"Oh, I have friends here in Saffêd but I must be able to sleep in a nice place."
"Of course; certainly. What would you suggest?"
"That hotel kept by the Jewish widow might do," I replied.
More amenities were exchanged, the upshot of which was that my four friends and I were given permission to sleep at the inn—a humble place, but infinitely better than the mosque. It was all perfectly simple.
CHAPTER III
THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA
So passed the days of our training, swiftly, monotonously, until the fateful December morning when the news came like a thunderbolt that Turkey was about to join hands with Germany. We had had reports of the war—of a kind. Copies of telegrams from Constantinople, printed in Arabic, were circulated among us, giving accounts of endless German victories. These, however, we had laughed at as fabrications of a Prussophile press agency, and in our skepticism we had failed to give the Teutons credit for the successes they had actually won. To us, born and bred in the East as we were, the success of German propaganda in the Turkish Empire could not come as an overwhelming surprise; but its fullness amazed us.