GERMANY MOBILISES THE TURKISH ARMY
In reading the August newspapers which described the mobilisations in
Europe, I was particularly struck with the emphasis which they laid upon
the splendid spirit that was overnight changing the civilian populations
into armies. At that time Turkey had not entered the war, and her
political leaders were loudly protesting their intention to maintain a
strict neutrality. Despite these pacific statements, the occurrences in
Constantinople were almost as warlike as those that were taking place in
the European capitals. Though Turkey was at peace, her army was
mobilising, merely, as we were told, as a precautionary measure. Yet the
daily scenes which I witnessed in Constantinople bore few resemblances
to those which were taking place in Europe. The martial patriotism of
men and the sublime patience and sacrifice of women may sometimes give
war an heroic aspect, but in Turkey the prospect was one of general
listlessness and misery. Day by day the miscellaneous Ottoman hordes
passed through the streets. Arabs, bootless and shoeless, dressed in
their most gaily-coloured garments, with long linen bags, containing the
required five days’ rations, thrown over their shoulders, shambling in
their gait and bewildered in their manner, touched shoulders with
equally dispirited Bedouins, evidently suddenly snatched from the
desert. A motley aggregation of Turks, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds,
Armenians, and Jews, showing signs of having been summarily taken from
their farms and shops, constantly jostled one another. Most were ragged,
and many looked half-starved; everything about them suggested
hopelessness and a cattle-like submission to a fate which they knew they
could not avoid. There was no joy of approaching battle, no feeling that
they were sacrificing themselves for a mighty cause; day by day they
passed, the unwilling children of a tatterdemalion empire that was
making one last despairing attempt to gird itself for action.
These wretched marchers little realised what was the power that was
dragging them from the four corners of their country. Even we of the
diplomatic group had not then clearly grasped the real situation. We
learned afterwards that the signal for this mobilisation had not come
originally from Enver or Talaat or the Turkish Cabinet, but the General
Staff in Berlin and its representatives in Constantinople, Liman von
Sanders and Bronsart, were really directing the variegated operation.
There were unmistakable signs of German activity. As soon as the German
armies crossed the Rhine work was begun on a mammoth wireless station a
few miles outside of Constantinople. The materials all came from Germany
by way of Rumania, and the mechanics, industriously working from
daybreak to sunset, were unmistakably Germans. Of course, the neutrality
laws would have prohibited the construction of a wireless station for a
belligerent in a neutral country like Turkey; it was therefore
officially announced that a German company was building this
heaven-pointing structure for the Turkish Government and on the Sultan’s
own property. But this story deceived no one. Wangenheim, the German
Ambassador, spoke of it freely and constantly as a German enterprise.
“Have you seen our wireless yet?” he would ask me. “Come on, let’s ride
up there and look it over.”
He proudly told me that it was the most powerful in the world--powerful
enough to catch all messages sent by the Eiffel Tower in Paris! He said
that it would put him in constant communication with Berlin. So little
did he attempt to conceal its German ownership that several times, when
ordinary telegraphic communication was suspended, he offered to let me
use it to send my telegrams.
This wireless plant was an outward symbol of the close though
unacknowledged association which then existed between Turkey and Berlin.
It took some time to finish such an extensive station, and in the
interim Wangenheim was using the apparatus on the _Corcovado_, a German
merchant-ship which was lying in the Bosphorus opposite the German
Embassy. For practical purposes, Wangenheim had a constant telephone
connection with Berlin.
German officers were almost as active as the Turks themselves in this
mobilisation. They enjoyed it all immensely; indeed, they gave every
sign that they were having the time of their lives. Bronsart, Humann,
and Lafferts were constantly at Enver’s elbow, advising and directing
the operations. German officers were rushing through the streets every
day in huge automobiles, all requisitioned from the civilian population;
they filled all the restaurants and amusement places at night and
celebrated their joy in the situation by consuming large quantities of
champagne--also requisitioned. A particularly spectacular and noisy
figure was that of von der Goltz Pasha. He was constantly making a kind
of viceregal progress through the streets in a huge and madly-dashing
automobile, on both sides of which flaring German eagles were painted. A
trumpeter on the front seat would blow loud, defiant blasts as the
conveyance rushed along, and woe to anyone, Turk or non-Turk, who
happened to get in the way! The Germans made no attempt to conceal their
conviction that they owned this town. Just as Wangenheim had established
a little Wilhelmstrasse in his Embassy, so had the German military men
established a sub-station of the Berlin General Staff. They even brought
their wives and families from Germany; I heard Baroness Wangenheim
remark that she was holding a little court of her own.
The Germans, however, were about the only people who were enjoying this
proceeding. The requisitioning that accompanied the mobilisation really
amounted to a wholesale looting of the civilian population. The Turks
took all the horses, mules, camels, sheep, cows, and other beasts that
they could lay their hands on, Enver telling me that they had gathered
in 150,000 animals. They did it most intelligently, making no provision
for the continuance of the species; thus they would leave only two cows
or two mares in many of the villages. This system of requisitioning, as
I shall describe, had the inevitable result of destroying the nation’s
agriculture, and ultimately led to the starvation of hundreds of
thousands of people. But the Turks, like the Germans, thought that the
war was destined to be a very short one, and that they would quickly
recuperate from the injuries which their methods of supplying an army
were causing their peasant population. The Government showed precisely
the same shamelessness and lack of intelligence in the way that they
requisitioned materials from merchants and shopmen. These proceedings
amounted to little less than conscious highwaymanship. But practically
none of these merchants were Moslems; most of them were Christians,
though there were a few Jews, and the Turkish officials therefore not
only provided the needs of their army, and incidentally lined their own
pockets, but they found a religious joy in pillaging the infidel
establishments. They would enter a retail shop, take practically all the
merchandise on the shelves, and give merely a piece of paper in
acknowledgment. As the Government had never paid for the supplies which
it had taken in the Italian and Balkan Wars, the merchants hardly
expected that they would ever receive anything for these latest
requisitions. Afterward, many who understood officialdom, and were
politically influential, did recover to the extent of 70 per
cent.--what became of the remaining 30 per cent. is not a secret to
those who have had experience with Turkish bureaucrats.
Thus, for most of the population, requisitioning simply meant financial
ruin. That the process was merely pillaging is shown by many of the
materials which the army took, ostensibly for the use of the soldiers.
Thus the officers seized all the mohair they could find; on occasion
they even carried off women’s silk stockings, corsets, and babies’
slippers, and I heard one case in which they reinforced the Turkish
commissary with caviar and other delicacies. They demanded blankets from
one merchant who was a dealer in women’s underwear; because he had no
such stock, they seized what he had, and he afterward saw his
appropriated goods reposing in rival establishments. The Turks did the
same thing in many other cases. The prevailing system was to take
movable property wherever available and convert it into cash; where the
money ultimately went I do not know, but that many private fortunes were
made I have little doubt. I told Enver that this ruthless method of
mobilising and requisitioning was destroying his country. Misery and
starvation soon began to afflict the land. Out of 4,000,000 adult male
population more than 1,500,000 were ultimately enlisted, and so about a
million families were left without breadwinners, all of them in a
condition of extreme destitution. The Turkish Government paid its
soldiers 25 cents a month, and gave the families a separation allowance
of $1.20 a month. As a result, thousands were dying from lack of food
and many more were enfeebled by malnutrition. I believe that the Empire
has lost a quarter of its Turkish population since the war started. I
asked Enver why he permitted his people to be destroyed in this way. But
sufferings like these did not distress him. He was much impressed by his
success in raising a large army with practically no money--something, he
boasted, which no other nation had ever done before. In order to
accomplish this, Enver had issued orders which stigmatised the evasion
of military service as desertion, and therefore punishable with the
death penalty. He also adopted a scheme by which any Ottoman could
obtain exemption by the payment of about $190. Still, Enver regarded his
accomplishment as a notable one. It was really his first taste of
unlimited power, and he enjoyed the experience greatly.
That the Germans directed this mobilisation is not a matter of opinion
but of proof. I need only instance that the Germans were requisitioning
materials in their own name for their own use. I have a photographic
copy of such a requisition made by Humann, the German naval attaché,
for a shipload of oil-cake. This document is dated September 29, 1914.
“The lot by the steamship _Derindje_ which you mentioned in your letter
of the 26th,” this paper reads, “has been requisitioned by me for the
German Government.” This clearly shows that, a month before Turkey had
entered the war, Germany was really exercising the powers of sovereignty
at Constantinople.