The Gallipoli deportation gives some idea of my difficulties in attempting to fulfil my duty as the representative of Allied interests in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, despite these occasional outbursts of hatred, in the main the Turkish officials themselves behaved very well. They had promised me at the beginning that they would treat their alien enemies decently, and would permit them either to remain in Turkey, and follow their accustomed occupations, or to leave the Empire. They apparently believed that the world would judge them, after the war was over, not by the way they treated their own subject peoples, but by the way they treated the subjects of the enemy Powers. The result was that a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Italian enjoyed far greater security in Turkey than an Armenian, a Greek, or a Jew. Yet against this disposition to be decent a persistent malevolent force was constantly manifesting itself.
In a letter to the State Department I described the influence that was working against foreigners in Turkey. “The German Ambassador,” I wrote in substance, “keeps pressing on the Turks the advisability both of repressive measures and of detaining as hostages the subjects of the belligerent Powers. I have had to encounter the persistent opposition of my German colleague in endeavouring to obtain permission for the departure of the subjects of the nationalities under our protection.”
Now and then the Turkish officials would retaliate upon one of their enemy aliens, usually in reprisal for some injury, or fancied injury, inflicted on their own subjects in enemy countries. Such acts gave rise to many exciting episodes, some tragical, some farcical, all illuminating in the light they shed upon Turkish character and upon Teutonic methods.
One afternoon I was sitting with Talaat, discussing routine matters, when his telephone rang.
“Pour vous,” said the Minister, handing me the receiver.
It was one of my secretaries. He told me that Bedri had arrested Sir Edwin Pears, had thrown him into prison, and had seized all his papers. Sir Edwin was one of the best-known British residents of Constantinople. For forty years he had practised law in the Ottoman capital; he had also written much for the Press during that period, and had published several books which had given him fame as an authority on Oriental history and politics. He was about eighty years old and of venerable and distinguished appearance. When the war started I had exacted a special promise from Talaat and Bedri that in no event should Sir Edwin Pears and Prof. Van Millingen, of Robert College, be disturbed. This telephone message which I now received—curiously enough, in Talaat’s presence—seemed to indicate that this promise had been broken.
I now turned to Talaat and spoke in a manner that made no attempt to conceal my displeasure.
“Is this all your promises are worth?” I asked. “Can’t you find anything better to do than to molest such a respectable old man as Sir Edwin Pears? What has he ever done to you?”
“Come, come, don’t get excited,” rejoined Talaat. “He’s only been in prison for a few hours, and I will see that he is released.”
He tried to get Bedri on the wire, but failed. By this time I knew Bedri well enough to understand his method of operation. When Bedri really wished to be reached on the telephone he was the most accessible man in the world; when his presence at the other end of the wire might prove embarrassing the most painstaking search could not reveal his whereabouts. As Bedri had given me his solemn promise that Sir Edwin should not be disturbed, this was an occasion when the Prefect of Police preferred to keep himself inaccessible.
“I shall stay in this room until you get Bedri,” I now told Talaat. The big Turk took the situation good-humouredly. We waited a considerable period, but Bedri succeeded in avoiding an encounter. Finally I called up one of my secretaries and told him to go out and hunt for the missing Prefect.
“Tell Bedri,” I said, “that I have Talaat under arrest in his own office, and that I shall not let him leave it until he has been able to instruct Bedri to release Sir Edwin Pears.”
Talaat was greatly enjoying the comedy of the situation. He knew Bedri’s ways even better than I did, and he was much interested in seeing whether I should succeed in finding him. But in a few moments the telephone rang. It was Bedri. I told Talaat to tell him that I was going to the prison in my own automobile to get Sir Edwin Pears.
“Please don’t let him do that,” replied Bedri. “Such an occurrence would make me personally ridiculous and destroy my influence.”
“Very well,” I replied, “I shall wait until 6.15. If Sir Edwin is not restored to his family by that time I shall go to the Police Headquarters and get him.”
As I returned to the Embassy I stopped at the Pears’ residence and attempted to soothe Lady Pears and her daughter.
“If your father is not here at 6.15,” I told Miss Pears, “please let me know immediately.”
Promptly at that time my telephone rang. It was Miss Pears, who informed me that Sir Edwin had just reached home.
The next day Sir Edwin called at the Embassy to thank me for my efforts on his behalf. He told me that the German Ambassador had also worked for his release. This latter statement naturally surprised me; I knew no one else had had a chance to do anything, as everything transpired while I was in Talaat’s office. Half an hour afterward I met Wangenheim himself; he dropped in at Mrs. Morgenthau’s reception. I referred to the Pears case and asked him whether he had used any influence in securing his release. My question astonished him greatly.
“What?” he said. “I helped you to secure his release! Der alte gauner! (The old rascal.) Why, I was the man who had him arrested!”
“What have you got against him?” I asked.
“In 1876,” Wangenheim replied, “that man was pro-Russian and against Turkey!”
Such are the long memories of the Germans! In 1876 Sir Edwin wrote several articles for the London Daily News describing the Bulgarian massacres. At that time the reports of these fiendish atrocities were generally disbelieved, and Sir Edwin’s letters placed all the incontrovertible facts before the English-speaking peoples and had much to do with the emancipation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule. This act of humanity and journalistic statesmanship had brought Sir Edwin much fame, and now, after forty years, Germany proposed to punish him by casting him into a Turkish prison! Again the Turks proved more considerate than their German allies, for they not only gave Sir Edwin his liberty and his papers, but permitted him to return to London.
Bedri, however, was a little mortified at my successful intervention in this instance, and decided to even up the score. Next to Sir Edwin Pears, the most prominent English-speaking barrister in Constantinople was Dr. Mizzi, a Maltese, seventy years old. The ruling powers had a grudge against him, for he was the proprietor of the Levant Herald, a paper which had published articles criticising the Union and Progress Committee. On the very night of the Pears episode Bedri went to Dr. Mizzi’s house at eleven o’clock, routed the old gentleman out of bed, arrested him, and placed him on a train for Angora, in Asia Minor. As a terrible epidemic of typhus was raging in Angora, this was not a desirable place of residence for a man of Dr. Mizzi’s years. The next morning, when I heard of it for the first time, Dr. Mizzi was well on the way to his place of exile.
“This time I got ahead of you!” said Bedri, with a triumphant laugh. He was as good-natured about it and as pleased as a boy. At last he had “put one over” on the American Ambassador, who had been unguardedly asleep in his bed when this old man had been railroaded to a fever camp in Asia Minor.
But Bedri’s success was not so complete, after all. At my request Talaat had Dr. Mizzi sent to Konia, instead of to Angora. There one of the American missionaries, Dr. Dodd, had a splendid hospital. I arranged that Dr. Mizzi could have a nice room in this building, and here he lived for several months, with congenial associates, good food, a healthy atmosphere, all the books he wanted, and one thing without which he would have been utterly miserable—a piano. So I still thought that the honours between Bedri and myself were a little better than even.
When the English authorities arrested the Turkish Consul and his staff at Saloniki, the Turks promptly imprisoned nine leading members of the French colony. It took me nearly three weeks to have them released. Early in January, 1916, word was received that the English were maltreating Turkish war prisoners in Egypt. Soon afterward I received letters from two Australians, Commander Stoker and Lieutenant Fitzgerald, telling me that they had been confined for eleven days in a miserable, damp dungeon at the War Office, with no companions except a monstrous swarm of vermin. These two naval officers had come to Constantinople in submarines which had made the daring trip from England, dived under the mines in the Dardanelles, and arrived in the Marmora, where for several weeks they terrorised and dominated this inland sea, practically putting an end to all shipping.
The particular submarine in which my correspondents arrived, the E15, had been caught in the Dardanelles, and its crew and officers had been sent to the Turkish military prison at Afium Kara Hissar in Asia Minor. When news of the alleged maltreatment of Turkish prisoners in Egypt was received, lots were drawn among these prisoners to see which two should be taken to Constantinople and imprisoned in reprisal. Stoker and Fitzgerald drew the unlucky numbers, and had been lying in this terrible underground cell for eleven days. I immediately took the matter up with Enver and suggested that a neutral doctor and officer examine the Turks in Egypt and report on the truth of the stories. We promptly received word that the report was false, and that, as a matter of fact, the Turkish prisoners in English hands were receiving excellent treatment.
About this time I called on Monsignor Dolci, the Apostolic Delegate in Turkey. He happened to refer to a Lieutenant Fitzgerald, who, he said, was then a prisoner of war at Afium Kara Hissar.
“I am much interested in him,” said Monsignor Dolci, “because he is engaged to the daughter of the British Minister to the Vatican. I spoke to Enver about him, and he promised that he would receive special treatment.”
“What is his first name?” I asked.
“Jeffrey.”
“He’s receiving ‘special treatment’ indeed,” I answered. “Do you know that he is in a dungeon in Constantinople this very moment?”
Naturally M. Dolci was much disturbed, but I reassured him, saying that his protégé would be released in a few days.
“You see how shamefully you treated these young men,” I now said to Enver; “you should do something to make amends.”
“All right; what would you suggest?”
Stoker and Fitzgerald were prisoners of war, and, according to the usual rule, would have been sent back to the prison camp after being released from their dungeon. I now proposed that Enver should give them a vacation of eight days in Constantinople. He entered into the spirit of the occasion, and the men were released. They certainly presented a sorry sight; they had spent twenty-five days in the dungeon, with no chance to bathe or to shave, with no change of linen or any of the decencies of life. But Mr. Philip took charge, furnished them the necessaries, and in a brief period we had before us two young and handsome British naval officers. Their eight days’ freedom turned out to be a triumphal procession, notwithstanding that they were always accompanied by an English-speaking Turkish officer. Monsignor Dolci and the American Embassy entertained them at dinner, and they had a pleasant visit to the Girls’ College. When the time came to return to their prison camp, the young men declared that they would be glad to spend another month in dungeons if they could have a corresponding period of freedom in the city when liberated.
In spite of all that has happened I shall always have a kindly feeling toward Enver for his treatment of Fitzgerald. I told the Minister of War about the lieutenant’s engagement.
“Don’t you think he’s been punished enough?” I asked. “Why don’t you let the boy go home and marry his sweetheart?”
The proposition immediately appealed to Enver’s sentimental side.
“I’ll do it,” he replied, “if he will give me his word of honour not to fight against Turkey any more.”
Fitzgerald naturally gave this promise, and so his comparatively brief stay in the dungeon had the result of freeing him from imprisonment and restoring him to happiness. As poor Stoker had formed no romantic attachments that would have justified a similar plea in his case, he had to go back to the prison in Asia Minor. He did this, however, in a genuinely sporting spirit that was worthy of the best traditions of the British Navy.
The failure of the Allied fleet at the Dardanelles did not definitely settle the fate of Constantinople. Naturally the Turks and the Germans felt immensely relieved when the fleet sailed away. But they were by no means entirely easy in their mind. The most direct road to the ancient capital still remained available to their enemies.
In early September, 1915, one of the most influential Germans in the city gave me a detailed explanation of the prevailing military situation. He summed up the whole matter in the single phrase:
“We cannot hold the Dardanelles without the military support of Bulgaria.”
This meant, of course, that unless Bulgaria adopted the cause of Turkey and the Central Powers, the Gallipoli expedition would succeed, Constantinople would fall, the Turkish Empire would collapse, Russia would be recreated as an economic and military power, and the War, in a comparatively brief period, would terminate in a victory for the Entente. Not improbably the real neutrality of Bulgaria would have had the same result. It is thus perhaps not too much to say that, in September and October of 1915, the Bulgarian Government held the duration of the war in its hands.
This fact is of such pre-eminent importance that I can hardly emphasise it too strongly. I suggest that my readers take down the map of a part of the world with which they are not very familiar—that of the Balkan States, as determined by the Treaty of Bucharest. All that remains of European Turkey is a small irregular area stretching, perhaps, one hundred miles west of Constantinople. The nation whose land is contiguous everywhere to Turkey is Bulgaria. The main railroad line to Western Europe starts at Constantinople and runs through Bulgaria, by way of Adrianople, Phillipopolis, and Sofia. At that time Bulgaria could create an army of 500,000 well-trained, completely organised troops. Should these once start marching toward Constantinople there was practically nothing to bar their way.
Turkey had a considerable army, it is true, but it was then finding plenty of employment repelling the Allied forces at the Dardanelles and the Russians in the Caucasus. With Bulgaria hostile, Turkey could obtain neither troops nor munitions from Germany. Turkey would have been completely isolated, and, under the pounding of Bulgaria, would have disappeared as a military force, and as a European State, in one very brief campaign.
I wish to direct particular attention to this railroad, for it was, after all, the main strategic prize for which Germany was contending. After leaving Sofia, it crosses north-eastern Serbia, the most important stations being at Nish and Belgrade. From the latter point it crosses the River Save and, later, the River Danube, and thence pursues its course to Budapest and Vienna and thence to Berlin. Practically all the military operations that took place in the Balkans in 1915-16 had for their ultimate object the possession of this road. Once holding this line, Turkey and Germany would no longer be separated; economically and militarily they would become a unit.
The Dardanelles, as I have described, was the link that connected Russia with her allies; with this passage closed; Russia’s collapse rapidly followed. The valley of the Morava and the Maritza, in which this railroad is laid, constituted for Turkey a kind of waterless Dardanelles. In her possession it gave her access to her allies; in the possession of her enemies, the Ottoman Empire would go to pieces. Only the accession of Bulgaria, to the Teutonic cause could give the Turks and Germans this advantage. As soon as Bulgaria entered, that section of the railroad extending to the Serbian frontier would at once become available. If Bulgaria joined the Central Powers as an active participant, the conquest of Serbia would inevitably follow, and this would give the link extending from Nish to Belgrade to the Teutonic Powers. Thus the Bulgarian alliance would make Constantinople a suburb of Berlin, place all the resources of the Krupps at the disposal of the Turkish Army, make inevitable the failure of the Allied attack on Gallipoli, and lay the foundation of that Oriental Empire which had been for thirty years the mainspring of German policy.
It is thus apparent what my German friend meant when, in early September, he said that, “without Bulgaria we cannot hold the Dardanelles.” Everybody sees this so clearly now that there is a prevalent belief that Germany had arranged this Bulgarian alliance before the outbreak of the war. On this point I have no information. That the Bulgarian King and the Kaiser may have arranged this co-operation in advance is not unlikely. But we must not make the mistake of believing that this settled the matter, for the experiences of the last few years show us that treaties are not always lived up to. Whether there was an understanding or not, I know that the Turkish officials and the Germans by no means regarded it as settled that Bulgaria would take their side. In their talks with me they constantly showed the utmost apprehension over the outcome; and at one time the fear was general that Bulgaria would take the side of the Entente.
I had my first personal contact with the Bulgarian negotiations in the latter part of May, when I was informed that M. Koloucheff, the Bulgarian Minister, had notified Robert College that the Bulgarian students could not remain in Constantinople until the end of the college year, but would have to return home by June 5th. The College for Women had also received word that all the Bulgarian girls must return at the same time. Both these American institutions had many Bulgarian students, in most cases splendid representatives of their country; it is through these colleges, indeed, that the distant United States and Bulgaria had established such friendly relations. But they had never had such an experience before.
Everybody was discussing the meaning of this move. It seemed quite apparent. The chief topic of conversation at that time was Bulgaria. Would she enter the war? If so, on which side would she cast her fortunes? One day it was reported that she would join the Entente; the next day that she had decided to ally herself with the Central Powers. The prevailing belief was that she was actively bargaining with both sides and looking for the highest terms. Should Bulgaria go with the Entente, however, it would be undesirable to have any Bulgarian subjects marooned in Turkey. As the boys and girls in the American colleges usually came from important Bulgarian families—one of the girls was the daughter of General Ivanoff, who led the Bulgarian Armies in the Balkan Wars—the Bulgarian Government might naturally have a particular interest in their safety.
The conclusion reached by most people was that Bulgaria had decided to take the side of the Entente. The news rapidly spread throughout Constantinople. The Turks were particularly impressed. Dr. Patrick, President of Constantinople College, arranged a special hurried gathering for her Bulgarian students, which I attended. It was a sad occasion, more like a funeral than the festivity that usually took place. I found the Bulgarian girls almost in a hysterical state; they all believed that war was coming immediately, and that they were being bundled home merely to prevent them from falling into the clutches of the Turks. My sympathies were so aroused that we brought them down to the American Embassy, where we all spent a delightful evening. After dinner the girls dried their eyes and entertained us by singing many of their beautiful Bulgarian songs, and what had started as a mournful day thus had a happy ending. Next morning the girls all left for Bulgaria.
A few weeks afterwards the Bulgarian Minister told me that the Government had summoned the students home merely for political effect. There was no immediate likelihood of war, he said, but Bulgaria wished Germany and Turkey to understand that there was still a chance that she might join the Entente. Bulgaria, as all of us suspected, was apparently on the auction block.
The one fixed fact in the Bulgarian position was the determination to have Macedonia. Everything, said Koloucheff, depended upon that. His conversations reflected the general Bulgarian view that Bulgaria had fairly won this territory in the first Balkan War, that the Powers had unjustly permitted her to be deprived of it, that it was Bulgarian by race, language, and tradition, and that there could be no permanent peace in the Balkans until it was returned to its rightful possessors. But Bulgaria insisted on more than a promise, to be redeemed after the war was over; she demanded immediate occupation. Once Macedonia was turned over to Bulgaria, she would join her forces to those of the Entente. There were two great prizes in the game then being played in the Balkans: one was Macedonia, which Bulgaria must have, and the other Constantinople, which Russia was determined to get. Bulgaria was entirely willing that Russia should have Constantinople if she herself could obtain Macedonia.
I was given to understand that the Bulgarian General Staff had plans all completed for the capture of Constantinople, and that they had shown these plans to the Entente. Their programme called for a Bulgarian army of 300,000 men advancing upon Constantinople twenty-three days from the time the signal to start should be given—but promises of Macedonia would not suffice; they must have possession.
Bulgaria recognised the difficulties of the Allied position. She did not believe that Serbia and Greece would voluntarily surrender Macedonia, nor did she believe that the Allies would dare to take this country away from them by force. In that event, she thought that there was a danger that Serbia might
make a separate peace with the Central Powers. On the other hand, Bulgaria would object if Serbia received Bosnia and Herzegovina as compensation for the loss of Macedonia; she felt that an enlarged Serbia would be a constant menace to her, and hence a future menace to peace in the Balkans. Thus the situation was extremely difficult and complicated.
One of the best informed men in Turkey was Paul Weitz, the correspondent of the Frankfürter Zeitung. Weitz was more than a journalist; he had spent thirty years in Constantinople, had the most intimate personal knowledge of Turkish affairs, and he was the confidant and adviser of the German Embassy. His duties there were really semi-diplomatic. Weitz had really been one of the most successful agencies in the German penetration of Turkey; it was common talk that he knew every important man in the Turkish Empire, the best way to approach him, and his price. I had several talks with Weitz about Bulgaria during those critical August and early September days. He said many times that it was not at all certain that she would join her forces with Germany. Yet on September 7th Weitz came to me with important news. The situation had changed overnight. Baron Neurath, the Conseiller of the German Embassy at Constantinople, had gone to Sofia, and, as a result of his visit, an agreement had been signed that would make Bulgaria Germany’s ally.
Germany, said Weitz, had won over Bulgaria by doing something which the Entente had not been able and willing to do. It had secured her the immediate possession of a piece of coveted territory. Serbia had refused to give Bulgaria immediate possession of Macedonia; Turkey, on the other hand, had now surrendered a piece of the Ottoman Empire. The amount of land in question, it is true, was apparently insignificant, yet it had great strategic advantages and represented a genuine sacrifice by Turkey.
The Maritza River, a few miles north of Enos, bends to the east, to the north, and then to the west again, creating a block of territory with an area of nearly 1,000 square miles, including the important cities of Demotica, Karaagatch, and half of Adrianople. What makes this land particularly important is that it contains about fifty miles of the railroad which runs from Dedeagatch to Sofia. All this railroad, that is except this fifty miles, is laid in Bulgarian territory; this short strip, extending through Turkey, cuts Bulgaria’s communications with the Mediterranean. Naturally Bulgaria yearned for this strip of land, and Turkey now handed it over to her. This cession cleared up the whole Balkan situation and made Bulgaria an ally of Turkey and the Central Powers. Besides the railroad, Bulgaria obtained that part of Adrianople which lay west of the Maritza River. In addition, of course, Bulgaria was to receive Macedonia as soon as that province could be occupied by Bulgaria and her allies.
I vividly remember the exultation of Weitz when this agreement was signed.
“It’s all settled,” he told me. “Bulgaria has decided to join us. It was all arranged last night at Sofia.”
The Turks also were greatly relieved. For the first time they saw the way out of their troubles. The Bulgarian arrangement, Enver told me, had taken a tremendous weight off their minds.
“We Turks are entitled to the credit,” he said, “of bringing Bulgaria in on the side of the Central Powers. She would never have come to our assistance if we hadn’t given her that slice of land. By surrendering it immediately, and not waiting until the end of the war, we showed our good faith. It was very hard for us to do it, of course, especially to give up part of the city, of Adrianople, but it was worth the price. We really surrendered this territory in exchange for Constantinople, for if Bulgaria had not come in on our side we would have lost this city. Just think how enormously we have improved our position. We have had to keep more than 200,000 men at the Bulgarian frontier, to protect us against any possible attack from that quarter. We can now transfer all these troops to the Gallipoli Peninsula, and thus make it absolutely impossible that the Allies’ expedition can succeed. We are also greatly hampered at the Dardanelles by the lack of ammunition. But Bulgaria, Austria, and Germany are to make a joint attack on Serbia and will completely control that country in a few weeks, so we shall have a direct railroad line from Constantinople into Austria and Germany and can get all the war supplies which we need. With Bulgaria on our side no attack can be made on Constantinople from the north; we have created an impregnable bulwark against Russia.
“I do not deny that the situation has caused us great anxiety. We were afraid that Greece and Bulgaria would join hands, and that would also bring in Rumania. Then Turkey would have been lost; they would have had us between a pair of pincers. But now we have only one task before us, that is to drive the English and French at the Dardanelles into the sea. With all the soldiers and all the ammunition which we need, we shall do this in a very short time. We gave up that piece of land because we saw that that was the way to win the war.”
The outcome justified Enver’s prophecies in almost every detail. Three months after Bulgaria accepted the Teutonic bribe the Entente admitted defeat and withdrew its forces from the Dardanelles, and with this withdrawal Russia, which was the greatest potential source of strength to the Allied cause, and the country which, properly organised and supplied, might have brought the Allies a speedy triumph, disappeared as a vital factor in the war. When the British and French withdrew from Gallipoli they turned adrift this huge hulk of a country to flounder to anarchy, dissolution, and ruin.
The Germans celebrated this great triumph in a way that was characteristically Teutonic. In their minds, January 17th, 1916, stands out as one of the great dates in the war. There was great rejoicing in Constantinople, for the first Balkan express—or, as the Germans called it, the Balkanzug—was due to arrive that afternoon. The railroad station was decorated with flags and flowers, and the whole German and Austrian population of Constantinople, including the Embassy staffs, assembled to welcome the incoming train. As it finally rolled into the station, thousands of “hochs” went up from as many raucous throats.
Since that January 17th, 1916, the Balkanzug has run regularly from Berlin to Constantinople. The Germans believe that it is as permanent a feature of the new Germanic Empire as the line from Berlin to Hamburg.
The defeat of the English fleet at the Dardanelles had consequences which the world does not yet completely understand. The practical effect of the event, as I have said, was to isolate the Turkish Empire from all the world, excepting Germany and Austria. England, France, Russia, and Italy, which for a century had held a threatening hand over the Ottoman Empire, had now lost all power to influence or control. The Turks now perceived that a series of dazzling events had changed them from cringing dependents of the European Powers into free agents. For the first time in two centuries they could now live their national life according to their own inclinations and govern their peoples according to their own will. The first expression of this rejuvenated national life was an episode which, so far as I know, is the most terrible in the history of the world. New Turkey, freed from European tutelage, celebrated its national rebirth by murdering not far from a million of its own subjects.
I can hardly exaggerate the effect which the repulse of the Allied fleet produced upon the Turks. They believed that they had won the really great decisive battle of the war. For several centuries, they said, the British fleet had victoriously sailed the seas, and, had now met its first serious reverse at the hands of the Turks. In the first moments of their pride the Young Turk leaders now saw visions of the complete resurrection of their Empire. What had for two centuries been a decaying nation had suddenly started on a new and glorious life. In their pride and arrogance the Turks began to look with disdain upon the people who had taught them what they knew of modern warfare, and nothing angered them so much as any suggestion that they owed any part of their success to their German allies.
“Why should we feel any obligation to the Germans?” Enver would say to me. “What have they done for us which compares with what we have done for them? They have lent us some money and sent us a few officers, it is true, but see what we have done! We have defeated the British fleet—something which the Germans and no other nation could do. We have stationed large armies in the Caucasus, and so have kept busy large bodies of Russian troops that would have been used on the Western front. Similarly we have compelled England to keep large armies in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in that way we have weakened the Allied armies in France. No, the Germans could never have achieved their military successes without us; the shoe of obligation is entirely on their foot.”
This conviction possessed all the leading men in Turkey, and now began to have a determining effect upon Turkish national life and Turkish policy. Essentially the Turk is a bully and a coward; he is as brave as a lion when things are going his way, but cringing, abject, and nerveless when reverses are overwhelming him. And now that the fortunes of war were apparently favouring the Empire, I began to see an entirely new Turk unfolding before my eyes. The hesitating and fearful Ottoman, feeling his way cautiously amid the mazes of European diplomacy, and seeking opportunities to find an advantage for himself in the divided counsels of the European Powers, now gave place to an upstanding, almost dashing, figure, proud and assertive, determined to live his own life and absolutely contemptuous of his Christian foes.
I was really witnessing a remarkable development in race psychology—an almost classical instance of reversion to type. The ragged, unkempt Turk of the twentieth century was vanishing, and in his place was appearing the Turk of the fourteenth and the fifteenth, the Turk who had swept out of his Asiatic fastnesses, conquered all the powerful peoples in his way, and founded in Asia, Africa, and Europe one of the most extensive empires that history has known. If we are properly to appreciate this new Talaat and Enver, and the events which now took place, we must understand the Turk who, under Osman and his successor, exercised this mighty but devastating influence in the world. We must realise that the basic fact underlying the Turkish mentality is its utter contempt for all other races. A fairly insane pride is the element that largely explains this strange human species. The common term applied by the Turk to the Christian is “dog,” and in his estimation this is no mere rhetorical figure; he actually looks upon his European neighbours as far less worthy of consideration than his own domestic animals.
“My son,” an old Turk once said, “do you see that herd of swine? Some are white, some are black, some are large, some are small; they differ from each other in some respects, but they are all swine. So it is with Christians. Be not deceived, my son. These Christians may wear fine clothes, their women may be very beautiful to look upon; their skins are white and splendid; many of them are very intelligent, and they build wonderful cities and create what seem to be great States. But remember that underneath all this dazzling exterior they are all the same—they are all swine.”
I have talked with many of the splendid men and women whom America has sent as missionaries to Turkey. They tell me that, in the presence of a Turk, they are always conscious of this attitude. The Turk may be obsequiously polite, but there is invariably an almost unconscious feeling that he is mentally shrinking from his American friend as something unclean. And this fundamental conviction for centuries directed the Ottoman policy toward its subject peoples. This wild horde swept from the plains of Central Asia and, like a whirlwind, overwhelmed the nations of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, conquered Egypt, Arabia, and practically all of Northern Africa and then poured into Europe, crushed the Balkan nations, occupied a large part of Hungary, and even established the outposts of the Ottoman Empire in the southern part of Russia.
So far as I can discover, the Ottoman Turks had only one great quality, that of military genius. They had several military leaders of commanding ability, and the early conquering Turks were brave, fanatical, and tenacious fighters, just as their descendants are to-day. I think that these old Turks present the most complete illustration in history of the brigand idea in politics. They were lacking in what we may call the fundamentals of a civilised community. They had no alphabet and no art of writing, no books, no poets, no art, and no architecture; they built no cities and thus established no orderly state. They knew no law except the rule of might, and they had practically no agriculture and no industrial organisation. They were simply wild and marauding horsemen, whose one conception of tribal success was to pounce upon people who were more civilised than themselves and plunder them.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these tribes overran the cradle of modern civilisation, which has given Europe its religion and, to a large extent, its civilisation. At that time these territories were the seats of many peaceful and prosperous nations. The Mesopotamian valley supported a large industrious agricultural population; Bagdad was one of the largest and most flourishing cities in existence; Constantinople had a greater population than Rome, and the Balkan region and Asia Minor contained several powerful States. Over all this part of the world the Turk now swept like a huge, destructive force. Mesopotamia in a few years became a desert; the great cities of the East were reduced to misery, and the subject peoples became slaves.
Such graces of civilisation as the Turk has acquired in five centuries have practically all been taken from the subject peoples whom he so greatly despises. His religion comes from the Arabs; his language has acquired a certain literary value by borrowing certain Arabic and Persian elements; and his writing is Arabic. Constantinople’s finest architectural monument, the Mosque of St. Sophia, was originally a Christian church, and practically all Turkish architecture is derived from the Byzantine. The mechanism of business and industry has always rested in the hands of the subject peoples—Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Arabs. The Turks have learned little of European art or science, they have established very few educational institutions, and illiteracy is the prevailing rule. The result is that poverty has attained a degree of sordidness and misery in the Ottoman Empire which is almost unparalleled elsewhere. The Turkish peasant lives in a mud hut in which he sleeps; he has no chairs, no tables, no eating utensils, no clothes except the few scant garments which cover his back and which he usually wears for many years.
In the course of time these Turks might learn certain things from their European and Arabic neighbours, but there was one idea which they could never even faintly grasp. They could not understand that a conquered people were anything except slaves. When they took possession of a land, they found it occupied by a certain number of camels, horses, buffaloes, dogs, swine, and human beings. Of all these living things, the object that physically most resembled themselves they regarded as the least important. It became a common saying with them that a horse or a camel was far more valuable than a man; these animals cost money, whereas they could get all the “infidel Christians” they needed for nothing. The usual name applied to the Christian was rayah—meaning cattle. It is true that the early Sultans gave the subject peoples and the Europeans in the Empire certain rights, but these in themselves really reflected the contempt in which all non-Moslems were held.
I have already described the “capitulations,” under which foreigners in Turkey had their own courts, prison, post-offices, and other institutions. Yet the early Sultans gave these privileges not from a spirit of tolerance, but merely because they looked upon the Christian nations as unclean, and therefore unfit to have any contact with the Ottoman administrative and judicial system. The Sultans similarly erected the several peoples each as the Greeks and Armenians into separate “millets,” or nations, not because they desired to promote their independence and welfare, but because they regarded them as vermin, and therefore disqualified for membership in the Ottoman State. The attitude of the Government toward their Christian subjects was illustrated by certain regulations which limited their freedom of action. The buildings in which Christians lived should not be conspicuous, and their churches should have no belfry. Christians were not permitted to ride a horse, for that was the exclusive right of the noble Moslems. If a Turk in the street should ask a Christian to clean his shoes, the latter must do so under penalty of death. The Turk had the right to test the sharpness of his sword upon the neck of any Christian.
One of the most remarkable official documents ever devised is the burial permit which the Ottoman Government used to issue, up to a hundred years ago, for the interment of its Christian subjects. The following is a literal translation:—“Oh thou irreligious priest, who hast been expelled from the presence of God, thou that wearest the crown of the devil and black raiments, so and so of your congregation of polluted infidels having died—although his desecrated corpse is not acceptable to the earth, yet as its terrible stench will become a public nuisance, take the polluted dead one, open a ditch, throw him in it, trample him under foot, and come back, thou infidel swine!”
Imagine a great Government, year in and year out, maintaining this attitude toward many millions of its own subjects! And for centuries the Turks simply lived like parasites upon these overburdened and industrious people. They taxed them to economic extinction, stole their most beautiful daughters and forced them into their harems, took Christian male infants by the hundreds of thousands and brought them up as Moslem soldiers. I have no intention of describing the terrible vassalage and oppression that went on for five centuries; my purpose is merely to emphasise this innate attitude of the Moslem Turk to people not of his own race and religion—that they are not human beings with rights, but merely chattels, which may be permitted to live when they promote the interest of their masters, but which may be pitilessly destroyed when they have ceased to be useful. This attitude is intensified by a disregard for human life and an intense delight in physical human suffering which are the not unusual attributes of primitive peoples.
Such were the mental characteristics of the Turk in his days of military greatness. In recent times his attitude toward foreigners and his subject peoples had superficially changed. His own military decline, and the ease with which the infidel nations defeated his finest armies, had apparently given the haughty descendants of Osman a respect at least for their prowess.
The rapid disappearance of his own Empire in a hundred years the creation out of the Ottoman Empire of new States like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Rumania, and the wonderful improvement which had followed the destruction of the Turkish yoke in these benighted lands, may have increased the Ottoman hatred for the unbeliever, but at least they had a certain influence in opening his eyes to his importance. Many Turks also now received their education in European universities, they studied in their professional schools, and they became physicians, surgeons, lawyers, engineers, and chemists of the modern kind. However much the more progressive Moslems might despise their Christian associates, they could not ignore the fact that the finest things, in this temporal world at least, were the products of European and American civilisation. And now that one development of modern history which seemed to be least understandable to the Turk began to force itself upon the consciousness of the more intelligent and progressive. Certain leaders arose who began to speak surreptitiously of such things as “Constitutionalism,” “Liberty,” “Self-Government,” and to whom the Declaration of Independence contained certain truths that might have a value even for Islam. These daring spirits began to dream of overturning the autocratic Sultan and of substituting a parliamentary system for his irresponsible rule. I have already described the rise and fall of this Young Turk movement under such leaders as Talaat, Enver, Djemal, and their associates in the Committee of Union and Progress. The point which I am emphasising here is that this movement presupposed a complete transformation of Turkish mentality, especially in its attitude toward subject peoples. No longer, under the reformed Turkish State, were Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and Jews to be regarded as “filthy Giaours.” All these peoples were henceforth to have equal rights and equal duties.
A general love-feast now followed the establishment of the new régime, and scenes of almost frenzied reconciliation, in which Turks and Armenians embraced each other publicly, apparently signalised the absolute union of the once antagonistic peoples. The Turkish leaders, such as Talaat and Enver, visited Christian churches and sent forth prayers of thanksgiving for the new order, and went to Armenian cemeteries to shed tears of retribution over the bones of the martyred Armenians who lay there. Armenian priests reciprocally paid their tributes to the Turks in Mohammedan mosques. Enver Pasha visited several Armenian schools, telling the children that the old days of Moslem-Christian strife had passed for ever and that the two peoples were now to live together as brothers and sisters.
There were cynics who smiled at all these demonstrations, and yet one development encouraged even them to believe that an earthly Paradise had arrived. All through the period of domination only the master Moslem had been permitted to bear arms and serve in the Ottoman Army. To be a soldier was an occupation altogether too manly and glorious for the despised Armenian. But now the Young Turks encouraged all Armenians to arm, and enrolled them in the Army on an equality with Moslems. These Armenians fought, both as officers and soldiers, in the Italian and the Balkan Wars, winning high praise from the Turkish Generals for their valour and skill. Armenian leaders had figured conspicuously in the Young Turk movement; these men apparently believed that a constitutional Turkey was possible, and they preferred such a Turkey to the suzerainty of the great European Powers or even to an independent State of their own. They were conscious of their own intellectual and industrial superiority to the Turks, and knew that they could prosper in the Ottoman Empire if left alone, whereas, under European control, they would have greater difficulty in meeting competition of the more rigorous European colonists who might come in. With the deposition of the Red Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and the establishment of a constitutional system, the Armenians now for the first time in several centuries felt themselves to be free men.
But, as I have already described, all these aspirations vanished like a dream. Long before the European war began the Turkish democracy had disappeared. The power of the new Sultan had gone, and the hopes of regenerating Turkey on modern lines had disappeared, leaving only a group of individuals, headed by Talaat and Enver, actually in possession of the State. Having lost their democratic aspirations, these men now supplanted it with a new national conception. In place of a democratic constitutional State they resurrected the idea of Pan-Turkism; in place of equal treatment of all Ottomans they decided to establish a country exclusively for Turks. I have called this a new conception; yet it was new only to the individuals who then controlled the destiny of the Empire, for, in reality, it was merely an attempt to revive the most barbaric ideas of their ancestors. It represented, as I have said, merely an atavistic reversion to the original Turk.
We now saw that the Turkish leaders, in talking about liberty, equality, fraternity, and constitutionalism, were merely children repeating phrases; that they had used the word “democracy” merely as a ladder by which to climb to power. After five hundred years’ close contact with European civilisation the Turk remained precisely the same individual as the one who had emerged from the steppes of Asia in the Middle Ages. He was clinging just as tenaciously as his ancestors to that conception of a State as consisting of a few master individuals whose right it is to enslave and plunder and maltreat any peoples whom they can subject to their military control. Though Talaat, Enver, and Djemal all came of the humblest families, the same fundamental ideas of master and slave possessed them that formed the statecraft of Osman and the early Sultans. We now discovered that a paper constitution, and even tearful visits to Christian churches and cemeteries, could not uproot the inborn preconception of this nomadic people, that there are only two kinds of people in the world—the conquering and the conquered.
When the Turkish Government abrogated the capitulations, and in this way freed themselves from the domination of the foreign Powers, they were merely taking one step toward realising this Pan-Turkish ideal. I have told of the difficulties which I had with them over the Christian schools. Their determination to uproot these, or at least to transform them into Turkish institutions, was merely another detail in the same racial progress.
Similarly, they attempted to make all foreign business houses employ only Turkish labour, insisting that they should discharge their Greek, Armenian, and Jewish clerks, stenographers, workmen, and other employees. They ordered foreign business houses to keep their books in Turkish, and I had some difficulty in arranging a compromise by which they could keep them in both French and Turkish. The Ottoman Government even refused to have any dealings with the representative of the largest Austrian munition maker unless he admitted a Turk as a partner. They developed a mania for suppressing all languages except Turkish. For decades French had been the accepted language of foreigners in Constantinople; all street signs were printed in both French and Turkish. One morning the astonished foreign residents discovered that all these French signs had been removed and that the names of streets, the directions on street cars, and other public notices, appeared only in these strange Turkish characters, which very few of them understood. Great confusion resulted from this change, but the ruling powers refused to restore the detested foreign language.
These leaders not only reverted to the barbaric conceptions of their ancestors, but they went to extremes that had never entered the minds of the wary Sultans. Their fifteenth-and sixteenth-century predecessors treated the subject peoples as dirt under their feet, yet they believed that they had a certain usefulness and did not disdain to make them their serfs. But this Committee of Union and Progress, led by Talaat and Enver, now decided to do away with them altogether. The old conquering Turks had made the Christians their servants, but their parvenu descendants bettered their instruction, for they determined to exterminate them wholesale and Turkify the Empire by massacring the non-Moslem elements. Originally this was not the statesmanlike conception of Talaat and Enver; the man who first devised it was one of the greatest monsters known to history, the “Red Sultan,” Abdul Hamid. This man came to the throne in 1876, at a critical period in Turkish history. In the first two years of his reign he lost Bulgaria, as well as important provinces in the Caucasus, his last remaining vestiges of sovereignty in Montenegro, Serbia, and Rumania, and all his real powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Greece had long since become an independent nation, and the processes that were to wrench Egypt from the Ottoman Empire had already begun. As the Sultan took stock of his inheritance, he could easily foresee the day when all the rest of his domain would pass into the hand of the infidel.
What had caused this disintegration of this extensive Turkish Empire? The real cause, of course, lay deep in the character of the Turk, but Abdul Hamid saw only the more obvious fact that the intervention of the great European Powers had brought relief to these imprisoned nations. Of all the new kingdoms which had been carved out of the Sultan’s dominions, Serbia—let us remember this fact to her everlasting honour—is the only one that has conquered her own independence. Russia, France, and Great Britain have set free all the rest. And what had happened several times before might happen again. There still remained one compact race in the Ottoman Empire that had national aspirations and national potentialities.
In the north-eastern part of Asia Minor bordering on Russia there were six provinces in which the Armenians formed the largest element in the population. From the times of Herodotus this portion of Asia has borne the name of Armenia. The Armenians of the present day are the direct descendants of the people who inhabited the country three thousand years ago. Their origin is so ancient that it is lost in fable and mystery. There are still undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions on the rocky hills of Van, the largest Armenian city, that have led certain scholars—though not many, I must admit it—to identify the Armenian race with the Hittites of the Bible. What is definitely known about the Armenians, however, is that for ages they have constituted the most civilised and most industrious race in the eastern section of the Ottoman Empire. From their mountains they have spread all over the Sultan’s dominions, and form a considerable element in the population of all the large cities. Everywhere they are known for their industry, their intelligence, and their decent and orderly lives. They are so superior to the Turks intellectually and morally that much of the business and industry had passed into their hands. With the Greeks, the Armenians constitute the economic strength of the Empire. These people became Christians in the fourth century and established the Armenian Church as their State religion. This is said to be the oldest State Church in existence.
In face of persecutions which have no parallel elsewhere, these people have clung to their early Christian faith with the utmost tenacity. For fifteen hundred years they have lived there in Armenia, a little island of Christians surrounded by backward peoples of hostile religion and hostile race. Their long existence has been one unending martyrdom. The territory which they inhabit forms the connecting link between Europe and Asia, and all the Asiatic invasions—Saracens, Tartars, Mongols, Kurds, and Turks—have passed over their peaceful country. For centuries they have thus been the Belgium of the East.
Through all this period the Armenians have regarded themselves not as Asiatics, but as Europeans. They speak an Indo-European language, their racial origin is believed to be by scholars Aryan, and the fact that their religion is the religion of Europe has always made them turn their eyes westward; and out of that western country, they have always believed, would some day come the deliverance that would rescue them from their murderous masters. And now, as Abdul Hamid in 1876 surveyed his shattered domain, he saw that its most dangerous spot was Armenia. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that these Armenians, like the Rumanians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, and the Serbians, aspired to restore their independent individual nation, and he knew that Europe and America sympathised with this ambition.
The Treaty of Berlin, which had definitely ended the Turco-Russian War, contained an article which gave the European Powers a protecting hand over the Armenians. How could he free himself permanently from this danger? An enlightened administration, which would have transformed the Armenians into free men and made them safe in their lives and property and civil and religious rights, would probably have made them peaceful and loyal subjects. But no Turk could rise to such a conception of statesmanship as this. Instead, Abdul Hamid decided that there was only one way of ridding Turkey of the Armenian problem—and that was to rid her of the Armenians. The physical destruction of 2,000,000 men, women, and children by massacres, organised and directed by the State, seemed to be the one sure way of forestalling the further disruption of the Turkish Empire.
One day Abdul Hamid sent for the Armenian Patriarch, the head of the Armenian Church. He received him in his palace directly overlooking the Bosphorus. The Sultan pointed to this stream and said: “If your Armenians do not stop agitating, I will make their blood flow like the Bosphorus out there!”
And now for nearly thirty years Turkey gave the world an illustration of government by massacre. We in Europe and America heard of these events when they reached especially monstrous proportions, as they did in 1895-96, when nearly 200,000 Armenians were most atrociously done to death. But through all these years the existence of the Armenians was one continuous nightmare. Their property was stolen, their men were murdered, their women were ravished, their young girls were kidnapped and forced to live in Turkish harems. All these things happened daily. Yet Abdul Hamid was not able to accomplish his full purpose; had he had his will, he would have massacred the whole nation in one hideous orgy. He attempted to do this in 1895, but found certain insuperable obstructions to his plan. Chief of these were England, France, and Russia. These atrocities called Gladstone, then eighty-six years old, from his retirement, and his speeches, in which he denounced the Sultan as “the Great Assassin” and “Abdul the Damned,” aroused the whole world to the enormities that were taking place. It became apparent that, unless the Sultan desisted, England, France, and Russia would intervene, and the Sultan well knew that, in case this intervention took place, such remnants of Turkey as had survived earlier partitions would disappear. Thus Abdul Hamid had to abandon his satanic enterprise of destroying a whole race by murder; yet Armenia continued to suffer the slow agony of pitiless persecution. Up to the outbreak of the European war not a day had passed in the Armenian vilayets without its outrages and its murders. The Young Turk régime, despite its promises of universal brotherhood, brought no respite to the Armenians. A few months after the love-feastings already described, one of the worst massacres took place at Adana, in which 35,000 people were destroyed.
And now the Young Turks, who had adopted so many of Abdul Hamid’s ideas, also made his Armenian policy their own. Their passion for Turkifying the nation seemed to demand logically the extermination of all Christians—Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians. Much as they admired the Mohammedan conquerors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they now perceived that these great warriors had made one fatal mistake, for they had had it in their power completely to obliterate the Christian populations and had neglected to do so. This policy, in their opinion, was a fatal error of statesmanship, and explained all the woes from which Turkey has suffered in modern times. Had these old Moslem chieftains, when they conquered Bulgaria, put all the Bulgarians to the sword, and peopled the Bulgarian country with Moslem Turks, there would never have been any modern Bulgarian problem, and Turkey would never have lost this part of her Empire. Similarly, had they destroyed all the Rumanians, Serbians, and Greeks, the provinces which are now occupied by these races would still have remained integral parts of the Sultan’s domain. They felt that the mistake had been a terrible one, but that something might be saved from the ruin. They would destroy all Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and other Christians, move Moslem families into their homes and into their farms, and so make sure that these territories would not similarly be taken away from Turkey.
In order to accomplish this great reform it would not be necessary to murder every living Christian. The most beautiful and healthy Armenian girls could be taken, converted forcibly to Mohammedanism, and made the wives or concubines of devout followers of the Prophet. Their children would then automatically become Moslems and so strengthen the Empire as the Janissaries did in former years. These Armenian girls represent a high type of womanhood, and the Young Turks, in their crude, intuitive way, recognised that the mingling of their blood with the Turkish population would exert a eugenic influence upon the whole. Armenian boys of tender years could be taken into Turkish families and be brought up in ignorance of the fact that they were anything but Moslems. These were about the only elements, however, that could make any valuable contributions to the new Turkey which was now being planned. Since all precautions must be taken against the development of a new generation of Armenians, it would be necessary to kill outright all men who were in their prime and thus capable of propagating the accursed species. Old men and women formed no great danger to the future of Turkey, for they had already fulfilled their natural function of leaving descendants; still, they were nuisances and therefore should be disposed of.
Unlike Abdul Hamid, the Young Turks found themselves in a position where they could carry out this “holy” enterprise. Great Britain, France, and Russia had stood in the way of their predecessor. But now these obstacles had been removed. The Young Turks, as I have said, believed that while they were at war with these nations they had no representatives in Turkey who could interfere with their internal affairs. Only one Power could successfully raise objections, and that was Germany. But Germany had never attempted to stop massacres in Turkey. In 1898, when all the rest of Europe was ringing with Gladstone’s denunciations and demanding intervention, Kaiser Wilhelm the Second had gone to Constantinople, visited Abdul Hamid, pinned his finest decorations on that bloody tyrant’s breast, and kissed him on both cheeks. The same Kaiser who had done this in 1898 was still sitting on the throne in 1915, and was now Turkey’s ally. Thus for the first time in two centuries the Turks, in 1915, had their Christian populations utterly at their mercy. The time had finally come to make Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks.