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TURKEY AND TOLERANCE—A FRIENDSHIP WASTED

My supreme interest in Turkey among the Moslem nations, arose from influences, or instincts, I cannot now with any certainty determine. I suspect, however, it was in part reaction against the injustice of Gladstone—the idol of my father’s youth, until the betrayal of his hero Gordon—and in part indignation with those who called the Koran an “accursed book.” My religion is the universal tolerance I expect for my own, and I can feel only the most profound admiration for the Great Prophet of Islam, whose fine personality has left so benign an influence throughout the East, and for his “Bible,” with its noble study of our own Christ. Carlyle, you will remember, pays glowing tribute to this “Prophet Hero!”

So I devoured every book that I could lay hands on about these interesting peoples; fought for introductions to anyone who could talk of them, from book-knowledge or personal acquaintance; studied medicine—that their women might suffer less.

It was in 1906 that I first met Pierre Loti’s “disenchanted” heroines, Zeyneb and Melek; and we soon became the closest friends. The tale of their daring, but unpractical, flight had stirred my imagination. Their father was one of Abdul Hamid’s Ministers, and two or three times during my visit they were almost kidnapped by order of the Sultan. On one occasion it was, indeed, only a miracle which disclosed the plot that was to have carried them off (by motor from Nice to Marseilles, thence back by boat to Constantinople) to the punishment awaiting them.

For hours they held me spellbound by their vivid descriptions of harem life, particularly the Sultan’s, and of the “Terror” under Abdul Hamid. With this clever monster at the helm, the Turks suffered a hundred times more than the Christians. Whole regiments of Albanians ceased to exist; whole companies went off to Yemen and were forgotten; Ministers died suddenly, and private families disappeared wholesale. Yet they must be thrown out of Europe, “bag and baggage,” because, in a minor degree, Christian Armenians, too, bled under Abdul Hamid!

After the departure of the two Hanoums (Turkish ladies), their father died suddenly. And though, when in Constantinople, I did my best to see and console their widowed mother, she persisted in regarding me as one of those giaours who had stolen away her daughters! And would listen to no defence or explanation.

It was then that I heard much of the coming Revolution: when and where “meetings” had taken place, who were members of the “secret societies,” which of their friends in prison would be liberated. In 1908, the Day of Deliverance suddenly came, to the astonishment of the whole world, and I, too, rejoiced, as though my own country were now set free!

I was, luckily, again in Constantinople for those great days. I saw the hideous tyrant of a few years ago driven through the streets of Pera; I was present at the opening of Parliament; introduced to the Sultan Abdul Hamid and his Grand Vizier Kiamil Pasha.

It was the Vizier’s charming daughter who soon became my dearest friend, and hostess for two subsequent visits. Once she spoke of me to Abdul Hamid’s successor, Mohammed V., as her “English sister” (her favourite term of endearment), and the Sultan replied: “I did not know Kiamil Pasha had any English children.” Poor man, he had a Turkish family of a score!

It was Hamid’s fall that first revealed to me how much Turkey loved England, what she was ready to give for British friendship. I had witnessed the arrival of our Ambassador, the late Sir G. Lowther, and his triumphant entry to Constantinople, when the horses were taken out of his carriage and he was drawn by Turks to the Embassy. As Abdul Hamid had compromised the nation by friendship with Germans, young Turkey threw herself at the feet of Great Britain.

Why could we not respond? Alas, our Ambassador and his French colleague, M. Constant, would openly express their preference for the despotic Abdul Hamid. And what was said, no doubt with no serious thought of offence, reached the ears of the young Turks and stung their pride: “People who visit Constantinople may be divided into two classes: those who like dirt and squalor” (of whom I was one), “and those who do not!”

It was inevitable that the Germans should make their profit from our discourtesy and blind contempt. We ought, from the first, to have known that she would send, as indeed she did, one of her finest diplomats to Constantinople. Marshall von Bieberstein, and his “retriever,” Dr. W—— of the Frankfurter Zeitung lost no opportunity of conciliating the young Turks, to what end we might, surely, have foreseen!

After the Balkan war, I paid a visit to vanquished Turkey; this time as a guest of my “Turkish sister” in Stamboul, whose father had been, meanwhile, banished to Cyprus, where he died. Under the circumstances I could not (for fear of further compromising my friends with the Government) see much of our Ambassador, Sir Louis Mallet, though I met him twice, and found him a charming man.

To all my appeals, at the Embassy and elsewhere, for British friendship and help to put Turkey on her feet again, I met the same foolish, “parrot” reply: “We cannot sacrifice Russia!” Nevertheless, when I returned to London, and published “An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem” (the diary record of private friendships, widely circulated in the East), we, the friends of Turkey, determined to defy the Government, and formed an Ottoman Society for that purpose.

When the war broke out I had just reached Berlin, once more en route for Turkey, Asia Minor, and afterwards Persia and India.

It is obvious that the world-tragedy had even a sharper sting for those of us who were bidden to hate our life-long “best friends” among the enemy peoples. Often enough, moreover, the individual “foe” (as was the case with my Turkish “sister”) could not throw off the heart’s allegiance to England merely because “it was war.”

Can we, indeed, honestly blame the young Turks? In the first place, they did not choose their own path. One man, Enver Pasha, joined Germany against the wishes of a whole nation. As one man, Mr. Lloyd George, would once have drawn the most constitutional of all peoples to fight the Turks, had not General Harington, luckily for them and us, disobeyed his command!

Besides, we did nothing to preserve our friendship with Turkey. Years of indifference, and most impolitic scoffings at real reforming enthusiasm, were followed, at the eleventh hour, by total neglect of any conciliating diplomacy, which could even then have kept Turkey out of the war, and shortened it by two years.

For instance, on the outbreak of war with Germany, “without notice, without the most banal of the forms of courtesy, on the very day when the Turkish flag should have been hoisted over the ships handed over to the Ottoman Commission, which had come to England to take charge of them, the dreadnoughts were seized by Great Britain and no offer was made by the British Government to refund, at least, the price of the two ships....” So wrote the late Grand Vizier Hakki Pasha; and one could mention many other, similar, senseless pin-pricks, which may inflame such people almost more than insults of greater import.

During the war my friendship for Turkey proved a serious handicap in hospital work. Anyone jealous of what privileges were by chance accorded to me would hand over a few choice tit-bits—that grew in passing—to the secret police. The French, unless in a fit of really inevitable war-depression, paid scant heed to such reports. The Americans, however, easily took alarm. One, I remember, actually spoke to me about the matter with a terror only equalled, in my experience, by that of the Cabinet Minister’s brother who once asked me: “How I could do anything so foolish as to live in a harem?”

It was a poor compliment to one of Turkey’s greatest statesmen, and to my hostess, his distinguished daughter.

But when I found that Roget’s “Thesaurus” gives as synonym for a harem, “a house of ill fame,” I understood!

Turkey, however, was crushed, defeated and, at Sèvres, humiliated. Were we not courting disaster by such unjust terms? If we remove the foot holding them down—but ever so slightly—will they rebound and strike?

“I cannot understand,” I said to one of their delegates, “how a Turk could be found to sign such a Treaty.” For always, with all their faults, I had known them proud.

“Had we not signed,” he answered, “the Greeks would have entered Constantinople, and God knows when we could have driven them out. What does it matter, the Treaty will not be ratified.”

To keep out the Greeks, to save bloodshed! Maybe he was right.

“At least, we are set free from Germany,” they said; and there is little we could not have asked then for such security.

They would have allowed Great Britain any privileges, any concessions, all sovereign rights, if only we had not permitted the occupation of Smyrna! When the Dutch pasteur, M. Lebouvier, sent the Times a full description of all the hideous bloodshed, the saturnalian orgies, and the riot with which the Greeks celebrated their triumphal entry, it was suppressed—and Englishmen do not know!

Consternation, despair, and anger were the order of the day. Those hitherto most apologetic for the part played by Turkey in the war, were now ready to glory in what they had done. A million and a half Turks enslaved by 300,000 “servant” Greeks! Can such things be?

In Constantinople a mass meeting of 250,000 people was held at the Byzantine Hippodrome, flags and banners were draped in black, women sobbed as at a funeral. They were mourning, indeed, for the city they were afterwards accused of having burned!

By what deplorable influence were we thus moved to attempt what would practically have meant the extermination of Turkey? The magic name of Venizelos is not enough! Again and again, the friends of Turkey have asked why? But we do not know whether British action was deliberate or the result of an incredibly big blunder!

M. Kemal Pasha’s great victory changed the face of affairs. Few in England had seemed to care what happened to this band of “rebels”; only a month before his victory, even our Intelligence Officers thought he would easily be beaten by the Greeks. Few had even heard of his three and a half years exile in the mountains!

Meanwhile, at home, we paid little heed, and scant courtesy, to the three Ambassadors from Angora, who came to negotiate peace. Békir Sami Bey’s confidential conversations with the ex-Prime Minister about the Soviet Government were handed on to M. Krassine. Youssouf Kemal Bey, indeed, obtained a hearing, but nothing was done. Fethi Bey (the Minister of the Interior, sent as a last resource) was told, and that was true, that Lord Curzon was seriously ill, but that no one “counted” in England except Mr. Lloyd George. Naturally, he asked the Premier for an audience, which was “promised,” but never given!

Incivility does not pay. It is too expensive a luxury for the greatest of nations. This level-headed Turk, accepting such treatment with all the dignity of his race, found many other things to praise in this country. “The English,” he said, “understand only one form of propaganda—the sword!” But of our institutions, our Parliament, our clubs, and the marvellous acting of Miss Sybil Thorndike in “Jane Clegg,” he said much, and nothing but praise, in Angora!

As a woman who has received the greatest kindness and courtesy from the Turks, my resentment, on behalf of Fethi Bey, was expressed with unmeasured indignation. His mission was not taken seriously; the Government dared to show him the cold shoulder!

For his part, most graciously he suggested that I should come over to Angora myself, to the cradle of the Nationalist movement, and see the hero of the Nationalists.

But for his ever-ready assistance it would have been useless to have made the attempt. When, in Angora, he renewed his apologies for all the discomfort I had endured, but I told him the journey itself had been a privilege, for it enabled me to see with my own eyes what his people had been driven to endure.

No, I could never have forgiven myself if, in a moment of weakness, I had been discouraged by the chivalry of the British officials and allowed them to persuade me to stay at home.