THE CITY OF DISGUISES
Constantinople, even at its most normal, has ever been a city of
concealment--concealed motives, concealed truths and falsehoods,
concealed cruelties and concealed persons. There, the way to a treaty,
a change of government, a concession or a commercial contract is often
through back doors and curtained corridors, with many a halt for
whispered promises, whispered betrayals, and the handing over of
_baksheesh_.
When normal life is upset by abnormal conditions the cauldron of
crookedness bubbles over with a thousand and one conspiracies. Every
other man is intriguing for himself, his safety, his pocket, his party,
his family, or his government appointment, or from sheer inability not
to intrigue. Such a period was the late summer of 1918, when we were
disguised spectators of the misery and oppression that preceded the
downfall of the Turkish Empire.
Four-fifths of the population, including the Turks themselves, were
deadly sick of war and wanted peace at any price. They hated the
Germans, and above all hated Enver Pasha and other Young Turk
dictators, who ruled by violence with the support of the Germans. Only
the politicians, the officials who lived by corruption, and the
speculators were against a separate peace.
Many a time, before I escaped, I heard curses on Enver and on the
Germans uttered by civilians, by officers, and even by guards. Once,
when a party of us were sitting in Petits Champs Gardens, a waiter
brought with the bill for tea a slip of paper on which he had written
"Vive l'Angleterre!" Later, dressed as a sailor and sitting in the
cafés with Kulman, I often heard the same sentiments expressed.
Yet the miserable, exploited populace seemed powerless to impress its
wishes on the Government. It was too disunited and too listless for
action. A total lack of national consciousness made Constantinople a
capital without a country. The population was a haphazard jumble of
races, an _olla podrida_ of peoples that nothing, not even hunger and
tyranny, could mould into a coherent whole. They murmured individually,
but collectively they remained resigned and silent.
If circulation be the test of a city's vitality it proved
Constantinople to be at very low ebb. All Mediterranean peoples move
slowly in the streets; but the Constantinopolitans of 1918, I noticed,
seemed to get nowhere; they crawled about aimlessly, or leaned against
the walls and doorways in fatalistic inaction, _waiting for something
to happen_.
In any case, the least attempt at organized protest was likely to lead
to sudden disappearances. The dungeons of Stamboul jail were crammed
with Greek, Armenian, and Turkish suspects; the infamous "Hall of
Justice," in the Ministry of War, echoed the cries of prisoners whose
interrogators extracted "information" by means of the bastinado. Open
malcontents were hanged daily.
Every decent-living person was likely to feel the tentacles of Young
Turk tyranny, as personified by Bedri Bey, Prefect of Police, and
Djevad Bey, Military Governor of Constantinople. Only the unrighteous
flourished. The speculation and graft were colossal, and beyond the
most extravagant dreams of the British brand of war profiteer.
Everybody was on the make. Ministers and high officials received huge
bribes, little politicians made little fortunes by acting as
go-betweens, rich merchants manipulated so as to get hundreds per cent
profit.
To take but a few of the swindles that I remember from my
Constantinople days, there were: the Smyrna sugar _affaire_, involving
the barefaced theft of twenty truckloads of a consignment from Austria;
the tobacco swindle, which made three directors of the Régie very
wealthy men within a month; the cocaine and quinine corner, engineered
by a few Jewish speculators, so that for a time the doctors could
obtain these drugs only at the price of a hundred pounds a kilo; the
oil scandal, the wood scandal, and the widespread flour-adulteration
scandal, whereby the lowest grade of bread, which was all that the poor
could afford, became not only unnourishing but inedible.
There being no system of rationing, only the well-to-do could buy the
dearer necessities of ordinary life. The poor remained sugarless, for
example, because sugar cost from two pounds sterling a kilo; and the
chances were that even when bought at that price it would have been
mixed with powdered marble. Thousands actually starved; while the
beautiful island of Prinkipo, with its summer palaces and villas,
swarmed with oily, scoundrelly, enormously wealthy Levantine
vulgarians.
Some of the Ministers traded openly. Enver Pasha and his associates
owned two of the largest shops in Stamboul. The Committee of Union and
Progress, a vampire of corruption that drained the very life blood of
Turkey, engaged enthusiastically in the orgy of speculation, and, by
controlling the transport, amassed millions for their party. These sums
the Committee had begun to invest in Switzerland and elsewhere as early
as 1917; so that when the crash came Enver, Talaat, and other Young
Turk leaders were able to abscond with bulging pockets.
The police, of course, shared in the plunder, and dabbled in every
species of blackmail. They waxed fat on the system that entitled them
to see the vecikas (identity papers) of any able-bodied man at any
time. As the city contained many thousands of deserters, without taking
into account those who obtained exemption from military service by
continued bribes to recruiting officers and gendarmes, this was a
profitable responsibility. A forged _vecika_, properly stamped, cost
anything from fifty to a hundred dollars. To buy off a policeman when
unprovided with a _vecika_ was more speculative. A solitary gendarme,
alone in a dark street, might be content to accept twenty-five dollars;
whereas two gendarmes together could be persuaded only with difficulty
to accept twenty, their mutual dignity and that of their official
positions having to be maintained in face of each other.
The city was full of suppressed identities. Deserters were as common as
nuts in May, and so were disguises. An enormous game of hide-and-seek
was in progress, with police _baksheesh_ as the forfeit for being
caught.
When a rich man--Turk, Greek, Jew, or Armenian--was conscripted he
could always pretend sickness, bribe the military doctor to send him to
a hospital, bribe the hospital doctor who examined him, and finally
bribe the medical board to give him leave. At the larger hospitals of
Constantinople, such as Haidar Pasha and Gumuch Souyou, the recognized
tariff was a hundred and twenty-five dollars for each month's leave,
with pretended complaints suggested by the doctor by way of bonus.
The discontent and the misery twice showed itself in shots at Enver
Pasha, as he drove through the streets in his Mercèdes; but the bullets
either missed him or flattened themselves on the chain mail which he
was reputed to wear.
Otherwise its outward manifestation was confined to the spreading of
rumours indicative of an early victory for the Allies. The "Tatavla
Agency," so-named from a district inhabitated by Greek merchants, was
the centre of anti-German propaganda. From it, even at the time of
Hindenburg's last great drive, there spread the wildest reports of
Ententist successes. Some, no doubt, were concocted to influence the
Bourse; but the object of most was to encourage the starving population
in their hopes for the downfall of the Young Turco-German régime.
No statement was too far-fetched to be believed in the bazaars and
cafés. When the British aeroplanes renewed their bomb-raids on
Constantinople, in the autumn of 1918, Yeats-Brown dropped hints that
the attacks were not the work of the British, but were a display of
German frightfulness, to show what would happen if Turkey's loyalty to
Germany wavered. After an interval of weeks this beautiful lie was
whispered back to him by a Greek, with well-imagined circumstances and
details to make it the more plausible.
Captain Yeats-Brown and Captain Sir Robert Paul lived through the most
extravagant adventures before the Turkish armistice found them still in
disguised liberty. They first escaped with the help of Miss Whittaker,
"the Edith Cavell of Constantinople." It was owing to her that, already
before leaving the prison at Psamatia, they were well supplied with
money and could look forward to a hiding-place. As prisoners, they had
kept in touch with her by means of letters, five-minute meetings
outside the British Church, and short conversations in the park, under
the complacent eyes of a bribed guard.
One night they slipped through the window of their room in the
prison-house, and having climbed along a narrow ledge, let themselves
into the street with a rope. Wearing fezzes and with their faces
stained brown, they walked to Theodore's house. Afterward they moved to
the room prepared for them in Pera.
A few days later Paul, dressed as an Arab, left Constantinople with two
Greeks. The party of three crossed the Sea of Marmora in a
sailing-boat, landed on the northern coast, and began tramping toward
the Gulf of Enos, where a boat awaited them.
Unfortunately for Paul the description of him, which the Ministry of
War circulated, mentioned that he had a prominent stoop. A stranger
with this peculiarity was found asleep in the church of a Greek
village; and by arresting him the local gendarme earned (but probably
never received) the reward offered for the British officer's capture.
Paul was brought back to the capital and dungeoned in the Ministry of
War Prison.
Yeats-Brown, meanwhile, had been stalking about the streets of
Constantinople as Mlle. Josephine Albert, in female clothes lent by
Miss Whittaker. He was now at a loose end, for Paul and the Greeks were
to have been the advance guard of a larger party, including Yeats-Brown
and several civilians who wished to leave Turkey.
After weeks of excitement in the City of Disguises Mlle. Albert
received an unexpected message from two old friends, who were living in
a back room of Theodore's house. Fulton and Stone had escaped from a
train at Haidar Pasha station two hours after my disappearance from the
ferry stage. With the help of my map they made their way by moonlight
to San Stefano aerodrome. There they waited for three days at the place
of rendezvous appointed by John Willie, the Bosnian aviator. Made
desperate by his nonappearance one of them called at the German
officers' mess and enquired for him; but, as they then learned, John
Willie had been arrested a week earlier as a suspect, and was in the
Ministry of War Prison, awaiting court-martial.
Fulton and Stone returned to Constantinople, and bribed Theodore to
hide them in his house. They were visited by Miss Whittaker, who
brought money from Mr. S., and by Mlle. Josephine Albert Yeats-Brown.
[Illustration: Captain Yeats-Brown, wearing the disguise in which as
"Mlle. Josephine Albert" he lived for several weeks in Constantinople
while doing propaganda work. The clothes were lent to him by Miss
Whittaker (now Lady Paul), "the Edith Cavell of Constantinople," who
helped several British officers to escape from the Turks.]
For want of a better opportunity the three British officers planned to
buy a small sailing-boat, and take it across the Black Sea. Prince
Avaloff, the Georgian officer who was a semi-prisoner at Psamatia, had
kept in touch with Yeats-Brown, and promised to accompany them. Having
landed somewhere near Poti their scheme would be to make for Avaloff's
estate in Georgia. It was at this period that White and I heard from
the trio, as a result of Titoff's visit to Theodore.
For many weeks the Maritza restaurant had been watched. A police spy
suspected Theodore; and one afternoon gendarmes surrounded his house,
while others entered and searched every room. Very unfortunately for
Yeats-Brown, whose hiding-place lay elsewhere, he was visiting Fulton
and Stone at the time. All three were captured.
A queer procession passed through the winding alleys of Stamboul to the
Ministry of War Prison. First went Theodore, blinking nervously behind
his blue-glassed spectacles. Then came Yeats-Brown, in his brand-new
disguise of a Hungarian mechanic. Fulton and Stone were behind him,
wearing only shirts, pants, and socks; for they had been half dressed
when captured, and the police refused permission to put on coats and
trousers. Theodore's two sisters and his old mother brought up the
rear.
When the police surrounded Theodore's house Miss Whittaker was on her
way to visit Fulton and Stone. Seeing gendarmes before the door she
passed on, and returned to her home in Pera; but for long afterward she
was conscious of being spied upon and followed. It was for this reason
that she had to abandon her intention of bringing to the _Batoum_ the
money which White and I were to receive from Mr. S.
The prison beneath the Ministry of War now contained an extraordinary
gathering of characters in the melodrama of escape and capture. Paul
was joined by Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone; John Willie, the Bosnian,
was in another cell, with some political prisoners; Theodore, weakened
by lack of food, fell ill in a dreadful dungeon, and nearly died. A
trial, he knew, could only have one result for him--sentence of
hanging. His mother and his two sisters received rather better
treatment, and were soon released.
The four Britishers lived through many strange days in the prison where
they consorted with a variety of captives that included Greeks,
Armenians, Turkish officers, two Mohammedan notabilities from Cairo, a
young Turkish prince who had been imprisoned for brawling in the
Sultan's palace, and the prince's eunuch. Yeats-Brown and Paul,
meantime, planned to escape from the famous old jail, a feat which no
captive had yet performed since it was built, six hundred years ago.
While walking in the garden one evening they slipped away from their
guards, and mingled with a crowd of officials who were crossing the
courtyard outside the Ministry of War. Swerving aside before they
reached the sentried gate, the pair climbed over some railings--and
were free once more. They walked across the Golden Horn Bridge, and so
to Pera. There, once again, Miss Whittaker and her friends found them a
place of concealment, near the deserted British Embassy.
Then began for the escaped couple a period of flitting from one
excitement to another. They became involved in a succession of
underground activities; and, with the help of Greeks and the clever
coöperation of Miss Whittaker, they spread around the city reports,
beliefs, hopes, and arguments likely to influence citizens in favour of
the Allies and against the Germans and Young Turks. They buried their
identities under darkened hair, false moustaches, fezzes, and forged
_vecikas_.
Yeats-Brown's propaganda work brought him into contact with a small
group of politicians and malcontents who were plotting a _coup d'état_
against the Young Turks. Although the miserable, exploited populace had
no popular leader to voice its discontent there came a moment--while
the Bulgars were at the gates of Adrianople, communications with
Germany were cut, the Allied Fleet threatened Dedeagatch and the
citizens of Aleppo were preparing to surrender to Allenby's victorious
cavalry--when everyone in Constantinople knew that Turkey was beaten.
Open rebellion which was to have hanged Talaat, Enver, and Djemal
Pashas high in the square of the Seraskarat then threatened.
But the rising was still-born, owing to treachery. The Prefect of
Police suddenly quadrupled his patrols, a few Turkish officers were
arrested, a few more civilians were hanged, a few conspirators
disappeared into the submerged world where men walked cautiously and in
the shadow, a few machine guns were placed so as to command a Greek
cathedral, a couple of aged senators were executed for having
"intrigued for a political resolution hostile to the Government"; and
life went on as before--upon the surface....
But escaped prisoners did not live upon the surface. They were in touch
with seditious elements beneath it. Once when Yeats-Brown was in a
certain café with some Greeks, and the talk was becoming wild as the
_árak_ bottle passed, there entered a detective known to everybody,
even to the British officer, who was the youngest initiate in "crime"
present. And without a whisper or a wink the talk swung, easily and
naturally, from the rankest sedition to the most harmless commonplace.
"We will destroy the Young Turks!" said a speaker, "we will destroy the
Young Turks and cut them in little pieces!"
He was harmonizing his words with indescribably graphic gesture, when
his expressive hands opened in a bland expression of resignation.
"What, therefore, can we do, my friends?" he continued. "We must remain
calm, and retain our dignity as citizens of a great city."
Nobody looked round or betrayed surprise; but the alien presence was
sensed by all. Soon after this scene the meeting adjourned to a cellar,
where a quiet, elderly gentleman, the proprietor of an hotel inhabited
chiefly by German officers, declared himself desirous of cutting his
clients' throats.
In war-time Constantinople one grew accustomed to this atmosphere of
melodrama, and learned not to regard it too seriously. The more one
knows of the Constantinopolitans of to-day the less can one trust any
estimate of them. Eternally fickle, like their forerunners who looked
on with equal enthusiasm at the triumph and execution of emperors and
sultans, they saw no incongruity in the city's hero-worship of Enver
Bey in 1908 and its deep detestation of Enver Pasha in 1918. Even now,
after welcoming the French and British with mad joy one short year ago,
they are restless, and again wear the cloak of conspiracy.
The wayward fickleness of Constantinople ruined the Byzantine Greeks,
and sapped the strength of the Roman Empire. Now, after a long period
of fretful wedlock, she is shaking herself free from the Turk. Whoever
next attempts to rule her will have some restless days and nights.
At the beginning of September there arrived in Constantinople another
escaped prisoner, who was to play an important part in the sensational
events that preceded the downfall of the Young Turks and their German
partners.
Several months earlier Lieutenant-Colonel Newcombe, D.S.O., R.E., had
been imprisoned in the Turkish Ministry of War, while awaiting
court-martial for an attempted escape. After his acquittal, owing to
lack of evidence, he was allowed into the city with the prison
interpreter. In a Pera tea-shop he met Mlle. "X", a Franco-Greek lady
of Entente sympathies, who offered to help him in any way possible. A
secret correspondence followed; and when Colonel Newcombe was sent to
the prison camp at Broussa, Mlle. "X", with her maid, followed him.
She stayed at a small hotel, on the pretence of taking the sulphur
baths for which Broussa was famous. Several meetings took place,
including a rendezvous at the house of the local Austrian Consul, whose
daughters were school-fellows of Mlle. "X."
The final interview at Broussa was when Colonel Newcombe, having
obtained the clothes of an Arab _imam_,[2] disguised himself in this
dress and slipped out of camp unobserved. He walked to the hotel, and
there the scheme of escape was definitely arranged. He then returned,
and by climbing over a wall, got back into the prison house without
being seen.
[2] Priest.
Mlle. "X" left Broussa for Constantinople. On the way she stopped at
Mudania (the port of Broussa) to bargain with two Greek boatmen, who
agreed to take the British officer across the Sea of Marmora. From
Constantinople she had a letter smuggled to Broussa, explaining how the
boatmen might be recognized.
Having read the letter Colonel Newcombe again disguised himself as an
Arab, and at dusk slipped away from the prison house, while another
officer-prisoner distracted the guards' attention by running in the
opposite direction. He walked all night by moonlight, and reached
Mudania next morning.
Having found the Greeks, and paid a hundred dollars for the hire of
their boat, he put to sea with them. A strong wind raged, so that he
was fourteen hours on the Sea of Marmora, living during this time on
bread and raisins. Finally he reached Constantinople and went to the
house of Mlle. "X"'s parents.
Like White and myself, Colonel Newcombe planned to go to Russia. He,
also, had his fill of adventure. Once, he remained safely hidden in
Miss Whittaker's house while the police were searching it for
Yeats-Brown and Paul.
He wrote several anti-German proclamations for distribution among the
Turkish soldiers, and concocted a letter to the Turkish army
commanders, advising them to refuse further service unless a new
ministry were formed. But the Turco-German débâcle in the Near East, of
which General Allenby's victories in Palestine and the Bulgarian
surrender were the beginnings, made him abandon this work for something
more important. Soon he found himself drawn into the very centre of the
vortex of plotting that swirled around the Sultan, the Cabinet, and the
Sublime Porte.
The peace parties lacked a leader powerful enough to take open action;
and when the old Sultan, who had been but a puppet dancing to the
strings pulled by Talaat and Enver, died in July, they hoped to find
one in his brother, the successor to the throne.
The new ruler, although he was neither strong enough nor able enough to
challenge the Young Turk leaders until after the Bulgarian armistice,
certainly leaned toward the Entente and favoured peace. His first act
was to send for the only English tailor in Constantinople, a civil
prisoner, and to order several uniforms from him.
The excitement among the Turkish politicians was indescribable.
"Have you heard about Mr. Hayden, the English tailor? The Sultan said
to him----" And rumour made the Sultan tell the English tailor
everything that was sensationally anti-German and anti-Enver.
Had the Sultan opposed the Grand Vizier and Enver Pasha in July, he
would have found support; for three-fourths of Constantinople detested
the Government. But the constabulary were faithful to Enver, who could
likewise have relied upon the many thousands of German troops
concentrated in the city; and a premature attempt by the Sultan to
withdraw Turkey from the war would have risked his life and his throne.
The defection of Bulgaria had the effect of an unexpected cold douche
on Enver and Talaat; who, after the Turkish occupation of Batoum and
capture of Baku, had been dreaming of a Greater Turkey that was to
include the Maritza basin, most of the Dobrudja, and the whole of the
Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian, with a sphere of influence
extending eastward to Bokhara and Samarkand. Agents and gramophone
records were carrying the voice of Enver all over the Moslem world.
When the Balkan Railway was cut and daily reports of German retreats in
France continued to arrive, even the Young Turk politicians began to
desert the rotten ship of state. The opposition groups--the Liberal,
the Navy, and the Khoja parties--raised their heads and began to
intrigue for a complete surrender to the Allies. Djambolat Bey, the
Minister of the Interior, resigned. Rahmi Bey, the powerful Vali of
Smyrna, who throughout the war had shown every consideration to the
Entente subjects in his _vilayet_, came to Constantinople with the
avowed intention of working an immediate peace. Talaat was for bargain
and compromise. Only Enver Pasha and his personal followers remained
faithful to their German friends. The Sultan's chance had come.
Colonel Newcombe decided on an audacious plan of action. He wrote a
convincing memorandum, which suggested that if Turkey now sued for a
separate peace she would obtain better terms than if she waited until
Germany was thoroughly beaten. This memorandum, originally the draft of
a proposed proclamation to the Turkish army, was taken by Miss
Whittaker to a Committee politician of her acquaintance. Eventually one
copy of it was given to Fethi Bey, the new Minister of the Interior,
and another passed through the hands of the Sultan's dentist to the
Sultan himself.
A week earlier--on September the twenty-ninth--the Young Turk Cabinet
had met to consider the Bulgarian demand for an armistice; and the
Grand Vizier, who arrived from Germany by the last Balkan express that
passed through Sofia, offered his resignation. At the time nobody could
form an alternative ministry so Talaat again took up the reins of
power.
The Sultan and the Minister of the Interior received their copies of
Colonel Newcombe's memorandum on October the fifth. During the
intervening days it had become more and more plain that Germany was
doomed to defeat. The Sultan and the Peace parties, therefore, only
wanted a suitable bludgeon for a _coup de grâce_ to the Ministry.
They found it in this purely unofficial communication from an escaped
prisoner of war. Colonel Newcombe's memorandum was produced and
discussed at a stormy council of the Committee of Union and Progress,
which resulted in the definite resignation of Talaat and Enver. Tewfik
Pasha, Izzet Pasha, and other Opposition leaders were called into
consulation by the Sultan.
From being a hunted fugitive Colonel Newcombe suddenly found himself a
person of consequence. As a special favour he was asked not to carry
out his plans for escaping from Turkey, because the Ottoman Government
believed he would be useful in arranging an armistice. He met the Vali
of Smyrna at the Tokatlian Hotel, and there the British prisoner and
the high Turkish official shook hands and discussed the changing
international situation.
On October the sixteenth Colonel Newcombe, accompanied by Miss
Whittaker, went by appointment to the house of a politician, where he
met the new Minister of the Interior, the Vali of Smyrna, and other
notabilities. Over the dinner table the mighty questions of peace and
war were then debated by an escaped prisoner of war and a prominent
Minister of the country in which he was technically still a captive.
Colonel Newcombe explained that though he worked for Allied and not
Turkish interests, his friendly advice was that the Ottoman Government
should sue immediately for a separate armistice; because whereas
Germany wanted to keep a weak Turkey whom she could dominate, the
Allies' principle of the rights of nationality forbade any idea of
complete domination.
The Turks' attitude at this curious meeting was summed up in remarks
made by the Minister of the Interior:
"We know we have lost our chance. There have been mistakes in the past.
We are practically bankrupt. But we honestly hate the Germans, and,
without kowtowing to the British, look to them to help us and to be our
friends, as we want to be friends with them."
Colonel Newcombe and the Turkish officials thrashed out such questions
as Turkey's financial bankruptcy, the opening of the Dardanelles, the
capitulations, autonomy for Armenia and Arabia, and punishment for the
Armenian massacres and for the maltreatment of British prisoners from
Kut-el-Amara (whereby nearly 80 per cent. of the latter had died).
Then, after dinner was over, the Minister of the Interior dictated in
French a long telegram, which the British officer was to send to Mr.
Lloyd George as soon as he should reach Allied territory.
Next day the Ministry tried to send him out of Turkey by aeroplane, but
failed because all aircraft was in the hands of the Germans. It was
agreed that he should receive special passports and proceed, via
Smyrna, to either Chios or Mudros.
After the dinner party of the sixteenth events moved rapidly toward an
armistice. The Vali of Smyrna caused a sensation two days later by
stating openly, in the _Journal d'Orient_, that peace negotiations were
in progress and that the Germans would have to go. Later in the day he
again met Colonel Newcombe at the Tokatlian Hotel, and discussed the
best means of approaching England for an armistice. By now the escaped
colonel was going about Constantinople quite openly, although
Yeats-Brown and Paul remained more or less in hiding.
Meanwhile, General Townshend, who was still a prisoner on Prinkipo
Island, had also sent a memorandum to the Government. A Turkish
armistice commission was formed, and he was asked by the Grand Vizier
to accompany the delegates who were about to leave the country; which
he did. It was arranged that Colonel Newcombe would follow in a few
days' time.
On his last night in Constantinople Colonel Newcombe went by
appointment to the terrace of the deserted British Embassy, and there
met Captain Yeats-Brown, who had slipped past the police into the
Embassy grounds. It was a meeting that neither of them will ever
forget. Below was the Golden Horn, shimmering in the moonlight, and
across its waters Stamboul showed up dimly, quiet and apparently
asleep. But the watchers on the Embassy terrace knew that the city
might stir from slumber at any moment; for the Phanar was bristling
with machine guns, St. Sophia was an armed camp, and, more terrible
than all, people were starving in the streets. The waning sickle moon
that rode above Stamboul seemed the symbol of the Turks' waning
dominion over Christian peoples. Very soon the Crescent would go down.
Very soon the Union Jack would float from the Embassy's barren
flagstaff. Very soon Pera would be decked with banners, and an Allied
fleet would proclaim an end to the nightmare of famine and oppression.
Next day Colonel Newcombe, who had been handed civilian passports by
the Minister of the Interior, travelled from Constantinople to Smyrna.
Finally he left Turkey, as a special adviser, in the company of Raouf
Bey, the new Minister of Marine. The party put to sea in a trawler, and
were picked up by H.M.S. _Liverpool_. They were taken to Mudros, where
the British Admiral Commander-in-Chief and General Townshend were
already negotiating with the Turkish delegates.
Up to the very end the Young Turk leaders hoped to hold the real, if
not the ostensible, control in Constantinople. Captain Yeats-Brown was
told by a politician that "nobody but Talaat could possibly manage
Turkey," and that "the English, if they come, would be well advised to
deal with the Committee of Union and Progress, as there is no other
real party in the country. They not only have all the money, but all
the brains and energy as well." Which last statement was nearly true.
But when it came to saying that Talaat was one of the dominant brains
of the century, and comparable as a statesman only to Lloyd George, the
disguised British officer could not help smiling and suggesting:
"Surely Talaat is not indispensable? If he goes, another
ex-telegraphist may arise, as good as he!"
This the members of the Committee of Union and Progress regarded as
near-blasphemy; but the fact that all the Young Turk leaders were
self-made men, with little knowledge of the science and history of
modern government, was one of the causes why Von Wangenheim, Von
Bernstorff, and other emissaries of German Imperialism were able, for
four years, to inspire a policy of Turkey for the Germans.
The sudden _volte face_ of the Turkish press, the announcement of the
armistice terms, the flight of the three chief criminals (Talaat,
Enver, and Djemal Pashas), and the downfall of the swaggering Germans
brought great joy to the miserable populace of Constantinople. They
vented their feelings in delirious enthusiasm over some released
prisoners who visited Pera, wearing their carefully hoarded khaki
uniforms.
The curtain was down, the sordid tragedy of oppression and corruption
was over. The new era opened in the mist of a November morning, with
the long, low lines of an Allied fleet steaming very slowly past the
Iles des Princes toward the Bosphorus.