MORE ADVENTURES OF THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS
The Gallipoli deportation gives some idea of my difficulties in
attempting to fulfil my duty as the representative of Allied interests
in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, despite these occasional outbursts of
hatred, in the main the Turkish officials themselves behaved very well.
They had promised me at the beginning that they would treat their alien
enemies decently, and would permit them either to remain in Turkey, and
follow their accustomed occupations, or to leave the empire. They
apparently believed that the world would judge them, after the war was
over, not by the way they treated their own subject peoples but by the
way they treated the subjects of the enemy powers. The result was that a
Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Italian enjoyed far greater security in
Turkey than an Armenian, a Greek, or a Jew. Yet against this disposition
to be decent a persistent malevolent force was constantly manifesting
itself. In a letter to the State Department, I described the influence
that was working against foreigners in Turkey. “The German Ambassador,”
I wrote on May 14, 1915, “keeps pressing on the Turks the advisability
both of repressive measures and of detaining as hostages the subjects of
the belligerent powers. I have had to encounter the persistent
opposition of my German colleague in endeavouring to obtain permission
for the departure of the subjects of the nationalities under our
protection.”
Now and then the Turkish officials would retaliate upon one of their
enemy aliens, usually in reprisal for some injury, or fancied injury,
inflicted on their own subjects in enemy countries. Such acts gave rise
to many exciting episodes, some tragical, some farcical, all
illuminating in the light they shed upon Turkish character and upon
Teutonic methods.
One afternoon I was sitting with Talaat, discussing routine matters,
when his telephone rang.
“_Pour vous_,” said the Minister, handing me the receiver.
It was one of my secretaries. He told me that Bedri had arrested Sir
Edwin Pears, had thrown him into prison, and had seized all his papers.
Sir Edwin was one of the best-known British residents of Constantinople.
For forty years he had practised law in the Ottoman capital; he had also
written much for the press during that period, and had published several
books which had given him fame as an authority on Oriental history and
politics. He was about eighty years old and of venerable and
distinguished appearance. When the war started I had exacted a special
promise from Talaat and Bedri that, in no event, should Sir Edwin Pears
and Prof. Van Millingen of Robert College be disturbed. This telephone
message which I now received--curiously enough, in Talaat’s
presence--seemed to indicate that this promise had been broken.
I now turned to Talaat and spoke in a manner that made no attempt to
conceal my displeasure.
“Is this all your promises are worth?” I asked. “Can’t you find anything
better to do than to molest such a respectable old man as Sir Edwin
Pears? What has he ever done to you?”
“Come, come, don’t get excited,” rejoined Talaat. “He’s only been in
prison for a few hours, and I will see that he is released.”
He tried to get Bedri on the wire, but failed. By this time I knew Bedri
well enough to understand his methods of operation. When Bedri really
wished to be reached on the telephone, he was the most accessible man in
the world; when his presence at the other end of the wire might prove
embarrassing, the most painstaking search could not reveal his
whereabouts. As Bedri had given me his solemn promise that Sir Edwin
should not be disturbed, this was an occasion when the Prefect of Police
preferred to keep himself inaccessible.
“I shall stay in this room until you get Bedri,” I now told Talaat. The
big Turk took the situation good-humouredly. We waited a considerable
period, but Bedri succeeded in avoiding an encounter. Finally I called
up one of my secretaries and told him to go out and hunt for the missing
prefect.
“Tell Bedri,” I said, “that I have Talaat under arrest in his own office
and that I shall not let him leave it until he has been able to instruct
Bedri to release Sir Edwin Pears.”
Talaat was greatly enjoying the comedy of the situation; he knew Bedri’s
ways even better than I did and he was much interested in seeing whether
I should succeed in finding him. But in a few moments the telephone
rang. It was Bedri. I told Talaat to tell him that I was going to the
prison in my own automobile to get Sir Edwin Pears.
“Please don’t let him do that,” replied Bedri. “Such an occurrence would
make me personally ridiculous and destroy my influence.”
“Very well,” I replied, “I shall wait until 6.15. If Sir Edwin is not
restored to his family by that time, I shall go to the Police
Headquarters and get him.”
As I returned to the Embassy I stopped at the Pears residence and
attempted to soothe Lady Pears and her daughter.
“If your father is not here at 6.15,” I told Miss Pears, “please let me
know immediately.”
Promptly at that time my telephone rang. It was Miss Pears, who informed
me that Sir Edwin had just reached home.
The next day Sir Edwin called at the Embassy to thank me for my efforts
in his behalf. He told me that the German Ambassador had also worked for
his release. This latter statement somewhat surprised me, as I knew no
one else had had a chance to make a move, since everything transpired
while I had been in Talaat’s office. Half an hour afterward I met
Wangenheim himself; he dropped in at Mrs. Morgenthau’s reception. I
referred to the Pears case and asked him whether he had used any
influence in obtaining his freedom. My question astonished him greatly.
“What?” he said. “I helped you to secure that man’s release! _Der alte
Gauner!_ (The old rascal.) Why, I was the man who had him arrested!”
“What have you got against him?” I asked.
“In 1876,” Wangenheim replied, “that man was pro-Russian and against
Turkey!”
Such are the long memories of the Germans! In 1876, Sir Edwin wrote
several articles for the London _Daily News_, describing the Bulgarian
massacres. At that time the reports of these fiendish atrocities were
generally disbelieved and Sir Edwin’s letters placed all the
incontrovertible facts before the English-speaking peoples, and had much
to do with the emancipation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule. This act of
humanity and journalistic statesmanship had brought Sir Edwin much fame
and now, after forty years, Germany proposed to punish him by casting
him into a Turkish prison! Again the Turks proved more considerate than
their German allies, for they not only gave Sir Edwin his liberty and
his papers, but permitted him to return to London.
Bedri, however, was a little mortified at my successful intervention in
this instance and decided to even up the score. Next to Sir Edwin Pears,
the most prominent English-speaking barrister in Constantinople was Dr.
Mizzi, a Maltese, 70 years old. The ruling powers had a grudge against
him, for he was the proprietor of the _Levant Herald_, a paper which had
published articles criticizing the Union and Progress Committee. On the
very night of the Pears episode, Bedri went to Dr. Mizzi’s house at
eleven o’clock, routed the old gentleman out of bed, arrested him, and
placed him on a train for Angora, in Asia Minor. As a terrible epidemic
of typhus was raging in Angora, this was not a desirable place of
residence for a man of Dr. Mizzi’s years. The next morning, when I heard
of it for the first time, Dr. Mizzi was well on the way to his place of
exile.
“This time I got ahead of you!” said Bedri, with a triumphant laugh. He
was as good-natured about it and as pleased as a boy. At last he had
“put one over” on the American Ambassador, who had been unguardedly
asleep in his bed when this old man had been railroaded to a fever camp
in Asia Minor.
But Bedri’s success was not so complete, after all. At my request Talaat
had Dr. Mizzi sent to Konia, instead of to Angora. There one of the
American missionaries, Dr. Dodd, had a splendid hospital; I arranged
that Dr. Mizzi could have a nice room in this building, and here he
lived for several months, with congenial associates, good food, a
healthy atmosphere, all the books he wanted, and one thing without which
he would have been utterly miserable--a piano. So I still thought that
the honours between Bedri and myself were a little better than even.
Early in January, 1916, word was received that the English were
maltreating Turkish war prisoners in Egypt. Soon afterward I received
letters from two Australians, Commander Stoker and Lieutenant
Fitzgerald, telling me that they had been confined for eleven days in a
miserable, damp dungeon at the War Office, with no companions except a
monstrous swarm of vermin. These two naval officers had come to
Constantinople on one of that famous fleet of American-built submarines
which had made the daring trip from England, dived under the mines in
the Dardanelles, and arrived in the Marmora, where for several weeks
they terrorized and dominated this inland sea, practically putting an
end to all shipping. The particular submarine on which my correspondents
arrived, the _E_ 15, had been caught in the Dardanelles, and its crew
and officers had been sent to the Turkish military prison at Afium Kara
Hissar in Asia Minor. When news of the alleged maltreatment of Turkish
prisoners in Egypt was received, lots were drawn among these prisoners
to see which two should be taken to Constantinople and imprisoned in
reprisal. Stoker and Fitzgerald drew the unlucky numbers, and had been
lying in this terrible underground cell for eleven days. I immediately
took the matter up with Enver and suggested that a neutral doctor and
officer examine the Turks in Egypt and report on the truth of the
stories. We promptly received word that the report was false, and that,
as a matter of fact, the Turkish prisoners in English hands were
receiving excellent treatment.
About this time I called on Monsignor Dolci, the Apostolic Delegate to
Turkey. He happened to refer to a Lieutenant Fitzgerald, who, he said,
was then a prisoner of war at Afium Kara Hissar.
“I am much interested in him,” said Monsignor Dolci, “because he is
engaged to the daughter of the British Minister to the Vatican. I spoke
to Enver about him and he promised that he would receive special
treatment.”
“What is his first name?” I asked.
“Jeffrey.”
“He’s receiving ‘special treatment’ indeed,” I answered. “Do you know
that he is in a dungeon in Constantinople this very moment?”
Naturally M. Dolci was much disturbed but I reassured him, saying that
his protégé would be released in a few days.
“You see how shamefully you treated these young men,” I now said to
Enver, “you should do something to make amends.”
“All right, what would you suggest?”
Stoker and Fitzgerald were prisoners of war, and, according to the usual
rule, would have been sent back to the prison camp after being released
from their dungeon. I now proposed that Enver should give them a
vacation of eight days in Constantinople. He entered into the spirit of
the occasion and the men were released. They certainly presented a sorry
sight; they had spent twenty-five days in the dungeon, with no chance to
bathe or to shave, with no change of linen or any of the decencies of
life. But Mr. Philip took charge, furnished them the necessaries, and in
a brief period we had before us two young and handsome British naval
officers. Their eight days’ freedom turned out to be a triumphal
procession, notwithstanding that they were always accompanied by an
English-speaking Turkish officer. Monsignor Dolci and the American
Embassy entertained them at dinner and they had a pleasant visit at the
Girls’ College. When the time came to return to their prison camp, the
young men declared that they would be glad to spend another month in
dungeons if they could have a corresponding period of freedom in the
city when liberated.
In spite of all that has happened I shall always have one kindly
recollection of Enver for his treatment of Fitzgerald. I told the
Minister of War about the Lieutenant’s engagement.
“Don’t you think he’s been punished enough?” I asked. “Why don’t you let
the boy go home and marry his sweetheart?”
The proposition immediately appealed to Enver’s sentimental side.
“I’ll do it,” he replied, “if he will give me his word of honour not to
fight against Turkey any more.”
Fitzgerald naturally gave this promise, and so his comparatively brief
stay in the dungeon had the result of freeing him from imprisonment and
restoring him to happiness. As poor Stoker had formed no romantic
attachments that would have justified a similar plea in his case, he had
to go back to the prison in Asia Minor. He did this, however, in a
genuinely sporting spirit that was worthy of the best traditions of the
British navy.