It is certain, nevertheless, that, as the new order settles in its stride, the Government will be confronted with many difficulties of which we cannot as yet foresee the precise nature. M. Kemal is at least two centuries ahead of some of his own Ministers, four hundred years in advance of the peasants, now suddenly, without preparation, made citizens of a Republic—a sovereign people. I have seen the peasants in their homes—those charming little pictures out of the sixteenth century. Without the least knowledge of, or interest in, what we have come to call civilisation, these simple folk have been vegetating through the centuries, free from the noise of great cities and the anxieties of progress. Though always ready to fight and die, as we say “for King and Country,” the symbol of their faith and inherited traditions, they had, and still have, no idea whatever of any government system, or who makes the laws. Naturally sober and religious—not poor, since they had always enough bread—these children of the soil have known no ambition to improve their quiet and happy lives.
It may be Kemal Pasha could do more with only his big Ministers and no Assembly. On the other hand, quicker progress might prove unsettling, and the founders of New Turkey need no advice from us. They have chosen what seems to them the better way; we can but pray for their success. No doubt, as France floundered through revolution, they will be driven to face a thousand bitter disappointments and delays. In times that have well-nigh submerged the land of the Mother of Parliaments, the Assembly must face rocks ahead.
Now that New and Independent Turkey has her chance, she should take it. Rome was not built in a day; and when difficulties come, as come they must, let none scoff with a cheap “I told you so.” Only leave Turkey to the Turks, and, like other nations, they will try and try again, until, at last, they succeed.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FOREIGN COLONY IN ANGORA—A GROUP OF FOREIGN PERSONALITIES
We cannot complete our record of “Personalities” in Angora without some mention of the foreigners in residence. Whatever has been asserted, there are no Germans there.
Quite apart from the Turkish officers’ personal antipathy, the Germans have no money for concessions; their educational methods would never take root in Anatolia; they have lost the legend of military superiority which was the only raison d’être of their influence in the past. Before the military genius of the Turks, their great generals have been compelled to baisser pavillon. Even during the war Turkey saw through German bluff, and the taste of army arrogance was amply efficient to kill the unnatural alliance for ever. I can definitely assert, by way of checking the prominence given to false statements of Teuton influence, that there are no Germans in Angora.
On the other hand, it is true that a subtle form of propaganda is still at work in Germany itself. There a Turk can obtain, by merely showing a passport, a document that entitles him to all the “special” terms given to “natives” at hotels, theatres, and shops.