“Nous verrons.”
We reached Eski-Chéir at about nine o’clock, and a telegram announced to the colonel that a special private car was on its way to meet him.
“Now,” said he, “I can offer hospitality, not only to you, but to your friends as well.”
We went to a café for tea, where numbers of Turks, wearing kalpaks, were singing patriotic songs. Directly they had finished, I clapped my hands, crying: “M. Kemal Pasha, Chok Guzel,” and their delight was obvious.
“Poor fellows,” said the colonel, whom I began to find sympathetic, “it needs such a tiny effort; they will respond to the least hint of real sympathy.”
There is nothing sordid about this little tumble-down café, though its floors are thick with mud and the attendants are charmingly shabby. “At least,” I said, “this dirt and discomfort is artistic.... What artist would dream of painting an American sky-scraper, luxurious and comfortable though it be? Yet here one could cover the walls of an exhibition from one day’s experience. The picturesque water-pots, the quaint trays, the artistic tea-glasses and coffee-cups, the colouring of the costumes.
“If Mr. Chester of the U.S. has come here to sweep away all this he is an enemy of Art.
“I love creature comforts—warmth, baths, and perfumes, but I sincerely trust no fever of reform will ever induce the Turks to spoil their surroundings; and, above all, that they will never call in American specialists to teach them building achievements. By all means let them adopt American hygiene; but American architecture, God forbid!
“I will pay honour where honour is due. To all who have so nobly perpetuated the work of Florence Nightingale I bow the knee. But what will American innovations do for Turkey?
“In the East End of New York, America’s melting-pot, I once saw a picturesque old Jew reading Spinoza in the original, as he sat absorbed on the sidewalk. His velvet cap was old and shabby, the long grizzly beard maybe none too clean; but in the primitive robes of his ancient race he looked a true Oriental.