A FIGHT FOR THREE THOUSAND CIVILIANS
On May 2nd, 1915, Enver sent his aide to the American Embassy, bringing
a message which he requested me to transmit to the French and British
Governments. About a week before, the Allies had made their landing on
the Gallipoli Peninsula. They had evidently concluded that a naval
attack by itself could not destroy the defences and open the road to
Constantinople, and they had now adopted the alternative plan of
despatching large bodies of troops, to be supported by the guns of their
warships. Already many thousands of Australians and New Zealanders had
entrenched themselves at the tip of the Peninsula, and the excitement
that prevailed in Constantinople was almost as great as that which had
been caused by the appearance of the fleet two months before.
Enver now informed me that the Allied ships were bombarding in reckless
fashion, and ignoring the well-established international rule that such
bombardments should be directed only against fortified places. British
and French shells, he said, were falling everywhere, destroying
unprotected Moslem villages and killing hundreds of innocent
non-combatants. Enver asked me to inform the Allied Governments that
such activities must immediately cease. He had decided to collect all
the British and French citizens who were then living in Constantinople,
take them down to the Gallipoli Peninsula, and scatter them in Moslem
villages and towns. The Allied fleets would then be throwing their
projectiles not only against peaceful and unprotected Moslems, but
against their own countrymen. It was Enver’s idea that this threat,
communicated by the American Ambassador to the British and French
Governments, would soon put an end to “atrocities” of this kind. I was
given a few days’ respite to get the information to London and Paris.
At that time about 3,000 British and French citizens were living in
Constantinople. The great majority belonged to the class known as
Levantines; nearly all had been born in Turkey, and in many cases their
families had been domiciled in that country for two or more generations.
The retention of their European citizenship is almost their only
contact with the nation from which they have sprung. Not uncommonly we
meet in the larger cities of Turkey men and women who are English by
race and nationality, but who speak no English, French being the usual
language of the Levantine. The great majority have never set foot in
England, or any other European country; they have only one home, and
that is Turkey. The fact that the Levantine usually retains citizenship
in the nation of his origin was now apparently making him a fitting
object for Turkish vengeance.
Besides these Levantines, a large number of English and French were then
living in Constantinople as teachers in the schools, as missionaries,
and as important business men and merchants. The Ottoman Government now
proposed to assemble all these residents, both those who were
immediately and those who were remotely connected with Great Britain and
France, and to place them in exposed positions on the Gallipoli
Peninsula as targets for the Allied fleet.
Naturally my first question when I received the startling information
was whether the warships were really bombarding defenceless towns. If
they were murdering non-combatant men, women, and children in this
reckless fashion, such an act of reprisal as Enver now proposed would
probably have had some justification. It seemed to me incredible,
however, that the English and French could commit such barbarities. I
had already received many complaints of this kind from Turkish officials
which, on investigation, had turned out to be untrue. Only a little
while before, Dr. Meyer, the first assistant to Suleyman Nouman, the
Chief of the Medical Staff, had notified me that the British fleet had
bombarded a Turkish hospital and killed 1,000 invalids. When I looked
into the matter, I found that the building had been but slightly
damaged, and only one man killed.
I now naturally suspected that this latest tale of Allied barbarity
rested on a similarly flimsy foundation. I soon discovered, indeed, that
this was the case. The Allied fleet was not bombarding Moslem villages
at all. A number of British warships had been stationed in the Gulf of
Saros, an indentation of the Ægean Sea, on the western side of the
Peninsula, and from this vantage point they were throwing shells into
the city of Gallipoli. All the “bombarding” of towns in which they were
now engaging was limited to this one city. In doing this the British
Navy was not violating the rules of civilised warfare, for Gallipoli had
long since been evacuated of its civilian population, and the Turks had
established military headquarters in several of the houses, which had
properly become the object of the Allied attack. I certainly knew of no
rule of warfare which prohibited an attack upon a military headquarters!
As to the stories of murdered civilians--men, women, and children--these
proved to be gross exaggerations; as almost the entire civilian
population had long since left, any casualties resulting from the
bombardment must have been confined to the armed forces of the Empire.
I now discussed the situation for some time with Mr. Ernest Weyl, who
was generally recognised as the leading French citizen in
Constantinople, and with Mr. Hoffman Philip, the Conseiller of the
Embassy, and then decided that I would go immediately to the Sublime
Porte and protest to Enver.
The Council of Ministers was sitting at the time, but Enver came out.
His mood was more demonstrative than usual. As he described the attack,
of the British fleet he became extremely angry; it was not the
imperturbable Enver with whom I had become so familiar.
“These cowardly English!” he exclaimed. “They tried for a long time to
get through the Dardanelles, and we were too much for them! And see what
kind of a revenge they are taking. Their ships sneak up into the outer
bay, where our guns cannot reach them, and shoot over the hills at our
little villages, killing harmless old men, women, and children, and
bombarding our hospitals. Do you think we are going to let them do that?
And what can we do? Our guns don’t reach over the hills, so that we
cannot meet them in battle. If we could, we would drive them off, just
as we did at the straits a month ago. We have no fleet to send to
England to bombard their unfortified towns as they are bombarding ours,
so we have decided to move all the English and French we can find to
Gallipoli. Let them kill their own people as well as ours.”
I told him that, granted that the circumstances were as he had stated
them, he had grounds for indignation. But I called his attention to the
fact that he was wrong; that he was accusing the Allies of crimes which
they were not committing.
“This is about the most barbarous thing that you have ever
contemplated,” I said. “The British have a perfect right to attack a
military headquarters like Gallipoli.”
But my argument did not move Enver. I became convinced that he had not
decided on this step as a reprisal to protect his own countrymen, but
that he and his associates were really looking for revenge. The fact
that the Australians and New Zealanders had successfully effected a
landing had aroused their most barbarous instincts. Enver referred to
this landing in our talk. Though he professed to regard it lightly, and
said that he would soon push the French and English into the sea, I saw
that it was causing him much concern. The Turk, as I have said before,
is psychologically primitive; to answer the British landing at Gallipoli
by murdering hundreds of helpless British who were in his power would
strike him as perfectly logical. As a result of this talk I gained only
a few concessions. Enver agreed to postpone the deportation until
Thursday--it was then Sunday--to exclude women and children from the
order, and to take none of the British and French who were then
connected with American institutions.
“All the rest will have to go,” was his final word. “Moreover,” he
added, “we don’t purpose to have the English ships fire at the
transports we are sending to the Dardanelles. In the future we shall put
a few Englishmen and Frenchmen on every ship we send down there as a
protection to our own soldiers.”
When I returned to our Embassy I found that the news of the proposed
deportation had been published. The amazement and despair that
immediately resulted were unparalleled, even in that city of constant
sensations. Europeans, by living for many years in the Levant, seem to
acquire its emotions, particularly its susceptibility to fear and
horror, greatly accentuated by their deprivation of the protection of
their Embassies. A stream of frenzied people now began to pour into the
Embassy. From their tears and cries one would have thought that they
were immediately to be taken out and shot; that there was any
possibility of being saved seemed hardly to occur to them. Yet all the
time they insisted that I should get individual exemptions. One could
not go because he had a dependent family; another had a sick child;
another was ill himself. My ante-room was full of frantic mothers,
asking me to secure exemption for their sons, and of wives who sought
special treatment for their husbands. They made all kinds of impossible
suggestions. I should resign my ambassadorship as a protest; I should
even threaten Turkey with war by the United States! They constantly
besieged my wife, who spent hours listening to their stories and
comforting them. In all this exciting mass there were many who faced the
situation with more courage.
The day after my talk with Enver, Bedri, the Prefect of Police, began to
arrest some of the victims.
The next morning one of my callers made what would ordinarily have
seemed to be an obvious suggestion. This visitor was a German. He told
me that Germany would suffer greatly in reputation if the Turks carried
out this plan; the world would not possibly be convinced that Germans
had not devised the whole scheme. He said that I should call upon the
German and Austrian Ambassadors; he was sure that they would support me
in my pleas for decent treatment. As I had made appeals to Wangenheim
several times before on behalf of foreigners, without success, I had
hardly thought it worth while to ask his co-operation in this instance.
Moreover, the plan of using non-combatants as a protective screen in
warfare was such a familiar German device that I was not at all sure
that the German Staff had not instigated the Turks. I decided, however,
to adopt the advice of my German visitor and seek Wangenheim’s
assistance. I must admit that I did this as a forlorn hope, but at least
I thought it only fair to Wangenheim to give him a chance to help.
I called upon him in the evening at ten o’clock and stayed with him
until eleven. I spent the larger part of this hour in a fruitless
attempt to interest him in the plight of these non-combatants.
Wangenheim said point-blank that he would not assist me. “It is
perfectly proper,” he maintained, “for the Turks to establish a
concentration camp at Gallipoli. It is also proper for them to put
non-combatant English and French on their transports and thus insure
them against attack.” As I made repeated attempts to argue the matter,
Wangenheim would deftly shift the conversation to other topics.
According to my record of this talk, written out at the time, the German
Ambassador discussed almost every subject except the one upon which I
had called.
“This act of the Turks will greatly injure Germany----” I would begin.
“Do you know that the English soldiers at Gaba Tepe are without food and
drink?” he would reply. “They made an attack to capture a well and were
repulsed. The English have taken their ships away so as to prevent their
soldiers from retreating----”
“But about this Gallipoli business,” I interrupted. “Germans themselves
here in Constantinople have said that Germany should stop it----”
“The Allies landed 45,000 men on the Peninsula,” Wangenheim answered,
“and of these 10,000 were killed. In a few days we shall attack the rest
and destroy them.”
When I attempted to approach the subject from another angle, this master
diplomatist would begin discussing Rumania and the possibility of
obtaining ammunition by way of that country.
“Your secretary, Bryan,” he said, “has just issued a statement showing
that it would be unneutral for the United States to refuse to sell
ammunition to the Allies, so we have used this same argument with the
Rumanians; if it is unneutral not to sell ammunition, it is certainly
unneutral to refuse to transport it!”
The humorous aspects of this argument appealed to Wangenheim, but I
reminded him that I was there to discuss the lives of between 2,000 and
3,000 non-combatants. As I touched upon this subject again, Wangenheim
replied that the United States would not be acceptable to Germany as a
peacemaker now, because we were so friendly to the Entente. He insisted
on giving me all the details of recent German successes in the
Carpathians and the latest news on the Italian situation.
“We would rather fight Italy than have her for our ally,” he said.
At another time all this would have greatly entertained me, but not
then. It was quite apparent that Wangenheim would not discuss the
proposed deportation further than to say that the Turks were justified.
His statement that it was planned to establish a “concentration camp” at
Gallipoli unfolded his whole attitude. Up to this time the Turks had not
established concentration camps for enemy aliens anywhere. I had
earnestly advised them not to establish such camps, thus far with
success. On the other hand, the Germans were protesting that Turkey was
“too lenient,” and urging the establishment of such camps in the
interior. Wangenheim’s use of the words “concentration camps in
Gallipoli” showed that the German view was at last prevailing and that I
was losing my battle for the foreigners.
An internment camp is a distressing place under the most favourable
circumstances, but who, except a German or a Turk, ever conceived of
establishing one right in the field of battle? Let us suppose that the
English and the French should assemble all their enemy aliens, march
them to the front, and place them in a camp in No Man’s Land, directly
in the fire of both armies. That was precisely the kind of
“concentration camp” which the Turks and Germans now intended to
establish for the resident aliens of Constantinople--for my talk with
Wangenheim left no doubt in my mind that the Germans were parties to the
plot. They feared that the land attack on the Dardanelles would succeed,
just as they had feared that the naval attack would succeed, and they
were prepared to use any weapon, even the lives of several thousand
non-combatants, in their efforts to make it a failure.
My talk with Wangenheim produced no results, so far as enlisting his
support was concerned, but it stiffened my determination to defeat this
enterprise. I now called upon Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador. He
at once declared that the proposed deportation was “inhuman.”
“I will take up the matter with the Grand Vizier,” he said, “and see if
I can stop it.”
“But you know that is perfectly useless,” I answered. “The Grand Vizier
has no power--he is only a figurehead. Only one man can stop this; that
is Enver.”
Pallavicini had far finer sensibilities and a tenderer conscience than
Wangenheim, and I had no doubt that he was entirely sincere in his
desire to prevent this crime. But he was a diplomat of the old Austrian
school. Nothing in his eyes was so important as diplomatic etiquette. As
the representative of his Emperor, propriety demanded that he should
conduct all his negotiations with the Grand Vizier, who was also at that
time Minister of Foreign Affairs. He never discussed State matters with
Talaat and Enver--indeed, he had only limited official relations with
these men, the real rulers of Turkey. And now the saving of 3,000 lives
was not, in Pallavicini’s eyes, any reason why he should disregard the
traditional routine of diplomatic intercourse.
“I must go strictly according to rules in this matter,” he said. And, in
the goodness of his heart, he did speak to Saïd Halim. Following this
example, Wangenheim also spoke to the Grand Vizier. In Wangenheim’s
case, however, the protest was merely intended for the official record.
“You may fool some people,” I told the German Ambassador, “but you know
that speaking to the Grand Vizier in this matter is as inconsequential
as shouting in the air.”
However, there was one member of the diplomatic corps who worked
whole-heartedly on behalf of the threatened foreigners. This was M.
Koloucheff, the Bulgarian Minister. As soon as he heard of this latest
Turco-German outrage, he immediately came to me with offers of
assistance. He did not propose to waste his time by a protest to the
Grand Vizier, but announced his intention of going immediately to the
source of authority, Enver himself. Koloucheff was an extremely
important man at that particular time, for Bulgaria was then neutral and
both sides were angling for her support.
Meanwhile Bedri and his minions were busy arresting all the doomed
English and French. The deportation was arranged to take place on
Thursday morning. On Wednesday the excitement reached the hysterical
stage. It seemed as if the whole foreign population of Constantinople
had gathered at the American Embassy. Scores of weeping women and
haggard men assembled in front and at the side of the building; more
than three hundred gained personal access to my office, hanging
desperately upon the Ambassador and his staff. Many almost seemed to
think that I personally held their fates in my hand; in their agony of
spirit some even denounced me, insisting that I was not exerting all my
powers on their behalf. Whenever I left my office and passed into the
hall I was almost mobbed by scores of terror-stricken and dishevelled
mothers and wives. The nervous tension was frightful; I seized the
telephone, called up Enver, and demanded an interview.
He replied that he would be happy to receive me on Thursday. By this
time, however, the prisoners would already have been on their way to
Gallipoli.
“No,” I replied, “I must see you this afternoon.”
Enver made all kinds of excuses; he was busy, he had appointments
scheduled for the whole day.
“I presume you want to see me about the English and French,” he said.
“If that is so, I can tell you now that it will be useless. Our minds
are made up. Orders have been issued to the police to gather them all by
to-night and to ship them down to-morrow morning.”
I still insisted that I must see him that afternoon, and he still
attempted to dodge the interview.
“My time is all taken,” he said. “The Council of Ministers sits at four
o’clock, and the meeting is to be a very important one. I can’t absent
myself.”
Emboldened by the thought of the crowds of women that were flooding the
whole Embassy, I decided on an altogether unprecedented move.
“I shall not be denied an interview,” I replied. “I shall come up to the
Council Room at four o’clock. If you refuse to receive me then, I shall
insist on going into the Council Room and discussing the matter with the
whole Cabinet. I shall be interested to learn whether the Turkish
Cabinet will refuse to receive the American Ambassador.”
It seemed to me that I could almost hear Enver gasp over the telephone.
I presume few responsible Ministers of any country have ever had such an
astounding proposition made to them.
“If you will meet me at the Sublime Porte at 3.30,” he answered, after
a considerable pause, “I shall arrange to see you.”
When I reached the Sublime Porte I was told that the Bulgarian Minister
was having a protracted conference with Enver. Naturally, I was willing
to wait, for I knew what the two men were discussing. Presently M.
Koloucheff came out; his face was tense and anxious, clearly revealing
the ordeal through which he had just passed.
“It is perfectly hopeless,” he said to me. “Nothing will move Enver; he
is absolutely determined that this thing shall go through. I cannot wish
you good luck, for you will have none.”
The meeting which followed between Enver and myself was the most
momentous I had had up to that time. We discussed the fate of the
foreigners for nearly an hour. I found Enver in one of his most polite
but most unyielding moods. He told me before I began that it was useless
to talk--that the matter was a closed issue. But I insisted on telling
him what a splendid impression Turkey’s treatment of her enemies had
made on the outside world. “Your record in this matter is better than
that of any other belligerent country,” I said. “You have not put them
into concentration camps, you have let them stay here and continue their
ordinary business, just as before. You have done this in spite of strong
pressure to act otherwise. Why do you destroy all the good effect this
has produced by now making such a fatal mistake as you propose?”
But Enver insisted that the Allied fleets were bombarding unfortified
towns, killing women, children, and wounded men.
“We have warned them through you that they must not do this,” he said,
“but they don’t stop.”
This statement, of course, was not true, but I could not persuade Enver
that he was wrong. He expressed great appreciation for all that I had
done, and regretted for my sake that he could not accept my advice. I
told him that the foreigners had suggested that I threaten to give up
the care of British and French interests.
“Nothing would suit us better,” he quickly replied. “The only difficulty
we have with you is when you come around and bother us with English and
French affairs.”
I asked him if I had ever given him any advice that had led them into
trouble. He graciously replied that they had never yet made a mistake by
following my suggestions.
“Very well, take my advice in this case, too,” I replied. “You will find
later that you have made no mistake by doing so. I tell you that it is
my positive opinion that your Cabinet is committing a terrible error by
taking this step.”
“But I have given orders to this effect,” Enver answered. “I cannot
countermand them. If I did, my whole influence with the Army would go.
Once having given an order I never change it. My own wife asked me to
have her servants exempted from military service, and I refused. The
Grand Vizier asked exemption for his secretary, and I refused him,
because I had given orders. I never revoke orders, and I shall not do it
in this case. If you can show me some way in which this order can be
carried out, and your protégés still saved, I shall be glad to listen.”
I had already discovered one of the most conspicuous traits in the
Turkish character: its tendency to compromise and to bargain. Enver’s
request for a suggestion now gave me an opportunity to play on this
characteristic.
“All right,” I said. “I think I can. I should think you could still
carry out your orders without sending _all_ the French and English
residents down. If you would send only a few you would still win your
point. You could still maintain discipline in the Army, and these few
would be as strong a deterrent to the Allied fleet as sending all.”
It seemed to me that Enver almost eagerly seized upon this suggestion as
a way out of his dilemma.
“How many will you let me send?” he asked quickly. The moment he put
this question I knew that I had carried my point.
“I would suggest that you take twenty English and twenty French--forty
in all.”
“Let me have fifty,” he said.
“All right, we won’t haggle over ten,” I answered. “But you must make
another concession. Let me pick out the fifty who are to go.”
This agreement had relieved the tension, and now the gracious side of
Enver’s nature began to show itself again.
“No, Mr. Ambassador,” he replied. “You have prevented me from making a
mistake this afternoon; now let me prevent you from making one. If you
select the fifty men who are to go you will simply make fifty enemies. I
think too much of you to let you do that. I will prove to you that I am
your real friend. Can’t you make some other suggestion?”
“Why not take the youngest? They can stand the fatigue best.”
“That is fair,” answered Enver. He said that Bedri, who was in the
building at that moment, would select the “victims.” This caused me
some uneasiness. I knew that Enver’s modification of his order would
displease Bedri, whose hatred of the foreigners had shown itself on many
occasions, and that the head of the police would do his best to find
some way of evading it. So I asked Enver to send for Bedri and give him
his new orders in my presence. Bedri came in, and, as I had suspected,
he did not like the new arrangement at all. As soon as he heard that he
was to take only fifty, and the youngest, he threw up his hands and
began to walk up and down the room.
“No, no, this will never do!” he said. “I don’t want the youngest; I
must have the notables!”
But Enver stuck to the arrangement and gave Bedri orders to take only
the youngest men. It was quite apparent that Bedri needed humouring, so
I asked him to ride with me to the American Embassy, where we would have
tea and arrange all the details. This invitation had an instantaneous
effect which the American mind will have difficulty in comprehending. An
American would regard it as nothing wonderful to be seen publicly riding
with an Ambassador, or to take tea at an Embassy. But this is a
distinction which never comes to a minor functionary, such as a Prefect
of Police, in the Turkish capital. Possibly I lowered the dignity of my
office in extending this invitation to Bedri--Pallavicini would probably
have thought so--but it certainly paid, for it made Bedri more pliable
than he would otherwise have been.
When we reached the Embassy we found the crowds still there, awaiting
the results of my intercession. When I told the besiegers that only
fifty had to go, and these the youngest, they seemed momentarily
stupefied. They could not understand it at first; they believed that I
might obtain some modification of the order, but nothing like this.
Then, as the truth dawned upon them, I found myself in the centre of a
crowd that had apparently gone momentarily insane, this time not from
grief, but from joy. Women, the tears streaming down their faces,
insisted on throwing themselves on their knees, seizing both my hands,
and covering them with kisses. Mature men, despite my violent
protestations, persisted in hugging me and kissing me on both cheeks.
For several minutes I struggled with this crowd, embarrassed by its
demonstrations of gratitude, but finally I succeeded in breaking away
and secreting myself and Bedri in an inner room.
“Can’t I have a few notables?” he asked.
“I’ll give you just one,” I replied.
“Can’t I have three?” he asked again.
“You can have all who are under fifty,” I answered.
But that did not satisfy him, as there was not a solitary person of
distinction under that age limit. Bedri really had his eye on Messieurs
Weyl, Rey, and Dr. Frew. But I had one “notable” up my sleeve whom I was
willing to concede. Dr. Wigram, an Anglican clergyman, one of the most
prominent men in the foreign colony, had pleaded with me, asking that he
might be permitted to go with the hostages and furnish them such
consolation as religion could give them. I knew that nothing would
delight Dr. Wigram more than to be thrown as a sop to Bedri’s passion
for “notables.”
“Dr. Wigram is the only notable you can have,” I said to Bedri. So he
accepted him as the best that he could do in that line.
Mr. Hoffman Philip, the Conseiller of the American Embassy--now American
Minister to Colombia--had already expressed a desire to accompany the
hostages, so that he might minister to their comfort. This was nothing
new in the manifestation of a fine humanitarian spirit in Mr. Philip.
Although not in good health, Mr. Philip had returned to Constantinople
after Turkey had entered the war in order that he might assist me in the
work of caring for the refugees. Through all that arduous period he
constantly displayed that sympathy for the unfortunate, the sick, and
the poor which is innate in his character. Though it was somewhat
irregular for a representative of the Embassy to engage in such a
hazardous enterprise as this one, Mr. Philip pleaded so earnestly that
finally I reluctantly gave my consent. I also obtained permission for
Mr. Arthur Ruhl and Mr. Henry West Suydam, of the Brooklyn _Eagle_, to
accompany the party.
At the end Bedri had to have his little joke. Though the fifty were
informed that the boat for Gallipoli would leave the next morning at six
o’clock, Bedri, with his police, visited their houses at midnight, and
routed them all out of bed. The crowd that assembled at the dock the
next morning looked somewhat weatherbeaten and worse for wear. Bedri was
there, superintending the whole proceeding, and when he came up to me he
good-naturedly reproached me again for letting him have only one
“notable.” In the main he behaved very decently, though he could not
refrain from telling the hostages that the British aeroplanes were
dropping bombs on Gallipoli! Of the twenty-five “Englishmen” assembled,
there were only two who had been born in England, and, of the
twenty-five “Frenchmen,” only two who had been born in France! They
carried satchels containing food and other essentials, their assembled
relatives had additional bundles, and Mrs. Morgenthau sent several
large cases of food to the ship. The parting of these young men with
their families was affecting, but they all stood it bravely.
I returned to the Embassy, somewhat wearied by the excitement of the
last few days and in no particularly gracious humour for the honour
which now awaited me. For I had been there only a few minutes when His
Excellency the German Ambassador was announced. Wangenheim discussed
commonplaces for a few minutes and then approached the real object of
his call. He asked me to telegraph to Washington that he had been
“helpful” in getting the number of the Gallipoli hostages reduced to
fifty! In view of the actual happenings, this request was so
preposterous that I almost laughed in his face. I had known that, in
going through the form of speaking to the Grand Vizier, Wangenheim had
been manufacturing an alibi for future use, but I had not expected him
to fall back upon it so soon.
“Well,” said Wangenheim, “at least telegraph your Government that I
didn’t ‘hetz’ the Turks in this matter.”
The German verb “hetzen” means about the same as the English “sic,” in
the sense of inciting a dog. I was in no mood to give Wangenheim a clean
bill of health, and told him so. In fact, I specifically reported to
Washington that he had refused to help me. A day or two afterward
Wangenheim called me on the telephone and began to talk in an excited
and angry tone. His Government had wired him about my telegram to
Washington. I told him that if he desired credit for assistance in
matters of this kind he should really exert himself and do something.
The hostages had an uncomfortable time at Gallipoli; they were put into
two wooden houses, with no beds, and no food except that which they had
brought themselves. The days and nights were made wretched by the
abundant vermin that is a commonplace in Turkey. Had Mr. Philip not gone
with them, they would have suffered seriously. After the unfortunates
had been there for a few days I began work with Enver again to get them
back. Sir Edward Grey, then British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had
requested our State Department to send me a message with the request
that I present it to Enver and his fellow Ministers. Its purport was
that the British Government would hold them personally responsible for
any injury to the hostages. I presented this message to Enver on May
9th. I had seen Enver in many moods, but the unbridled rage which Sir
Edward’s admonition now caused was something entirely new. As I read the
telegram his face became livid, and he absolutely lost control of
himself. The European polish which Enver had sedulously acquired
dropped like a mask; I now saw him for what he really was--a savage,
blood-thirsty Turk.
“They will not come back!” he shouted. “I shall let them stay there
until they rot!
“I would like to see those English touch me!” he continued. I saw that
the method which I had adopted with Enver, that of persuasion, was the
only possible way of handling him. I tried to soothe the Minister now,
and, after a while, he quieted down.
“But don’t ever threaten me again!” he said.
After spending a week at Gallipoli, the party returned. The Turks had
moved their military headquarters from Gallipoli, and the English fleet,
therefore, ceased to bombard it. All came back in good condition and
were welcomed home with great enthusiasm.