In the meantime, the march of political events led us on to Election Day and victory. Woodrow Wilson was triumphantly elected President, with a Democratic Congress behind him. The political ambitions of some of his managers were gratified. McAdoo became Secretary of the Treasury; Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; Redfield, Secretary of Commerce; and Burleson, Postmaster-General. What my friends a few months earlier had called a hopeless cause was now a dazzling success.

In April, 1913, Senator O’Gorman telephoned me from Washington that he had been requested by the President to offer me the Ambassadorship to Turkey. I apparently astonished him when I told him please to thank the President for me, but that I would not accept. O’Gorman, whom I had known for many years, urged me to come to Washington to discuss the matter with him. He said that I had no right to refuse such a tender over the telephone. I complied with his request, and we discussed the matter one evening until well past midnight. O’Gorman used all his persuasive powers, and told me that it seemed strange that I, an entire newcomer in politics, without ever having rendered any other political service, should have the temerity to decline to be one of the President’s ten personal representatives, in the capacity of Ambassador at one of the important Courts of Europe. He told me that the President was very much disappointed at my decision; and urged me to see him personally, and explain to him my reasons for declining. He said he knew the President was very anxious to avail himself of my services, and thought it ill advised for me to refuse to obey what amounted to a command from the head of the Government. I called on the President, and he said:

“I want you to take the Embassy at Constantinople. I am convinced that the two posts that demand the greatest intellectual equipment in our representatives are Turkey and China. Therefore, I am particularly concerned to have, in these two countries, men upon whom I can absolutely rely for sound judgment and knowledge of human nature. This is the reason I am asking you to take the post at Constantinople.”

“If that is the situation,” I replied, “I should much prefer China, although it is only a ministership. And for this reason: the Jews of this country have become very sensitive (and I think properly so) over the impression which has been created by successive Jewish appointments to Turkey, that that is the only diplomatic post to which a Jew can aspire. All the Jews that I have consulted about your offer have advised and urged me to decline it. Oscar Straus has been criticized by some of his co-religionists for accepting a second and even a third appointment to Constantinople. I don’t mind criticism, but I share the feeling of the other Jews that it is unwise to confirm an impression that this is the only field for them in the diplomatic service.”

Mr. Wilson’s reply was aggressive in manner and almost angry in tone.

“I should have hoped,” he said, “that you had a higher opinion of my open-mindedness and freedom from prejudice than this. I certainly draw no such distinctions, and I am sorry that you should have thought so. I think you will agree with me when I give you my further reasons for this choice. In the first place, Constantinople is the point at which the interest of the American Jews in the welfare of the Jews of Palestine is focussed, and it is almost indispensable that I have a Jew at that post. On the other hand, our interests in China are expressed largely in the form of missionary activities, and it seems quite necessary that our Minister there should be a Christian, and preferably a man of the evangelical type; and I am sincerely anxious to have you accept Turkey.”

Nevertheless, I remained firm in my refusal to accept the offer, and told the President I would have to find some non-political path in which to serve the people.

As I left the President, he gave me a look which is hardly describable. He was sadly disappointed that he had not been able to dominate my decision. He showed a deep affection for me, and it was evident how much he regretted that his arguments had failed to persuade me. On the other hand, I felt sorry, and probably showed it in my face, that I appeared so ungrateful at not promptly complying with his request, and abiding by his judgment that Turkey was the best place in which I could serve the country.

Shortly thereafter, my wife, my daughter Ruth, and I embarked for Europe, where we intended to spend the summer. While at Aix-les-Bains, I met Ambassador Myron T. Herrick, and I mentioned to him that I had refused the Ambassadorship to Turkey. He told me that I had made a grievous mistake, and probably from ignorance; that I did not comprehend what a splendid position that of Ambassador was; that not only I, but my children and my children’s children, would be benefited by my having held such a position. He ended by urging me that if I still could obtain the post, I should take steps to secure it.

My friend, Dr. Stephen S. Wise (of the Free Synagogue of New York, of which I was president), was then in Paris. I wrote him about the matter, and asked whether he could come to Aix-les-Bains for a consultation. He replied that he had but three days left in Europe, but that if I would start to Dijon the following morning he would also start from Paris, and we should both reach Dijon at noon. He would meet me at the station, and we could have four hours together to discuss the matter before our return to our respective bases.

We met at Dijon as arranged, and to my astonishment I found Wise tremendously anxious to have me accept the position. He told me that he had just visited Palestine, and that amongst the other services that I could render in Turkey, would be a great service to the Jews in Palestine. He reminded me of the happy experience, in the same office, of Solomon Hirsch, of Portland, Ore., who had been president of his congregation in that city. I knew the facts of that experience as Mr. Hirsch was the uncle of Judge Samson Lachman, who had been my partner in the practise of the law for twenty years. Dr. Wise urged me with all the force of his eloquence to rescind my declination.

I told Dr. Wise that I would be back in America in September, and if the position had not yet been filled at that time, I would reconsider it. On the strength of this statement, Dr. Wise telegraphed the President that I would accept. Within three days I received a cable from the President, again tendering me the position, and I accepted it.

Meanwhile, on January 1, 1913, Sulzer had been inaugurated as Governor of New York. A few weeks before this event, some of the leading social workers of New York City came to me and asked me to secure them an opportunity to have a conference with the President-elect. They wished to put before him the kind of legislation that would be required to carry out the social programme which they had been largely responsible for having embodied in the Democratic and Progressive platforms. I told them I did not see how the President could do much in this direction. Most of their plans called for state legislation, and I pointed out that it would be better and more effective for them to meet Governor Sulzer. I offered to give a dinner at my house in New York, at which Governor Sulzer would be the guest of honour, and I told them they might give me a list of the people whom they wished to have meet him. The list they gave me included the best-known social workers, such people as Homer Folks, Owen R. Lovejoy, Mary E. Dreier, Lillian D. Wald, John A. Kingsbury, and Edward T. Devine.

Sulzer accepted my invitation readily enough. One reason for his acceptance became apparent when I heard that the state printer at the moment was pressing him for the manuscript of his inaugural address, which he had not yet written, though it was already late in December. When the address was delivered some days later it embodied in his own language many of the thoughts and proposals that were put forward that evening by the social workers.

After the dinner the party adjourned to the library, and there I seated Sulzer in a big carved oak chair, facing the others, who sat in a semicircle before him. Each of the guests in turn made a presentation to the Governor of the situation and needs in the field of social reform in which he or she was an expert. These were really splendid expositions of the improvements required in the health, child-labour, tenement-house, and other laws. When Sulzer made his reply to their addresses, I was astonished at the grasp he displayed of the principles involved in these reforms, and at the eagerness with which he embraced their advocacy. It really seemed as if he were going to go heart and soul into making a record of progressive legislation for his administration.

I was not less delighted when, after a conference a few weeks later with Messrs. Folks, Kingsbury, and Devine, concerning the most important of these reforms—the drastic revision of the health laws—the four of us went up as a delegation to see Sulzer, and secured his hearty support. The situation was, that the health laws of New York State were being administered by five or six hundred health boards in the various villages, and an investigation had shown that a very substantial percentage of the health commissioners in these places were undertakers. We proposed a centralized state health board headed by a state health commissioner. Sulzer agreed to back the plan. He went further and said to me: “What’s more, you may name the Health Commissioner.” We thereupon returned to New York, and my friends drew up a draft of new laws to regulate the public health. This codification was enacted by the legislature at Sulzer’s insistence, and has since been adopted by more than thirty states. We agreed that Dr. Hermann M. Biggs was the ideal man for Commissioner, and I asked Sulzer to appoint him. He then hedged on his promise and selected another man, though Dr. Biggs was later appointed and made a national reputation in the office. Sulzer did, however, make good a part of his promise. He felt it necessary, for political reasons, to appoint two or three men of his own choice to the State Board of Health, but he allowed us to name the majority membership.

Sulzer’s administration thus started auspiciously. He saw, what every other shrewd observer also saw: the dazzling opportunity which lay before any politician who stood out boldly for the people as against the bosses, and who could embody this independent position in practical measures of reform. The lesson of Roosevelt’s career had just been confirmed by Wilson’s. But the experiences I am now narrating ultimately convinced me that Sulzer did not have the courage which had carried these two men of eminence. He “played politics,” and got no further than an unconvincing imitation of their methods. He continued to assure us Independents, on the one hand, that he was whole-heartedly converted, and that he had broken entirely with his past. But later we found out that he was at the same time assuring his friends in Tammany that “I am the same old Bill.” He tried to imitate Roosevelt’s success in another direction, in building up a personal “machine” in New York State by coquetting with the up-state Independent Democrats, to whom he allotted a share of the patronage which he controlled.

Ultimately, of course, both sides found him out for what he was. When they did, the Independents simply dropped him. Tammany, however, exacted a swift and terrible vengeance. If discipline were to be maintained within the wigwam, not even the appearance of open revolt could be tolerated, and Tammany proceeded to make a spectacular example of Sulzer.

Sulzer’s first appearance at Albany as Governor was not, however, a shock to Tammany alone. Albany is like Washington on a small scale. The Governor’s mansion was, traditionally, not only the office of the chief executive of the state, it had been likewise the social centre around which revolved a sort of court of élite society. Heretofore every governor of New York had been a very presentable social figure, and they had all maintained at the executive mansion an atmosphere of social distinction. Sulzer rudely overturned this tradition. He wished in every possible way to dramatize his rôle of “friend of the people.” Consequently, he always referred to the executive mansion as the “People’s House,” and ostentatiously invited all who would to come and call upon him in it. The staid Knickerbocker society of Albany was aghast at the sight of throngs of what they termed “the rabble” invading the hitherto exclusive chambers of the executive mansion. Great was their anger toward Governor Sulzer. They, too, cherished hopes for vengeance.

In the meantime, Sulzer was having other difficulties in maintaining his rôle of independence. One day he telephoned me to come up at once to his rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria. He had a matter of great importance to discuss, he said, and we could talk it over at luncheon. When I arrived, I found him in great excitement.

“The powers,” he exclaimed, meaning Tammany, “are trying to force me to appoint a certain man chairman of the Public Service Commission, and I am refusing to do it because I don’t think it a proper appointment. But they are getting very angry about it, and I don’t know what to do.”

I told him there was only one thing he could do and that was to continue to refuse to appoint him.

“But,” complained Sulzer, “it means my political death if I don’t name him.”

“Well,” I said, “then you are going to political death anyway. Because as surely as you yield to them, the public at large will become even bitterer enemies than Tammany. On the other hand, if you at least prove to the public that you have the nerve to stand out against the organization, they will come to the rescue and stand firmly behind you.”

As we talked, a Tammany leader was announced. Sulzer had him ushered into his bedroom while we continued our talk in the parlour. Evidently the Tammany leader was waiting for his final decision, for at length Sulzer said:

“Very well, I will go in there.”

He went into the bedroom and was gone for more than an hour. I had to wait so long that I grew impatient and, ringing for a waiter, ordered my luncheon. As I ate, I could hear the voices through the closed door, and though I could not distinguish the conversation, it was violent, for occasionally I could hear an explosion of vocal fireworks in the bedroom. When at length Sulzer came out, his manner was one of excited bravado. Throwing back the tails of his Prince Albert coat and assuming the Henry Clay pose, he exclaimed, “Well, I have done it! I have actually defied them!”

And he added:

“I did it on your account and by your advice. And now you have got to do me a favour.”

When I asked what this meant, he replied: “It may come to this: Murphy may press me so hard to name somebody else whom I ought not to nominate that I may have to appoint you yourself as chairman of the Commission. Even Murphy would not dare to prevent the confirmation of the appointment of the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Democratic National Committee. Will you accept the position if that situation arises?”

This was a critical test of my willingness to serve the cause of good government, as I had every reason to suspect that President Wilson would soon offer me a position of a much greater distinction in the National Government. But I was so wrapped up in the hope of achieving political regeneration in New York, as we had just achieved it in the nation, that I did not hesitate.

“If I can keep you from having to obey orders from Murphy in making your appointments, I will even do that,” I replied.

Sulzer thanked me warmly and then added:

“Now you must do me one other favour.”

“What is that?” I inquired.

“You have got to make a speech at my birthday dinner down at the Café Boulevard to-morrow night. I want you to show that you are back of me.”

“Governor,” I replied, “I will make that speech; but let me tell you now, bluntly, that I shall say there what I have told you to-day, that I shall continue to back you only so long as you adhere to your promises to us to be independent.”

“I don’t care what you say,” said Sulzer, “if only you will come down and prove that you are behind me.”

This dinner was quite a dramatic occasion. The old Café Boulevard was the Delmonico of the East Side, and it had been the scene of many a Tammany festivity. Sulzer here was among his own people, and this gave him the feeling of confidence which came from having his friends around him. The dinner was in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. People well known in many walks of life crowded the tables. Sulzer was personally still popular, and the feeling of the occasion was one of cordial good wishes. Not only were his life-long friends of the East Side among those present, but such other Democratic friends as Senator Stone of Missouri, Frank I. Cobb of the New York World, John D. Crimmins, and myself; and even representative Republicans, such as District Attorney (later Governor) Whitman, Judge Otto Rosalsky, Louis Marshall, and Samuel S. Koenig, were among the diners.

I resolved to take no chances of spoiling my speech, which I had prepared rapidly but with great care the day before. So when I arose, I read it. This address made a local sensation at the moment. It was called by the papers “the wish-bone speech.” As it was very brief and as it had some effect on the political situation at that time, I think it worth quoting.

“Governor,” I said, “you have wished, and have been training all your life to be a leader of the people; you have wished it so long that now it has become true, and we want to see your wish-bone converted into back-bone, for you will need much of it.

“You are now at the head of a mighty host that is marching onward in the fight for good government. Picture to yourself the thousands behind you in a solid phalanx, crowding you on so that you cannot turn back. If you fail them as a leader the march will still proceed, and someone else will be chosen.

“The combat is to be fought to a finish. The people have discovered how near they were to losing their Democracy, how both great parties were in danger of falling into the control of designing self-seekers who were determined to secure control of the Government for their own selfish ends. At Baltimore it was determined that they could not control the National Government. It was you who, as presiding officer of the Convention, gave Mr. Bryan the opportunity to throw the victory to Mr. Wilson.

“At Syracuse, you were nominated in an open convention to lead the Democrats of this state. We look to you to be the Governor of the Empire State, and not to be the agent of undisclosed principals who hide themselves from the public view. They can no longer govern this country, state or city; and no office-holder needs to be responsible to or afraid of them.

“There is but one master who will last forever and to whom all ought to bow, and that is enlightened public opinion. If you enlist under its banner, you can proceed unmolested by petty tyranny, and the harder you fight, the greater will be the army that will enlist in your cause and under your leadership. You are to be envied the opportunity you have to advance the cause of good government. It is not an easy task; your opponents are numerous and trained in the art of spiking their opponents’ guns; but you must stand up, plant yourself firmly, saying: ‘Come one, come all. This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.’”

This address, with its unexpected note of blunt warning, became the key-note of the evening. The other speakers discarded their prepared addresses and spoke in a similar vein. Sulzer realized that he had to meet this challenge, and in his reply he pledged himself anew to the cause of the people.

“Long ago,” he said, “I made a vow to the people that in the performance of my duty no influence would control me but the dictates of my conscience and my determination to do the right—as I see the right—day in and day out, regardless of political future or personal consequences. Have no fear—I will stick at that.”

These were brave words. But Sulzer proved unequal to their promise. All he did was to go far enough in the surface appearance of independence to rouse the Tiger of Tammany to a fury of vengeance.

Tammany soon found an occasion to carry out this intention, and they removed Sulzer from his office. This act of private vengeance cost Tammany four years of control of the city government of New York, for Hennessy’s disclosures made the public eager to administer a rebuke to Tammany, and this rebuke took the form of electing Mitchel as Mayor.

The Tiger’s opportunity to impeach Sulzer came about in this way: When Sulzer filed his sworn statement of campaign expenses, Tammany scented some gross discrepancies and did some shrewd detective work. The result was that they discovered that he had not included in his list of contributions the $2,500 he had received from Jacob H. Schiff, nor the checks of several others, including my own, which amounted in all to many thousands of dollars. By careful investigation they had established the fact that he had not applied these moneys to his campaign expenses, but had deposited them to his personal account and used the money as margin with a Wall Street broker for stock-market speculation. Thereupon, Tammany leaders in the State Legislature arose in the Assembly Chamber and impeached William Sulzer of high crimes and misdemeanours. They charged him, among other things, with filing a false statement of campaign expenses, with perjury, and with the suppression of testimony; and demanded his dismissal from office. The Assembly sustained a motion for his impeachment. When I returned from Europe in September, 1913, I found that his trial was in progress, and I was summoned as a witness to testify before the High Court of Impeachment.

It would take the pens of a Macaulay and a Swift to do justice to this modern burlesque of the trial of Warren Hastings. I use the term “burlesque” in no sense of disrespect toward the Court and its setting. The dignity of the proceedings was almost awe-inspiring. But the defendant lent no such exalted interest to the event as did the romantic figure of Warren Hastings. The offences of Hastings had, at least, the dramatic merits of their magnitude. Burke’s indictment of him was a recital of crimes worthy of the treatment of a Greek tragic poet. Hastings’s accusers were distressed queens, pillaged treasures, and suffering peoples. Burke’s plea for a verdict was an appeal to the conscience of mankind.

By this comparison the Sulzer impeachment was a travesty, the defendant a petty misdemeanant, and the purpose of the trial a spiteful vengeance on a rebellious henchman. The setting of the Court, however, gave the event a fictitious dignity. The Senate Chamber at Albany had been altered for the occasion by the state architect. A lofty seat had been provided for the presiding judge of the High Court of Impeachment, Judge Edgar M. Cullen, who, as chief judge of the Court of Appeals, presided ex officio. Below him was a long seat for the associate judges. Ascending tiers of seats were provided for the forty-four members of the State Senate who, with the judges of the Court of Appeals, constituted the High Court of Impeachment. Behind Judge Cullen’s chair the entire wall of the room was hung with a dark red velvet curtain in the centre of which was emblazoned the coat of arms of New York in gold embroidery, flanked on either side by national emblems. At one side of the court room, places were provided for the “Fourth Estate,” the gentlemen of the press, to whom Burke had made so eloquent an appeal on the greater historical occasion. The public balcony, which at the Hastings trial had been crowded with the Sarah Siddonses and the haut ton of London, was, here at Albany, crowded with the vengeful Knickerbocker aristocracy, who had come to gloat in triumph over the final discomfiture of the demagogic desecrator of the executive mansion. The Edmund Burke of the Sulzer impeachment was Edgar T. Brackett, late of the New York Senate. Alton B. Parker and John B. Stanchfield were the chief counsel of the managers for the Assembly which had presented the indictment, but Brackett was the man who made the oratorical impeachment. Sulzer stood upon the prerogative of early precedents and refused to make a personal appearance before the Court. In compliance with a judicial ruling he abstained from functioning as Governor while the trial was in progress and, instead of facing his accusers, spent his time in a frantic but futile effort to make political combinations that would save him.

Witness after witness testified to Sulzer’s solicitation of contributions for which he had made no accounting. My testimony was only confirmatory of a mass of evidence elicited from men of eminence like Jacob H. Schiff and many others. I appeared before the Court on September 24, 1913. Replying to questions from the prosecutor, I repeated the conversation I had had with Sulzer when I gave him my check for $1,000, and I also testified to the fact that on the day I returned from Europe, Governor Sulzer had telephoned me, “If you are going to testify I hope you will be easy with me”—to which I answered that I would testify to the facts.

The verdict of the court was “Guilty.” Sulzer was shorn of his high office. His proud hopes, fostered by the soothsayer’s prophecy, were sadly broken. Knickerbocker society had its revenge; the “People’s House” became again the executive mansion. And Tammany had its vengeance; it had crushed its rebel henchman and given all other potential malcontents a spectacular object lesson.

CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL SIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE

“Ambassador,” he said, “when I made my trip through the Holy Land, I had great difficulty in finding Mount Beatitude. I wish you would try to persuade the Turkish Government to grant a concession to some Americans to build a macadam road up to it, so that other pilgrims may not suffer the inconvenience which I did in attempting to find it.”

Thus fortified by the Secretary’s complete programme for my Ambassadorial task, I set forward to the White House for a farewell call upon President Wilson. He bade me a hearty God-speed, and in parting gave me an injunction which enabled me to save many lives in the next three years. “Remember,” he said, “that anything you can do to improve the lot of your co-religionists is an act that will reflect credit upon America, and you may count on the full power of the Administration to back you up.”

Fortunately for the success of my mission, I had a most enlightening conference in New York before I left. At the suggestion of Mr. Alfred E. Marling, who was one of the trustees of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, I had an interview at that great centre of missionary activity, 156 Fifth Avenue, with a large group of earnest and able men, who could speak with authority on the problems I should confront in the East. I learned that five of these men were to cross the Atlantic at the same time I should be crossing. These were Doctors Arthur Judson Brown, James L. Barton, Charles Roger Watson, Dr. Mackaye, and Bishop Arthur Selden Lloyd. These men were the leaders of the Foreign Mission Boards of the Presbyterian, Congregational, United Presbyterian, Methodist, and Protestant Episcopal Churches. One of them, Doctor Barton, had himself been a missionary in Turkey, and had also acted as President of the Protestant College at Harpoot. Another, Doctor Watson, had been a missionary in the Turkish Protectorate of Egypt, and his parents had been missionaries for half a century at Cairo.

I had engaged passage for Europe on the Imperator, but when I learned that these five men were sailing at nearly the same time on the George Washington (later to become famous as President Wilson’s “peace ship”) to attend a world missionary conference at The Hague, I asked them to change their reservations and go with me. They were limited in their expense accounts and could not change, so, emulating Mohammed, I “went to the mountain” and changed to their ship. The voyage gave me an opportunity to gain from them a fuller picture of the work of the mission boards, which was very helpful to me in my new task.

The conversations I had with these men on shipboard were a revelation to me. I had hitherto had a hazy notion that missionaries were sort of over-zealous advance agents of sectarian religion, and that their principal activity was the proselyting of believers in other faiths. To my surprise and gratification, these men gave me a very different picture. In the first place, their cordial coöperation with one another was evidence of the disappearance of the old sectarian zeal. They were, to be sure, profoundly concerned in converting as many people as they could to what they sincerely believed to be the true faith. But I found that, along with this ambition, Christian missionaries in Turkey were carrying forward a magnificent work of social service, education, philanthropy, sanitation, medical healing, and moral uplift. They were, I discovered, in reality advance agents of civilization. As representatives of the denominations which supported them, they were maintaining several hundred American schools in the Levant, and several full-fledged colleges, of which three, at least, deserve to rank with the best of the smaller institutions of higher learning in the United States. They maintained, also, several important hospitals. And, as a part of their purely religious function, they were bringing a higher conception of Christianity to the millions of submerged Christians in the Turkish Empire, who, but for them, would have been left to practise their religion without the inspiration of the modern thought of the West, which has so vastly widened its spiritual significance.

As my wife and youngest daughter, Ruth, could not accompany me, I took with me my daughter Helen, her husband, Mr. Mortimer J. Fox, and their two sons Henry and Mortimer. We Visited London, Paris, and Vienna on our way to Constantinople, and at each of these capitals I paid my respects not only to the American Ambassador, but to the resident Turkish plenipotentiary as well. In doing this I had in mind two things: first, to accustom myself to the looks of an embassy from within, as I had to that date never been in an embassy building in any country; and second, to secure some hints upon the character of the government to which I was accredited, in advance of my first formal contact with it. At last, on November 27, 1913, we rolled into the railroad station at Constantinople.

My first impression of the famous old capital of Asia-in-Europe was of a moving sea of silk hats. The station platform seemed populated entirely with frock-coated gentlemen buried under these chimney-like black headpieces. After some confusion, human personalities began to emerge from under them, and to individualize themselves as real people with proper names, and a rational relationship to myself as another human being. The first to greet me was Mr. Hoffman Phillip, who as Conseiller and First Secretary of the Embassy had acted as chargé d’affaires during Mr. Rockhill’s visit to the United States.

He introduced me to the others, and after a somewhat bewildering round of handshakings, Phillip, the Foxes, and I stepped into a carriage and were driven to the Pera Palace Hotel, where Phillip gave us a Thanksgiving dinner.

The Embassy at Constantinople is a handsome, marble, three-story structure, set in a garden surrounded by a high wall, and overlooking the Golden Horn. Often during my first days there I would find myself humming the old refrain, “I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.” There were, to be sure, no “vassals and serfs by my side”; but I had more useful assistants in my official staff. Besides Mr. Phillip, there were second and third secretaries, and A. K. Schmavonian, the Turkish legal adviser of the Embassy. He was the permanent attaché—the interpreter—and was, besides, the custodian of the Embassy’s traditions. He knew every American interest in Turkey, had carried on for years the correspondence with the consuls and the missionaries, and hence was an invaluable storehouse of information. He knew, also, all the Turkish officials; the ramifications of the Turkish governmental departments; the names and characteristics of the leaders of the recent revolution; and, of course, he was versed in the niceties of diplomatic custom.

Soon after my arrival I observed a curious phenomenon concerning the position of an ambassador. The instinctive ambition of the attachés led them to try to keep the Ambassador from taking an active hand in the work of the Chancery. It was explained to me with great solemnity, that the business office of the Embassy was not like other business offices; that its operations were so involved in delicacies of diplomatic usage that none but old hands, trained in all their niceties, were competent to handle the transaction of its intricate affairs. All details, I was informed, should be left to those accustomed to handling them. I made short work of this mysterious nonsense. Business is business, and details are the substance of larger concerns. Therefore, I promptly acquainted myself with the records of the Embassy for several years preceding, and took absolute charge of its functions, as I was in duty bound to do. The mysteries faded instantly. Common sense, judgment, and energy are the desiderata of all business relationships, and I found no barrier in these affairs, because of their so-called diplomatic nature.

Other American ambassadors have complained to me that their subordinates usurped their functions in this fashion; and I know of some who have occupied the most exalted posts in Europe and never penetrated the mysteries of their Chanceries, and, consequently, never really functioned as ambassadors at all.

As my wife and Ruth had not accompanied me, their absence relieved me, for the moment, of social duties, and gave me time for a considered survey of the society in which I would soon be projected as an active member. I realized that much depended upon the first associations I should make in that society, and I needed just such an opportunity to learn by indirection the composition of it, the factions into which it was divided, and the cross currents of personality and interest that disturbed it.

The “diplomatic set” at Constantinople was a little world apart. At most, its members numbered a scant hundred. It comprised the Grand Vizier, the Premier and his Cabinet, and the ambassadors and ministers of other governments, with their principal attachés. Occasionally, there were added to this intimate circle a few leading international bankers and merchants and distinguished tourists. But chiefly we consorted with ourselves. Our intercourse was a continuous succession of luncheons, teas, dinners, and formal state functions. In such a constricted society, thrown into such intense communication, the personal equation was naturally of paramount importance. Ere long, I had occasion to use every resource, from social gifts to business experience, to maintain myself in this society of shrewd and cultivated men, all of whom had the advantage of a life-long training in diplomacy and in the intricacies of European statecraft.

My first concern, therefore, was to appraise their personalities. I recalled a piece of wise advice from James Stillman the elder, who was one of the cleverest American financiers. He told me that when a man confronted a new situation, and was not yet sure of his ground, his safest course was to impress his adversaries by mystifying them. I adapted this advice to the present occasion. I realized that the diplomatic corps at Constantinople knew much more about me than I knew about any of them, because I was the one stranger to them, and they were many and all strange to me. I resolved to do, as nearly as I could, directly the opposite of what they expected of me. For one thing, they had fallen into the European habit of imagining that all successful Americans are men of fabulous wealth, and they credited certain absurd stories about my supposed intention to conduct the Embassy on a scale of lavish expenditure, designed to make a great social impression. Accordingly, I went to the other extreme and managed the Embassy very modestly. For some weeks after my arrival I did not even use an automobile, contenting myself with a carriage and a pair of Arabian ponies.

Further to play the rôle of mystifier, I obeyed only the letter of the custom which prescribes that a new Ambassador shall call upon the other ambassadors after he has been presented to the Sovereign. They are supposed to return this call, and thereafter the newcomer is expected to make the advances to his elders toward a more intimate and workable acquaintance. Instead, I remained at the Embassy and devoted myself to the business of the Chancery and did some watchful waiting.

These tactics were rewarded by an opportunity to enter the society of the diplomatic corps under circumstances that gave me the advantage. One day the local correspondent of the Frankfürter Zeitung called upon me at the Embassy. This was Dr. Paul Weitz, who had been a resident of Turkey for more than twenty-five years, knew all the officials, spoke the language, and understood the subtleties of Turkish psychology. He was, in reality, an unofficial attaché of the Embassy and a secret agent of the German Government. Dr. Weitz opened the conversation.

“Mr. Ambassador,” he said, “I have gotten the impression that you are a man of direct methods. For this reason I, too, shall use the direct method. Frankly, I have come as the emissary of the German Ambassador and the Austrian Ambassador, with whom I had luncheon this very day. You were the principal topic of conversation. These gentlemen are puzzled by your attitude and they are curious to learn your true character. They have commissioned me to find out these things for them, and I have preferred to come and ask you bluntly rather than to follow my usual method of finding out by indirection. What is your real attitude? Are you by preference a recluse, or are you playing a game?”

“I am glad,” I replied, “that you have come to me personally with these questions, especially because it gives me the opportunity to send a direct message to your principals. Please be good enough to tell them for me that I have made it a life-long practice never to make the first advances. I have always waited for the advances to come from the other side. Therefore, you may tell “Their Excellencies” that it is for them to decide whether they wish their relationship with me to continue to be one of formal diplomatic exchanges, or a frank, man-to-man friendship. If they prefer the latter, I shall be delighted to meet them halfway, but they must cover the first half.”

Dr. Weitz readily agreed to carry this message, and he was so pleased with the frankness of my conversation that he made no concealment of his own position. He went on to tell me that he was a confidential adviser to the German ambassadors, and frequently was commissioned to carry on unofficial negotiations in which, for reasons of delicacy or of policy, it was not advisable either that the Ambassador should appear in person, or that he should make use of one of his official family. He explained to me that the reason he was used in this capacity was his intimate acquaintance with Turkish life and officials, and he offered to undertake similar commissions for me at any time I might care to make use of him. For obvious reasons, I never availed myself of the offer.

Dr. Weitz faithfully repeated my message to the German and Austrian ambassadors who afterward told me that they were greatly delighted with it. The very next afternoon, Baron Wangenheim paid me a call; and the following morning, his Austrian colleague, Marquis Pallavicini, arrived to improve my acquaintance. They both greeted me in the spirit of my message, and we entered at once upon an acquaintanceship which removed the formality of an official relation. Both of them were very useful to me during my first weeks in Constantinople. The Marquis was the doyen of the diplomatic corps. He was a nobleman of ancient family, had grown old in the diplomatic service, and was an authority on every point of diplomatic usage, from the most subtle phrasing of a threat of war to the refinements of precedence in placing guests at table at a diplomatic dinner. In this latter direction, indeed, he was invaluable to me in teaching me the relative rank of the bewildering array of officers and title holders among my visitors.

Baron Wangenheim I have described at great length in my earlier volume, “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.” Unlike Pallavicini, who was quiet, formal, conventional, and a typical diplomat of the old school, Wangenheim was a perfect representative of Prussia. He was not a native of Prussia—but his bearing was that of an excitable Hindenburg. He was a man of great stature, in the prime of life, overflowing with physical vitality, energetic in person, opinionated and positive in manner, voluble and aggressive in conversation, somewhat flirtatious, proud, overbearing—he was Prussia and modern Germany embodied.

After Pallavicini and Wangenheim had broken the ice, I speedily made the acquaintance of the other members of the diplomatic corps, and their characters emerged in my mind in sharp definition. Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, was a fine type of English gentleman. He exhibited the quiet force and cultivation which one naturally expects from a member of the English upper classes. Though a bachelor, his establishment was one of the most magnificent in Constantinople. Turkey has always been a vital point in British policy, and the British Government has spared no pains to make its public appearance there correspond with the splendour and importance of the British Empire.

The French Ambassador was M. Bompard, the Russian was Michel de Giers. These men also adequately embodied their respective countries, the one in its ideals of polished politeness and clear intellectual grasp, the other in its ideals of imperial pride and the sense of power.

Meeting these men at luncheon; dining with them and their ladies at gorgeous evening functions, where the splendour of the men’s uniforms, the brightness of the women’s costumes, and the gayety of the young couples made a lively scene of light-hearted inconsequentiality; it was hard to realize that they were, in truth, acting the part of expectant legatees of a friendless dying man—sitting at tea in his parlour, and waiting for his last gasp as a signal for a scramble to divide his property among themselves. They frankly told me (though of course not in these words) that this was their position. In their eyes the Sick Man of Europe, so long the diseased invalid among the nations, was now really dying. They had no hesitation in discussing their ambitions regarding his property. Giers comported himself already as if Russia had actually attained her age-old vision of capturing Constantinople—as if he were the Governor of Russia’s new capital city. Sir Louis Mallet did not conceal the interest which his government had in everything that tended to insure the safety of the Suez Canal. Bompard was deeply concerned to secure more concessions for French capital in Turkey. Even the Greek Minister talked with confidence of an approaching Hellenic confederation which should embrace Smyrna and part of the Asian hinterland.

There was, indeed, considerable reason for their hopes. The revolutionary party in Turkey, under the name of the Union and Progress Party, had overthrown the Government and had taken possession of the country in the name of the people. Abdul Hamid, whom Gladstone, for his atrocious crimes, had dubbed “Abdul the Damned,” was now shorn of his power, and was a prisoner in a palace, almost within sight of the American Embassy. His throne was now occupied by a nominal successor, his brother, Mohammed V. This good-humoured weakling, however, enjoyed only the shadow of power and none of its substance. His brother, fearful of a plot to overthrow him, had caused his successor to be reared in a manner that totally unfitted him for the exercise of authority. He had kept him secluded from society, had not permitted him to learn even the rudiments of history and statecraft, and had enfeebled his intellect and character by constantly exposing him to the temptations of self-indulgence. He had placed before the Heir Apparent all the pleasures of life; had supplied him with countless wives, luxurious food, rich wines, and all the other ministers of sensual enjoyment. Reared in such atmosphere, he had grown up and passed the prime of life, ignorant of Government affairs and without any chance to develop his character. Socially, of course, he was a charming gentleman, but as a ruler, he was hopelessly incompetent.

He was, indeed, merely the figurehead of a government whose substantial ministers were the aggressive, self-made leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress. These were men of native shrewdness, character, and courage. Their political leader was Talaat Bey, a great hulk of a man, who had begun life in the humble capacity of porter in a village railroad station, and who had advanced to the limits of his social prospects when he had achieved the dignity of a telegraph operator in the same station. By sheer force of natural genius, however, he had become a political power, and after the revolutionists had sprung their coup d’état, he soon rose to be their leader. With their success, he had leaped immediately to the dazzling eminence of a Cabinet position, and was then the chief of the Cabal that was the real ruler of the Empire.

The military head of the Young Turks was Enver Bey, a handsome and dashing young officer, who had studied his profession and cultivated the social graces as military attaché of the Turkish Embassy at Berlin. He was now minister of War and in control of the Turkish Army—a necessary weapon in the hands of Talaat to maintain the Young Turk party in power. Some of my foreign colleagues of the diplomatic corps assured me that these two men were the real power in Turkey. They had seven associates, all men of great influence, and all members of the Committee of Union and Progress.

The personalities of these men, and the drama of their conflicting ambitions and intrigues, gradually unfolded themselves before my eyes. It was like sitting at the performance of a fascinating play, only this was more interesting because it was the reality of life. The actors were the representatives of great nations, and upon the issue of this dramatic situation rested the fate of millions of people.

The experiences of my first few weeks at Constantinople and the intensely interesting sensations they aroused in me can best be conveyed to my readers by reproducing a few of the letters which I wrote home to America in the excitement of these moments. The first I shall quote was dated December 23, 1913, and was addressed to my wife and youngest daughter: