There was one intervention during those years to which I look back with satisfaction, and that was my protest against the King’s Oath before the Coronation of King Edward. The Oath was actually changed, and though my protest may have had no effect upon that historic fact, it was none the less the first letter in “The Times” upon the subject.
It ran thus:
Sir,—
Surely Colonel Sandys and the members of the Protestant Reformation Society should, looking at the matter simply from their own point of view, recognize that the surest way to strengthen any creed is, as the whole history of the world has proved, to persecute it. And it is mere juggling with words to attempt to show that it is anything other than persecution to hold up the Roman Catholic faith to obloquy in the Coronation Oath, while every other creed, Christian or non-Christian, is left unassailed. Is it not a shocking thing that, while Roman Catholic chapels throughout the whole Empire are still draped in black for a deceased Monarch, his successor should be compelled by law to insult the most intimate convictions of these same mourners?
And is it not a most narrow and foolish policy, unworthy of this tolerant age, that a young King should be forced to offend the feelings of great numbers of Irishmen, Canadians and other subjects? I feel sure that, apart from Catholics, the great majority of broad-minded thinkers of any or of no denomination in this country are of opinion that the outcry of fanatics should be disregarded, and that all creeds should receive the same courteous and respectful treatment so long as their adherents are members of the common Empire. To bring these medieval rancours to an end would indeed be an auspicious opening of a new reign.
Yours faithfully,
Arthur Conan Doyle.
CHAPTER XXII
THE YEARS BETWEEN THE WARS
Constantinople—The Night of Power—A Strange Creature—Dorando—Dramatic Adventures—The Congo Agitation—Olympic Games—Divorce Reform—Psychic Experience—Speculation.
Years of peaceful work followed my marriage, broken only by two journeys to the Mediterranean, in the course of which we explored some out-of-the-way portions of Greece, and visited Egypt, where I found hardly one single man left of all the good fellows whom I had once known. In the course of our travels we visited Constantinople, looking at the great guns in the forts on the Dardanelles, with little thought of all the British lives which were to be sacrificed upon those low, dark, heather-clad hills which slope down to the Northern shore. In Constantinople we attended the weekly selamlik of Abdul Hamid, and saw him with his dyed beard and the ladies of his harem as they passed down to their devotions. It was an incredible sight to Western eyes to see the crowd of officers and officials, many of them fat and short of wind, who ran like dogs behind his carriage in the hope that they might catch the Imperial eye. It was Ramadan, and the old Sultan sent me a message that he had read my books and that he would gladly have seen me had it not been the Holy month. He interviewed me through his Chamberlain and presented me with the Order of the Medjedie, and, what was more pleasing to me, he gave the Order of the Chevekat to my wife. As this is the Order of Compassion, and as my wife ever since she set foot in Constantinople had been endeavouring to feed the horde of starving dogs who roamed the streets, no gift could have been more appropriate.