CHAPTER XXXII
CONSTANTINOPLE NO LONGER THE CAPITAL—THE HEART AND SPIRIT OF TURKEY ARE IN ANGORA
As our little cockle-shell reaches the busy quay at Constantinople, the veiled women collect their animals and carry them through the Custom house. I am the only Britisher, yet the tall, well-built official rapidly scans my passport and signs it without moving a muscle, or showing the faintest surprise at my arrival by that boat, not even opening his lips in reply to my good-morning. Is this army etiquette? His kind face has been taught not to unbend. It seems a foolish way of encouraging foreigners to understand us. “You are not English,” everyone declares, “dear lady, you have too much heart to be English.”
“We English have hearts,” is my reply, “but, for some reason, we must pretend we have none.”
Someone wearing a fez, perhaps a Moslem, insists on taking me to the hotel, though I assure him that I am quite capable of carrying my little bag, and a few rugs over my arm. But he has seen Fethi Bey’s letter, and nothing, clearly, will prevent him from mounting beside the driver and burdening himself with my belongings.
At Tokatlians’ Hotel, however, the Armenian porter handed him the truly magnificent tip of two Turkish pounds. He assured me that others pay double that sum for the little trip from the boat to the hotel!
I see, at once, that there is a difference between Angora and Constantinople. In Anatolia no one would dream of thrusting his services upon his country’s friend, or of accepting a two pound tip for so short a ride. My Angora host’s servants could not even be induced to accept a tip when I left. At Angora there was none of the Levantine haggling over the price of a cab. In Constantinople I decided always to leave such matters to the porter, who was a kindly man and did his best. Nevertheless, I should seriously advise the Nationalists, when they are back here, to fix a tariff for luggage and cabs, as the traveller is now intolerably imposed on.
There is compensation, of course, in the return to Western comforts, if not luxuries; above all, of the hot bath. I have already taken three; and they tell me that, if I still don’t feel clean, it is only because the water is always brown. One can, further, obtain the services of a manicurist, a hairdresser, and a chiropodist, all worthy men; and how I enjoy these hot-house sitting-rooms, and sheets like satin on the bed! A touch of fever and full permission to stay tired, are quite enough to make me perfectly content with my one “weary” hat—until my luggage condescends to get un-lost.
General Harington invited me to the Harbié (British Headquarters); chiefly, no doubt, to hear about the big men I have seen in Angora. There are few Englishmen more keenly interested than he in the personalities of the Nationalist leaders, particularly, of course, “the Pasha.” He speaks affectionately of “that nice, honest, fine soldier,” Ismet Pasha; and describes Refet Pasha as “a very clever man, one from whom I have never had an unkind or discourteous word. We are the best of friends.”
I asked him whether “he was altogether in sympathy with the Turks.”
“You must remember,” he answered, “that I was with General Wilson. No one could have had a finer chief; and no man, I dare to say, could have followed more closely in his chief’s footsteps than I.”
“Could not our troops be withdrawn, while such an act might still seem le beau geste?”
“We ought never to have been here,” he replied.
“It hurts my national pride to see you fine men doing police work.”
I told him all I had learned about “the Pasha’s” opinion of the situation, and asked him when he intended to retire.
“As soon as I feel really confident that Peace will be ratified.”
“And Lausanne?”
“We shall have storms, but the result must be peace.”
“When?”
“As soon as we dare hope....”
I congratulated him on the rôle he had played at Moudania.
“I am glad,” he said, “to have rendered service to my country.”
“Can you see any motive for this disastrous policy in Constantinople?”
“I can only suppose that, for some reason, Mr. Lloyd George simply refused to listen to the advice of everyone who knew Turkey, in favour of friends entirely ignorant of the whole subject. I am almost disposed to think he did not even consult his own Foreign Minister.”
“Why did you not go to Lausanne?” I asked.
“Well, I was not invited. Lord Curzon and Ismet Pasha appear to understand each other; and they have clever experts at the Conference.”
“Do you not feel, however, that a “prejudiced” expert may do even more harm than the Premier’s ‘men,’ who knew nothing?”
“If you can prove they are prejudiced, yes.”
“In my view, when the Turks mistrust them, it is enough.”
“That, surely, is not for me to say.”
I much fear it was “mistaken” modesty, which led General Harington to think that his presence would “make no difference” at Lausanne.
On the other hand, his praise of Refet Pasha is well-deserved. It would, indeed, require an exceedingly smart diplomatist to get over a man no one can bluff, for all his courtesy and kindness. The “wonderful little general” is always busy, but never too busy to see the friends of his country, who all delight in his wit.
“There is nothing he would not dare,” said Colonel Mougin. “I can imagine him smoking a cigarette on the edge of Vesuvius! With a mere handful of men he held his own against regiments of Allies all along the line.”
When I first met Refet Pasha we spoke of Colonel Mougin, with whom he had been photographed. I told him that I had been fighting the colonel ever since we met.
“Fighting with that charming man?” he exclaimed.
“The charm of friendship is to fight in peace,” I replied, “or Discuter sans disputer, as the French say.”
He laughed heartily, and then spoke with the deepest respect of General Harington.
“You have yourself given me an example,” said I. “‘Love your enemies’, as it is written.”
Colonel Mougin used to say that Refet Pasha had the glorious spirit of a pioneer, and that his country made good use of the quality. When he had cut his way through the wilderness of Anatolia, they sent him to take possession of Constantinople, though the Allies were still there! At the same time, he was to prepare the way for the axe that was once more to chop with severity, speaking metaphorically, of course, in the departure of the Sultan. When the Government machine at Constantinople was running smoothly, he was sent off to tackle Thrace!
Refet Pasha spoke warmly of Colonel and Mrs. Samson, not forgetting their charming little girl.
“He rendered great service to Turkey during the Siege of Adrianople. He likes the Turks.”
“Like all British gentlemen,” I interposed, to his amusement.
GENERAL REFET PASHA AND COLONEL MOUGIN IN CONSTANTINOPLE.
p. 288
“Enemies, or not enemies,” he said, “in spite of all the terrible things your compatriots have done, they are fine and intelligent men. I ventured to say to them: ‘Perhaps, by bringing every man you can obtain from the four corners of the earth, you may crush our forces, but never our spirit. And remember, in crushing us you will mutilate yourselves for ever!’ General Harington knows that. He perfectly understands.”
The General spoke of his twenty-eight years’ service: the terrible hardship of these last years, when they had to fight, not only the enemy without, but those Turks who had thrown in their lot with the Allies.
“They say,” he went on, “soldiers love war. It is not true. They hate it, because they know what it means. Politicians want war and make war; we only have to obey.”
He has a very high opinion of the present Khalif, whom I myself met ten years ago, in the days of Mahmoud II.
“Everybody has the greatest respect for him,” he went on, “and rightly; a fine gentleman and a great artist.”
“How does he like not being a Sultan?”
“He is the Khalif,” he replied. “In his place, however, I might prefer the lesser honour and the smaller responsibilities.”
“Do you approve of my going to Lausanne?” I asked.
“You have worked hard, and honestly, at studying the country and striven very sincerely to understand my people. It will be well for your delegates to be told the truth. Nevertheless, Lord Curzon himself knows the subject inside out. He has made up his mind, and knows exactly what he intends to do. Above all, he thoroughly understands what effect his policy will produce.”
I believe every word. This time the Prime Minister will have nothing to say; Lord Curzon has full powers. His responsibilities are heavy indeed. With the terrible heritage of “ugly debts” incurred in the name of England, of which he will personally be held guilty for years to come! For him, the right way is not the easy way.
The British officials of Constantinople have been most kind to me; as the only Englishwoman who knows the story of Angora, and has been near to the “heart” of the Turks; they hope I shall go to Lausanne.
But who will listen? From the beginning of time, has an Englishman ever asked a woman for her opinion, or listened to her if she expressed one, even after being consulted! Often, of course, a personality like Lady Hamilton’s, may exert great influence; but men do not come to us for information or advice on policy however much we may know, however deeply and clearly we may think. I am still uncertain of how much our women may ever be allowed to effect in politics and diplomacy.
I once heard a story from a witty Frenchman, which “hits off” our men to a miracle! Their stubborn tenacity, which has never conceded an inch to women that was not dragged out of them by main force! A celebrated French Minister once came to London in hopes of securing a certain concession. When he had spent an hour explaining his case, our great personages briefly replied: “You might as well have asked us for a part of Hyde Park!” He tried again, for another hour, with precisely the same result. His reasons, any mutual advantages that might, or might not, accrue, were absolutely ignored. They only answered, “You might as well have asked us for Hyde Park!”
At Lausanne, unfortunately, there is every reason to fear that the English and the Turks are both adopting the method of not listening. It works, of course (so far as getting your own way), if one party is firmly in possession; but when the claim to control is in dispute, and neither can be induced to yield, one must feel that a little conciliation might be prudent.
Thinking it most unlikely that I shall have another opportunity of talking so freely to any British officials, I have spoken with great frankness of what has been in my heart for years, but what I now see can never be changed.
Lord Curzon spoke courteously of my self-imposed mission “to serve my country abroad,” but England will never entrust such tasks to women, or even lend them any official sanction.
This, then, is my swan song of the work which I have proved that a woman can do. Before leaving the stage, I may say what I think.
“If you suppose that we are going to let any Tom, Dick or Harry run our Embassies, as they do in America, you are very much mistaken.” I was once “officially” informed: “We may be accused of being socially exclusive, but everyone knows to which Embassy they should appeal when anything has to be done.”
“That does not touch my complaint,” I answered. “I shall continue to resent the fact that we are not allowed the same footing as women in other countries. We have at last secured the vote, and, theoretically, the right of entry to all professions; but, proud as we are of Lady Astor and Mrs. Wintringham, their presence in Parliament has, rather unfortunately, produced an impression of far more ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ than we have actually achieved. Some are indeed safely on the heights, but most women have not yet even planted their feet on the lowest rung of the ladder.
“Everyone knows that the Englishman is chivalrous to women, and is their surest anchor in distress. He will willingly die for them, but he maintains his rooted objection to being asked to help them to live.
“The French Government sent a woman to Angora with the fullest official backing in finance and prestige. Their Ambassador provided a plan for her journey, and has made public acknowledgment of her service to France.”
“We do not require women for this work,” was the dogmatic reply; which also, of course, ignored the principle involved in such official rigidity.
But with the unfailing courtesy which the best Englishman never denies to the women whose “interference” he most resents, “I hope you made our position clear to your friends the Turks. Those who serve our Government have always done so of their own free-will. That is why we are served so well!”
I approached this question from another angle at Lausanne. As I have already pointed out, and illustrated from experience in an earlier chapter, it is most advisable, if not essential, that the Ambassador, like other great “Personages,” should employ agents to “try out” the petty “first steps” of any change in policy.
I was told by way of reply, that “the first qualification for ‘entering diplomacy’ is to be twenty-one!” This, of course, excludes a woman over thirty; a fact that may serve for answer to many bitter attacks upon my “Disadvantage of Being a Woman.” A man of threescore is seldom considered too old for diplomacy; a woman of thirty-five is fourteen years beyond the limit.
“What would you do with the old men?” I was asked.
“Teach them golf,” was my prompt retort.
At the Front in a French uniform, speaking French to my own compatriots, I was always unwilling to confess my nationality. So long as they thought I was French, they forgot the lady, and made a friend of the woman! Shedding their “own” uniform, as it were, they “let go” in homage and devotion; giving, being, and appealing for themselves. But the moment it came out that I was English, the open oyster closed down and hid its pearl. From these spruce, upright, and tightly-buttoned uniforms I could never get through the politeness.
As an interpreter in the Guards once explained it: “When one of your Generals asks me to buy him a Vie Parisienne, he never forgets to add, ‘but don’t give it to me in front of my officers.’” It must be the same with women. The Englishman will allow a French woman to “have a peep” at his soul. To his compatriot he offers his dignity and his prestige—which are no better than a bag of bones!
What I have always known, has been brought home more forcibly than ever during this trip. In matrimony, at his office, and in the home, the Englishman must be master. We can, if we must, accept a good master. Who will help us against the bad? Do the Laws of England?
It sometimes seems indiscreet for an Englishwoman to visit the British Embassies in foreign capitals, but I rarely omit to call on the French; and there are, of course, certain advantages, under some circumstances, in a twin-nationality. I have been invited to their Christmas lunch by General and Madame Pellé.
Mr. Neville Henderson, the British chargé d’affaires at Constantinople, though certainly not pro-Turk, does not hesitate to criticise the Greeks. An ideal sense of balance for a diplomat.
The Turks like Mr. Henderson; and when I remarked on the apparent anomaly that “one can be popular in Turkey without being pro-Turk,” I was met by the astounding retort that “he succeeds because he knows how to talk”—a strong argument against “silent” diplomacy!
I can only hope that he may long remain at his post. Although he may not like to hear his beloved Foreign Office called a “mausoleum,” or the burial-ground for twentieth-century ideals. Of him, one can repeat what a Cabinet Minister once said of France: that “he is one of the few ready to give a criminal, or a genius, his chance.” Though not an enthusiast for any “Asiatic Revival,” he will accept the inevitable, and cheer the winner. May he stay at his post at least till danger is past.
I have just made my first, and I hope my last, stay in Pera. The sister-in-law of my little Turkish sister is dying, so I cannot accept her hospitality, though she has begged me to come to her.
What a terrible warning one can take from Pera! I had not realised the danger of losing oneself in the ambition to be truly cosmopolitan. These people belong to all nations and have the souls of none. Their faces have only one common feature—the lack of the spirit behind all racial types, the entire absence of any ideal. In Anatolia I found two forms of inborn honour: the “nationalist” and the “primitive peasant.” In Pera I stepped from Tokatlian’s Hotel to the Embassy with the feeling that someone is going to stab me in the back.
This is the fourth Christmas I have spent in Turkey. On the first occasion the Germans invited me to their Christmas Tree; outside some Armenians sang their exquisite native carols; which, like their folk-songs, make one wish their characters were equally fine. The concert, however, was interrupted by the master-scavengers of Constantinople, the innumerable dogs, against whose furious barking the Christians at first bravely held on. But the “enemy” trotted away to collect his forces from every quarter of the city and, in the end, I won a wager for the dogs versus the Christians. Our entertainers went home, amidst a never-to-be-forgotten chorus of canine howling.
In Constantinople the dogs certainly had their own nationality. Divided against each other by street feuds, the biggest troop coming from the “station beat,” where cans of rubbish are emptied from the Orient express, they yet united to drive out the “alien” Christians from the fatherland of “Dogdom!”
And so it is with the Moslems. If Albania and Syria have left their fatherland, it is not wise for a foreigner to utter a word against Turkey in their presence.
Mustapha Kemal Pasha will find no difficulty about proving his confidence in Nationalism. “If Europe deny us justice, we shall obtain justice from Asia The brotherhood of Islam stands solidly for us.”
This Christmas, after a pleasant dinner at the hotel with Mr. D——, I asked him to take me to church. “Can you hold on to Faith after what you have seen?” he asks.
“I have sometimes nearly lost hold. But when I realise that ‘war’ has taken away everything else from us, I just hang on, hard.”
So I go to church alone, leaving the hideous jazz-band and the noisy dancers; who drink and step out like kangaroos by way of enjoyment!
The eternal beauty of the midnight Mass carries one right away from the dreadful tragedy of life, handing us, too, spiritual food for the heart’s strengthening. On the way home I was humming the Christmas hymn, “Come and Adore Him,” when a clash of discord struck at me from the approaching hotel-mob; for their part, humming “j’en ai marre” (“I am fed up”) the most contagious refrain ever uttered.
I, very unreasonably, poured out my wrath on Mr. D—— next morning. “Is it impossible to make them realise what their song means? Nero fiddled while Rome was burning; they are dancing to the tune of a poor woman’s broken heart. Someone will soon find a gay air for “the Song of the Shirt,” and men will be hopping and braying to it.”
At last I am, fortunately, able to drive quietly away from Pera. “You haven’t changed a bit, you always disliked Pera,” my little Turkish sister had said. “I remember that when we used to go to the Ottoman Bank to fetch your letters you would have the horses whipped up so as to ride to Pera and back as quickly as possible.”
Again I am gazing upon the “Sublime Porte.” It is still “sublime” and the sunset has not changed. Yet no longer can it command my love; and woman does not reason!
The old buildings are as magnificent as ever; the sun is still sparkling on the gold; the picturesque beggars are still there; the blue sky, the Bosphorus, and the cypress trees!
Only the heart and spirit of Turkey have gone to Angora. This is no longer the Turkey of the Turks; and so I am a stranger here, and there are no friendly faces of the Anatolians to give me greeting.
Along the road the same houses are tumbling down, at exactly the same stage of decrepitude. “Nothing has changed, my child,” I say, “except my heart.”
As we pass the old Tekké, however, I miss the kindly face that used to smile on me from behind the green grilled window; and we laugh over the curious souvenirs I managed to obtain from that holy man.
I was walking with Colonel Z., ten years ago, the first day I noticed him at the window; the big, lovely, dark eyes; the green swathed turban; the Persian robe; and on his face the look of the “peace that passeth understanding.” He must be the “Sower that went forth to sow,” I said, “please take me in to him.”
“But I cannot,” said the colonel; and so, before he realised what I was doing, I just walked in myself and told the holy man that “I had come to look at his ‘beautiful face.’” After that I paid him many visits, sharing his coffee, making signs to the women, and watching his strange worship, that had not even any accompaniment of the piping flute.
He told me that no Christian had ever before been admitted into the Tekké.
“Do you consider me a heathen?” I asked.
“No, we are all children of God. How can one of His children be a heathen?”
“What has become of the old man?” I asked my Turkish sister.
“They ordered his son—you remember that fine lad—to say Vive la Grèce, Vive Venizelos, and when he refused, they shot him.”
“But what of the old man?”
“It broke his heart. One day he just fell asleep and did not wake again.”
The harem door is still open. The little daughter, now thirteen, still calls me Tezajim (dear Aunt), and we find seats on the marble veranda to wait for the sun to set over the shores of the Marmora.
“How often I think of you,” murmured my little sister, “trying and trying, day after day, to paint our sunset.” And when I repeated that to the late Sir Alfred East he laughed heartily, saying, “Dear child, Turner could not have done it?”
And who has taken the place of my attendant, Miss Chocolate? The slim figure of a coal-black negress appears to answer my question, robed in brown velvet, with a brown velvet toque. I must call her Miss Ink, though her name is Mary.
I lunch with my Turkish sister as often as the poor sick woman can spare her, and she is generous. Yet eighteen of her friends are there already. This time my friend wears a fur coat and a black veil with lace over it. “Fancy calling that a veil, I teased her. Yet I can count the steps taken in the progress of Turkish women by our lunches. The first time I came to Turkey, you wanted to go up in a lift, and though your father said neither ‘yea’ nor ‘nay,’ you did not go. The second time you often used the lift. The third time, we lunched at Tokatlian’s restaurant, ‘for ladies only.’ Now you lunch unveiled (I don’t call that a veil) in a mixed restaurant.
“And yet, now you have won the privilege for which you have been waiting so many years, you prefer to lunch ‘with the ladies.’ How like a woman!”