“I understood your interest amounted almost to veneration, or so it is said.”
“What a strange rumour! I naturally study all the great strategists; but to compare the Sakharia with Austerlitz is surely no great compliment.”
The Ante-room at Tchan-Kaya.
Though I confess to being considerably startled by this emphatic declaration, it reminded me of a conversation with Monsieur Clemenceau some years before the war.
“He told me,” I said, “that he considered Lord Rosebery’s enthusiastic admiration of Napoleon had been almost a blot on his own political career.... ‘Where is the greatness of that vain egoist?’ asked the outspoken Frenchman. ‘I consider myself a hundred times greater, for this simple reason: When Napoleon came down he fell for ever. When I, or my country, are down, then I am at my greatest and best.’”
Though M. Kemal could smile at the Gallic boasting, while honouring the boaster, his own criticism was more quietly expressed:
“Napoleon put ambition first. He fought for himself, not for ‘the Cause’—with the inevitable débâcle.”
As I listen to Mustapha Kemal, taking advantage the while of his gracious invitation to thaw my frozen toes and hands at the wood fire, I wonder what a “keen soldier” would not have given to be in my place, with the chance of hearing a private lecture from one of the world’s great generals, a man not more than forty.
“Were you ever in doubt of success?” I asked.