The outlook for the future--The consequences of trusting Germany--The
Entente's death sentence on Turkey--The social necessity for this
deliverance--Anatolia, the new Turkey after the war--Forecasts about
the Turkish race--The Turkish element in the lost territory--Russia
and Constantinople; international guarantees--Germany, at peace,
benefits too--Farewell to the German "World-politicians"--German
interests in a victorious and in an amputated Turkey--The
German-Turkish treaty--A paradise on earth--The Russian commercial
impetus--The new Armenia--Western Anatolia, the old Greek centre of
civilization--Great Arabia and Syria--The reconciliation of Germany.
We have come to the end of our sketches. The question before us now is:
What will become of Turkey? The Entente has pronounced formal sentence
of death on the Empire of the Sultan, and neither the slowly fading
military power of Turkey, nor the help of Germany, who is herself
already virtually conquered, will be able to arrest her fate.
On the high frost-bound uplands of Armenia the Russians hold a
strategic position from which it is impossible to dislodge them, and
which will probably very soon extend to the Gulf of Alexandretta. In
Mesopotamia, after that enormously important political event, the Fall
of Baghdad, the union was effected between the British troops and
the Russians, advancing steadily from Persia. The Suez Canal is now
no longer threatened, and the British troops have been removed from
there for a counter-offensive in Southern Palestine, and probably,
when the psychological moment arrives, an offensive against Syria,
now so sadly shattered politically. It is quite within the bounds of
possibility, too, that during this war a big new Front may be formed
in Western Anatolia, already completely broken up by the Pan-Hellenic
Irredenta, and the Turks will be hard put to it to find troops to meet
the new offensive. Arabia is finally and absolutely lost, and England,
by establishing an Arabian Caliphate, has already won the war against
Turkey. Meantime, on the far battlefields of Galicia and the Balkans,
whole Ottoman divisions are pouring out their life-blood, fighting for
that elusive German victory that never comes any nearer, while in every
nook and corner of their own land there is a terrible lack of troops.
Enver Pasha, at length grown anxious, has attempted to recall them, but
in vain.
That is a short résumé of the military situation. This is how the
Turkey of Enver and Talaat is atoning for the trust she has placed in
Germany.
To a German journalist who went out two years ago to a great Turkey,
striving for a "Greater Turkey," it does indeed seem a bitter irony of
fate to see his sphere of labour thus reduced to nothingness. The fall
of Turkey is the greatest blow that could have been dealt to German
"world-politics"; it is a disappointment that will have the gravest
consequences. But from the standpoint of culture, human civilisation,
ethics, the liberty of the peoples and justice, historical progress,
the economic development of wide tracts of land of the greatest
importance from their geographical position, it is one of the most
brilliant results of the war, and one to be hailed with unmixed joy.
When I look back on how wonderfully things have shaped in the last two
and a half years I am bound to admit that I am happy things have turned
out as they have. If perchance any Turk who knows me happens to read
these lines, I beg him not to think that my ideas are saturated with
hatred of Turkey. On the contrary, I love the country and the Turkish
race with those many attractive qualities that rightly appealed to a
poet like Loti.
I have asked myself thousands of times what would be the best political
solution of the problem, how to help this people--and the other races
inhabiting their country--to true and lasting happiness. From my many
journeys in tropical lands, I have grown accustomed to the sight of
autochthonous civilisations and semi-civilised peoples, and am as
interested in them as in the most perfectly civilised nations of
Europe. I have therefore, I think, been able to set aside entirely in
my own mind the territorial interests of the West in the development
of the Near East, and give my whole attention to Turkey's own good and
Turkey's own needs. But even then I have been obliged to subscribe
to the sentence of death passed on the Turkey of the Young Turks
and the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It is with the fullest
consciousness of what I am doing that I agree to the only seemingly
cruel amputation of this State. It is merely the outer shell covering
a number of peoples who suffer cruelly under an unjust system, chief
among them the brave Turkish people who have been led by a criminal
Government to take the last step on the road to ruin. The point of view
I have adopted does not in any way detract from my personal sympathies,
and I still have hopes that the many personal friendships I made
in Constantinople will not be broken by the hard words I have been
obliged to utter in the cause of truth, in the interests of outraged
civilisation, and in the interests of a happier future for the Ottoman
people themselves.
The amputation of Turkey is a stern social necessity. Someone has
said: "The greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I have too much love
for the Turkish people, too much sympathy for them, to adopt this
pessimistic attitude without great inward opposition; but unfortunately
it is only too true. We have seen how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat
has reacted sharply against the Western-minded, liberal era of the
1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has turned again to Asia and her newly
discovered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of to-day, European culture
and civilisation are at best but a technical means; they are no longer
an end in themselves. Their dream is no longer Western Europe, but a
nationally awakened and strengthened Asiatentum.
In face of this intellectual development, how can we hope that in the
new Turkey there will be a radical alteration of what, in the whole
course of Ottoman history, has always been the one characteristic,
unchangeable, momentous fact, of what has always shattered the most
honest efforts at reform, and always will shatter every attempt at
improvement within a sovereign Turkey--I refer to the relationship
of the Turk to the "_Rajah_" (the "herd"), the Christian subjects of
the Padishah. The Ottoman, the Mohammedan conqueror, lives by the
"herd" he has found in the land he has conquered; the "herd" are the
"unbelievers," and rooted deep in the mind of this sovereign people,
who have never quite lost their nomadic instincts, is the conviction
that they have the right to live by the sweat of the brow of their
Christian subjects and on the fruits of their labour. That we
Europeans think this unjust the Turk will never be able to grasp.
A Wali of Erzerum once said: "The Turkish Government and the Armenian
people stand in the relationship of man and wife, and any third persons
who feel sympathy for the wife and anger at the wife-beating husband
will do better not to meddle in this domestic strife." This quotation
has become famous, for it exactly characterises the relationship of
the Turk to the "Rajah," not to the Armenians. In this phrase alone
there lies, quite apart from all the crimes committed by the present
Turkish Government, a sufficient moral and political foundation for
the sentence of death passed on the sovereignty of the present Turkish
State. For so long as the Turks cling to Islam, from which springs that
opposition between Moslem rulers and "Giaur" subjects so detrimental
to all social progress, it is Europe's sacred duty not to give Turkey
sovereignty over any territory with a strong Christian element. That
is why Turkey must at all costs be confined to Inner Anatolia; that is
why complete amputation is necessary; and why the outlying districts
of Turkey, the Straits, the Anatolian coast, the whole of Armenia must
be rescued and, part of it at any rate, placed under formal European
protection.
Even in Inner Anatolia, which will probably still be left to the
Ottomans after the war, the strongest European influence must be
brought to bear--which will probably not be difficult in view of
Turkey's financial bankruptcy; European customs and civilisation must
be introduced; in a word, Europe must exercise sufficient control
to be in a position to prevent the numerous non-Turks resident even
in Anatolia from being exposed to the old system of exploiting the
"Rajah." Discerning Turks themselves have admitted that it would be
best for Europe to put the whole of Turkey for a generation under
curatorship and general European supervision.
I, personally, should not be satisfied with this system for the
districts occupied more by non-Turks than by Turks; but, on the other
hand, I should not go so far in the case of Inner Anatolia. I trust
that strong European influence will make it possible to make Inner
Anatolia a sovereign territory. I have pinned my faith on the Ottoman
race being given another and final opportunity on her own ground of
showing how she will develop now after the wonderful intellectual
improvement that has taken place during the war. I hope at the same
time that even in a sovereign Turkish Inner Anatolia Europe will have
enough say to prevent any outgrowths of the "Rajah principle."
The Turks must not be deprived of the opportunity to bring their
new-found abilities, which even we must praise, to bear on the
production of a new, modern, but thoroughly Turkish civilisation
of their own on their own ground. Anatolia, beautiful and capable
of development, is, even if we confine it to those interior parts
chiefly inhabited by Ottomans, still quite a big enough field for the
production of such a civilisation; it is quite big enough too for the
terribly reduced numbers now belonging to the Osmanic race.
The amputation and limitation of Turkey, even if they do not succeed
in altering the real Turkish point of view--and this, so far as the
relationship to the Christians is concerned, is the same, from the
Pasha down to the poorest Anatolian peasant--will at least have a
tremendously beneficial effect. The possibilities in the Turkish race
will come to flower. "The worst patriots," I once dared to say in one
of my articles in spite of the censorship, "are not those who look for
the future of the nation in concentrated cultural work in the Turkish
nucleus-land of Anatolia, instead of gaping over the Caucasus and down
into the sands of the African desert in their search for a 'Greater
Turkey.'" And in connection with the series of lectures I have already
mentioned about Anatolian hygiene and social politics, I said, with
quite unmistakable meaning: "Turkey will have a wonderful opportunity
on her own original ground, in the nucleus-land of the Ottomans, of
proving her capability and showing that she has become a really modern,
civilised State."
My earnest wish is that all the Turks' high intellectual abilities,
brought to the front by this war, may be concentrated on this beautiful
and repaying task. Intensive labour and the concentration of all forces
on positive work in the direction of civilisation will have to take the
place of corrupt rule, boundless neglect, waste, the strangulation of
all progressive movements, political illusions, the unquenchable desire
for conquest and oppression. This is what we pray for for Anatolia,
the real New Turkey after the war. In other districts, also, now fully
under European control, the pure Turkish element will flourish much
more exceedingly than ever before under the beneficent protection of
modern, civilised Governments. Frankly, the dream of Turkish Power has
vanished. But new life springs out of ruin and decay; the history of
mankind is a continual change.
Russia, too, after war, will no longer be what she seemed to terrified
Turkish eyes and jealous German eyes dazzled by "world-politics": a
colossal creature, stretching forth enormous suckers to swallow up her
smaller neighbours; a country ruled by a dull, unthinking despotism.
From the standpoint of universal civilisation it is to be hoped that
the solution of the problem of the Near East will be to transform
the Straits between the Black Sea and Aegea, together with the city
of Constantinople, uniquely situated as it is, into a completely
international stretch with open harbours. Then we need no longer oppose
Russian aspirations. If England, the stronghold of Free Trade and of
all principles of freedom of intercourse, and France, the land of
culture, interested in Turkey to the extent of millions, were content
to leave Russia a free hand in the Straits; if Roumania, shut in in
the Black Sea, did not fear for her trade, but was willing to become
an ally of Russia in full knowledge of the Entente agreement about
the Straits, it is of course sufficiently evident what guarantee
with regard to international freedom modern Russia will have to give
after the war, and even the Germans have nothing to fear. Of course
the German anti-European "Antwerp-Baghdad" dream will be shattered.
But once Germany is at peace, she will probably find that even the
Russian solution of the Straits question benefits her not a little. The
final realisation of Russia's efforts, justifiable both historically
and geographically, to reach the Mediterranean at this one eminently
suitable spot, will certainly contribute in an extraordinary degree to
remove the unbearable political pressure from Europe and ensure peace
for the world.
Just a few parting words to the German "World-politicians." Very often,
as I have said, I heard during my stay in Constantinople expressions
of anxiety on the part of Germans that all German interests, even
purely commercial ones, would be gravely endangered in the victorious
New Turkey, which would spring to life again with renewed jingoistic
passions and renewed efforts at emancipation. And more than once--all
honour to the feelings of justice and the sound common sense of those
who dared to utter such opinions--I was told by Germans, in the middle
of the war, and with no attempt at concealment, that they fully agreed
it was an absolute necessity for Russia to have the control of the
only outlet for her enormous trade to the Mediterranean, and that
commercially at any rate the fight for Constantinople and the Straits
was a fight for a just cause.
Now, let us take these two points of view together. From the purely
German standpoint, which is better?--a victorious and self-governing
Turkey imbued with jingoism and the desire for emancipation,
practically closed to us, even commercially, or an amputated Turkey,
compelled to appeal for European help and European capital to recover
from her state of complete exhaustion; a Turkey freed from those
Young Turkish jingoists who, in spite of all their fine phrases and
the German help they had to accept for all their inward distaste of
it, hate us from the very depths of their heart; a Turkey which, even
if Russia,--as a last resort!--is allowed to become mistress of the
Dardanelles with huge international guarantees, would, in the Anatolia
that is left to her, capable of development as it is, and rich in
national wealth, offer a very considerable field of activity for German
enterprise? The short-sighted Pan-Germans, who are now fighting for the
victory of anti-foreign neo-Pan-Turkism against the modern, civilised
States of the Entente, who had no wish at all that Germany should not
fare as well as the rest in the wide domains of Asiatic Turkey, can
perhaps answer my question. They should have asked themselves this,
and foreseen the consequences before they yielded weakly to Turkish
caprices and themselves stirred up the Turks against Europe.
As things stand now, however, the German Government has thought fit,
in her blind belief in ultimate victory, to enter on a formal treaty,
guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, at
a point in the war when no reasonable being even in Germany could
possibly still believe that a German victory would suffice to protect
Turkey after she has been solemnly condemned by the Entente for her
long list of crimes. Germany has thus given a negative answer to the
question passed from mouth to mouth in the international district of
Pera almost right from Turkey's entry into the war: "Will Germany, if
necessary, sacrifice Constantinople and the Dardanelles, if she can
thus secure peace with Russia?" She had already given the answer "No"
before the absurd illusions of a possible separate peace with Russia
at this price were finally and utterly dispelled by the speech of the
Russian Minister Trepoff, and the purposeful and cruelly clear refusal
of Germany's offer of peace. These events and the increasing excitement
about the war in Constantinople and elsewhere were not required to
show that in the Near East as well the fight must be fought "to the
bitter end."
Never, however--and that is German World-politics, and the ethics of
the World-politician--have I ever heard a single one of those Germans,
who thought it an impossibility to sacrifice their ally Turkey in order
to gain the desired peace, put forward as an argument for his opinion
the shame of a broken promise, but only the consideration that German
activity in the lands of Islam, and particularly in the valuable Near
East, would be over and done with for ever. I wonder if those who have
decided, with the phantom of a German-Turkish victory ever before them,
to go on with the struggle on the side of Turkey even after she had
committed such abominable crimes, and to drench Europe still further
with the blood of all the civilised nations of the world, ever have
any qualms as to how much of their once brilliant possibilities of
commercial activity in Turkey, now so lightly staked, would still exist
were Turkey victorious.
Luckily for mankind, history has decided otherwise. After the war, the
huge and flourishing trade of Southern Russia will be carried down to
the then open seaports between Europe and Asia; the wealth of Odessa
and the Pontus ports, enormously increased and free to develop, will
be concentrated on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and the whole
hitherto neglected city of Constantinople, from Pera and Galata to
Stamboul and Scutari and Haidar-Pasha, will become an earthly paradise
of pulsing life, well-being, and comfort. The luxury and elegance of
the Crimea will move southwards to these shores of unique natural
beauty and mild climate which form the bridge between two continents
and between two seas. Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful
labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the
Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the
war, under Turkish régime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes
which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth.
Never, even after another hundred years of Turkish rule, would that
unique coast ever have become what it can be and what it must be--one
of the very greatest centres of international intercourse and the
Riviera of the East, not only in beauty of landscape, but in luxury
and wealth. The greatest stress in this connection is to be laid on
the lively Russian impetus that will spring from a modernised Russia,
untrammelled by restrictions in the Straits. Convinced as I am that
Russia after the war will no longer be the Russia of to-day, so feared
by Germany, the Balkan States, and Turkey, I am prepared to give this
impetus full play, as being the best possible means for the further
development of Constantinople.
In Asia Minor, from Brussa to the slopes of the Taurus and the foot
of the Armenian mountains, there will extend a modern Turkey which
has finally come to rest, to concentration, to peaceful labour, after
centuries of conflict, despotic extortion, the suicidal policy of
military adventurers, and superficial attempts at expansion coupled
with neglect of the most important internal duties. The inhabitants
of these lands will soon have forgotten that "Greater Turkey" has
collapsed. They will be really happy at last, these people whose
idea of happiness hitherto had been a veneer of material well-being
obtained by toadying, while the great bulk of the Empire pined in dirt,
ignorance, and poverty, consumed by an outworn militarism, oppressed
by a decaying administration. Then, but not till then, the world will
see what the Turkish people is capable of. Then there will be no need
for pessimism about this kindly and honourable race. Then we can become
honest "Pro-Turks" again.
In Western Asia Minor, Europe will not forget that the whole shore,
where once stood Troy, Ephesus, and Milet, is an out-and-out Hellenic
centre of civilisation. Quite independently of all political feelings
towards present-day Greece, this historical fact must be taken into
consideration in the final ruling. It is to be hoped that the Greek
people will not have to atone for ever for the faults of their
non-Greek king who has forgotten that it is his sacred duty to be a
Greek and nothing but a Greek, and who has betrayed the honour and the
future of the nation.
The Armenian mountain-land, laid waste by war, and emptied of men
by Talaat's passion for persecution, will obtain autonomy from her
conqueror, Russia, and will perhaps be linked up with all the other
parts of the east, inhabited by the last remnants of the Armenian
people. Armenia, with its central position and divided into three among
Turkey, Russia, and Persia, may from its geographical position, its
unfortunate history, and the endless sufferings it has been called
upon to bear, be called the Poland of Further Asia. Delivered from the
Turkish system, freed from all antagonistic Turko-Russian military
principles of obstruction, linked up by railways to the west as well as
the already well-developed region of Transcaucasia, with a big through
trade from the Black Sea via Trapezunt to Persia and Mesopotamia,
it will once more offer an excellent field of activity to the high
intellectual and commercial abilities of its people, now, alas!
scattered to the four winds of heaven. But they will return to their
old home, bringing with them European ideas, European technique, and
the most modern methods from America.
If men are lacking, they can be obtained from the near Caucasus with
its narrow, over-filled valleys, inhabited by a most superior race
of men, who have always had strong emigrating instincts. Even this
most unfortunate country in the whole world, which the Turks of the
Old Régime and of the New have systematically mutilated and at last
bequeathed to Russia with practically not a man left, is going to have
its spring-time.
In the south, Great Arabia and Syria will have autonomy under the
protection of England and France with their skilful Islam policy; they
will have the benefit of the approved methods of progressive work in
Egypt, the Soudan, and India as well as the Atlas lands; they will be
exposed to the influences and incitements of the rest of civilised
Europe; they will probably be enriched with capital from America,
where thousands of Arab and Syrian, as well as Armenian, refugees have
found a home; they will provide the first opportunity in history of
showing how the Arab race accommodates itself to modern civilisation
on its own ground and with its own sovereign administration. The final
deliverance of the Arabs from the oppressive and harmful supremacy of
the Turks, now happily accomplished by the war, was one of the most
urgent demands for a race that can look back on centuries of brilliant
civilisation. The civilised world will watch with the keenest interest
the self-development of the Arabian lands.
Even Germany, once she is at peace, will have no need to grumble at
these arrangements, however diametrically opposed they may be to the
now sadly shattered plans of the Pan-German and Expansion politicians.
Germany will not lose the countless millions she has invested in
Turkey. She will have her full and sufficient share in the European
work and commercial activity that will soon revive again in the Near
East. The Baghdad railway of "Rohrbach & Company" will never be
built, it is true; but the Baghdad Railway with a loyal international
marking off of the different zones of interest, the Baghdad Railway,
as a huge artery of peaceful intercourse linking up the whole of Asia
Minor and bringing peace and commercial prosperity, will all the more
surely rise from its ruins. And when once the German _Weltpolitik_
with its jealousy, its tactless, sword-rattling interference in the
time-honoured vital interests of other States, its political intrigues
disguised in commercial dress, is safely dead and buried, there will be
nothing whatever to hinder Germany from making use of this railway and
carrying her purely commercial energy and the products of her peaceful
labour to the shores of the Persian Gulf and receiving in return the
rich fruits of her cultural activity on the soil of Asia Minor.
APPENDIX
For the better understanding of the fact that a German journalist, the
representative of a great national paper like the _Kölnische Zeitung_,
could publish such a book as this, and to ward off in advance all the
furious personal attacks which will result from its publication, and
which might, without an explanation, injuriously affect its value as
an independent and uninfluenced document, it is, I think, essential to
explain the rôle I filled in Constantinople, how I left Turkey, and how
I came to the decision to publish my experiences.
As far as my post on the _Kölnische Zeitung_ is concerned, I accepted
it and went to Turkey although I was from the very beginning against
German "World-politics" of the present-day style at any rate (not
against German commercial and cultural activity in foreign countries)
and against militarism--as was only to be expected from one who had
studied colonial politics and universal history unreservedly, and had
spent many years studying in the English, French, and German colonies
of Africa--and although I was quite convinced that Germany's was the
crime of setting the war in motion. Besides, my "anti-militarism" is
not of a dogmatic kind, but refers merely to the relations customary
between civilised nations--witness the fact that I took part in the
Colonial War of 1904-6 in German South-West Africa as a volunteer.
I hoped to find in Turkey some satisfaction for my extra-European
leanings, a sphere of labour less absorbed by German militarism, and
opportunity for independent study, and surely no one will take it amiss
that I seized such a chance, certainly unique in war-time, in spite of
my political views.
Once arrived in Turkey, I kept well in the background to begin with,
so as to be able to form my own opinion, of course doing my uttermost
at the same time to be loyal to the task I had undertaken. In spite
of everything I had to witness, it was quite easy to reconcile all
oppositions, until that famous day when my wife denounced Germany to
my face. From that moment I became an enemy of present-day Germany
and began to think of one day publishing the whole truth about the
system. Until then I had contented myself with never saying a good word
about the war, as one can easily find for oneself from a perusal of my
various articles in the _Kölnische Zeitung_ during 1915-16, dated from
Constantinople and marked (a small steamship).
That dramatic event which finally alienated me from the German cause
took place just after the end of a severe crisis in my relationship
with German-Turkish Headquarters. Some slight hints I had given of
Turkish mismanagement, cynicism, and jingoism in a series of articles
appearing from February 15th, 1916, onwards, under the title "Turkish
Economic Problems," so far as they were possible under existing
censorship conditions, was the occasion of the trouble. One can imagine
that Headquarters would certainly be furious with a journalist whose
articles appeared one fine day, literally translated, in the _Matin_
under the title: "_Situation insupportable en Turquie, décrite par un
journaliste allemand_" ("Insufferable situation in Turkey, described
by a German journalist"), and cropped up once more on June 1st, in
the _Journal des Balcans_, I was three times over threatened with
dismissal. My paper sent a confidential man to hold an inquiry, and
after a month he made a confidential report, which resulted in my being
allowed to remain. But the fact that the same journalist that wrote
such things was married to a Czech was too much for my colleagues,
who were in part in the pay of the Embassy, in part in the pay of the
Young Turkish Committee, whose politics they praised, regardless of
their own inward convictions, like the representative of the _Berliner
Tageblatt_, to get material benefit or make sure of their own jobs.
I gleaned many humorous details at a nightly sitting of my Press
colleagues in Pera, at which I myself was branded as a "dangerous
character that must be got rid of," and my wife (who was far too young
ever to worry about politics) as a "Russian spy"--perhaps because, with
the justifiable pride and reserve of her race, she did not attempt to
cultivate the society of the German colony. That began the period of
intrigues and ill-will, but my enemies did not succeed in damaging
me, although matters went so far as a denunciation of me before the
"Prevention of Espionage Department" of the General Staff in Berlin. My
paper, after they had given me the fullest moral satisfaction, and had
arranged for me to remain in Constantinople in spite of all that had
taken place, thought it was better to give me the chance of changing
and offered me a new post on the editorial staff elsewhere.
However, I was now quite finished with Germany, or rather with its
politics; it would have been a moral impossibility for me to write
another single word in the editorial line; so I refused the offer and
applied for sick-leave from October 1st, 1916, to the end of the war
(by telegram about the middle of August). It was granted me with an
expression of regret.
Arrived in Switzerland (February 7th, 1917), I severed all connection
with my paper by mutual consent from October 1st, 1916, onwards. After
my resignation, no special editorial representative of the _Kölnische
Zeitung_ was appointed to take my place, as the censorship made any
kind of satisfactory work impossible.
I should like to emphasise the fact that the intrigues against me,
the crisis with Headquarters I have just mentioned, and my departure
from Constantinople did not injure me in any way either morally
or financially, and have nothing whatever to do with the present
publication. It is certainly not any petty annoyance that could bring
me to such an action, which will probably entail more than enough
unpleasant consequences for me. The reproaches levelled against me by
my pushing, jingoistic colleagues were as impotent as their attempts to
get rid of me as "dangerous to the German Cause"; I have written proof
of this from my paper in my hand, and also of the fact that it was of
my own free-will that I retired. I can therefore look forward quite
calmly to all the personal invective that is sure to be showered on me
for political reasons.
I had sufficient independent means not to feel the loss of my post
in Constantinople too keenly; and if I still kept my post after the
beginning of the crisis with Headquarters, it was simply and solely so
that as a newspaper correspondent I might be in possession of fuller
information, and able to follow up as long as possible the developments
that were taking place on that most interesting soil of Turkey.
When that was no longer possible, I refused the post offered me in
Cologne--in fact twice, once by letter and once by telegram--for I
could not pretend to opinions I directly opposed. I therefore remained
as a free-lance in the Turkish capital. I was extremely glad that the
difference of opinion ended as it did, for I had at last a free hand to
say and write what I thought and felt.
My stay in Constantinople for a further three months as a silent
observer naturally did not escape the notice of the German authorities,
and after they had reported to the Foreign Office that a "satisfactory
co-operation between me and the German representatives was not longer
possible," they had of course to discover some excuse for putting an
end to my prolonged stay in Turkey. They finally attempted to get rid
of me by calling me up for military duty again. But this was useless in
my case, for my health had been badly shaken by my spell at the Front
at the beginning of the war, and besides I had the doctor's word for it
that I should never be able to stand the German climate after having
lived so long in the Tropics.
Whether they liked it or not, the authorities had to find some
other means of getting me out of Constantinople. The Consul-General
approached me, after he had discussed the matter with the Ambassador,
to see if I would not like to go to Switzerland to get properly cured;
otherwise he was sure I would be turned out by the Turks. They were
evidently afraid, for I was getting more and more into bad odour
with the German authorities for my ill-concealed opinions, that I
would publish my impressions, with documentary support, as soon as
ever there was a change of government in Turkey, or as soon as the
German censorship was removed and anything of the kind was possible.
They apparently thought that the frontier regulations would be quite
sufficient to prevent my taking any documentary evidence with me to
Switzerland.
As a matter of fact this was the case, and the day before my departure
from Constantinople I carefully burned the whole of my many notes,
which would have produced a much more effective indictment against the
moral sordidness of the German-Young Turkish system than these very
general sketches. But the strictest frontier regulations could not
prevent me from taking with me, free of all censorship, the impressions
I had received in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after a
painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German and to the duties I
had undertaken. Even then I had considerable difficulty in getting
across the frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days at the
frontier before I was finally allowed into Switzerland. It was only
owing to the fact that I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the
authority of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging that no
difficulties of a political kind might be placed in the way of my
going to Switzerland, as I had been permitted to do so by medical
certificate, the passport authorities and the local command, that I
finally won my point with the frontier authorities and was permitted to
cross into Switzerland.
To tell the truth, I must admit that the high civil authorities, and
particularly the Foreign Office, treated me throughout most kindly and
courteously. For this one reason I had a hard fight with myself, right
up to the very last, even after I arrived in Switzerland, before I
sat down and wrote out my impressions and opinions of German-Turkish
politics. And if I have now finally decided to make them public, I can
only do so with an expression of the most honest regret that my private
and political conscience has not allowed me to requite the kindness of
the authorities by keeping silent about what I saw of the German and
Turkish system.
End of Project Gutenberg's Two War Years in Constantinople, by Harry Stuermer