CHAPTER XIV
IN THE “TRAIN DE LUXE”—THE SUPREME GOOD FELLOWSHIP OF ENGLISH LAUGHTER—JOURNEYING TOWARDS THE CRADLE OF NEW TURKEY
It was well past ten when I woke next morning. Though the sun was blazing through the uncurtained windows, I had slept undisturbed.
A Battle Royal with my Tangled, Dusty Hair.
There had, of course, been no chance of “undressing for the night.” But I had been able to take off my boots, and having a whole compartment to myself, I was only too glad to take out my wire brush for the luxury of a “battle royal” with my tangled and dusty hair.
I was still only half awake and far too tired to think of les convenances, when a smiling crowd of excited and gesticulating Turks suddenly appeared on the platform. Truth to tell, the six-days-and-five-nights’ journey seemed like an eternity. I had forgotten Smyrna—almost forgotten the war. Were these happy children the “enemies” of my country?
A tactful little bird now reminded me that Turks are not used to the vision of ladies “at the toilette,” and it was, perhaps, a somewhat perverse form of gratitude that tempted me to fill my rubber basin from my host’s bottle of Evian in order to wash my hands “under the table.”
A Bottle of Evian—Under the Table.
Despite haste and discretion, however, I experienced an unusual sense of being dressed and clean, as I eventually stepped out into the daylight to make the acquaintance of Eski-Chéir.
I found the colonel on the platform talking with animation to a nice-looking Turkish general, who also, it appeared, had a saloon, to which we all three soon adjourned for coffee and talk. He, too, will scarcely believe that I am English.... “I did not think Englishwomen could laugh so heartily,” was his excuse for scepticism.
“My dear sir,” I replied, “I was born laughing, and shall keep it up to the bitter end. God has given me a few gifts—not many—and that for which I give most thanks is a keen sense of humour.”
So I trotted out all the experiences of my journey one by one, not forgetting the Greek I had to “shake” at Athens, and the Frenchman in the “Caracole.” Convulsed with laughter, they one and all shouted: “She is not English!”
This strange impression of our race prevails, I know, also in France and America. They forget Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the supreme “good fellowship of English laughter.” French wit, no doubt, reveals the swift play of a keener and more subtle intellect; ours is a “midsummer madness” of warm hearts in the Forests of Arden.
For my part, when the “literature” mistress challenged her class to “hunt for humour” in “Julius Cæsar,” I put my finger upon the Stage Direction—“Enter Cæsar in his nightgown!” I could not then, nor can I now, agree that Brutus’s wife’s distracted hurrying away, and then recalling, the page for news of his master is anything but tragic pathos.
Few nations, again, will enjoy as we do a joke against themselves. When I published a “Turkish Woman’s Impressions of Europe,” about ten years ago, in which she so happily hit off the weakness of our Western civilisations, the Continent was up in arms. It was an English critic who gaily expressed his “most sincere thanks” for so “thorough a dressing-down.” No publisher in the States would take the following book, with Americans as “victims,” for fear of his “sensitive” and “patriotic” (!) readers.
At a half-ruined restaurant near the station, over the most excellent meal I ever tasted in such miserable surroundings, we had a long talk with General Mouedine Pasha and his two sons about politics and some curious stories they had heard somewhere about England. It is natural that these men should not be interested in any other subject. The general, he told us, had been in and out of prison for the last fifteen years—exiled by Abdul Hamid, escaping, and caught again. After the Armistice he left Constantinople, at great personal risk, to join M. Kemal Pasha; was, for a time, Governor of Adana, and is now taking up his post as Ambassador at Teheran. Most of the leading soldier Nationalists—M. Kemal Pasha and Fethi Bey among the rest—seem to have been his grateful pupils, and, naturally, he is a proud man to-day.
If only the authorities at Lausanne had known or could imagine anything about life in Angora during the last three years! All the best men exiled, persecuted, and imprisoned. What wonder that Nationalism had grown into a religion!
He was indignant at the suggestion that French officers, or a British strategist, were “wanted” in the Turkish Army. “My pupils,” he said, “are more fitted to give instruction than to receive it....
“The buying and selling of munitions, the haggling and bargaining introduced in the army—all that ought not to be—came from Germany.”
He was not the only “big man” in Turkey to lose faith in their war-ally, or to recognise some compensation for their terrible defeat in the freedom from Teuton rule that it involved; but they are not, therefore, any more kindly disposed to the yoke of “the Allies.”
Eski-Chéir had been one of the most flourishing towns in Anatolia, and was destined from its position as a junction between two big railway lines—Angora and Baghdad—to become more prosperous year by year. Every town, of course, has its own story of looting, “violation of women,” and fire; but to the spectator all now seem very much alike, and what chiefly impressed one here was the amazing rapidity with which it had started to recover.
If the produce be only lifted from the backs of patient and sure-footed donkeys on to the Mother Earth, it is, after all, extraordinary that there should yet be any produce left. Peasants ready to walk miles along muddy roads to sell their goods in such small quantities for so little profit will scarcely welcome the cost of transport by modern methods. For them, time is not money, and four weeks’ tramp beside a donkey is far cheaper than a few hours by train.
It surprised me to find the curio-merchants already again supplied with their tempting wares: mother-o’-pearl ikons and other relics, old coffee-mills, coral seals, cameos, etc. Trade was fairly brisk, being run on the sound basis of quick profits and small returns, fair prices and honest dealing.
The attractions, of course, come nowhere near those of the famous bazaar at Constantinople; but I was grateful to find so little haggling over the price. I remember two types of merchants at Constantinople. One kindly-looking old man with a long white beard was sitting cross-legged over his charcoal fire, making himself a cup of coffee. When I inquired about a fine Persian dressing-gown that took my fancy, he simply answered: “Much too dear for you,” and so dismissed me. The other always asked for three times what he was prepared to accept—a most irritating habit. When I visited the bazaar in Turkish dress, my Turkish sister, of course a real Turk, asked if he really found he could rob people in this way. “I never rob Turks,” was the naïve reply, “only the English and the Americans.” The temptation to disclose my nationality was strong, but in those less liberal days it might have meant “trouble” for my friend.
Here I soon saw it would be waste of time to visit any bazaar after the French colonel. He counts it a day wasted if he has not found some treasures, which are all sent for him to Paris.... “Poor man,” as my friend the innkeeper would have remarked, “he is so far from home!”
In Eski-Chéir before the fire, however, art had been altogether put away for munitions. The factories worked day and night, cannons and lorries in readiness all the time. One day we shall learn something at least of the ceaseless efforts by which victory was snatched out of nothing.
We left the town at about ten o’clock in the evening. At last we are actually en route for Angora. “I cannot even yet quite believe,” said I, “that I am really starting, that I shall really arrive.” I heard that some American women (more enterprising, or less expensive, than their confrères) have reached Ismidt, but can get no further.
It was, indeed, “hard-going,” and I believe that the colonel’s “salon” only just came in time. I was told, four years ago, by the eminent Jean Louis Faure, that if I survived at all it would be as a permanent and complete invalid. Yet I have faced more since then than most “strong” people would care to attempt.
The Turks, remember, who could not obtain or afford a yaili (the native carriage) were driven to “walk” the eight hundred miles to Angora in a climate that more than doubles the strain on one’s physique.
As soon as we meet new faces, the questions about Lloyd George all begin over again.
I told the story of Les Misérables. How the ambitious Welsh lad and his uncle, the village cobbler, “worked at the French” together in the old days, one looking out “what a word meant” in the dictionary, the other discovering how to pronounce it. Mr. Lloyd George had often declared that the policy of his whole career came straight from his first study of that immortal classic—“to devote his life to helping the ‘under dog.’”
Perhaps he has lost the copy of Les Misérables he used always to carry with him, and so missed the road to that magnificent goal; so, at least, it seemed to my Turkish audience. “That is the man, a democrat who could understand and appreciate our fight for freedom; what has driven him to hate us?”
I could only repeat such “explanation” as I had been able to offer before to their compatriots of the mountains.
The colonel was kind enough to suggest how much I might have saved England had I been here a year ago.
“It is very doubtful,” I answered, “whether I could have done much, even then. Our Government makes up its own mind without listening to outside information. As a matter of fact, Colonel Aubrey Herbert, a recognised authority on the Near East, called twice at 10, Downing Street, to urge that very scheme upon the Premier’s private secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, but they preferred to keep me in England.”
“But why is your ‘intelligence’ so badly managed?” he asked.
“What evidence can you produce for such an assumption?” was my retort.
“There could surely be no other explanation of your leaving the Greeks without support ... unless, indeed, they are right who whisper that Mr. Lloyd George actually wanted the opposing armies to exterminate each other. His conduct, certainly, lent colour to the charge.”
But I refused to be drawn.... “‘Intelligence’ is not my province,” I answered, “although I can say that the Turks were not served much better in that respect.... They won by ‘faith’; what we of the West call ‘superstition.’”
I was able to more or less look after the son of an eminent Turkish lady writer during his studies in Paris, just after the Treaty of Sèvres. His father, one of the leading Governors under the last administration, had given up all to follow M. Kemal Pasha. When I asked the boy whether they had any hope of success, he just flashed out: “They must succeed. His stars are ‘right.’ He could not fail!”
On the other hand, Turkish diplomats, one and all, declared he would fail.
GENERAL MOUEDDINE PASHA.
Military Instructor of Mustapha Kemal Pasha.
Turkish Ambassador at Teheran (Persia).
p. 128
“Must such splendid efforts be thrown away?” I sadly answered; “are there no circumstances that might arise to justify at least some hope?”
“My dear lady,” was the courteous and grave reply, “we wish him success, as you do; but you have too much good sense to believe in fairy tales. The Pasha has neither money nor munitions. He has the Greeks (well supported by the Allies and the Sultan) against him on the north, the Armenians on the east, the French on the south. He will put up a brave fight and perish in the attempt. The days of miracles are past.” But the miracle happened!
And now, as the train followed the line of the victorious army, our young men took out their maps and eagerly pointed out to us these, now almost sacred, landmarks. Their father, at the same time, explained many technical details—why such and such a position could not be maintained, where the Greek strategy had failed, how General Trécoupis (now thankful, no doubt, to be in the Turks’ hands at Eski-Chéir) had surrendered to a mere lieutenant.
By way of return for all this interesting information, I told a few simple stories about the Royal Family of Great Britain, which I have always found interest these people far more than my “grander,” or more romantic, reminiscences from the Courts of Europe.
They are never tired of hearing that our Edward VII. only required one “gentleman in waiting” at a time at Marienbad; whereas the Czar (Ferdinand) of Bulgaria was always accompanied by a suite of eight or nine. Sir Edward Goschen was instructed to dress, like his royal master, in a green Tyrolese hat with its little shooting feather. He was sent to sit on “the king’s bench” until the crowd had satisfied their natural desires for “a good view,” and gone home to breakfast. Then Edward VII. himself arrived.
I went on to tell of a Wagner concert, so crowded that a certain little American lady of about seventy quietly settled into the only empty seat that the King’s attendant just happened to have vacated. She simply “refused to believe” the scandalised authorities when they told her that she was sitting beside the King of England. Edward enjoyed the joke, would not allow “his friend,” to be disturbed, and chattered merrily to her between the music to the end of the programme.
Her countrywomen, in Ascot gowns, driving their four-horse carriages up to the golf-course at Marienbad, in search of an introduction, did not find His Majesty so easy to approach. The most determined of them all (up against something that “money” could not buy) was driven to use her scissors to cut off a few hairs from his dog’s tail. “At least,” she said, “if I have no souvenir of the King of England, I have a bit of his dog,” and she mounted the hairs in a locket and wore it until she died.
“You see,” I concluded, “how much these ‘democrats’ admire a king. Will the fever, I wonder, ever take root in the East?”
When we reached the Sakharia, the eyes of the general were filled with tears, and it was some time before he managed to speak of what had been. It seemed, indeed, too good to be true. The Greeks had penetrated to Sakharia; and now they were driven out of the whole country!
“Without our Pasha,” said he, “we should still be slaves. To-day, none dare fail in duty to our Fatherland!”
They were all this man’s pupils, these Nationalist leaders. To his fine, upright character they owe an example they are proud to acknowledge. His sons told me that he was in exile for six years, and they had no idea where he was! It was easy to see how they admired him and how devoted he was to them; and now his work at Teheran will not be easy; such men give their whole lives to service!
We have travelled quickly and comfortably over this desolate country; the little engine, stoked with wood, is tugging its long burden up the long heights.
“Look,” said the colonel, “there is Angora.”
“That little village perched on a hill?”
“It is not a village,” he corrected, “it is a town.”
Yet somehow I felt this was not what I had expected ... “such a tiny speck of a place to bear so great a name!”
Well, I had my first peep at that which I had come so far to see—the cradle of the New Turkey. Soon I shall meet the hero of the Nationalists!