Whether they liked it or not, the authorities had to find some other means of getting me out of Constantinople. The Consul-General approached me, after he had discussed the matter with the Ambassador, to see if I would not like to go to Switzerland to get properly cured; otherwise he was sure I would be turned out by the Turks. They were evidently afraid, for I was getting more and more into bad odour with the German authorities for my ill-concealed opinions, that I would publish my impressions, with documentary support, as soon as ever there was a change of government in Turkey, or as soon as the German censorship was removed and anything of the kind was possible. They apparently thought that the frontier regulations would be quite sufficient to prevent my taking any documentary evidence with me to Switzerland.
As a matter of fact this was the case, and the day before my departure from Constantinople I carefully burned the whole of my many notes, which would have produced a much more effective indictment against the moral sordidness of the German-Young Turkish system than these very general sketches. But the strictest frontier regulations could not prevent me from taking with me, free of all censorship, the impressions I had received in Turkey, and the opinions I had arrived at after a painful battle for loyalty to myself as a German and to the duties I had undertaken. Even then I had considerable difficulty in getting across the frontier, and I had to wait seventeen whole days at the frontier before I was finally allowed into Switzerland. It was only owing to the fact that I sent a telegram to the Chancellor, on the authority of the Consul-General in Constantinople, begging that no difficulties of a political kind might be placed in the way of my going to Switzerland, as I had been permitted to do so by medical certificate, the passport authorities and the local command, that I finally won my point with the frontier authorities and was permitted to cross into Switzerland.
To tell the truth, I must admit that the high civil authorities, and particularly the Foreign Office, treated me throughout most kindly and courteously. For this one reason I had a hard fight with myself, right up to the very last, even after I arrived in Switzerland, before I sat down and wrote out my impressions and opinions of German-Turkish politics. And if I have now finally decided to make them public, I can only do so with an expression of the most honest regret that my private and political conscience has not allowed me to requite the kindness of the authorities by keeping silent about what I saw of the German and Turkish system.