A European official, who has lived here all his life (and he is an
old man now), is astonished at my recklessness in trusting myself as
I have done to the protection of the “unspeakable” Turks. He was born
and bred with the idea that Turks were “unspeakable,” and consequently
has nothing to do with them, unless he can possibly help it, and when
he does he lets them see he dislikes them. Extraordinary it is, that
there should be Europeans in this country who, after living almost a
lifetime amongst a people, have not got to know them one little bit
better! They make their whole existence, as it were, an island--their
thoughts, their actions, their words, even their friends--and fondly
imagine themselves to be patriots. “How uncomfortable! How nasty! Oh!
I wouldn’t like that!” they exclaim, as I describe to them some of
the customs of this people amongst whom they have lived over fifty
years. “Whatever did you do in a household where there were no forks
and knives?” The answer is not very difficult to guess; but they seem
incapable of understanding my delight at eating with my fingers, like
the primitive people who entertained me.
And yet, after only a short time, how different is my experience of
these same “unspeakable” Turks! Every day since I have been here some
woman comes with a present for me! I have received a wooden spoon,
stuffs, embroideries, Brussels sprouts, melons, sweetmeats, yourout
(curdled milk), and one poor woman has walked from a neighbouring
village, bringing me a little lamb; I have explained to her, however,
that although I much appreciate her gift, the fog of London would kill
the little thing, and he had better, therefore, remain where he is in
the sun. And why have all these women come bringing me presents? Simply
out of gratitude (and gratitude is one of their chief characteristics)
to a woman who loves their country, and because that woman is English.
Right into the very heart of Asia the word “England” stands for
something almost superhuman. “We can never, never forget that England
has shed her blood for us,” said one day the Turkish Heir to the
throne. England stands for all that is good and honest and just.
England is the fairy godmother, who, with a touch of her magic wand,
could put everything straight for them. In the families where there
are two governesses, an Englishwoman and a Frenchwoman, it is the
Englishwoman who is given the position of trust, the Englishwoman
who sleeps in the children’s room, the Englishwoman who buys their
clothes; in short, whatever the mother cannot do herself she prefers
the Englishwoman to do for her. “The Englishwoman told me so, therefore
I believe her,” is a phrase which I myself have heard; and one mother,
quite recently, who was, in spite of my presence, weeping bitterly
because her son had gone to Paris to study, added, “It would have all
been so different had he gone to England.” My host tells me, too, that
when he was a little boy, and the Circassians were groaning under the
Russian yoke, his mother and her friends used to comfort each other
with the hope that the English most surely would come to deliver them.
They did not think of the Turks, who were their natural deliverers, and
who at that time were quite strong enough to come to their assistance;
but their thoughts always turned to the great faraway England, who
always came to help States in bondage, or States struggling for
regeneration.
And so, when I think of this great prestige of my country, it seems a
thousand pities that there are persons doing their best to destroy that
prestige.
I hear the Turks called suspicious--during the reign of Abdul Hamid,
perhaps, yes--they had every reason for being so. I have trusted them,
and they of all the nations of Europe have never given me the wrong
change.
I have trusted them, and they have not deceived me. One day, I
remember, I had to cross the bridge without Fâtima, and pay my own
toll. Not knowing the Turkish for what I wanted to say, I opened my
purse, and the man took out what he wanted and put back the change. My
boxes have never been locked since I left the boat. When I return from
my afternoon drive Miss Chocolate takes off my “tcharchaff” and puts
away my purse. My books, my papers, my letters are all open; the few
jewels I possess are on my table. I close my eyes in the homes of these
humble villagers confident that no harm will come to me; that they will
not unfasten my pearls whilst I sleep. In our Western countries should
I not be scolded for putting temptation in their way? And I, in my
turn, feel sure they trust me.
My friend Zeyneb lives at No. 43. It is a luxury to have a number.
Addresses are generally given in this manner: the district first,
let us say “Kiz Tach,” for example; then, as further direction, “the
house at the corner, near the fountain, near the convent, near the
mosque.” One generally trusts to Providence, in the form of a kindly
stranger, to find the way, and I must say they take unending pains to
help one. With a number, then, I say to myself, it will be easy to
find Zeyneb. But alas, there are other No. 43’s in the district, these
numbers, for the most part, having been purchased at the bazaar and
put on the door without rhyme or reason, and as a sort of decoration.
To find my friend’s house, which is ten minutes’ walk from Pera, it
took my coachman two and a half hours and cost me 20f., and “the way
is so easy,” explained Zeyneb. After that I walked, following these
instructions: “Always keep on the cobbles which lie on the earth
from north to south. Although the road may turn and twist, mount and
descend, as long as you keep on the north to south lying cobbles you
will be all right.” And after dark, when I have taken that way, had the
Turks been suspicious, what would they not have imagined I was doing
when suddenly, from my little bag, I extracted a box of matches and
examined the cobbles to be sure I had not strayed on to those lying
from east to west. Once or twice a kindly old man brought his lantern,
and came with me as far as the hillock, at the side of which Zeyneb’s
No. 43 is situated.
When I remarked on the number of maps and the prominence given to
drawing of maps in the Turkish schools, my guide answered, “You English
on your comfortable island do not require to know the map of Europe.”
Yes, a thousand pities it is that we all of us, from the highest of the
land to the schoolboy, should not have a more accurate knowledge of the
map of Europe and a more accurate knowledge of the peoples on that map.
If all those who are now working in the cause of peace turned their
efforts towards making the nations of a country understand one another
better war would be much less possible. If only we had more knowledge
of the people of other lands, many diplomatic errors could be avoided.
Over and over again we have slighted the Moslems of our Empire. How
many of us even realize that King George rules over more Moslems than
any other sovereign. Hear the asinine remarks of our young subalterns
about the uncivilized Indian _niggers_ who must be kept in their
place!! How dare they thus humiliate persons of a civilization older
and greater than our own.
There is a wonderful brotherhood amongst the Moslems. Any injustice
to their Moslem brothers of Turkey is counted as an insult to Moslem
Indians; they have written so to me. Unfortunately we have not this
same brotherhood amongst us Christians. I have in my possession a
letter written by a Lazarist Father, deploring the possibility that
Constantinople might fall into the hands of the Greeks. “They are
waging war,” he says, “in the name of the Cross, but does Europe not
know that that Cross is _tout ce qu’il a de plus Grecque_” (sic). What
a splendid example of Christian brotherhood to show to the Moslems
of the world! He prefers the _infidel_ Turk to another member of the
Christian Church because the Turk has offered him hospitality and
allowed him to have his churches and his missions, and has in no way
interfered with his religious liberties, whereas from his brother
Christian he could not expect such broad-mindedness. And what horrors
would not have been committed at the Holy Sepulchre had not the Turks
been there to guard it against the Christians. Sad, indeed, it is that
this wonderful Christian religion of ours should be divided against
itself to the detriment of its best interests.
Had the Bulgarians and the Christian natives of the Balkans gone out
to wage war like Hottentots, or any of the other nations they have
the impertinence to regard as savages, we might have pitied them;
but that they should carry the Cross, and wage war in the name of
the Cross, what Christian can ever forgive them? “We used to respect
your Christian Cross,” one day a Turk said to me; “we used to bow
respectfully when the Cross passed in the streets, but the Bulgarians
have dragged that Cross in the mire.” I was one day reading with a
friend the beautiful, wonderful story of Jesus of Nazareth.
“This is not the Christ of the Bulgarians,” she said. “No, indeed,” I
replied.
* * * * *
And Young Turkey--has she yet had a chance? We cannot pass judgment
on them till they have had ten years’ fair trial. Unfortunately for
them, their revolution was a little too idealistic. Theirs was to be a
bloodless revolution! Bloodless revolution it was, and it astonished
the whole civilized world. Alas! they have now to learn you cannot
make a revolution without shedding blood, any more than a doctor can
amputate a limb without shedding blood. The poison they should have
cleared away at the time of their revolution they have to clear away
now; the minions of Hamid, who earned a substantial living as spies,
are still there to plot and plan for the return of the tyrant.
The Young Turks have had to pay a heavy price for their experience!
Counter-revolutions and insurrections to the number of seven, and three
European wars, and the last two against five nations! Add to this also,
the humiliating interference of Europe. I have seen here households
with a Greek cook, an Armenian _bonne à tout faire_, an Albanian
cavass, and a Turkish gardener. It is no easy matter to rule such a
household. See what tact and patience it requires. The Armenian, for
some reason, insults the cook, who replies by throwing the chicken at
her head; then the Albanian and the Turk are dragged into the quarrel,
and you hear them cursing one another in their different languages.
Who does not pity the mistress of a house like this? Who is the person
so tactless as to interfere? And is it not the same with the Turkish
Government, except that they have the Syrians and Arabs as well? When
things seem to be going on fairly smoothly, the Powers, with bungling,
interfering hands, come along and “demand reforms.” “We cannot make
headway with our reforms,” writes my compatriot from Trebizonde; “some
Power always objects to something.” And what will the Power say now,
when I tell them that here in the schools of Asia Minor the walls are
covered with German maps, the apparatus in the agricultural college is
German, and most of the scientific instruments are German? Poor Turkey,
will she ever have a soul to call her own?
* * * * *
Unfortunately, the world always seems to forget that the key to the
understanding of a nation is in the hands of the women. One sex cannot
achieve true greatness without the assistance of the other. “If I only
had a woman who could tell me what to do and say just at the right
moment,” a Turk said to me one day. How well I understand what he felt.
Where would our political men be without their womenkind, not only to
tell them what to do and say, but often to do and say it for them? This
Turk in question had made a social mistake; he told me all about it. In
my country a charming wife’s smile can atone for multitudes of social
sins much more serious; but here----. Political men cannot be expected
to bear on their shoulders both burdens political and burdens social.
I have been, whilst here, to see the Governor’s wife. She is a sister
of the Khedive, and her husband a brother of the Grand Vizier, and,
like his brother, he receives no salary for his services. This
beautiful and accomplished lady, who dresses only in Turkish dresses,
made of Turkish stuffs, whose very jewels are all set, not in Paris,
but in the old Arabian Fâtima style--see of what assistance she could
be to her husband if she took her place at the head of his table,
as our Western women do! The Princess, who speaks five Western and
three Oriental languages, has read, perhaps, more than most of her
countrywomen (she is Egyptian), and she has supplemented her knowledge
by travelling, not only in every European country with the exception
of Russia, but right across to San Francisco and back through Canada,
“and you see,” she added, charmingly, “I can give all my attention to
travelling because I have no dressmaker worries.”
The man who has not beside him some woman who can judge instinctively
for him, and whisper “Beware!” from the bottom of my heart I pity him.
How many men can tell at a glance whether another is a gentleman or
not? A woman generally can, a man sometimes. I have seen most charming
Turks with friends unworthy of them. “Surely,” I have said to myself,
“you would not have made a friend of such a man had your wife been
there to guide you!” And so, in trying to solve the riddle of the Turk
the answer is to be found behind that harem door. Both men and women
blame the harem, and rightly so, for most of their disasters; the
remedy they see in the education of the women.
I have come to Turkey at indeed an interesting time. Here in Broussa
I have not marvelled, as did the Oxford professor of Arabic, in the
visitors’ book, about the boys’ knowledge of that language. I have
congratulated them on their first football match. I have admired the
children’s first attempts at plain needlework (not embroidery, that is
born in them), dancing, singing, and drawing. In all these arts they
have made progress, and although the art students’ trees are a little
bald and a little too green, and their cows’ eyes a little too near
their tails, there is in that work a great promise of better.
The Belgian head-mistress of the School of Arts and Crafts, at the
opening of which I was present, and who has allowed me to go so often
to see the working of a school which, naturally, interests me, tells
me, “double the number of children have arrived over the number for
whom the Government provided accommodation,” and she added, “We must
just put up with the discomfort. They are like hungry children asking
for bread, and I dare not turn them away.”
[Illustration: OPENING OF THE BELGIAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS,
STAMBOUL]
And now Turkey is to find teachers of her own to instruct all these
children. She cannot always be asking the assistance of the foreigner.
She knows to her cost now what that means, and we who wish her
well will leave no stone unturned to help her to help herself--to
improve the teachers’ training college, and assist some of the most
brilliant pupils to have the benefit of English and French methods of
organisation.