I found this period of preparation intensely interesting. It was to be crowned in October, upon a second visit to Washington, by an official call on the Secretary of State. I looked forward to this visit with great expectations. Alas for the illusions which a day can wreck! William Jennings Bryan was the Secretary of State. He knew no more about our relations with Turkey than I did. The long-looked-for instructions were an anti-climax. They were, in full, as follows:
“Ambassador,” he said, “when I made my trip through the Holy Land, I had great difficulty in finding Mount Beatitude. I wish you would try to persuade the Turkish Government to grant a concession to some Americans to build a macadam road up to it, so that other pilgrims may not suffer the inconvenience which I did in attempting to find it.”
Thus fortified by the Secretary’s complete programme for my Ambassadorial task, I set forward to the White House for a farewell call upon President Wilson. He bade me a hearty God-speed, and in parting gave me an injunction which enabled me to save many lives in the next three years. “Remember,” he said, “that anything you can do to improve the lot of your co-religionists is an act that will reflect credit upon America, and you may count on the full power of the Administration to back you up.”
Fortunately for the success of my mission, I had a most enlightening conference in New York before I left. At the suggestion of Mr. Alfred E. Marling, who was one of the trustees of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, I had an interview at that great centre of missionary activity, 156 Fifth Avenue, with a large group of earnest and able men, who could speak with authority on the problems I should confront in the East. I learned that five of these men were to cross the Atlantic at the same time I should be crossing. These were Doctors Arthur Judson Brown, James L. Barton, Charles Roger Watson, Dr. Mackaye, and Bishop Arthur Selden Lloyd. These men were the leaders of the Foreign Mission Boards of the Presbyterian, Congregational, United Presbyterian, Methodist, and Protestant Episcopal Churches. One of them, Doctor Barton, had himself been a missionary in Turkey, and had also acted as President of the Protestant College at Harpoot. Another, Doctor Watson, had been a missionary in the Turkish Protectorate of Egypt, and his parents had been missionaries for half a century at Cairo.
I had engaged passage for Europe on the Imperator, but when I learned that these five men were sailing at nearly the same time on the George Washington (later to become famous as President Wilson’s “peace ship”) to attend a world missionary conference at The Hague, I asked them to change their reservations and go with me. They were limited in their expense accounts and could not change, so, emulating Mohammed, I “went to the mountain” and changed to their ship. The voyage gave me an opportunity to gain from them a fuller picture of the work of the mission boards, which was very helpful to me in my new task.
The conversations I had with these men on shipboard were a revelation to me. I had hitherto had a hazy notion that missionaries were sort of over-zealous advance agents of sectarian religion, and that their principal activity was the proselyting of believers in other faiths. To my surprise and gratification, these men gave me a very different picture. In the first place, their cordial coöperation with one another was evidence of the disappearance of the old sectarian zeal. They were, to be sure, profoundly concerned in converting as many people as they could to what they sincerely believed to be the true faith. But I found that, along with this ambition, Christian missionaries in Turkey were carrying forward a magnificent work of social service, education, philanthropy, sanitation, medical healing, and moral uplift. They were, I discovered, in reality advance agents of civilization. As representatives of the denominations which supported them, they were maintaining several hundred American schools in the Levant, and several full-fledged colleges, of which three, at least, deserve to rank with the best of the smaller institutions of higher learning in the United States. They maintained, also, several important hospitals. And, as a part of their purely religious function, they were bringing a higher conception of Christianity to the millions of submerged Christians in the Turkish Empire, who, but for them, would have been left to practise their religion without the inspiration of the modern thought of the West, which has so vastly widened its spiritual significance.
As my wife and youngest daughter, Ruth, could not accompany me, I took with me my daughter Helen, her husband, Mr. Mortimer J. Fox, and their two sons Henry and Mortimer. We Visited London, Paris, and Vienna on our way to Constantinople, and at each of these capitals I paid my respects not only to the American Ambassador, but to the resident Turkish plenipotentiary as well. In doing this I had in mind two things: first, to accustom myself to the looks of an embassy from within, as I had to that date never been in an embassy building in any country; and second, to secure some hints upon the character of the government to which I was accredited, in advance of my first formal contact with it. At last, on November 27, 1913, we rolled into the railroad station at Constantinople.
My first impression of the famous old capital of Asia-in-Europe was of a moving sea of silk hats. The station platform seemed populated entirely with frock-coated gentlemen buried under these chimney-like black headpieces. After some confusion, human personalities began to emerge from under them, and to individualize themselves as real people with proper names, and a rational relationship to myself as another human being. The first to greet me was Mr. Hoffman Phillip, who as Conseiller and First Secretary of the Embassy had acted as chargé d’affaires during Mr. Rockhill’s visit to the United States.
He introduced me to the others, and after a somewhat bewildering round of handshakings, Phillip, the Foxes, and I stepped into a carriage and were driven to the Pera Palace Hotel, where Phillip gave us a Thanksgiving dinner.
The Embassy at Constantinople is a handsome, marble, three-story structure, set in a garden surrounded by a high wall, and overlooking the Golden Horn. Often during my first days there I would find myself humming the old refrain, “I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.” There were, to be sure, no “vassals and serfs by my side”; but I had more useful assistants in my official staff. Besides Mr. Phillip, there were second and third secretaries, and A. K. Schmavonian, the Turkish legal adviser of the Embassy. He was the permanent attaché—the interpreter—and was, besides, the custodian of the Embassy’s traditions. He knew every American interest in Turkey, had carried on for years the correspondence with the consuls and the missionaries, and hence was an invaluable storehouse of information. He knew, also, all the Turkish officials; the ramifications of the Turkish governmental departments; the names and characteristics of the leaders of the recent revolution; and, of course, he was versed in the niceties of diplomatic custom.