The Young Turks who write to me from their own country or who converse with me in London are unanimous in describing the situation as serious, but in their opinion the Committee is too strong for its enemies. They say that the Sultan himself is on the side of the Committee, and disapproves of the machinations of the Liberal Union. They maintain that whatever professions of Liberalism the Liberal Union may make it is reactionary in its policy, has known reactionaries within its ranks, and is led by self-seeking politicians lacking in patriotism. They allege that many of the Greeks who support the Liberal Union, having thrived as parasites of the old régime, prefer despotisms to constitutions. They, moreover, explain that some members of the Liberal Union are exceedingly clever and cunning men who have succeeded in winning over honest men of the Young Turk party—including ulemas and other strict adherents of the Mussulman creed—by specious arguments and misrepresentations. All this seems probable, and it is certain that numbers of the Young Turks, though true patriots, are simple-minded honest men who are likely to be duped by the trained intriguers among the Committee’s enemies.
One gathers, therefore, that an incongruous alliance of non-Moslem socialists, Greek separatists, reactionaries, and misled upright Mussulmans is opposed to the Committee of Union and Progress. A most malignant press campaign is being carried on against the Committee, and the organs of the Committee strike hard in return, with the unfortunate result that on either side an intense hatred has been engendered which cannot but be injurious to the country’s interests, imperils the Constitution, and plays into the hands of Turkey’s external foes.
The Committee of Union and Progress is not rich and has not attempted to enrich itself; but it appears that the Liberal Union is well supplied with funds wherewith to carry on its campaign, purchase newspapers, and buy the consciences of men. It is known that the Greeks have been the largest contributors to these funds. The Palace gang is also said to have supplied its share. When I was in Constantinople I was informed that the Committee had intercepted correspondence between the Palace and a certain Pasha—who was then an exile in England passing under various aliases—and had obtained proof that this notorious person was the trustee of large sums lying in London banks which were intended to meet the expenses of intriguing for the restoration of the old régime. Certain foreign Powers, which have no love for the Young Turk régime, have also been openly accused of intriguing with the reactionaries. If they are innocent of this they have but themselves to blame for the suspicion that attaches to them, for one can only judge of their present policy by regarding their past. How unscrupulously Germany exploited the old régime is known to all the world. Some of the Germans whom I met in Constantinople expressed their conviction and their hope that the days of the new régime were numbered. It was interesting to hear these men, who represented the political commercialism of their country, frankly state, as if it were an incontrovertible axiom, that all European peoples, whether German, British, or any other, had for their one aim in Turkey the exploitation of a helpless country. The Germans are perfectly sincere when they assert that the Balkan Committee is the paid agent of a cunning British Government, that the expression of British sympathy for oppressed nationalities is organised hypocrisy with the attainment of selfish ends as its one motive. As they look with their cold, blue eyes into yours you realise that they quite believe these things. The materialism of modern Germany has so sunk into the souls of her sons—including some of the most illustrious of them—that it has become inconceivable to them that a nation, or a group of the citizens of that nation, can take a disinterested interest in the affairs of other nations and sympathise unselfishly with its misfortunes or triumphs. To the Germans the enthusiasm with which the success of the Young Turk cause was welcomed in England was all humbug—a cleverly engineered manifestation of friendship whose object it was to secure for Great Britain the influence in Turkey which Germany had lost by the revolution but confidently looked forward to recovering at an early date by more straightforward if more brutal methods.
The thirty years of despotism, by its deliberate encouragement of corruption, had demoralised a great part of the Turkish nation. The cure cannot come in a day, and those well provided with money can still buy power in Constantinople. It was amid very corrupt surroundings that the Young Turks, pure themselves, set to work to undertake the regeneration of Turkey and to make the Empire strong. To begin with, Constantinople is full of men who have lived by corrupt practices all their lives—the men who were blackmailing spies under the old régime, or had belonged to that huge tribe of useless functionaries who used to crowd every public department and had to be bribed by those whom business brought into contact with them. All these people, their occupation now gone, are wandering about the capital in very disconsolate mood, hard up, regretting “the good old days,” and hating the purifying influence that has brought this change about. These men are all reactionaries; many of them know well how to poison the minds of ignorant people against the Committee with cunning inventions. They are largely responsible for the growing popular dislike of the Committee. It is very difficult for the people in the capital to arrive at the truth, and they are largely at the mercy of paid agitators and schemers. Even foreign Governments are able to influence public opinion in Turkey. The Germans and Austrians possess a useful piece of machinery for the dissemination of news to serve their own interests in the shape of a telegraphic agency which supplies Constantinople with practically all its foreign information, and sells its despatches by the column to the newspapers of that city at a low rate that cannot possibly pay the expenses of the service. The news which purports to come from London is often of an astonishing character.
I understand that the Committee of Union and Progress is now about to reorganise its constitution and convert itself into what we should call a Parliamentary party; but under whatever name it continues its existence it is to be hoped that this body of men, which has done such great and noble work for Turkey, which contains so many men of single-minded, self-sacrificing patriotism, will remain the dominating party in the country. But it will have to be as the strong man armed and ever watchful, for its enemies are many and have the money wherewith, alas! the consciences of both men and newspapers can still be purchased in Turkey.
CHAPTER XXI
THE NEW SULTAN
THE greater part of this book was in the press, and the preceding chapter, which was to have been the final one, lacked but a few concluding paragraphs to bring my work to a close, when the news reached London that a revolution had broken out in Constantinople. On that eventful thirteenth of April I was lunching in a literary club off the Strand with two well-known members of the Young Turk party. The information conveyed by an early issue of a so-called evening paper was scanty, and we hoped that nothing worse had occurred than one of those mutinous demonstrations on the part of the Sultan’s pampered Body-guard which the Young Turks have already proved themselves capable of suppressing with promptitude and vigour. But later and fuller information brought anger and sorrow to the friends of Turkey: nearly the whole garrison of the capital had risen against the Government; the soldiers were killing their young officers; fanatical mobs were hunting out the members of the Young Turk party to murder them; the Committee of Union and Progress, in Constantinople at any rate, was at the feet of its enemies.