Under Four Administrations Part 23

The President now desires me to make to you the formal offer of the post of Amba.s.sador to Turkey. The epoch-making events now occurring in the Turkish Empire bring with them difficulties and opportunities which make that post take on even greater importance, and the President feels that your past service and keen knowledge of the Near East make you peculiarly qualified to take charge at this time of the important Emba.s.sy at Constantinople.

Adverting to your previous conversations with the President and with me, relative to your disinclination to accept a post which you have previously held, I would add that the President would be glad to consider your transfer from Constantinople to some other post if an opportune time should arrive when this was practicable and when you wished to relinquish the important mission which is now tendered to you.

I am, my dear Mr. Straus, Very sincerely yours P. C. KNOX

In June, while I was getting ready for my departure, I was compelled to undergo an operation for appendicitis. I therefore wrote the President asking him to relieve me of my appointment, as my illness would delay me for another month or more. The President promptly advised me not to be disturbed by the delay, that he would be glad to wait until my health was entirely restored before having me start, and that it was not possible, because of the troubled conditions in Turkey, at that time to find any one to replace me.

At this time I received a letter from Roosevelt, addressed from the heart of British East Africa, expressing pleasure at my again going to Turkey:

SAIGO SOI, LAKE NAIVASHA _16th July, 1909_

MY DEAR MR. AMBa.s.sADOR:

Your letter gave me real pleasure. Mrs. Roosevelt had written of you, and your dear wife, and two beautiful daughters, coming out to see her; and she told me how much she enjoyed your visit. As for the address at the dedication of the memorial window, my dear fellow, you said the very things that I would most like to have said about me, especially coming from a man whom I so much respect and who is my close personal friend.

I am delighted that you have accepted the Turkish Emba.s.sy. The situation was wholly changed by the revolution, and at this moment I think that Constantinople is the most important and most interesting diplomatic post in the world.

I shan't try to write to you at any length, for I find it simply impossible to keep up with correspondence here in camp, and am able to write my letters at all at the moment only because a friend has turned up with a typewriter.

I can't say how I look forward to seeing you. I know nothing whatever of American politics at the present moment. We have had a very successful and enjoyable trip.

With love to Mrs. Straus and with hearty congratulations not to you but to our country for your having gone to Turkey, I am

Faithfully yours THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The first paragraph refers to an address I had made in May. The Reverend J. Wesley Hill, of the Metropolitan Temple, had one of the windows of his church dedicated to the Roosevelt Administration and I was asked to deliver the princ.i.p.al address. I took for my subject "The Spirit of the Roosevelt Administration," and reviewed the leading progressive acts of the Administration and pointed out how they were all aimed to secure the rights and enlarge the opportunities of the plain people. I had in mind counteracting the influence then current to belittle the work of the Roosevelt Administration. For with the beginning of the Taft Administration, the reactionaries in and out of Congress had become more bitter and outspoken in their opposition to the Roosevelt policies; it seems that they were encouraged by the report that a break had taken place between Roosevelt and Taft, and by the fact that certain Senators and members of the House who had fallen out with Roosevelt seemed to be specially welcomed at the White House. My address was therefore widely quoted in the press and subsequently circulated in pamphlet form. I quote one of its salient paragraphs:

All the Roosevelt measures and policies were based not only upon moral convictions, but upon a statesman's forethought for the welfare of the country. That he would encounter the powerful opposition of the offending corporate interests was to be foreseen and expected. All reforms and reformers no less in our country than in others have encountered the reactionaries of privilege and power, who persuaded themselves that their so-called vested interests, however acquired and however administered, were their vested rights. These trespa.s.sing reactionaries when not checked and made obedient to the legitimate needs and righteous demands of the many produced a spirit of revenge which broke out into revolution at the extreme opposite end of the social system.

On August 18th Mrs. Straus and I left New York on the S.S. Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm for Cherbourg. A week later we were in Paris, where we met Mrs. Roosevelt with three of her children, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. During the fortnight of our stay we saw a great deal of them and several times we went to the theater or sight-seeing together. Mrs.

Roosevelt told me that her husband had solicitously inquired about us in several of his letters and suggested that I write him.

When we reached Constantinople on September 18th, the month of Ramazan had begun, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rifaat Pasha, informed me that the Sultan, now Mohammed V, brother of Abdul Hamid, would probably delay receiving me for a week or ten days, until the middle of Ramazan, and not at the end, as was customary with the former Sultan.

Accordingly I was received on Monday, October 4th.

The residence of the new Sultan was in the Palace of Dolma Bagtche. As my rank now was that of amba.s.sador, this audience was a more ceremonious one than those of my former missions. Eight royal carriages came from the Palace to conduct me and my staff to the residence of His Royal Majesty. The first of these, in which I rode, was a most gorgeous affair, with outriders and two postilions in uniforms of brilliant colors standing on a platform in the rear of the carriage. The streets of Pera were crowded with spectators as these dazzling equipages went by, in spite of a light rain that was falling. As we entered the Palace, a large troop of soldiers arranged along each side of the main gate presented arms. I was met by the Chief Introducer of Amba.s.sadors and several other officials, who conducted me to the audience chamber above.

With my dragoman, Mr. Gargiulo, I then proceeded with the Chief Introducer of Amba.s.sadors into the presence of the Sultan while the rest of my staff were detained in an anteroom.

The Sultan was a man of about sixty-five, short and very thick-set. He was dressed in military uniform, but appeared physically inert and clumsy. During the whole thirty-three years' reign of his brother, Abdul Hamid, he had been imprisoned in a palace on the Bosphorus and kept under constant guard. He grew up in ignorance and his appearance clearly indicated mental backwardness. His eyes were dull and his appearance almost that of an imbecile, except when an occasional spark of animation was noticeable. Withal he seemed kind and good-natured.

When I made my address, I felt as though I were speaking to an image rather than a human being, and I went through it as quickly as possible, omitting some parts for the sake of brevity, realizing that it was simply a form and that the Introducer of Amba.s.sadors would presently read the whole of it in Turkish. The Sultan was then handed the Turkish reply to read, which he did haltingly, even consulting the Introducer at times to decipher a word. That being over, the doors to the anteroom were thrown open and my staff entered, also the consul-general and his staff, and each man was presented to the Sultan. We were then conducted back to the anteroom and served with cigarettes and coffee, even though it was Ramazan, when Mohammedans do not drink or smoke until after sundown. In a few minutes more we were conducted back to our carriages.

The whole function was more in the nature of mimicry on the stage than a serious diplomatic performance.

With my dragoman I paid my official calls upon the Grand Vizier and the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Porte, both of whom received me in full-dress uniform and immediately returned the calls.

The Government of Turkey under the new regime, with a Sultan who was merely a figurehead, was in the hands of the ministry, and the ministers in turn were appointed and controlled by the Young Turks, or so-called party of "Union and Progress" which had brought on the revolution of 1908 and deposed the late Sultan in April, 1909. It required no great insight to see that a government thus controlled by an invisible power without official responsibility could not be one of either liberty or progress; yet the leading ministers were men of ability and some of them men of considerable experience. Rifaat Pasha, for instance, was formerly amba.s.sador to London, an intelligent and thoroughly enlightened statesman. Hussein Hilmi Pasha, the Grand Vizier, was the former member of a joint committee charged with the government of Macedonia. Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, had previously held an inferior position. He was one of the leading representatives of the Young Turk Party and was believed to be the one mainly responsible for the terrible slaughter and martyrdom of Armenians during the World War. After that war he fled to Berlin, where, in 1920, he was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a young Armenian. Djavid Bey, Minister of Finance, was a remarkably brilliant young man, about thirty-four years old, from Salonica. It was said he was a Donmeh; that is, a member of a sect of apostate Jews also known as Sabbatians from the name of its Messiah or prophet, Sabbata Zevi, who gave the sect its romantic origin in the middle of the seventeenth century. Professor Graetz gives a full and interesting description of this whole movement in his "History of the Jews."

Among my colleagues were Gerard Lowther, who represented Great Britain; Marquis Imperiali, Italy; and Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, Germany.

Because of the lack of general society in Constantinople, the members of the diplomatic corps became very intimate with one another, and this was so with my colleagues generally and especially between the German amba.s.sador and myself, for we were also fellow members of the Hague Tribunal, and in 1907 he was chairman of the German delegation at the Conferences. He was by far the ablest and most forceful diplomat in Constantinople at this period. During his term of office there, German influence in the Ottoman Empire entirely overshadowed the British. This influence started its ascendancy following the visit of the Emperor in 1898, when he obtained the promise of the concession for the building of the Bagdad Railway.

When first the Ottoman Government granted this concession, the financiers of Great Britain, France, and Germany had come to a tentative agreement for the joint construction of the road. The Germans then wanted more than an equal control in the enterprise, and the negotiations fell through. Had the interests of Great Britain and Germany been united in the Near East, there probably would have been quite a different alignment of Powers on the chessboard of Europe, and perhaps the World War would have been prevented. The Bagdad Railway, if jointly constructed, would have contributed to a better understanding between Great Britain and Germany instead of accentuating more and more their differences as the road proceeded toward the Persian Gulf.

I could plainly see evidences, both in social life in the Turkish capital and in the unmistakable trend of diplomatic alignments, of a rapidly developing entente between Great Britain, France, and Russia.

Since the Russo-j.a.panese War, and with the coming of the new regime in Turkey, Russia had changed her att.i.tude toward Turkey and had become extremely friendly. Italy maintained a neutral att.i.tude as between Great Britain and Germany. Austria, as always, if not controlled by, was in close sympathy with, Germany.

Abdul Hamid had developed into the most autocratic ruler of modern times. With the overthrow of his regime and its colossal system of secret agents, there was hope for a gradual development of a parliamentary government, especially as some of the officials in the Turkish ministry were forward-looking men, of considerable ability and honesty of purpose. However, just as the jealousy between the Great Powers had prevented the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years or more, so the same jealousy prevented rehabilitation.

Great Britain favored the building up of Turkey; the policy of Russia, Germany, and Austria was to keep Turkey weak and disorganized.

With the establishment of the new regime Germany, England, France, and Italy sought concessions from the Government for the development of mines and the building of railroads, docks, and other public utilities.

The country was rich and undeveloped, and the Turks themselves had neither the capacity nor the money for such undertakings. But the effect of these concessions was undermining the sovereignty and was foreshadowing conflict.

With the pa.s.sing of the old regime and the beginning of the new, an appalling ma.s.sacre of Armenians had taken place in Cilicia; and it was believed that this ma.s.sacre, which cost the lives of twenty thousand or more victims, was engineered by the old regime to discredit the new.

The first fall of the new ministry was brought about by what was known as the Lynch affair, which concerned a steams.h.i.+p monopoly of an English company on the Tigris and Euphrates. The Lynch Company had a perpetual concession to navigate two steamers from the Persian Gulf to Ba.s.sora, and from there to Bagdad on the Tigris and as far as navigable on the Euphrates. There was also a Turkish company with a similar concession, and the English company undertook negotiations with the Grand Vizier for the consolidation of the two companies, by which the Lynch Company was to pay the Ottoman Government 160,000 in cash. The new company was to have a grant for seventy-two years, with the right given to the Ottoman Government to buy it all out at the end of thirty-six years on a basis to be agreed upon. The new company was to have the monopoly of the navigation, and it was to have an English president with a board of directors composed half of Englishmen and half of Turkish subjects.

The arrangements were made on behalf of the ministry by the Grand Vizier, Hilmi Pasha, and the matter was then brought up under interpellation in the Parliament. The first vote taken was against confirmation of the transaction. This amounted to an expression of lack of confidence in the ministry, whereupon the Grand Vizier stated that unless the transaction was confirmed, he and his colleagues would resign. Two days later, on motion of Djavid Bey, the eloquent Minister of Finance, the whole matter was reconsidered and an equally large vote cast confirming the transaction. Aside from registering confidence or the lack of it in the ministry, the vote against confirmation would also have been interpreted as an act of hostility toward England. For the time being the problem was settled.

Shortly thereafter, however, there arose in the Bagdad vilayet such opposition to this transaction that the deputies from that province threatened to withdraw from Parliament. The negotiations were regarded as a victory for England in the strengthening of her influence along the Persian Gulf, and a defeat for the Germans, whose railway terminus would be at Ba.s.sora, at the junction of the two rivers. The Persian Gulf, on the other hand, was of strategic interest to Great Britain because it is the corridor to India. German influence proved the stronger with the Young Turks, and the consolidation of the Lynch Company with the Turkish company was not confirmed.

This vote resulted in the fall of the ministry, for a month later the Young Turks forced the resignation of the Grand Vizier. In giving his resignation to the Sultan, the Grand Vizier stated his reason as poor health, but that was merely for public consumption. Talaat Bey and Djavid Bey were known to be prominent members of the Young Turks, and the Grand Vizier, who had been Minister of the Interior and then Grand Vizier under the former Sultan, was not fully trusted as being in accord with the regime of the Young Turks. To bridge over this ministerial crisis the Young Turks offered to Hakki Pasha, amba.s.sador at Rome, the grand viziers.h.i.+p, which he accepted.

Early in the year 1910 the diplomatic circle in Constantinople was thrown, if not into gloom, at least into official mourning. The Grand Duke Nicolaiovich, uncle of Czar Nicholas of Russia, and King Leopold of Belgium, died. At Constantinople, more than at any capital in the world, ceremonies of any kind were exaggerated to make an impression upon the Turkish mind. And so in both these instances elaborate funeral services were held which the diplomatic representatives attended in full uniform, loaded with all decorations. The service for the Grand Duke lasted about two hours, although no one apparently listened to any part but the singing, and there was a general sigh of relief when it was over. The service for the Belgian king was of a similar nature, with the addition of a huge catafalque, surmounted by a crown, erected in the center of the church, which was so cold that most of us kept on our overcoats.

Shortly thereafter I attended a third funeral, this time a Turkish one.

Hamdy Bey, director and organizer of the Imperial Museum, had died on February 24, 1910, at about sixty-eight years of age. I had known him for twenty years; he had always been courteous and obliging to American visitors, and had shown many special favors to me, notably in regard to the permit for the Babylonian excavations. The services took place at eleven in the morning in front of the entrance to the Sophia Mosque. The funeral cortege consisted of about a dozen dervishes clad in long black robes with high conical head-coverings made of rough yellowish-gray woolen material, and about three times the height of an ordinary fez.

They chanted in plaintive tones, "Allah! Allah! Allah!" Next came the coffin-bearers, six in number. As is the custom among the Mohammedans, the coffin was of plain boards, covered with shawls, over which was draped a black covering with some phrases from the Koran worked into it.

On top of the coffin was the red fez or head-covering of the deceased.

Behind the coffin walked many of the leading officials of the Government and other prominent people. The entire ministry was present. I joined the procession shortly before reaching the mosque and was asked to walk beside Rifaat Pasha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I was the only representative of a foreign power present, and my attendance was warmly appreciated by the Turkish officials and by the relatives of the deceased.

When the procession reached the mosque, the coffin was placed upon the pediment of a Greek column near the entrance, an appropriate place for it to rest, I thought. All the mourners having gathered round, one of the imans or priests standing by the coffin recited a prayer of about six minutes' duration, in the midst of which he put the following questions in Turkish to the bystanders:

"You all knew Hamdy Bey; what kind of a man was he?"

And the audience replied "Eyi," meaning "good."

"If he has done any wrong to you, do you forgive him?"

Their reply in Turkish signified, "We do."

The body was then borne on the shoulders of the carriers to the museum enclosure which was near by, in front of the Chinili Kiosque. Djavid Bey then mounted the marble portico and from there delivered a funeral oration lasting about twelve minutes, in which he referred to the excellent work accomplished by the deceased under the most trying circ.u.mstances during the reign of corruption and oppression, and pointed to the buildings surrounding the enclosure as the most fitting and lasting memorial.

A funeral among the Mohammedans is not regarded as a cause for mourning.

Death is looked upon as a matter of course. Every respect is shown the memory of the deceased, but there is neither sanctimony nor suppressed sorrow at the funeral service. This is doubtless due to the spirit of fatalism deeply embedded in their religion, and which colors so deeply the life and philosophy of a Mohammedan.

The att.i.tude of prayer on the part of the bystanders during this ceremony was one I had never observed at the ordinary services in the mosques. They all stood erect, arms horizontally extended forward from the elbow, palms turned upward. The simplicity of the whole service impressed me very much. The entire dramatic scene, in its picturesque surroundings, was unforgettable. The day was bright and beautiful, and the Bosphorus wore its most attractive coloring. Turkish functions, whether official or ceremonial, are always arranged with quiet dignity and precision.