Finally my host invited the audience to express their appreciation of the visit from an Englishwoman, who had persisted, against such terrible odds, in coming to give them so much “news” from Great Britain; and the old wooden roofs echoed to their cheers and clapping.
Maybe the British Government would scarcely have approved our meeting; but there are many people in England who take a different view; and as I told the people, “I had been seven years on the French front (a real slice out of one’s life) and I knew what war meant. I will not believe our men are going to be led to war again. However our politicians may talk, whatever hysteria may be printed in the Press, we have sound, practical reasons for friendship. There is nothing in the Nationalist Pact to which Great Britain can seriously object; nothing, certainly, to justify the shedding of blood on either side.”
After the meeting we drove back to our comfortable quarters, and talked long into the night over tea and cigarettes. Too tired to sleep, I told my host if once I dozed off there would be no waking me “this side of anytime,” so I “let myself go” upon the glories of old England and the fine traditions of our race—a subject my present companions were still perfectly ready to applaud.
We passed on to America and her big Press. To their taste, British journalism is “just dry bones—without a breath of life.” They must have something picturesque, unrestrained by any considerations of taste or possible hurt to the feelings of those concerned.
I told them of the strange pride with which an American dared to boast of an “interview” with King Constantine. “His Majesty,” as the reporter had written, “without asking me even to sit down, drew from his pocket a handsome case and helped himself to a cigarette. He naturally did not offer one to me.”
Constantine was, naturally, infuriated by the sarcastic implication, and denied the “interview” altogether. The “man from the States” promptly started an “action” against him, and withdrew it, once he had thus secured far more publicity (which means dollars) than all the “interviews” he might have secured with deposed royalties, would ever have brought his way.
A lady compatriot of his, in the same spirit, once claimed to have secured an “interview” with M. Kemal Pasha, and wrote that “he smoked Player’s cigarettes.” When I told her friend that this was certainly untrue, he said: “What matters! It was good copy.”
I was not, however, altogether surprised to learn that this “impression” of Constantine was, most probably, quite true. All kinds of similar stories were in circulation about the dead monarch, but the Turkish officers were of opinion that, though as commander-in-chief he certainly appeared to live underground, there was little he could be expected to achieve with the army at his command. To be fearless is a commandant’s first duty, and for that quality they were as ready to praise the fallen Djémal and Enver as M. Kemal Pasha himself. With all his faults and mistakes, none could accuse Enver of fear.
My “lady’s maid” on this occasion proved to be a picturesque young woman, dressed in very bright colours, wearing her hair in two long plaits enclosed in a gay scarf. With the pleasant zeal of her race, she squandered the whole contents of a beautiful Eastern water-jug in “pouring them over my hands,” a process which used up all the water long before I felt clean! And not even grease and eau-de-Cologne would drive off half the effects of these terrible days from my face. It was a case for Turkish baths. And Nazafer, my little maid, proved so timid and gentle a hairdresser that I had to use some English “force” in this direction when she had left me for the night.
Yet words cannot express the delight of this welcome change to all the luxuries of civilisation. A blazing wood fire, a hot bottle, and the generous supply of white satin cushions worked in a lovely iris design on my vast, picturesque bed!