TURKEY AND TOLERANCE—A FRIENDSHIP WASTED
MY supreme interest in Turkey among the Moslem nations, arose from
influences, or instincts, I cannot now with any certainty determine. I
suspect, however, it was in part reaction against the injustice of
Gladstone—the idol of my father’s youth, until the betrayal of his hero
Gordon—and in part indignation with those who called the Koran an
“accursed book.” _My_ religion is the universal tolerance I expect for
my own, and I can feel only the most profound admiration for the Great
Prophet of Islam, whose fine personality has left so benign an influence
throughout the East, and for his “Bible,” with its noble study of our
own Christ. Carlyle, you will remember, pays glowing tribute to this
“Prophet Hero!”
So I devoured every book that I could lay hands on about these
interesting peoples; fought for introductions to anyone who could talk
of them, from book-knowledge or personal acquaintance; studied
medicine—that their women might suffer less.
It was in 1906 that I first met Pierre Loti’s “disenchanted” heroines,
Zeyneb and Melek; and we soon became the closest friends. The tale of
their daring, but unpractical, flight had stirred my imagination. Their
father was one of Abdul Hamid’s Ministers, and two or three times during
my visit they were almost kidnapped by order of the Sultan. On one
occasion it was, indeed, only a miracle which disclosed the plot that
was to have carried them off (by motor from Nice to Marseilles, thence
back by boat to Constantinople) to the punishment awaiting them.
For hours they held me spellbound by their vivid descriptions of harem
life, particularly the Sultan’s, and of the “Terror” under Abdul Hamid.
With this clever monster at the helm, the Turks suffered a hundred times
more than the Christians. Whole regiments of Albanians ceased to exist;
whole companies went off to Yemen and were forgotten; Ministers died
suddenly, and private families disappeared wholesale. Yet they must be
thrown out of Europe, “bag and baggage,” because, in a minor degree,
Christian Armenians, too, bled under Abdul Hamid!
After the departure of the two Hanoums (Turkish ladies), their father
died suddenly. And though, when in Constantinople, I did my best to see
and console their widowed mother, she persisted in regarding me as one
of those _giaours_ who had stolen away her daughters! And would listen
to no defence or explanation.
It was then that I heard much of the coming Revolution: when and where
“meetings” had taken place, who were members of the “secret societies,”
which of their friends in prison would be liberated. In 1908, the Day of
Deliverance suddenly came, to the astonishment of the whole world, and
I, too, rejoiced, as though my own country were now set free!
I was, luckily, again in Constantinople for those great days. I saw the
hideous tyrant of a few years ago driven through the streets of Pera; I
was present at the opening of Parliament; introduced to the Sultan Abdul
Hamid and his Grand Vizier Kiamil Pasha.
It was the Vizier’s charming daughter who soon became my dearest friend,
and hostess for two subsequent visits. Once she spoke of me to Abdul
Hamid’s successor, Mohammed V., as her “English sister” (her favourite
term of endearment), and the Sultan replied: “I did not know Kiamil
Pasha had any English children.” Poor man, he had a Turkish family of a
score!
It was Hamid’s fall that first revealed to me how much Turkey loved
England, what she was ready to give for British friendship. I had
witnessed the arrival of our Ambassador, the late Sir G. Lowther, and
his triumphant entry to Constantinople, when the horses were taken out
of his carriage and he was drawn by Turks to the Embassy. As Abdul Hamid
had compromised the nation by friendship with Germans, young Turkey
threw herself at the feet of Great Britain.
Why could we not respond? Alas, our Ambassador and his French colleague,
M. Constant, would openly express their preference for the despotic
Abdul Hamid. And what was said, no doubt with no serious thought of
offence, reached the ears of the young Turks and stung their pride:
“People who visit Constantinople may be divided into two classes: those
who like dirt and squalor” (of whom I was one), “and those who do not!”
It was inevitable that the Germans should make _their_ profit from _our_
discourtesy and blind contempt. We ought, from the first, to have known
that she would send, as indeed she did, one of her finest diplomats to
Constantinople. Marshall von Bieberstein, and his “retriever,” Dr. W——
of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ lost no opportunity of conciliating the
young Turks, to what end we might, surely, have foreseen!
After the Balkan war, I paid a visit to vanquished Turkey; this time as
a guest of my “Turkish sister” in Stamboul, whose father had been,
meanwhile, banished to Cyprus, where he died. Under the circumstances I
could not (for fear of further compromising my friends with the
Government) see much of our Ambassador, Sir Louis Mallet, though I met
him twice, and found him a charming man.
To all my appeals, at the Embassy and elsewhere, for British friendship
and help to put Turkey on her feet again, I met the same foolish,
“parrot” reply: “We cannot sacrifice Russia!” Nevertheless, when I
returned to London, and published “An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem”
(the diary record of private friendships, widely circulated in the
East), we, the friends of Turkey, determined to defy the Government, and
formed an Ottoman Society for that purpose.
When the war broke out I had just reached Berlin, once more _en route_
for Turkey, Asia Minor, and afterwards Persia and India.
It is obvious that the world-tragedy had even a sharper sting for those
of us who were bidden to hate our life-long “best friends” among the
enemy peoples. Often enough, moreover, the individual “foe” (as was the
case with my Turkish “sister”) could not throw off the heart’s
allegiance to England merely because “it was war.”
Can we, indeed, honestly blame the young Turks? In the first place, they
did not choose their own path. One man, Enver Pasha, joined Germany
_against_ the wishes of a whole nation. As _one_ man, Mr. Lloyd George,
would once have drawn the most constitutional of all peoples to fight
the Turks, had not General Harington, luckily for them and us, disobeyed
his command!
Besides, we did _nothing_ to preserve our friendship with Turkey. Years
of indifference, and most impolitic scoffings at real reforming
enthusiasm, were followed, at the eleventh hour, by total neglect of any
conciliating diplomacy, which could even then have kept Turkey out of
the war, and shortened it by two years.
For instance, on the outbreak of war with Germany, “without notice,
without the most banal of the forms of courtesy, on the very day when
the Turkish flag should have been hoisted over the ships handed over to
the Ottoman Commission, which had come to England to take charge of
them, the dreadnoughts were seized by Great Britain and no offer was
made by the British Government to refund, at least, the price of the two
ships....” So wrote the late Grand Vizier Hakki Pasha; and one could
mention many other, similar, senseless pin-pricks, which may inflame
such people almost more than insults of greater import.
During the war my friendship for Turkey proved a serious handicap in
hospital work. Anyone jealous of what privileges were by chance accorded
to me would hand over a few choice tit-bits—that grew in passing—to the
secret police. The French, unless in a fit of really inevitable
war-depression, paid scant heed to such reports. The Americans, however,
easily took alarm. One, I remember, actually spoke to me about the
matter with a terror only equalled, in my experience, by that of the
Cabinet Minister’s brother who once asked me: “How I could do anything
so foolish as to live in a harem?”
It was a poor compliment to one of Turkey’s greatest statesmen, and to
my hostess, his distinguished daughter.
But when I found that Roget’s “Thesaurus” gives as synonym for a harem,
“a house of ill fame,” I understood!
* * * * *
Turkey, however, was crushed, defeated and, at Sèvres, humiliated. Were
we not courting disaster by such unjust terms? If we remove the foot
holding them down—but ever so slightly—will they rebound and strike?
“I cannot understand,” I said to one of their delegates, “how a Turk
could be found to sign such a Treaty.” For always, with all their
faults, I had known them proud.
“Had we not signed,” he answered, “the Greeks would have entered
Constantinople, and God knows when we could have driven them out. What
does it matter, the Treaty will not be ratified.”
To keep out the Greeks, to save bloodshed! Maybe he was right.
“At least, we are set free from Germany,” they said; and there is little
we could not have asked then for such security.
They would have allowed Great Britain any privileges, any concessions,
all sovereign rights, if only we had not permitted the occupation of
Smyrna! When the Dutch _pasteur_, M. Lebouvier, sent the _Times_ a full
description of all the hideous bloodshed, the saturnalian orgies, and
the riot with which the Greeks celebrated their triumphal entry, it was
_suppressed_—and Englishmen do not know!
Consternation, despair, and anger were the order of the day. Those
hitherto most apologetic for the part played by Turkey in the war, were
now ready to glory in what they had done. A million and a half Turks
enslaved by 300,000 “servant” Greeks! Can such things be?
In Constantinople a mass meeting of 250,000 people was held at the
Byzantine Hippodrome, flags and banners were draped in black, women
sobbed as at a funeral. They were _mourning_, indeed, for the city they
were afterwards accused of having burned!
By what deplorable influence were we thus moved to attempt what would
practically have meant the extermination of Turkey? The magic name of
Venizelos is not enough! Again and again, the friends of Turkey have
asked why? But we do not know whether British action was deliberate or
the result of an incredibly big blunder!
M. Kemal Pasha’s great victory changed the face of affairs. Few in
England had seemed to care what happened to this band of “rebels”; only
a month before his victory, even our Intelligence Officers thought he
would easily be beaten by the Greeks. Few had even heard of his three
and a half years exile in the mountains!
Meanwhile, at home, we paid little heed, and scant courtesy, to the
three Ambassadors from Angora, who came to negotiate peace. Békir Sami
Bey’s confidential conversations with the ex-Prime Minister about the
Soviet Government were handed on to M. Krassine. Youssouf Kemal Bey,
indeed, obtained a hearing, but nothing was done. Fethi Bey (the
Minister of the Interior, sent as a last resource) was told, and that
was true, that Lord Curzon was seriously ill, but that no one “counted”
in England except Mr. Lloyd George. Naturally, he asked the Premier for
an audience, which was “promised,” but never given!
_Incivility does not pay._ It is too expensive a luxury for the greatest
of nations. This level-headed Turk, accepting such treatment with all
the dignity of his race, found many _other_ things to praise in this
country. “The English,” he said, “understand only _one_ form of
propaganda—the sword!” But of our institutions, our Parliament, our
clubs, and the marvellous acting of Miss Sybil Thorndike in “Jane
Clegg,” he said much, and nothing but praise, in Angora!
As a woman who has received the greatest kindness and courtesy from the
Turks, my resentment, on behalf of Fethi Bey, was expressed with
unmeasured indignation. His mission was _not_ taken seriously; the
Government dared to show him the cold shoulder!
For his part, most graciously he suggested that I should come over to
Angora myself, to the cradle of the Nationalist movement, and see the
hero of the Nationalists.
But for his ever-ready assistance it would have been useless to have
made the attempt. When, in Angora, he renewed his apologies for all the
discomfort I had endured, but I told him the journey itself had been a
privilege, for it enabled me to see with my own eyes what his people had
been driven to endure.
No, I could never have forgiven myself if, in a moment of weakness, I
had been discouraged by the chivalry of the British officials and
allowed them to persuade me to stay at home.
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