An historic event that meeting between representatives of the Sultan’s army and the enemy who had been clamouring for admittance without the lines of Chatalja, so near the capital of the Sultan’s Empire. They met at four o’clock on December 4th, at a place between the outposts of the armies. The delegates came by rail as far as a point where the line was broken at Batchekeui. Where the broken line resumes its road to Constantinople the train bearing Nazim Pasha and his suite awaited the delegates. Nazim Pasha descended from his saloon car and went on foot to meet the delegates, Bulgarians, to represent Servian and Montenegrin interests as well as their own, Greeks to speak for themselves. They all entered the saloon car, which the Greek representatives left again after a little while. The sitting of the Bulgarians and Turks, conducted with great secrecy, lasted till 8.15 p.m. Turkish officers were sitting round a huge camp-fire which lit up the tents of their army’s head-quarters at Hademkeui, the smoke curling up into the sky of a cold, damp winter’s evening; these officers discussed the probable results of the conference, and hoped for a continuance of the war. A shrill whistle heralded the return of Nazim Pasha’s train. He alighted, gave an order to one of the officers attending him, and soon the news spread that an armistice had been arranged. By the lines of Chatalja, the last defences of Constantinople, the Ottoman army agreed to a cessation of hostilities with the former subjects of so many victorious Sultans.
The armistice soon broadened out into a desire for peace proposals, and London was chosen as the place where they should be discussed.
When the Ottoman delegates left Constantinople for England my work was done, and I turned homewards. It was a cold, cloudy morning when my ship swung slowly out from her moorings at Galata, and the smoke of the city hung over it as a heavy canopy into which the cypresses pointed warning fingers. Slowly we moved past the mighty warships of foreign nations, round Seraglio Point out into the Sea of Marmora. A slight breeze arose and disturbed the canopy of smoke, broke the heavy banks of clouds, and admitted rays of hopeful sunlight through the rifts. Here and there light broke upon the moving waters, called forth glittering reflections from the portholes of some sombre man-of-war, or tipped the muzzle of a gun with flashing silver. Under the uncertain sunshine Seraglio Point stood out white against the dark cypresses, whose outlines were blurred by the heavy mass of crowded Galata and Pera, crowned by the tower. The sun shone out stronger as we ploughed through the steel-blue waters, throwing up the gleaming brasswork on the dome of St. Sophia like a bright star in a murky night. The yellow buildings of the Palace of Justice stood out bravely from their commanding position, and the distant towers of Yedi Koulé showed up against the heavy background of shadowed, undulating country. As the sun rose higher in the heavens the snow-clad mountains of Asia gloriously reflected its victorious rays.
We arrived early in the morning at the Dardanelles, and there we had one more experience of Turkish procrastination. Without any apparent reason, the tug appointed to pilot us through the mine-fields failed to answer to our signals, and kept us waiting several hours. Then she came bustling up, went about, and bade us follow her. Ours was the first of a string of ships; we were followed by a fretful-looking Roumanian mail-steamer, and behind her came several patient tramps, thumping leisurely along. Everywhere along the European side of the Dardanelles, to which we kept quite close, were evidences of military preparations against attack; machine-guns were artlessly concealed by dry brushwood among the green undergrowth of the cliffs, old field-guns stood out lonely behind insufficient earthworks, here and there were groups of soldiers, sentries—one I noticed with his back to the sea—and patrols of cavalry scurried along the road. The daylight brightened as we sailed on past ruined castles and obsolescent earthworks into the blue Ægean Sea, losing sight of the Turkish fleet—grey and heavy, and listlessly at anchor by the old towers of the Dardanelles. No sooner had our ship put her nose out into the open than we saw black clouds of smoke hurrying along the skyline: Greek destroyers on the look-out for any ships coming out of the Dardanelles.
There was one more evidence of war as we drew near to Tenedos, with its mediæval fortress. Greek destroyers were lying under the ancient walls, and one of them dashed out to hold us up in the approved style. First a blank shot across our bows and then a boarding-party of Greek sailors, who wandered about our ship in what seemed to me a very aimless manner. Then we sailed on again southward, past many islands, till we turned into the Mediterranean Sea. A strong breeze came off the land, where cloud shadows were chasing each other over rocky promontories, foam-tipped waves were playing at the foot of steep cliffs, and little white-winged sailing vessels came dancing over the sea.
There was “Festa” at Reggio and Messina, for it was Sunday, and myriads of lights cast fitful reflections on the waters of the straits as we sailed through them. Then came a day of tumbling seas, roused by the wind that sweeps across from the Gulf of Lions, and then sunshine on the southern coast of France, lighting up the stern walls of Château d’If, and shining on Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, over the busy port of Marseilles. Then a furious rush through fair Provence, to Paris, thence through Normandy, and then again the sea, green under a grey sky, boisterous as the free winds that whistled in the rigging, as the smart little turbine packet thrust her saucy nose into the waves and tossed them over her back, pitching, rolling, until fitful gleams of sunlight lit up the chalk cliffs of England.
In the meantime the fate of a broken Empire was being decided in London. Not at first with the dignity which such an event demands, so deeply important in the world’s history; rather was it characterized by the methods of the Oriental bazaar, and its small, haggling spirit. While Adrianople was starving, while the Sultan’s troops shivered on the bleak, wind-swept outposts that guard Constantinople at the lines of Chatalja, unseemly procrastination marked the course of events at the meetings of the delegates, who met for an hour or so now and again, then returned to their luxurious quarters.
Meanwhile the tone and temper of the Turks, as expressed in Constantinople, caused much anxiety to those who longed for peace. I had seen some signs of this before leaving the East. The minds of some Turks with whom I discussed the situation were still full of imagined victories for the future; they declined to consider themselves defeated, and expressed their confidence that victorious Ottoman armies would yet hold triumphant entry into Sofia—and Athens. Their opinion may be set aside as worthless. Those who know, and there are many, though they keep their convictions secret, are aware that inefficiency has brought the East down before the organized, purposeful West, and that the days of Turkish rule in Europe are numbered, that the Ottoman Empire this side of the Bosphorus is as much doomed as was that of ancient Byzant when Amurath made Adrianople his capital.
The great majority of Turks appear to be of the same mind as Ali, the master-weaver; they know little of what is happening, they seem to care less. Those soldiers that I have seen returned from the front looked too listless and miserable to form an opinion, and they probably know as little of what went on during the war as the private soldier generally does in these days of warfare over a large extent of country. I have generally found the task of drawing out old soldiers on their war experiences to result in recitals too romantic for use in anything but a work of fiction, or else quite fruitless. There was one, a German barber, who had been through the campaign of 1870-1871; when asked to relate his experiences, all he could say, after deep reflection, was: “Every day I shave de captain.”
It may be taken for granted that the Ottoman Empire as a European Power is a thing of the past, that all those provinces carved out of Europe by the sword of Othman have been lost by the sword, and that of Turkey in Europe nothing remains but the strips of land which the Allies are pleased to leave to their old enemy. Constantinople will remain Turkish for some time yet—ten years, perhaps fifteen—but methinks the Turk is tired of his stay in Europe, that he will soon pack up his small possessions and return to Asia Minor, whence he came.