As I find myself embarked on this somewhat long defence of the Turkish people I may as well deal with another popular misconception concerning them. It is often urged that the Mohammedan institution of polygamy, with its consequent degradation of women, is incompatible with the progress or with the moral and mental well-being of a race, and that this by itself makes the Turk unfit to rule in Europe. Now it must be remembered that many distinct races profess the Mohammedan religion, and that some of these are barbarian and others decadent, even as are some of the races that profess Christianity; but it is not fair, because the Turks happen to be Mussulmans, that they should be credited with the faults and vices of some other Mussulman peoples. I have no intention of discussing the effects of polygamy, but I may point out that the Turk, unlike the Arab, appears to be not really polygamous by nature, and that whatever may happen in some other Moslem lands there is no degradation of the women in Turkey. The Turkish peasant women are as far from being degraded as any other women of their class in Europe. It may astonish some Englishmen to learn that the simple-living Turk of the upper and middle classes, though his religion permits him to marry four wives, rarely marries more than one. Of the Young Turks whom I have met, not one, I believe, has more than one wife, and I have heard several of them speak with disapproval of the custom of polygamy. English ladies who have friends among the Turkish ladies have told us how refined, charming, and—in these latter days—well educated they are. As most Turkish gentlemen retain the old customs in their family life, the Englishman visiting the house of a Turkish friend has no opportunity of seeing his wife, but his little daughters up to the age of about twelve years are usually brought in by the proud father to see the visitor, just as they might be in England, when the pretty manners, the intelligence, and the careful education which they have evidently received (they nearly always speak French or some other European language) tell their own tale. The constant and deep veneration which a Turk entertains for his mother through life belies the nonsense that is sometimes talked concerning the condition of the women in Turkey. The Turkish woman, too, respected and trusted, is much freer than most people in this country imagine, and, as I shall explain later on, the revolution largely owed its success to her brave co-operation.

One ought to be able to form some idea of the character of a people from its literature. Turkish literature, the classical form of which was borrowed from that of Persia, has, like many other things in Turkey, been undergoing a process of modernisation; it has for some years been under the influence of Western, more especially of French, literature; and simplicity and lucidity in the expression of thought has taken the place of the intentional obscurity and artificiality that characterise Oriental writing. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, in the Turkey volume of the excellent “The Story of the Nations” series, concludes his chapter on Turkish men of letters as follows: “The tone of the imaginative literature of modern Turkey is very tender and very sad. The Ottoman poets of to-day love chiefly to dwell upon such themes as a fading flower, or a girl dying of decline; and though admiration of a recent French school may have something to do with this, the fancy forces itself upon us, when we read those sweet and plaintive verses, that a brave but gentle-hearted people, looking forward to its future without fear, but without hope, may be seeking, perhaps unconsciously, to derive what sad comfort it may from the thought that all beautiful life must end in dismal death.” I have met some of these modern Turkish poets, very manly fellows, though their work has the melancholy tinge described above, for which, in my opinion, a long political exile in a foreign land and sorrows for the evil fortunes of their beloved country are largely responsible. But now the days of Turkey’s mourning are over, and the more recent poems of these men, who are sturdy patriots and not decadents, are beginning to reflect the triumph, enthusiasm, and hope which have characterised the Young Turks since their successful revolt against the despotism.

CHAPTER II
ATROCITIES

SUCH are the people who but recently were spoken of as the “unspeakable Turks.” For thirty years they have suffered from the crudest of tyrannies and have met with but scant sympathy in Western Europe; for it was “their double misfortune,” to quote the words of a writer in the Times, “to be oppressed and to be compelled to bear the odium of the cruelty of the oppressor. Their fine qualities were obscured to the world. Their name was a byword for cruelty, violence, and fanaticism.” In England, if one attempted to defend the Turk, one was regarded as a cold-blooded villain by a great many good people. A considerable section of the English lost their sense of fair play so soon as the Turkish question became at the same time a pawn in our party politics and an excitant of religious bigotry; for one political party became avowedly anti-Turkish, while numbers of well-meaning but unjust Christian people approached the subject from the point of view which made a Mussulman appear everything that is vile, and so espoused the cause of Turkey’s Christian enemies as being of necessity the right one. It was the same sort of sectarian narrow-mindedness that impelled well-known preachers—not members of the English State Church to pray from their pulpits for the success of the Americans in their war with Spain, because Spain was Catholic and the “land of the Inquisition.” Thus it came about when Turkey’s Christian subjects rebelled in the seventies and the Russians came to their assistance, the Turks were held up to opprobrium as fiends in human shape, the murderers, violators, and mutilators of the gentle Christians. Any piece of evidence, second-hand or third-hand, however extravagant, was implicitly believed by these people provided it was against the Turks, whereas whenever charges of committing atrocities were brought against Russians and Bulgarians by the most trustworthy eye-witnesses a very different standard of evidence was set up, and it was held to be incredible that Christians could do these things.

Yet what were the facts? In the first place, there can be no doubt that Russia, bent on the destruction of Turkey and aggrandisement at her expense, had stirred the Bulgarians into rebellion by means of agents provocateurs. Travellers who visited Bulgaria in the years preceding the Russo-Turkish war state that the Bulgarian peasantry were more prosperous than any in Turkey. It is unlikely that they would have risen of their own accord, seeing that they had good reason to be grateful to the Turks, who had come to their rescue when their persecuting Greek fellow-Christians had set themselves to exterminate the Bulgarian Church, language, and nationality. In the next place, it is now realised that the Christians and not the Turks initiated the atrocities. The Bulgarians, when they rose, plundered and burnt the villages of the Turks, committed the most shocking cruelties, and massacred unarmed Moslem men, women, and children. There is good evidence to show that the Turkish regular troops behaved with consideration to the Christian population until their passions were roused by the barbarities committed by the Bulgarians and Russian Cossacks; then indeed the Turks, exasperated by the sufferings of their co-religionists, engaged in terrible reprisals which aroused the indignation of the civilised world. Ferocious when provoked by the cruelty of others, the Turks are the last people to engage in wanton cruelty, and those who like myself have seen their armies in time of war can vouch for their humane treatment of prisoners and of the civil population in an enemy’s country. It must be remembered, too, that the worst atrocities proved against the Turks in Bulgaria were committed not by Turkish regulars but by fanatical Circassians and by the Bashi-Bazouks, ill-disciplined irregulars recruited from the criminals and ne’er-do-wells of any races, detested by the Turks themselves for their excesses.

The evil name thus acquired by the Turk during the war with Russia stuck to him through the years that followed, and ignorant, prejudice has been wont to put down to him all the cruel deeds committed by the Palace Camarilla, including the terrible Armenian massacres, which were perpetrated, not by the Turks—who regarded these crimes with loathing—but by the savage Kurds and Lazes, at the instigation of those who misruled the unfortunate country. In many ways the Turks have suffered more from the oppressive despotism than their Christian fellow-subjects, but all the sympathy of our humanitarians has been for the latter, and they had little pity or sympathy to spare for the Mussulman. Of late years the political intriguers in Athens, Sofia, and Belgrade have been supporting bands of Christian brigands in Macedonia, with the object of forwarding the rival interests of the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians, in anticipation of the scramble over the partition of that rich country on the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire. These bands have been burning villages and murdering women and children, their excesses being committed against both Christians and Turks. In April, 1908, a Bulgarian band burnt a Greek priest at the stake. The incident aroused no comment. What a howl would have been raised had the Mussulmans done this thing!

So the Christian had plenty of friends and the Turk few. No voices were raised to defend him and to explain the injustice that was done him. Neither was he the man to put his own case before his European critics; for the Turk is better with the sword than with the pen; he is not so cunning as Greek or Bulgarian in carrying on a newspaper campaign, or in the weaving of effective misrepresentations; as a rule he is too proud to defend himself against calumny, and treats with silent contempt those who snarl at him. Moreover the Turk, being essentially a patriot, would not appeal for help to foreign Governments as did the Christians. To quote from an article recently written by Halil Halid: “The Mussulmans suffered as much as, indeed in many places more than, the Christians, from a despotic régime. They had submitted, not to the will of their rulers, but to their hard fate, because Turkish patriotism, which has not until recently received fitting attention, was too great to allow them to invite outside interference or help in the national struggle against native tyranny. Never despairing of gaining their end, the people of Turkey have waited for an opportune moment to strike a blow at the foundations of despotism, and this promptly and with the least possible risk of international complications. They have thus submitted to the indignities and hardships caused by the tyranny of their own rulers, rather than expose themselves to the patronising interference of any foreign Power.”

There are thus excuses for the misunderstanding that poisoned the minds of so many Englishmen against their former friends, the Turks. Greeks, Bulgarians, and others who sought the dismemberment of Turkey and the appropriation of Macedonia voiced their cause loudly, not only with just denunciations of the Turkish oppression of the Christians, but with many plausible inventions. That the Turkish side of the question was so rarely heard was also largely due to the fact that, during the few years preceding the revolution, it became ever more difficult for Englishmen in Turkey to have friendly intercourse with the Turks themselves. The intervention of the English Government to introduce reforms into Turkey, and the action of the Balkan and Armenian Committees, which were wrongly believed by the Sultan and his advisers—and appear still to be believed by all Germans and Austrians—to be the agents in advance of the perfidious English Government, so intensified the hatred of the Turkish despotism against England that it was practically made a crime for a Turk, especially if he was suspected of Liberal tendencies, to receive an Englishman into his house. If a Turk was even seen to speak to an Englishman in Constantinople the spies reported the fact to the Palace; and, as I shall explain later, to manifest sympathy for the British cost many a Turk his life and liberty. Thus the intelligent tourist, or the globe-trotting M.P., who visited Constantinople in those days was not in a position to pick up accurate information. His doings and goings would probably be watched by spies, especially if he was a member of the Balkan Committee. Though he knew it not, he would find no opportunity of conversing with Turks save such as were the secret agents of the Palace. His dragomans would be Greeks or Armenians, who might speak to him of the grievances of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, but certainly not of the grievances of the Turks. So, too, was it with most of the journalists. If they were anti-Turks they sought information from the members of the Greek and Bulgarian bands, and if they were pro-Turks they were on friendly terms with officialdom—they had audiences with ministers, possibly with the Sultan himself; and as all Turks are very polite, they often left the audience-chamber charmed with despotism, and explained, in the papers they represented, that the Young Turk party was either a myth or a small and impotent group of malcontents, who, during a sojourn in Paris, had absorbed the wild theories of the internationalists and anarchists.