruly tribe, from whom the Turks draw their best sailors. Trebizond has an Armenian Archbishop and twenty Christian churches, as well as an American missionary station. All the Turkish mosques were once Christian places of worship.

We were sitting in the dining-room of the Hôtel d’Italie looking out upon the dark waters of the Black Sea rolling menacingly far away to the horizon, when a dark-bearded, slimly built man with a low forehead and ferret-like eyes approached us. He was a Russian Armenian, a doctor of medicine, who had come to Trebizond to set up in practice. He did not care a fig for politics and was silent. He was absorbed in his own profession—that of getting on in the world.

Prominent in his quaint costume and mannerism was a young professor of philology from a university of Northern Europe. He was about twenty-five years of age and believed he knew everything worth knowing in geography, philology, and politics. His sympathies were all with the Christian “brothers.” He had come over from Russia, where, in the pursuit of his philological calling, he had rummaged over the worm-eaten parchments of sundry Christian monasteries, and had caught from these the current term of “brothers”—meaning that the lowliest Christian is a “brother,” and the Moslem Turk at best an infidel stranger. He laid down the law without hesitation. “I never condemn a whole people,” he exclaimed; “I say that the vices of a people are always the fault of an autocratic Government.” Here was a specimen of the learned European, caught young in Turkey, returning home with all the kudos which a few months—or even years—added to a smattering familiarity with Oriental languages, can confer, to be looked upon by his friends as an authority on the Eastern question, and possibly, later on, to champion the claims of the suffering “brothers” in the East in the legislative Chamber of his native land!

The sun had sunk in the west. It was twilight and we were sitting alone, when there entered an American missionary. A few preliminaries revealed the fact that we had to deal with a worthy, excellent man, past middle age—a teacher of the Gospel whose range of interests did not necessarily exclude politics.

“Yes, sir, it is a hard, laborious life, but we keep pegging away,” he said in the course of conversation. “No newspapers, railways, or telegraphs: no means of communication with one’s friends. It is like living in another world. And what a cesspool it is—fifty feet deep, and, do what we may, we can only disinfect the surface. Formerly, when I first came here, thirty years ago, it was very different. We were encouraged to work, and enjoyed every liberty; also we largely increased the number of our flock; but now,” he added despondently, “it is all reaction.”

“No wonder,” I rejoined, “the past has bred revolution.”

“Yes, I admit there has been a revolutionary movement, but not fostered by us. We have always inculcated obedience to the authorities.”

“But do I understand you rightly that a well-known revolutionist was one of your pupils?”

“Yes, and I always refused to believe that he had anything to do with the revolutionists.”

“Do you refuse to believe so now?”

“No, I am grieved to say.”

“Now tell me,” I continued, “how are things over in Russia—a Christian country?”

“Far worse than here,” he answered in excited tones. “The Russians are much more intolerant—much more reactionary than the Turks. Why, if the Russians ever come here, they will turn us missionaries neck and crop out of the country.”

Thereupon we parted, and I left the hotel in search of a breath of fresh air and came upon an Israelite.

“Why, sir,” he began, “those Armenians are an accursed race. To think of the position which they once held in Turkey, after having managed, in the course of generations, to get nearly all the wealth of the country into their hands, and to fill some of the best paid appointments! If they had ventured to play their revolutionary game in Russia, the Russians would not have left a man of them alive. I tell you they are accursed. In our Jewish hooks it is written—written three thousand years ago—that they shall not prosper, that their seed shall be wasted.”

Among the men who were credited with a large share in the cruel measures of repression said to have been carried out by different Turkish high officials against the Armenians, the name of Marshal Chakir Pasha, Imperial Commissioner for the introduction of reforms in Anatolia, stood foremost. The story that the Marshal, who was at Erzeroum in the month of October 1895, at the time of the Armenian rising, had, like a human bloodhound, stood, watch in hand, when asked for orders, and decided that the work of knocking the Armenians on the head was to continue for another hour and a half—some versions say two hours—went almost the round of the world. It was told to me in Constantinople by a person of distinction and impartiality, and although this did not amount to proof positive, I could hardly resist the conviction that there must be something in the tale, bearing in mind the exceptional source of my information. I had also heard that more than one of the diplomatic representatives of the Great Powers at Constantinople, notably Sir Philip Currie, had repeatedly but vainly urged the Sultan to recall the Marshal. I was therefore in a somewhat expectant frame of mind when I learnt that the redoubtable pasha was staying in Trebizond with his whole staff. Its principal members consisted of Hassib Effendi, formerly Turkish Consul-General at Tiflis in the Caucasus, and since in like capacity at Teheran; Danish Bey, formerly First Secretary of the Turkish Embassy at St. Petersburg; and Demeter Mavrocordato Effendi.

Marshal Chakir Pasha had had a distinguished career. Educated at the military school of Pancaldi, at Constantinople, he was afterwards attached to the Turkish état-major. Quitting that post after a time, he entered the Administrative Department, and became within a short space of time Governor in succession of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Bagdad. Subsequently he rejoined the army, and held a command in Montenegro during the war, and later on was present at the memorable Shipka Pass battles. After the Russo-Turkish war Chakir returned to Constantinople, and was sent as Turkish Ambassador to St. Petersburg, where he remained for twelve years, and where, so the Russian Consul-General at Erzeroum assured me, he saw the Marshal, the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps, leading the polonaise with the Empress Dagmar as a partner.

Since then Chakir Pasha had been civil and military governor of Crete, and previous to his latest appointment he had been nominated member of the High Military Commission of Inspection, which sat under the presidency of the Sultan at the Palace of Yildiz.

I felt somewhat abashed at the thought of asking such a man a series of questions closely affecting his personal honour. But Chakir himself made my task easy by his well-bred urbanity. He was a short, stout, full-bearded, distinguished-looking man of about sixty years of age, with massive features and bright keen eyes, denoting intelligence and capacity for hard work. I called on him at his official residence with Mavrocordato Effendi, and found him in a small, sparsely furnished apartment, sitting at a plain writing-table, the other members of his staff being also present and seated round the table.

After coffee and a few preliminary remarks, I told the Marshal frankly that I had heard the story of the watch, and that I hoped he would kindly excuse my asking him the true facts of the case. He took my question in very good part, and said in reply that he was perfectly cognizant of the tale, but that he had never considered it incumbent upon himself to take official notice of it—any other notice being, of course, in his position, out of the question. However, he could assure me, he added with a smile, that when the story first reached Erzeroum people who knew the facts of the case smiled at the idea. He could only advise me not to take his assurance one way or the other, but, as I was going to Erzeroum, to make my own inquiries.

Encouraged by the Marshal’s manner, I then asked him: “I have been told that a large amount of the trouble in Kurdistan was owing to the Kurds having been armed by the Turkish Government, and that it was your Excellency with whom this measure originated.”

“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “the Kurds have always been more or less armed, and have often used their arms against the Turkish Government, as you are doubtless aware. The idea of arming the Kurds in a homogeneous military fashion, which has led to the formation of the Hamadiè cavalry regiments (about 40,000 to 50,000 strong), belongs to Marshal Zeki Pasha, the Commander of Erzingian. The Sultan approved of the idea, which was intended to furnish a counterpoise to the Russian Cossack regiments, and asked me to work out the plan, which I did at Constantinople, in my capacity of member of the military commission at Yildiz. I even candidly admit that my sympathies are with these regiments—after all, they are my own countrymen.” The Marshal repeated this in a quiet tone of almost apologetic modesty, which had something quaintly touching in its simplicity, and set me thinking how very few men in a similar high position in other countries would have condescended to enter thus into details. I could not help feeling drawn towards the old soldier.

Chakir Pasha was not a man of many words, and several of those present now joined in the conversation, which became general. Only once did the Marshal interpose in a quiet but decisive manner. Danish Bey was in the midst of relating some incident, and suddenly stopped short, for some reason or other, whereupon the Marshal said: “Continue, tell him everything—il n’y a rien à cacher.”

As I was personally acquainted with many well-known Turkish officers and diplomatists, our conversation had plenty of points of mutual interest. However, in what follows I only give a résumé of what may interest the outside world. Part of what I have to relate was told in the Marshal’s presence, he now and then putting in a word or making some verbal correction, whilst some of the details were given me later in the evening at the hotel by the members of his staff and by other persons later at Erzeroum. I give the facts exactly as they were stated to me by individuals who one and all held responsible positions, and who, in our personal intercourse, which lasted several days, made the impression upon me of being honourable, cultivated men of the world. According to my informants, the original troubles at Trebizond had begun two years previously as a consequence of members of the Armenian revolutionary committee firing in broad daylight on Hamid Pasha, the commander of the garrison, and Bahri Pasha, Governor-General of Van, who happened to be at Trebizond at the time, and was walking with Razi Khan, the Persian Consul-General. Both pashas were wounded.

“With regard to the interior, signs of coming trouble were apparent a long time back. In some districts, where the Kurdish chiefs had been accustomed for centuries past to do all their business with the Armenian merchants and bankers in the towns, their mutual relations were of the most cordial character. The Kurds were even in the habit of staying in the houses of their Armenian friends when they came to town. Gradually a change came over the scene. The Kurds met strange faces in the towns, and the manner of the Armenian merchants visibly changed. Russian Armenian journalists from Tiflis became regular visitors, and the assumption is that they influenced the Armenian element in the direction of discontent and revolt. That they were able to do so is the more unaccountable as the Armenian language and the Armenian schools have always been entirely free, and in Turkey the Armenians are exempted from military service—a most distasteful profession to them—on paying a nominal sum. Moreover, the Armenians have been able, in the course of centuries, to gather into their hands the greater part of the wealth of the country. The Armenian ‘bakal,’ or village grocer, holds a great number of the Turkish peasantry in the perpetual bondage of usury. In Russia, on the other hand, the Armenians are rigorously drafted into the army, and are generally sent to serve their time in districts far away from their homes, while their schools and their language are interfered with by a severe censorship.

“When the insurrectionary movement was ripe, the men who appeared on the scene gave themselves the name of ‘Fedaïs,’ or the ‘Sacrificed for the country.’ This is the sobriquet which the notorious Armenian revolutionist, Daniel Tschoueh, applied to himself. Under the pretext of saving his country he roamed through the vilayet of Sivas, where he committed acts of brigandage. And yet this very man was so deficient in physical courage that he died of fear the very day he was brought before the gendarmerie of Sivas. He was originally employed in the mines of Kara Hissar Charki, in the district of the vilayet of Sivas. Among other atrocities which he committed was the murder of the representative of the Procureur-Général of Kara Hissar Charki, as well as his wife and children, on the road to Sivas.

“With regard to the reforms which have since been introduced, it is as well the world should know that the Armenians are only willing to accept such as conform easiest with their idiosyncrasies. But when it is a question of their undertaking obligations which involve certain hardships, such as the post of gendarme, they simply refuse to serve the Imperial Government. It is extremely difficult to find Armenians to serve as gendarmes, and this notwithstanding that the Imperial Government offers them all sorts of inducements. For not only are they well paid, but they are held to be doing military service in acting as gendarmes and are thus freed from the tax for exemption from military service. Instead of serving in the above capacity they prefer posts which offer chances of making money without hard work. Thus they are very eager to be appointed adjunct (muavin) to the kaimakan or to other more or less lucrative official posts.”

Chakir Pasha’s mission had been to travel all through Kurdistan for the last two years, and the following interesting statements were made sporadically in the further course of my conversations with his suite:

“One of the most remarkable features of this Armenian rebellion was the marvellous rapidity with which news spread among Mussulmans and Armenians alike. Thus, hardly had Sir Philip Currie in the autumn of 1895 telegraphed to Erzeroum to the locum tenens of the British Consul that the Sultan had accepted the proposals of the Powers than the gentleman in charge asked for the telegram and interpreted it as portending Armenian autonomy. A newspaper correspondent telegraphed from London to Givon Schismanian, the Archbishop of Erzeroum, ‘Victoire complète’ (Armenian: ‘Mouzaferiat berke mal’), and the news spread to the farthest limits of Kurdistan. In some places the Kurds decided to make a clean sweep of the Armenians. Chakir Pasha started immediately for Khinis, on the road between Erzeroum and Bitlis, and persuaded the Kurdish beys to remain quiet. Twenty-four hours later it might have been too late.” In fact, according to statements of Chakir Pasha’s suite, both here and elsewhere he saved many hundred lives by his prompt measures.

The Armenians on their side, so I was assured, fêted the correspondent who had championed their cause in a London newspaper as a national hero, “Le Sauveur de l’Arménie.” The Armenians of Erzeroum presented him with a pen set in brilliants; the Armenians of Tiflis gave him whole cases full of presentation plate. The following was subsequently told me by one of Chakir Pasha’s staff:

“We were staying at the government house in Van with Chakir Pasha at the end of September ’96, when we were unexpectedly informed that the hiding-place of the Armenian insurgents had been discovered. They had entrenched themselves in the gardens of the Armenian quarter of the town, and it would have been extremely difficult to get at them without artillery. Chakir, fearing that the Mussulman population might get beyond control if fighting was at once commenced, told off a large body of troops to cut off the Armenian quarter from the other part of the town. After this was done the Armenian revolutionists were driven out of the town, losing a number of killed and wounded. In the meantime the representative of the Armenian Bishop of Van called upon Chakir Pasha and showed him a telegram which he proposed to send at once to Monsignor Khrimyan, the Armenian Catholikos of Etchmiadzin (in Russia), in which he said that, while the Armenians had for six hundred years been contented under the dominion of the Turks, people from abroad were now coming to trouble their tranquillity, and he begged Monsignor Khrimyan to use his influence to prevent such people from coming into the country, as they could only do the Armenians harm. To this Chakir Pasha replied that the telegram in itself was excellent, but it ought to have been sent long ago, and not at the very moment when the insurgents had been discovered by the authorities; that it was a matter of public notoriety that these people had been in Van for two months past, and that the Armenian community had been well aware of the fact, and ought to have apprised the authorities, so that they might distinguish between their friends and their enemies.”

Of the members of the suite of Chakir Pasha with whom I had opportunities of talking the most interesting was Mavrocordato Effendi, an Orthodox Catholic, and related to the Greek princely family of the same name. He had previously been Turkish Consul-General at Liverpool and at Barcelona, Secretary of the Turkish Embassy at Paris, etc., and was a cultured European. He spoke English almost like an Englishman. Community of meals for several days following in stormy, depressing weather brought about mutual confidence and expansion of ideas.

Mavrocordato had not been able to see his young wife and child for fifteen months, as he had accompanied Chakir Pasha in his mission right through Anatolia, or Kurdistan—a country many Europeans will persist in calling “Armenia.” He was a hard-working and zealous Turkish official, with the breadth of view of a cultured man of the world.

“Yes,” he said in conversation, “the reforms desired by the Powers are now introduced throughout Asiatic Turkey and in full working order. But I do not think much of their practical value. Their spirit is already contained in Turkish law, which is excellently adapted to the needs of this part of the world. Of course we have had abuses: what country, particularly what Eastern country, has not? But we are on the road to improvement. The principal thing we want is a body of honest and capable administrators and minor functionaries, and on your journey through the country you will be able to convince yourself that among Turkish officials in Anatolia the majority, especially among the new appointments, are good men—a great improvement on the old order of things.”

“But how about the rumours I hear of appointments depending on the bribery of officials at the Palace in Constantinople?” I asked.

“Do I look like a man who has bribed his way through Palace officials?” he replied. “There may be instances of bribery and peculation, but hardly in connexion with these matters. What Asiatic Turkey is most pressingly in need of are good roads and railways. At the present moment the Mussulman population, which is far worse off than the Christian, is very poor; and the richer the harvest, the poorer they are. For where there is plenty prices decline, as there are no adequate means of transport and no markets. But another difficulty which the Government has to contend with in all its attempts at reform is the conservatism which seems ingrained in everything and everybody Asiatic. It is this that the diplomatists of Europe lose sight of when they, Penelope-like, elaborate one plan of reform after another for the Turkish Empire over a green baize table in some kiosk on the Bosphorus. A little incident will illustrate this. The Sultan sends a capable official to some distant province as kaimakan, or prefect. He has been educated at Constantinople, at the École Civile. He is scrupulously honest, in touch with modern ideas, enthusiastically devoted to his work, and anxious to benefit the people under his care. He endeavours to introduce reforms, beginning with the improvement of the roads of the town where he officially resides. He calls upon the inhabitants to contribute towards this good work. Result: the Mohammedans and the Armenian population join hands and petition the Government to have the kaimakan removed. He is a modern man: they prefer the old-fashioned do-nothing type of official.”

Such was the information my companion and I gathered on the eve of our plunge into the Asiatic domains of the Sultan from some of the men who had been responsible there for the maintenance of order. The time had come for departure. We had spent several days at Trebizond inspecting the bazaar and making some purchases of stores, Dr. Hepworth and myself ordering each a warm sheepskin fur—such as are worn by the peasants and camel-drivers—and after having engaged some tumble-down vehicles and horses, we started on the long journey through the interior of the country to Erzeroum—a matter of eight to ten days’ travelling. We took leave of every comfort associated with civilization, such as beds, washing-basins, even tables and chairs, which we only came upon again at the end of our journey at Alexandretta.

CHAPTER V
JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: II

My mother Earth!

And thou, fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,

Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.

And thou, the bright eye of the Universe,

That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight—thou shin’st not on my heart.

Byron

On leaving Trebizond the winding road rises gradually until you reach the tableland of the Taurus, the so-called Armenian Highlands. We took one last look at the Black Sea from a height before it was lost to sight, dark and menacing with its ships lying at anchor.

A feature which struck me with surprise shortly after leaving Trebizond were the Christian monasteries which we passed at intervals, perched high up on the ridge of the hills on either side of us. We were told that they had been tenanted by monks from time immemorial, and that they still inhabit them. Surely here was ocular demonstration in favour of Mohammedan tolerance, since, if the much-spoken-of fanaticism of the Turk had any tangible existence, these monasteries could not possibly have remained unmolested, undefiled, inhabited right through the many centuries during which the country has belonged to the Turks.

Another feature of our journey, which, however, only presented itself to us later on, was equally a matter of surprise to us—imbued as we were with the notion that peaceable Armenians were in daily fear for their lives and property right through the country. We frequently met whole Armenian families, men, women, and children, the women sitting astride their horses, travelling on the road without weapons of any kind.

It was a novel sensation to arrive in the evening at a miserable shed, a barn, a stable, mostly without any windows or other ventilation, termed a “han,” in which oxen, buffaloes, and camels were quartered, and to be told that we were expected to pass the night there. But such was destined to be, with few exceptions, our nightly experience for the next few weeks.

On emerging from our stable one morning, long before sunrise, we could scarcely see a yard in front of us. We were surrounded by a thick mist. It rose from an encampment of camels, buffaloes, and horses immediately facing us. It appeared that they had arrived in the evening after us, and, finding the “han” occupied by our party, had camped out all night in the open. The bitter cold had acted in the manner described, causing clouds of steam to rise from the bodies of the animals.

Our first station of any note was a place called Gumysch Hanè, a name which denoted that silver mines were or had been worked in the neighbourhood. Here we changed our carriages for saddle-horses, with which next morning we crossed the Zigana Pass—6000 feet high and one of the most perilous sections of our journey now that in the winter, owing to the snow, the road, at its best little better than a bridle-path, was narrowed to the breadth of a mere wooden plank, with yawning ravines on the off-side of us. It was here that we met the most thrilling experiences of our whole journey—namely, the encountering of caravans of mules, camels, and droves of sheep proceeding in the opposite direction. We were told that only a short time previously on this road a number of camels connected together by ropes had lost their footing and been precipitated into the abyss below. Here I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a passage describing Professor Vambéry’s experience over the same road, as it exactly tallies with my own: “On our way we met a long line of over-loaded mules descending amidst the wild screams of their Persian drivers. It is a rare sight to watch them advancing with the utmost care, without any accident upon the slippery path cut into the rock, scarcely two spans wide, flanked by the bottomless abyss. And yet it is a very unusual thing for a mule to be precipitated into the abyss yawning along the path. If ever it happens it is in winter. The danger is greatest when two caravans happen to meet face to face. In order to avoid such an encounter big bells, heard at a great distance, are used by them, warning the caravans to keep out of each other’s way. The continuously steep ascent lasted over four hours. There is hardly a worse road in all Asia, yet this is the only commercial road which connects Armenia with Persia, nay, Central Asia with the West. During the summer hundreds of thousands of these animals are traversing this route, going and coming, loaded with the products of Asia and the manufactures of Europe.”[^[6]]

[6]. “Arminius Vambéry: Life and Adventures.” London, 1890: pp. 38–39.

Thus our feeling of relief was great when we had happily crossed the Zigana Pass without further trouble than the anxious moments involved in dodging the camels, mules, and sheep we met; their tinkling bells warning us of their approach, whilst we in our turn warned them with our own bells hanging at our horses’ necks. There was only one critical moment, at least for me, when my horse became restive, for it looked as if intent on negotiating the abyss. I rose in my stirrup, ready to jump off on the inside, so as to allow of my mount taking the fatal leap alone.

On the evening of November 21 we arrived at Baiburt, the largest town in the Armenian Highlands after Erzeroum, from which it is still 105 kilometres away. Baiburt is about 1638 metres above sea-level, and occupies an important commercial and strategic position. It is situated on the fringe of the Armenian Highlands and the Pontine mountain range, and forms a connecting link between the two. Previous to the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 it possessed 10,000 inhabitants, which have since diminished to about one-half. It had also been taken by the Russians under General Paskiewitsch in 1828, and had suffered severely. An observant German traveller,[^[7]] visiting the place nearly seventy years ago, before the present German fashion of treating everything Turkish as couleur de rose, described Baiburt as giving one a foretaste of “those desolate, decayed, half-ruined, and nearly deserted towns which, from here right throughout the whole of Asiatic Turkey up to the Persian frontier, form a sequence of progressive misery.” These words require little variation to describe the appearance of the place when we came there. For instance, we were assured that there was not a single qualified doctor in the town. And yet, although a poverty-stricken place, it was still possible to meet with people bearing expensive weapons on their person, for, like the nomads of old, the Asiatic Turk usually carries all his portable property about with him. At least, so much might be inferred from the fact that I bought a beautiful damascene dagger with a solid silver sheath and handle from a servant for six Turkish pounds.

[7]. Reisen von Moritz Wagner. Leipzig, 1852.

We started early next morning, having exchanged saddle-horses for sledges, and arrived at sunset at our destination, another wretched “han” at the foot of the renowned Kop Dagh, which we were to cross in the morning, the pass being 8000 feet above sea-level. The summit is variously given as between 10,000 and 11,000 feet above sea-level. Owing to the danger of being delayed by snow-drifts, relays of workmen were engaged during the night to clear a path for our sleighs through the snow. It was arranged that we should start before daybreak, between four and five in the morning. The journey turned out to be a somewhat exciting affair. We started by the dim light of lanterns, first crossing a frozen stream. Our horses, at times up to their bodies in snow, had the greatest difficulty; at others our sleighs were repeatedly on the point of turning over and landing us in the unknown. Luckily, we were not troubled with the boisterous wind we had feared we might encounter at the summit; and after several hours of laborious ascent we crossed the pass in all safety, if not in comfort, owing to the bitter cold of that region. In the course of the day we met a solitary horseman on his way to the pass. He was a Canadian missionary, with whom we exchanged greetings.

Travellers unite in describing the scenery in this part of the Armenian Highlands as of surpassing beauty. In the winter we saw nothing of the wonderful effects of atmosphere and colour which form such a striking feature of the country, as the whole landscape up to the horizon was one mass of snow-covered mountains, somewhat resembling in character and outline the broad convex cupolas of a Turkish mosque, say the Aja Sophia of Constantinople.

As the sun breaks in the early morning on the Kop Dagh, a vision presents itself to the eye as of the bursting forth of the light of heaven. It reminded me of some of the most ambitious efforts of Gustave Doré in his illustrations of the Bible.

Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Merchant of Venice, v.

Arrived at the summit of the pass, the endless panorama of a snow-covered, undulating tableland at our feet is as that of a mythical world, majestic, almost terrible in the total absence of all human habitations as far as the eye could reach towards the horizon—weird in its vast expanse, all covered with snow.

We reached Erzeroum in the afternoon of November 24. The grim-looking old fortress was dimly perceptible from afar through the dry wintry mist, dominated by a background of hills rising considerably higher than the plateau upon which it is situated. As we drew near, our cavalcade careered along ventre à terre, the horses of our cavalry escort foaming and bleeding at the mouth as their riders urged them on at a furious pace in order to enable us to reach our destination before dark—the only instance in all our journey when I saw horses at all hardly used. Here, as later at Bitlis and Diarbekir, our arrival had been expected: the roofs of the houses were crowded with inhabitants—women and children among them—eager to obtain a sight of the remarkable visitors as our cortège drove past and proceeded through the narrow streets to our quarters at one of the public offices or konaks in the town. Our camp-beds were promptly fixed up and we could look for a few days’ rest after the exertions of our journey. Here we found ourselves in the interior of Asia.

Professor Vambéry, visiting Erzeroum more than fifty years ago, gives a depressing description of the place. The houses were already built in Eastern fashion, the walls of stone and mud running irregularly in zigzag line, with windows looking out in the yard rather than the street, secret entrances, and other little things characteristic of Eastern houses.[^[8]] “Evidences of the poverty of the inhabitants of Erzeroum meet the eye in whatever direction one may look. The dirt, the squalor, and the underground dwellings are unbearable. The smell of their food, which they cook by the fire made of a fuel called tezek (cattle dung), is especially loathsome.” This description tallies with our own experience. The hardships we had undergone—notably the unpalatable food spread out before us on the ground—quickened our longing to arrive at Erzeroum, which, to our imagination, fired by the contrast we expected it to offer to the places we had passed through, already presented itself in glowing colours. Dr. Hepworth and I had ceased to enjoy a meal long before we reached Erzeroum, and had it not been that M. Maximow, the Russian Consul, generously lent us his Armenian cook, who accompanied us during the remainder of our journey, we both might well have succumbed to its hardships.

[8]. “Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambéry.” London, 1890: p. 41.

Erzeroum is the capital of the vilayet of that name, and is situated on a plateau thirty-eight kilometres long by twenty-two broad, stretched out at an altitude of 6000 feet above sea-level. It is dominated by mountains of even greater altitude, near to which the Kara Sua, or Western Euphrates, has its source not far from the city. The town is a very old settlement. The word “Erzeroum” is a corruption of “Arzen-er-rum,” i.e. the town of Arzen of the Romans—in contradistinction to a neighbouring town of the same name which was a Syro-Armenian settlement in antiquity. In the beginning of the fifth century of our era Erzeroum was converted into a fortress by Anatolius, one of the generals of Theodosius the Younger, in honour of whom it was christened Theodosiopolis, a name it retained until the middle of the eleventh century. In more recent times it has been repeatedly occupied by the Russians, as in 1829 and 1878. To-day Erzeroum has 39,000 inhabitants, half of which are made up of Armenians, Persians, and a few Greeks. Persia, Russia, England, and the United States are represented by Consuls. It also contains a missionary station. Erzeroum is approached by a modern but rudely constructed chaussée.

We had looked forward to visiting the bazaar, in the hope of being able to get hold of some bargains in rare coins, old Turkish swords or daggers; but we were doomed to disappointment here, as also later on at Bitlis and Diarbekir. Whatever may have been the chances of bargains in times gone by, there was nothing left worth picking up when we were there. Of greater interest than the bazaar was the street in which the sword-makers plied their trade beside each other as in their guilds in the Middle Ages. They worked according to primitive methods, with rude tools and weighing scales, but apparently under dignified independent conditions, and seemed to take a pride in their art, which allowed of a workman putting his best efforts into his work and claiming a price in accordance therewith. They showed us some beautiful specimens of damascene blades and gold-inlay work, which induced us to have our names inscribed in Turkish characters by the same process on the barrels of our Winchester rifles. But even their trade, we were told, is not what it used to be. Many of their best workmen (Armenians) had emigrated to Russia, though some had since returned. Altogether the influence of Russia loomed large over the place. The driver of our sleigh, an elderly man, had been a prisoner in Russia. We were told there was a great scarcity of wood in the district, but though there are plenty of forests over the borders in Russia, the Russian authorities would not allow the timber to be exported to Turkey, as they pursued a policy of “drying up” all Turkish means of communication.

We next passed through a street almost monopolized by black amber workers. They drew their raw material from Persia, beyond Lake Van, but here again the workmen told us sadly that they had to procure their tools from Russia. Altogether, I gained the impression that the “Double Eagle” would not have much trouble in ousting the “Crescent” from these parts; though the more intelligent of the community, and, significant to note, Armenians among them, did not view the prospect with favour. The maligned Turk, if hopelessly backward from a practical point of view, is yet in many ways more pliable and conciliatory than the Russian. The market-place, with its endless array of carts and booths, was largely peopled by Persians, who do most of the carrying trade, the retailing business being here, as elsewhere, in the hands of the Armenians. Of Jews there was hardly any trace. We were told that they could not compete with the Armenians.

It would be difficult for people living under European conditions to realize the prestige which our party enjoyed in these distant parts. For the moment we figured as direct ambassadors from the Sultan and the public opinion of the outer world, thus eclipsing the status of the Governor-General himself. And yet in some respects there was a natural homeliness about our intercourse which is usually foreign to the Western world. Thus, when we had finished our dinner, at which we were waited upon by a host of servants—our six cavalry sergeants among others—and rose from our seats, those who had waited upon us sat down quite naturally in the places we had just vacated and proceeded to take their own dinner from the rich supply of viands left on the table as almost a matter of course. Nor did this unusual familiarity detract in the least from the extreme deference and goodwill with which we were waited upon by everybody deputed to our service.

With the object of our journey in view we called successively upon Mr. Graves, the British Consul; Mohamed Cherif Reouf Pasha, the Governor-General (Vali); M. Roqueferrier, the French Consul; and M. V. Maximov, the Russian Consul-General. To each of these gentlemen we put the question whether he believed in the truth of the tale about Chakir Pasha and the watch-in-hand episode. M. Roqueferrier ridiculed the story. “Ce sont des histoires inventées à plaisir,” he said, and added a few words of high personal appreciation of Chakir Pasha.

The Russian Consul, M. Maximov, said: “It is not my business to deny the truth of such tales. All I can tell you is, ‘que Chakir Pasha est un brave homme—un homme de très bon cœur.’ I have known him for years, he is a friend of mine.” Mr. Graves, the British Consul, said: “I was not here at the time, nor have I spoken to Chakir Pasha about the matter, but the Vali assured me that it was not true, and that is quite sufficient for me, as I should believe implicitly any personal statement of Reouf Pasha.”

“Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to rebellion?” I asked Mr. Graves.

“Certainly not,” he replied. “I do not believe that a single Armenian would have been killed.”

Mr. Graves is a weighty authority, and if he is in Turkey to-day I feel sure he will not object to my citing him in this important matter.

Let it suffice, we did not meet a single person in Erzeroum, whatever his nationality, race, or creed might have been, who attached the slightest credence to a story which, cunningly invented and circulated broadcast, not only cruelly slandered a man of integrity, but did a deal of harm to his country in the public opinion of the world.

The position of Vali or Governor-General of a Turkish province has come to be associated with an unenviable notoriety in the estimation of a large section of the European public. Not unnaturally, a great share of the responsibility for the wild vengeance of the mob rests with those invested with supreme authority, and where the person wielding this authority has been unequal to its grave responsibilities rumour has stepped in and has credited Turkish officials in general with every imaginable crime.

There are doubtless bad Valis as there are bad men in other stations of life, and we were on the look-out for one in order to make an example of him. Alas that I can only give my experience of a good Vali, Mohamed Cherif Reouf Pasha, Governor-General of the first-class vilayet of Erzeroum.

When General Grant visited Jerusalem, he found Reouf Pasha in the position of Governor of that wonderful city. A strong friendship sprang up between the thin-lipped, taciturn general and the suave, courtly, and yet most simple-mannered pasha. Their meeting had taken place many years previously, but Reouf still loved to talk of Grant, whom he recognized as one of the few truly great men he had come across in his lifetime. And as for Grant’s opinion of Reouf, I understand from a reliable source that, before leaving Jerusalem, Grant assured him that if he were again elected President of the United States, he would ask the Sultan to send him as Turkish Minister to Washington.

Reouf Pasha belongs to one of the oldest Turkish families. His father, Osman Pasha, was Governor-General of Bosnia during the last ten years of his life. Reouf Pasha was educated at home, under the care of special tutors, and later on his father sent him to Paris to complete his studies. Among the successive appointments of a long and honourable career may be mentioned those of kaimakan and moutesarrif in Roumelia, Bosnia, and Syria, and twelve years’ governorship of Jerusalem—one of the most difficult posts in the Empire. From thence Reouf Pasha was sent to Beirut as Governor-General, then in succession to Damascus, Bitlis, and Kharput, displaying everywhere the qualities of justice and mercy. His activity was ceaseless, and order followed his advent everywhere. He was appointed to his present very responsible and onerous position just one week prior to the breaking out of the Armenian rebellion in October 1895.

In the following words I endeavour to sum up the information I gained from various sources, notably the Consular representatives in Erzeroum, concerning Reouf Pasha’s work as Vali of that province.

“Those who have carefully watched the Governor-General in his endeavours to stay the misfortunes of those black hours, to limit their area and repair the damage done, cannot resist the impression that no trouble whatever would have taken place if he had had time to guard against it.

“When Reouf Pasha was appointed to Erzeroum it was already too late. He did what could be done to stop the impending evil, sending the soldiers and gendarmes to the most threatened spots, arresting pillaging Kurds and having them summarily shot, notably those who had come from the vilayet of Bitlis and had advanced as far as Kighi. Reouf Pasha caused between eighty and ninety Mohammedan Turks to be shot during those critical days.

“As soon as the murderous crisis had subsided Reouf Pasha did all in his power to make amends for the damage done. He caused searching investigations to be made all over Erzeroum, and wherever stolen property was found it was restored to its rightful owners. A large portion of what had been pillaged was taken away from the pillagers and delivered back. He also organized a public subscription, the amount of which enabled over four hundred mechanics to resume their occupation.

“Once tranquillity was restored, Reouf Pasha reorganized the gendarmerie and the police so effectually that whilst they were kept more strictly in hand than ever before, they were most successful in arresting a number of Armenian agents-provocateurs and revolutionary emissaries, such notably as Aram Aramian and Armenak Dermonprejan. In the affair of Alidjekrek, in 1896, a number of Armenian revolutionists came over the Russian frontier towards Alaskird. Reouf Pasha, informed in time, sent a body of gendarmes to meet them, with the result that three were killed and the remainder took flight back to Russia.

“A number of secret stores of arms in different places—Passen, Sitaouk, etc.—were discovered by the vigilance of Reouf’s police, and were safely stowed away. I myself saw some of the muskets seized—they bore a Russian inscription.

“All these results are most satisfactory, and have been obtained quietly, without exciting the feelings of the Mohammedan population. Since Reouf Pasha has been here it can be said that justice is handled in the most satisfactory manner. Several of the Courts of Justice which were in need of a broom have been swept, and now work perfectly. A number of corrupt officials have been made an example of—notably the former commissary of police. In a word, all classes of the population unite in recognizing the beneficent activity of the present Vali of Erzeroum, respecting whose government an English Blue Book contains the following: ‘The Vilayet of Erzeroum may be given as a model of administration among the governorships of Asiatic Turkey.’”

The following instance was told me of an Armenian being chosen for preferment by the Vali. He was the second commissary of police at Erzeroum, and had proved himself to be so efficient an officer all through the political troubles that Reouf procured for him the commandership of the order of Medjediè, and also a brevet rank equal to that of major in the Army.

Thus far the information given to me, the main correctness of which I feel I can vouch for.

I was privileged to meet his Excellency on several occasions during our stay in Erzeroum, and nothing could exceed his unvaried courtesy and affability. Even more than this, he showed a positive anxiety that I should accept no statement from him uncorroborated by independent testimony. Through his kindness every channel of information, whether Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, or Turk, was unreservedly set at my disposal. His pet phrase was: “Si c’est la vérité, dites-le!”

In my personal intercourse with Reouf Pasha I was struck by the extraordinary contrast between his quiet, even gentle manners and the great energy he was credited with. There was little mutual esteem between him and Chakir Pasha. To the mind of the mild, gentle-voiced administrator, the hardy soldier who had been credited with all sorts of dreadful energy was not energetic enough. The characteristic feature of Reouf Pasha’s energy seems to have been that it enabled him to conciliate—to turn an enemy into a friend.