THE “BOSS SYSTEM” IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND HOW IT PROVED USEFUL TO
GERMANY
Talaat, the leading man in this band of usurpers, really had remarkable
personal qualities. Naturally Talaat’s life and character proved
interesting to me, for I had for years been familiar with the Boss
system in my own country, and in Talaat I saw many resemblances to the
crude yet able citizens who have so frequently in the past gained power
in local and state politics. Talaat’s origin was so obscure that there
were plenty of stories in circulation concerning it. One account said
that he was a Bulgarian gipsy, while another described him as a Pomak--a
Pomak being a man of Bulgarian blood whose ancestors, centuries ago, had
embraced the Mohammedan faith. According to this latter explanation,
which I think was the true one, this real ruler of the Turkish Empire
was not a Turk at all. I can personally testify that he cared nothing
for Mohammedanism for, like most of the leaders of his party, he scoffed
at all religions. “I hate all priests, rabbis, and hodjas,” he once told
me--hodja being the nearest equivalent the Mohammedans have for a
minister of religion. In American city politics many men from the
humblest walks of life have not uncommonly developed great abilities as
politicians, and similarly Talaat had started life as a letter carrier.
From this occupation he had risen to be a telegraph operator at
Adrianople; and of these humble beginnings he was extremely proud. I
visited him once or twice at his house; although Talaat was then the
most powerful man in the Turkish Empire, his home was still the modest
home of a man of the people. It was cheaply furnished; the whole
establishment reminded me of a moderately priced apartment in New York.
His most cherished possession was the telegraph instrument with which he
had once earned his living. Talaat one night told me that he had that
day received his salary as Minister of the Interior; after paying his
debts, he said, he had just one hundred dollars left in the world. He
liked to spend part of his spare time with the rough-shod crew that made
up the Committee of Union and Progress; in the interims when he was out
of the cabinet he used to occupy the desk daily at party headquarters,
personally managing the party machine. Despite these humble beginnings,
Talaat had developed some of the qualities of a man of the world. Though
his early training had not included instruction in the use of a knife
and fork--such implements are wholly unknown among the poorer classes in
Turkey--Talaat could attend diplomatic dinners and represent his country
with a considerable amount of dignity and personal ease. I have always
regarded it as indicating his innate cleverness that, though he had had
little schooling, he had picked up enough French to converse tolerably
in that language. Physically, he was a striking figure. His powerful
frame, his huge sweeping back, and his rocky biceps emphasized that
natural mental strength and forcefulness which had made possible his
career. In discussing matters Talaat liked to sit at his desk, with his
shoulders drawn up, his head thrown back, and his wrists, twice the
size of an ordinary man’s, planted firmly on the table. It always seemed
to me that it would take a crowbar to pry these wrists from the board,
once Talaat’s strength and defiant spirit had laid them there. Whenever
I think of Talaat now I do not primarily recall his rollicking laugh,
his uproarious enjoyment of a good story, the mighty stride with which
he crossed the room, his fierceness, his determination, his
remorselessness--the whole life and nature of the man take form in those
gigantic wrists.
Talaat, like most strong men, had his forbidding, even his ferocious,
moods. One day I found him sitting at the usual place, his massive
shoulders drawn up, his eyes glowering, his wrists planted on the desk.
I always anticipated trouble whenever I found him in this attitude. As I
made request after request, Talaat, between his puffs at his cigarette,
would answer “No!” “No!” “No!”
I slipped around to his side of the desk.
“I think those wrists are making all the trouble, Your Excellency,” I
said. “Won’t you please take them off the table?”
Talaat’s ogre-like face began to crinkle, he threw up his arms, leaned
back, and gave a roar of terrific laughter. He enjoyed this method of
treating him so much that he granted every request that I made.
At another time I came into his room when two Arab princes were present.
Talaat was solemn and dignified, and refused every demand I made. “No, I
shall not do that”; or, “No, I haven’t the slightest idea of doing
that,” he would answer. I saw that he was trying to impress his princely
guests; to show them that he had become so great a man that he did not
hesitate to “turn down” an ambassador. So I came up nearer and spoke
quietly.
“I see you are trying to make an impression on these princes,” I said.
“Now if it’s necessary for you to pose, do it with the Austrian
Ambassador--he’s out there waiting to come in. My affairs are too
important to be trifled with.”
Talaat laughed. “Come back in an hour,” he said. I returned; the Arab
princes had left, and we had no difficulty in arranging matters to my
satisfaction.
“Someone has got to govern Turkey; why not we?” Talaat once said to me.
The situation had just about come to that. “I have been greatly
disappointed,” he would tell me, “at the failure of the Turks to
appreciate democratic institutions. I hoped for it once, and I worked
hard for it--but they were not prepared for it.” He saw a government
which the first enterprising man who came along might seize, and he
determined to be that man. Of all the Turkish politicians whom I met I
regarded Talaat as the only one who really had extraordinary native
ability. He had great force and dominance, the ability to think quickly
and accurately, and an almost superhuman insight into men’s motives. His
great geniality and his lively sense of humour also made him a splendid
manager of men. He showed his shrewdness in the measures which he took,
after the murder of Nazim, to gain the upper hand in this distracted
empire. He did not seize the government all at once; he went at it
gradually, feeling his way. He realized the weaknesses of his position;
he had several forces to deal with--the envy of his associates on the
revolutionary committee which had backed him, the army, the foreign
governments, and the several factions that made up what then passed for
public opinion in Turkey. Any of these elements might destroy him,
politically and physically. He understood the dangerous path that he was
treading, and he always anticipated a violent death. “I do not expect to
die in my bed,” he told me. By becoming Minister of the Interior, Talaat
gained control of the police and the administration of the provinces, or
vilayets; this gave him a great amount of patronage, which he used to
strengthen the power of the Committee. He attempted to gain the support
of all influential factions by gradually placing their representatives
in the other cabinet posts. Though he afterward became the man who was
chiefly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians, at this time Talaat maintained the pretense that the
Committee stood for the unionization of all the races in the empire, and
for this reason his first cabinet contained an Arab-Christian, a Deunme
(a Jew by race, but a Mohammedan by religion), a Circassian, an
Armenian, and an Egyptian.
He made the latter Grand Vizier, the highest post in the Government, a
position which roughly corresponds to that of Chancellor in the German
Empire. The man whom he selected for this office, which in ordinary
times was the most dignified and important in the empire, belonged to
quite a different order of society from Talaat. Not uncommonly bosses in
America select high-class figureheads for mayors or even governors, men
who will give respectability to their faction, yet whom, at the same
time, they think they can control. It was some such motive as this which
led Talaat and his associates to elevate Saïd Halim to the Grand
Vizierate. Saïd Halim was an Egyptian prince, the cousin of the Khedive
of Egypt, a man of great wealth and great culture. He spoke English and
French as fluently as his own tongue and was an ornament to any society
in the world. But he was a man of unlimited vanity and ambition. His
great desire was to become Khedive of Egypt, and this had led him to
trust his political fortunes to the gang that was then ascendant in
Turkey. He was the heaviest “campaign contributor,” and, indeed, he had
largely financed the Young Turks from their earliest days. In exchange
they had given him the highest office in the empire, with the tacit
understanding that he should not attempt to exercise the real powers of
his office, but content himself with enjoying its dignities.
Germany’s war preparations had for years included the study of internal
conditions in other countries; an indispensable part of the imperial
programme had been to take advantage of such disorganizations as existed
to push her schemes of penetration and conquest. What her emissaries
have attempted in France, Italy, and even the United States is apparent,
and their success in Russia has greatly changed the course of the war.
Clearly such a situation as that which prevailed in Turkey in 1913 and
1914 provided an ideal opportunity for manipulations of this kind. And
Germany had one great advantage in Turkey which was not so conspicuously
an element in other countries. Talaat and his associates needed Germany
almost as badly as Germany needed Talaat. They were altogether new to
the business of managing an empire. Their finances were depleted, their
army and navy almost in tatters, enemies were constantly attempting to
undermine them at home, and the great powers regarded them as seedy
adventurers whose career was destined to be brief. Without strong
support from an outside source, it was a question how long the new
régime could survive. Talaat and his Committee needed some foreign power
to organize the army and navy, to finance the nation, to help them
reconstruct their industrial system, and to protect them against the
encroachments of the encircling nations. Ignorant as they were of
foreign statecraft, they needed a skilful adviser to pilot them through
all the channels of international intrigue. Where was such a protector
to be obtained? Evidently only one of the great European powers could
perform this office. Which one should it be? Ten years before Turkey
would naturally have appealed to England. But now the Turks regarded
England as merely the nation that had despoiled them of Egypt and that
had failed to protect Turkey from dismemberment after the Balkan wars.
Together with Russia, Great Britain now controlled Persia and thus
constituted a constant threat--at least so the Turks believed--against
their Asiatic dominions. England was gradually withdrawing her
investments from Turkey, English statesmen believed that the task of
driving the Turk from Europe was about complete, and the whole
Near-Eastern policy of Great Britain hinged on maintaining the
organization of the Balkans as it had been determined by the Treaty of
Bucharest--a treaty which Turkey refused to regard as binding and which
she was determined to upset. Above all, the Turks feared Russia in 1914,
just as they had feared her ever since the days of Peter the Great.
Russia was the historic enemy, the nation which had given freedom to
Bulgaria and Rumania, which had been most active in dismembering the
Ottoman Empire, and which regarded herself as the power that was
ultimately to possess Constantinople. This fear of Russia, I cannot too
much insist, was the one factor which, above everything else, was
forcing Turkey into the arms of Germany. For more than half a century
Turkey had regarded England as her surest safeguard against Russian
aggression, and now England had become Russia’s virtual ally. There was
even then a general belief, which the Turkish chieftains shared, that
England was entirely willing that Russia should inherit Constantinople
and the Dardanelles.
Though Russia, in 1914, was making no such pretensions, at least openly,
the fact that she was crowding Turkey in other directions made it
impossible that Talaat and Enver should look for support in that
direction. Italy had just seized the last Turkish province in Africa,
Tripoli, at that moment, was holding Rhodes and other Turkish islands,
and was known to cherish aggressive plans in Asia Minor. France was the
ally of Russia and Great Britain, and was also constantly extending her
influence in Syria, in which province, indeed, she had made great plans
for “penetration” with railroads, colonies, and concessions. The
personal equation played an important part in the ensuing drama. The
ambassadors of the Triple Entente hardly concealed their contempt for
the dominant Turkish politicians and their methods. Sir Louis Mallet,
the British Ambassador, was a high-minded and cultivated English
gentleman; Bompard, the French Ambassador, was a similarly charming,
honourable Frenchman, and both were personally disqualified from
participating in the murderous intrigues which then comprised Turkish
politics. Giers, the Russian Ambassador, was a proud and scornful
diplomat of the old aristocratic régime. He was exceedingly astute, but
he treated the Young Turks contemptuously, manifested almost a
proprietary interest in the country, and seemed to me already to be
wielding the knout over this despised government. It was quite apparent
that the three ambassadors of the Entente did not regard the Talaat and
Enver régime as permanent, or as particularly worth their while to
cultivate. That several factions had risen and fallen in the last six
years they knew, and they likewise believed that this latest usurpation
would vanish in a few months.
But there was one active man in Turkey then who had no nice scruples
about using such agencies as were most available for accomplishing his
purpose. Wangenheim clearly saw, what his colleagues had only faintly
perceived, that these men were steadily fastening their hold on Turkey,
and that they were looking for some strong power that would recognize
their position and abet them in maintaining it. In order that we may
clearly understand the situation, let us transport ourselves, for a
moment, to a country that is nearer to us than Turkey. In 1913
Victoriano Huerta and his fellow conspirators gained control of Mexico
by means not unlike those that had given Talaat and his Committee the
supreme power in Turkey. Just as Huerta murdered Madero, so the Young
Turks had murdered Nazim, and in both countries assassination had become
a regular political weapon. Huerta controlled the Mexican Congress and
the offices just as Talaat controlled the Turkish Parliament and the
chief posts of that state. Mexico under Huerta was a poverty-stricken
country, with depleted finances, exhausted industries and agriculture,
just as was Turkey under Talaat. How did Huerta seek to secure his own
position and rehabilitate his distracted country? There was only one
way, of course--that was by enlisting the support of some strong foreign
power. He sought repeatedly to gain recognition from the United States
for this reason and, when we refused to deal with a murderer, Huerta
looked to Germany. Let us suppose that the Kaiser had responded; he
could have reorganized Mexican finances, rebuilt her railroads,
reëstablished her industries, modernized her army, and in this way
obtained a grip on the country that would have amounted to virtual
possession.
Only one thing prevented Germany from doing this--the Monroe Doctrine.
But there was no Monroe Doctrine in Turkey, and what I have described as
a possibility in Mexico is in all essentials an accurate picture of what
happened in the Ottoman Empire. As I look back upon the situation, the
whole thing seems so clear, so simple, so inevitable. Germany, up to
that time, was practically the only great power in Europe that had not
appropriated large slices of Turkish territory, a fact which gave her an
initial advantage. Germany’s representative at Constantinople was far
better qualified than that of any other country, not only by absence of
scruples, but also by knowledge and skill, to handle this situation.
Wangenheim was not the only capable German then on the ground. A
particularly influential outpost of Pan-Germany was Paul Weitz, who had
represented the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ in Turkey for thirty years. Weitz
had the most intimate acquaintance with Turks and Turkish affairs; there
was not a hidden recess to which he could not gain admittance. He was
constantly at Wangenheim’s elbow, prompting, advising, informing. The
German naval attaché, Humann, the son of a famous German archæologist,
had been born in Smyrna, and had passed practically his whole life in
Turkey; he not only spoke Turkish, but he could also think like a Turk,
and the whole psychology of the people was part of his mental equipment.
Moreover, Enver, one of the two main Turkish chieftains, was on friendly
terms with Humann. When I think of this experienced trio, Wangenheim,
Weitz, and Humann, and of the charming and honourable gentlemen who were
opposed to them, Mallet, Bompard, and Giers, the events that now rapidly
followed seem as inevitable as the orderly processes of nature. By the
spring of 1914 Talaat and Enver, representing the Committee of Union and
Progress, practically dominated the Turkish Empire. Wangenheim, always
having in mind the approaching war, had one inevitable purpose: that was
to control Talaat and Enver.
Early in January, 1914, Enver became Minister of War. At that time Enver
was thirty-two years old; like all the leading Turkish politicians of
the period he came of humble stock and his popular title, “Hero of the
Revolution,” shows why Talaat and the Committee had selected him as
Minister of War. Enver enjoyed something of a military reputation,
though, so far as I could discover, he had never achieved a great
military success. The revolution of which he had been one of the leaders
in 1908 had cost very few human lives; he commanded an army in Tripoli
against the Italians in 1912--but certainly there was nothing Napoleonic
about that campaign. Enver himself once told me how, in the Second
Balkan War, he had ridden all night at the head of his troops to the
capture of Adrianople, and how, when he arrived there, the Bulgarians
had abandoned it and his victory had thus been a bloodless one. But
certainly Enver did have one trait that made for success in such a
distracted country as Turkey--and that was audacity. He was quick in
making decisions, always ready to stake his future and his very life
upon the success of a single adventure; from the beginning, indeed, his
career had been one lucky crisis after another. His nature had a
remorselessness, a lack of pity, a cold-blooded determination, of which
his clean-cut handsome face, his small but sturdy figure, and his
pleasing manners gave no indication. Nor would the casual spectator have
suspected the passionate personal ambition that drove him on. His
friends commonly referred to him as “Napoleonlik”--the little
Napoleon--and this nickname really represented Enver’s abiding
conviction. I remember sitting one night with Enver, in his house; on
one side hung a picture of Napoleon; on the other one of Frederick the
Great; and between them sat Enver himself! This fact gives some notion
of his vanity; these two warriors and statesmen were his great heroes
and I believe that Enver thought fate had a career in store for him not
unlike theirs. The fact that, at twenty-six, he had taken a leading part
in the revolution which had deposed Abdul Hamid, naturally caused him to
compare himself with Bonaparte; several times he has told me that he
believed himself to be “a man of destiny.” Enver even affected to
believe that he had been divinely set apart to reëstablish the glory of
Turkey and make himself the great dictator. Yet, as I have suggested,
there was something almost dainty and feminine in Enver’s appearance. He
was the type that in America we sometimes call a matinée idol, and the
word women frequently used to describe him was “dashing.” His face
contained not a single line or furrow; it never disclosed his emotions
or his thoughts; he was always calm, steely, imperturbable. That Enver
certainly lacked Napoleon’s penetration is evident from the way he had
planned to obtain the supreme power, for he early allied his personal
fortunes with Germany. For years his sympathies had been with the
Kaiser. Germany, the German army and navy, the German language, and the
German autocratic system exercised a fatal charm upon this youthful
preacher of Turkish democracy. After Hamid fell, Enver went on a
military mission to Berlin, and here the Kaiser immediately detected in
him a possible instrument for working out his plans in the Orient, and
cultivated him in numerous ways. Afterward Enver spent a considerable
time in Berlin as military attaché, and this experience still further
endeared him to Germany. The man who returned to Constantinople was
almost more German than Turkish. He had learned to speak German
fluently, he was even wearing a moustache slightly curled up at the
ends; indeed, he had been completely captivated by Prussianism. As soon
as Enver became Minister of War, Wangenheim flattered and cajoled the
young man, played upon his ambitions, and probably promised him
Germany’s complete support in achieving them. In his private
conversation Enver made no secret of his admiration for Germany.
Thus Enver’s elevation to the Ministry of War was virtually a German
victory. He immediately instituted a drastic reorganization. Enver told
me himself that he had accepted the post only on condition that he
should have a free hand, and this free hand he now proceeded to
exercise. The army still contained a large number of officers, many of
whom were partisans of the murdered Nazim and favoured the old régime
rather than the Young Turks, Enver promptly cashiered 268 of these, and
put in their places Turks who were known as “U. and P.” men, and many
Germans. The Enver-Talaat group always feared a revolution that would
depose them as they had thrown out their predecessors. Many times did
they tell me that their own success as revolutionists had taught them
how easily a few determined men could seize control of the country; they
did not propose, they said, to have a little group in their army
organize such a _coup d’état_ against them. The boldness of Enver’s move
alarmed even Talaat, but Enver showed the determination of his character
and refused to reconsider his action, though one of the officers removed
was Chukri Pasha, who had defended Adrianople in the Balkan war. Enver
issued a circular to the Turkish commanders, practically telling them
that they must look only to him for preferment and that they could make
no headway by playing politics with any group except that dominated by
the Young Turks.
Thus Enver’s first acts were the beginnings in the Prussification of the
Turkish army, but Talaat was not an enthusiastic German like his
associate. He had no intention of playing Germany’s game; he was working
chiefly for the Committee and for himself. But he could not succeed
unless he had control of the army; therefore, he had made Enver, for
years his intimate associate in “U. and P.” politics, Minister of War.
Again he needed a strong army if he was to have any at all, and
therefore he turned to the one source where he could find assistance, to
Germany. Wangenheim and Talaat, in the latter part of 1913, had arranged
that the Kaiser should send a military mission to reorganize the Turkish
forces. Talaat told me that, in calling in this mission, he was using
Germany, though Germany thought that it was using him. That there were
definite dangers in the move he well understood. A deputy who discussed
this situation with Talaat in January, 1914, has given me a memorandum
of a conversation which shows well what was going on in Talaat’s mind.
“Why do you hand the management of the country over to the Germans?”
asked this deputy, referring to the German military mission. “Don’t you
see that this is part of Germany’s plan to make Turkey a German
colony--that we shall become merely another Egypt?”
“We understand perfectly,” replied Talaat, “that that is Germany’s
programme. We also know that we cannot put this country on its feet with
our own resources. We shall, therefore, take advantage of such technical
and material assistance as the Germans can place at our disposal. We
shall use Germany to help us reconstruct and defend the country until we
are able to govern ourselves with our own strength. When that day comes,
we can say good-bye to the Germans within twenty-four hours.”
Certainly the physical condition of the Turkish army betrayed the need
of assistance from some source. The picture it presented, before the
Germans arrived, I have always regarded as portraying the condition of
the whole empire. When I issued invitations for my first reception, a
large number of Turkish officials asked to be permitted to come in
evening clothes; they said that they had no uniforms and no money with
which to purchase or to hire them. They had not received their salaries
for three and a half months. As the Grand Vizier, who regulates the
etiquette of such functions, still insisted on full uniform, many of
these officials had to remain absent. About the same time the new German
mission asked the commander of the second army corps to exercise his
men, but the commander replied that he could not do so as his men had no
shoes!
Desperate and wicked as Talaat subsequently showed himself to be, I
still think that he at least was not then a willing tool of Germany. An
episode that involved myself bears out this view. In describing the
relations of the great powers to Turkey I have said nothing about the
United States. In fact, we had no important business relations at that
time. The Turks regarded us as a country of idealists and altruists, and
the fact that we spent millions building wonderful educational
institutions in their country purely from philanthropic motives aroused
their astonishment and possibly their admiration. They liked Americans
and regarded us as about the only disinterested friend whom they had
among the nations. But our interests in Turkey were small; the Standard
Oil Company did a growing business, the Singer Company sold sewing
machines to the Armenians and Greeks; we bought a good deal of their
tobacco, figs, and rugs, and gathered their licorice root. In addition
to these activities, missionaries and educational experts formed about
our only contacts with the Turkish Empire. The Turks knew that we had
no desire to dismember their country or to mingle in Balkan politics.
The very fact that my country was so disinterested was perhaps the
reason why Talaat discussed Turkish affairs so freely with me. In the
course of these conversations I frequently expressed my desire to serve
them, and Talaat and some of the other members of the Cabinet got into
the habit of consulting me on business matters. Soon after my arrival, I
made a speech at the American Chamber of Commerce in Constantinople;
Talaat, Djemal, and other important leaders were present. I talked about
the backward economic state of Turkey and admonished them not to be
discouraged. I described the condition of the United States after the
Civil War and made the point that our devastated Southern States
presented a spectacle not unlike that of Turkey at that present moment.
I then related how we had gone to work, developed our resources, and
built up the present thriving nation. My remarks apparently made a deep
impression, especially my statement that after the Civil War the United
States had become a large borrower in foreign money markets and had
invited immigration from all parts of the world.
This speech apparently gave Talaat a new idea. It was not impossible
that the United States might furnish him the material support which he
had been seeking in Europe. Already I had suggested that an American
financial expert should be sent to study Turkish finance and in this
connection I had mentioned Mr. Henry Bruère, of New York--a suggestion
which the Turks had received favourably. At that time Turkey’s greatest
need was money. France had financed Turkey for many years, and French
bankers, in the spring of 1914, were negotiating for another large
loan. Though Germany had made some loans, the condition of the Berlin
money market at that time did not encourage the Turks to expect much
assistance from that source.
In late December, 1913, Bustány Effendi--a Christian Arab, and Minister
of Commerce and Agriculture, who spoke English fluently (he had been
Turkish commissioner to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893)--called and
approached me on the question of an American loan. Bustány asked if
there were not American financiers who would take entire charge of the
reorganization of Turkish finance. His plea was really a cry of despair
and it touched me deeply. As I wrote in my diary at the time, “They seem
to be scraping the box for money.” But I had been in Turkey only six
weeks, and obviously I had no information on which I could recommend
such a large contract to American bankers. I informed Bustány that my
advice would not carry much weight in the United States unless it were
based on a complete knowledge of economic conditions in Turkey. Talaat
came to me a few days later, suggesting that I make a prolonged tour
over the empire and study the situation at first hand. He asked if I
could not arrange meanwhile a small temporary loan to tide them over the
interim. He said there was no money in the Turkish Treasury; if I could
get them only $5,000,000, that would satisfy them. I told Talaat that I
would try to raise this amount for them, and that I would adopt his
suggestion and inspect his Empire with the possible idea of interesting
American investors. After obtaining the consent of the State Department,
I wrote to my nephew and business associate, Mr. Robert E. Simon, asking
him to sound certain New York institutions and bankers on making a
small short-time collateral loan to Turkey. Mr. Simon’s investigations
soon disclosed that a Turkish loan did not seem to be regarded as an
attractive business undertaking in New York. Mr. Simon wrote, however,
that Mr. C. K. G. Billings had shown much interest in the idea, and
that, if I desired, Mr. Billings would come out in his yacht and discuss
the matter with the Turkish Cabinet and with me. In a few days Mr.
Billings had started for Constantinople.
The news of Mr. Billings’s approach spread with great rapidity all over
the Turkish capital; the fact that he was coming in his own private
yacht seemed to magnify the importance and the glamour of the event.
That a great American millionaire was prepared to reinforce the depleted
Turkish Treasury and that this support was merely the preliminary step
in the reorganization of Turkish finances by American capitalists,
produced a tremendous flutter in the foreign embassies. So rapidly did
the information spread, indeed, that I rather suspected that the Turkish
Cabinet had taken no particular pains to keep it secret. This suspicion
was strengthened by a visit which I received from the Chief Rabbi
Nahoum, who informed me that he had come at the request of Talaat.
“There is a rumour,” said the Chief Rabbi, “that Americans are about to
make a loan to Turkey. Talaat would be greatly pleased if you would not
contradict it.”
Wangenheim displayed an almost hysterical interest: the idea of America
coming to the financial assistance of Turkey did not fall in with his
plans at all, for in his eyes Turkey’s poverty was chiefly valuable as a
means of forcing the empire into Germany’s hands. One day I showed
Wangenheim a book containing etchings of Mr. Billings’s homes,
pictures, and horses; he showed a great interest, not only in the
horses--Wangenheim was something of a horseman himself--but in this
tangible evidence of great wealth. For the next few days several
ambassadors and ministers filed into my office, each solemnly asking for
a glimpse at this book! As the time approached for Mr. Billings’s
arrival, Talaat began making elaborate plans for his entertainment; he
consulted me as to whom we should invite to the proposed dinners,
lunches, and receptions. As usual Wangenheim got in ahead of the rest.
He could not come to the dinner which we had planned and asked me to
have him for lunch, and in this way he met Mr. Billings several hours
before the other diplomats. Mr. Billings frankly told him that he was
interested in Turkey and that it was not unlikely that he would make the
loan.
In the evening we gave the Billings party a dinner, all the important
members of the Turkish Cabinet being present. Before this dinner,
Talaat, Mr. Billings, and myself had a long talk about the loan. Talaat
informed us that the French bankers had accepted their terms that very
day, and that they would, therefore, need no American money at that
time. He was exceedingly gracious and grateful to Mr. Billings, and
profuse in expressing his thanks. Indeed, he might well have been, for
Mr. Billings’s arrival enabled Turkey at last to close negotiations with
the French bankers. His attempt to express his appreciation had one
curious manifestation. Enver, the second man in the Cabinet, was
celebrating his wedding when Mr. Billings arrived. The progress which
Enver was making in the Turkish world is evidenced from the fact that,
although Enver, as I have said, came of the humblest stock, his bride
was a daughter of the Turkish Imperial House. Turkish weddings are
prolonged affairs, lasting two or three days. The day following the
Embassy dinner, Talaat gave the Billings party a luncheon at the Cercle
d’Orient, and he insisted that Enver should leave his wedding ceremony
long enough to attend this function. Enver, therefore, came to the
luncheon, sat through all the speeches, and then returned to his bridal
party.
I am convinced that Talaat did not regard this Billings episode as
closed. As I look back upon this transaction, I see clearly that he was
seeking to extricate his country, and that the possibility that the
United States would assist him in performing the rescue was ever present
in his mind. He frequently spoke to me of Mr. “Beelings,” as he called
him, and even after Turkey had broken with France and England, and was
depending on Germany for money, his mind still reverted to Mr.
Billings’s visit; perhaps he was thinking of our country as a financial
haven of rest after he had carried out his plan of expelling the
Germans. I am certain that the possibility of American help led him, in
the days of the war, to do many things for me that he would not
otherwise have done. “Remember me to Mr. Beelings” were almost the last
words he said to me when I left Constantinople. This yachting visit,
though it did not lack certain comedy elements at the time, I am sure
ultimately saved many lives from starvation and massacre.