CHAPTER XVI
ANGORA II.—AT THE HOME OF MY KIND AND COURTEOUS HOST
The next morning we breakfast, “when I am ready,” which is 8.30. My host’s face beams with delight, and the generous menu could hardly fail to put “the guest” in good spirits—toast and boiled eggs (my allowance being half a dozen a day), biscuits and cheese, olives, and glasses of tea.
In Nationalist houses “reading the papers” and discussing foreign telegrams have become almost a religious rite. This morning, clearly, there is “good news”! The very air we breathe seems lighter, faces look less anxious, men are greeting each other in hopeful tones! What can it be?
Of course, I am not kept long in suspense—“Mr. Lloyd George is a fallen angel!” Well, certainly, I shall not go into mourning; but, at the same time, the animosity thus so sharply revealed makes one sad for one’s own country.
With their inborn tact, my friends suggest that we all go to the Pasha’s to celebrate, not the fall of a “Lost Leader,” but the prospect of the Conservatives’ return to power.
To them, as in England, the change is welcome for the long vista of possibilities it opens up. Shall we resume the Beaconsfield traditions without Gladstone’s sentimentality? Will Mr. Bonar Law find means to justify our faith? It is obviously early days yet for any assurance in prophecy.
Yet, if the exit of Mr. Lloyd George delighted the Continent and the Near East—as if a modern Nero had been assassinated—I, for one, could only think with sorrow upon the “splendour of opportunity” which he has missed and lost. No man, since the world began, ever held in his hands such a power for good in England and among all nations. He could have raised the prestige of Empire to even greater heights and led the councils for peace.
Almost the contrary has come to pass. To-day, certainly, our faith, our good word, our justice, and our fair play (without which England is not England) are almost everywhere subjected to suspicion and distrust.
When Turks tell me it is as easy “to buy” one of our officers as those of other nations, that they have done so over and over again in Constantinople, I try to say that it cannot be. When my host tells me they paid £6,000 sterling for our men’s assistance to charter a boat and escape from Malta, I can only admit, in silence, that they did—somehow—escape. When I learn that at least one correspondent in Constantinople is subsidised by the Greeks, I can bear no more. Whence have bribery and corruption invaded our country against the traditions of centuries? I told them I used to feel that “I was sitting on a rock amidst howling and roaring seas; now even the rock itself is sinking.”
To pay honour where honour is due, I compliment the Minister on the splendid “foreign” news of both his papers—the Tanine and the Vakit. I wish to-day that I knew the language and could read the articles by Hussein Djahid and Ahmet Emine. Even translated, I find them full of sound commonsense and beautifully written. If at times they are bitter, there is none of that sensationalism which our Press has lately borrowed from the States.
My host is due at his office at 9.30, but, though he has ventured to glance at his watch, the talk continues. At about 10.30, I casually ask: “Are you not going to your office to-day?”
“When you allow it,” was the startling answer.
Now, surely, time is of importance at least to a responsible Minister? Yet he will cheerfully give up an hour of his sleep (for that is what it will mean) to my entertainment, because I have forgotten my duty.
“Do not hesitate,” he went on, “to tell me of anyone you would specially like to meet, man or woman. It shall be arranged.... Fethi Bey will lunch with you to-day. Whom else shall I invite?”
I said that I should, one day, like to see Younous Nadi Bey, the editor of Yeni Gun and President of Commission for Foreign Affairs in the Grand National Assembly. “He must be interesting, since our Press describe him as a ‘man who ought to be shot’!”
I found this gentleman, as I expected, well worth going out of one’s way to meet. Without the exquisite manners of Hussein Djahid Bey, he is one of those men who, having made up his own mind about right and wrong, never hesitates to act.
At any rate, until he is shot, he will not allow the Government to sleep, nor to trust Europe without sufficient guarantees. He graciously wrote in Yeni Gun that I had given him some very valuable information about our policy. I certainly did my best to explain Lord Curzon’s position. Neither he nor Fethi Bey, however, could understand how he could stay in the new Cabinet. I scarcely expected that they, or any foreigner, could realise the full measure of England’s folly in putting the whole machinery of government into one man’s undisputed control. Like everyone else nominally in power, the Foreign Minister became a mere cypher.
“Why did he stand it?” they asked.
“For the moment, no protests would have had any effect. His resignation might easily have brought in a far more complete collapse, and, meanwhile, he probably felt that the interests of Conservatism were, to a large extent, in his hands. Lord Curzon knows the East, and he knows what ought to be done. As Goethe says: ‘Between the knave and the fool, one should always choose the knave.’... Gegen die Dumheit, kämpfen die Götte selbst vergebens. (Even the gods fight in vain against stupidity.)”
Again and again I try to assure them that our policy in Turkey is going to “come right.” When they politely retorted that we “did not seem in any great hurry to start turning,” I could only suggest that “Empires, like whales, could not quickly change their direction.”
Younous Nadi Bey is a most interesting talker. Like so many of the Nationalists, he “comes from” Malta; like them all, he loves his country sincerely, and is eager to protect her. Can we expect these men to trust the Power that, only three months ago, was doing its best to destroy them? For myself, I could only hope that we should soon give them sound reason to change their opinions.
I afterwards paid a visit to Younous Nadi at the offices of the Yeni Gun. After coffee in his primitive “editorial sanctum,” I was shown over all the “works.”
The illustrations are prepared with a hand machine, which reminded me of our school magazine activities; but the “results” are, if anything, rather better than our own “dailies” achieve.
The operator had built his bed over the solitary press, in part, no doubt, to save time, but possibly also with the idea of protecting his “treasure.” The editor apologised for the lack of all our modern processes of production. I was the more inclined to compliment him upon his conquest of difficulties.
It is surely a tour de force to “get the news” from this Anatolian machinery, and there are sixty papers in Anatolia!
We were staying in the Hadji Baïram quarter of Angora, so called from the mosque and turbé erected in memory of that sainted man. My host’s house stands on the edge of a hillock, exposed on all sides to the rain or wind or snow. No carriage can drive up to the doors, and, too often, that last hundred yards’ walk means being soaked to the skin. Any number of stray dogs and cats find shelter in its many doorways, howling and whining all through the night.
GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AT ANGORA.
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My guide is supposed to call for me at ten o’clock in the morning, but I have often enough rejoiced at his indifference to the clock. There is so much to sketch from our front door: an unused cemetery, with moss-covered stèles (tombstones) lying in picturesque confusion; a tumble-down shepherd’s hut; a crumbling mosque; mud houses in need of repair; and for background, a steep hill crowned by Timourlin’s tomb.
“There is so much to sketch from our front door.”
While painting, I have counted just four passers-by—two men leading their fruit-laden donkeys, and two women taking their asses to drink. No artist can resist Oriental landscapes; and genius, I suppose, would hardly remember to share my longing for nice warm “Western” baths in an atmosphere that means “microbes” in summer and in winter all kinds of discomfort.
The “sights” for tourists do not delay one many days. There are excellent “Red Cross” hospitals, a military hospital, an école normale for girls, a military school, the Ministries, town gardens, the Armenian Orphanage, the “Embassies,” and the Ottoman Bank. One can also enjoy long drives through miles of uncultivated land.
These various “institutions,” particularly the educational, are full of interest if one had time to thoroughly investigate the whole system, since probably no civilisation in the world differs so radically from our own.
Explorations, however extensive, must all be over before five o’clock. For as the eastern sun sets in its glory, we all go home—ministers and deputies to plan and work, the rest of the population to talk and wonder what the “great folk” are doing.
I never understood how all the people managed to hide themselves in so few houses. Turks, we all know, can perform miracles with mattresses and divans; but even their ingenuity can seldom have overcome so “tough a problem” as the inhabitants, official and civil, of Angora.
There is, admittedly, a housing “problem,” and building has not yet begun. As Angora is to be the permanent seat of Government, they cannot much longer delay the important consideration of providing for Foreign Embassies.
I have already driven many times past the Assembly (which closely resembles one of our county clubs); I have seen the admirably-arranged flower-gardens and heard the band. To-morrow, for the first time, I am to enter the Nationalist Parliament!