During the winter of 1913-14, Talaat and Enver, especially the former, came to me repeatedly for advice. Inexperienced as they were, their problems were such as to test the strength of the ablest statesman of any country. The only reason I can give for the fact that they drew close to me in the matter of asking advice was that they felt that America alone of the larger foreign nations had no private axe to grind as regards her relations with Turkey. Feeling the deepest sympathy for all efforts to forward the welfare of backward peoples, I did all I could to aid them with the best counsel I could offer.
One opportunity for such assistance presented itself on the occasion of the dinner given by the American Chamber of Commerce for the Levant, on February 22, 1914, at which I was invited to make the principal address of the evening. Talaat and some of his colleagues were to be guests of honour. I felt I could point out to them in my address, by indirection, the path along which they might lead Turkey to regeneration. To do this, I recapitulated the story of America’s great moral and material advancement, interpreting the events in the way which I thought would be most intelligible to the Turkish intelligence, and suggesting that the Turkish leaders be guided in their policy by the lessons of our history. As this speech had a considerable effect upon the Turkish Government, and as it is, I think, not without interest to Americans themselves, I take the liberty of quoting the substance of it:
What an achievement it would be if the Young Giant of the West, who by strictly attending to his own business has developed into one of the greatest and richest nations of the world, could make others see the advantages and wisdom of following his example. We recognize the difficulty which confronts everyone who tries to prevail upon another to benefit by his experience, but perhaps nations, which are guided by disinterested patriots who have only the good of the people at heart and none of the selfish motives or petty vanities of an individual, may be willing, not only to study the history of a successful nation, but also to profit by its experiences, and thus save the expense and spare the waste caused by experimenting.
As a diplomat I am “directed by my Government especially to refrain from public expressions of opinion upon local political or other questions arising within my jurisdiction.” These are the exact words contained in my Instruction Book, and I am obliged to follow them conscientiously. But that does not prevent me, however, from telling you what we have done at home to establish and increase our commerce and what we are doing to improve it and the conditions of our people; and it is for this country, the Balkan States, and Persia to determine how much of it can be adopted by them.
It is just fifty years ago that our country finished one of the bloodiest and most expensive internecine wars recorded in history, and you all know that the worst strifes are those that are waged between brothers. All the southern states had been completely devastated; a large part of their white male population was killed during the war; millions of slaves had been set free and were unprepared to take care of themselves and would not work; both the North and the South were in a complete state of physical and financial exhaustion. The cost of the war exceeded 1,500 million dollars; our Government bonds were selling below par and were mostly owned in foreign countries; we had just been deprived of the wise leadership of the great Abraham Lincoln who had been foully murdered. We had fought for a principle and had won, but the hatred of the sections for each other survived and the great problem was to reconcile the combatants to the new conditions and again to absorb into our commercial and business activities the hundreds of thousands of members of the disbanded army and to have our communities resume their normal condition and bring about a reconstruction of the southern states. We were confronted by a tremendous problem, and it took wise statesmanship, great grit, patient toil, and unswerving enthusiasm born from an absolute and abiding faith in the future to solve it. We had only 35,000 miles of railroads and many of these traversed the devastated country. I say “only,” because to-day we have more than 250,000 miles of railroad which have brought into easy communication with the large markets of our country all our developed farms and mines, etc., and have given the country four transcontinental routes. We had a population of 34 millions which has now grown to more than 95 millions, of which 19 millions attend our public and two millions our private schools, and 320,000 attend 596 universities and colleges in which there are thirty thousand professors and instructors and which have libraries containing 16 million volumes of books. Our imports in 1870 were 436 millions and our exports 393 millions, showing a balance against us of 43 millions; while in 1913, our imports were 1,813 millions and our exports 2,465 millions, so that we had a balance of trade in our favour of 652 millions, and for the last seven years the average annual balance of trade has been more than five hundred million dollars. We have gained by immigration about 30 million people of which the year 1913 brought 1,200,000—practically equal to the population of the city of Constantinople. This great army, besides bringing their energy, strength, and capacity to work, also brought with them 30 million dollars in cash! I wonder if these figures give you the faintest idea of this tremendous growth.
How was this all done?
We invited, urged, and welcomed help from every source and there was a generous response. We utilized English, French, German, and Dutch money to help build our railroads. We opened our portals wide to immigrants who overflowed our shores in a most unprecedented fashion. It first relieved Ireland and Germany of their surplus population and thereby bettered the condition of those that remained at home; later on Italy and Russia sent us hundreds of thousands of their people. And it was thus that the native population received the necessary reinforcements to help develop the new districts that were being opened for settlement. As fast as the railroad development pierced the West, villages and cities followed it. The Northerners and Southerners found a common ground in the great and almost boundless West which was then entirely undeveloped and they worked side by side in this new land of promise and soon forgot their past differences. They started out in log cabins which they erected with their own hands; they slept on pine boughs and were willing to forego all comforts to enable them rapidly to recoup their lost fortunes. Gradually they acquired the almost luxurious surroundings in which they live to-day, for there is hardly a farmhouse without an organ or a piano, a sewing machine, a small library and carpets on the floor, and most of them own considerable agricultural machinery and a great many of them their own automobiles.
We adopted a system of protection so as to foster our then infant industries which are now managed by wonderful corporations that not only can stand alone but compete with the world. We encouraged thrift and habits of saving so that the deposits in the savings banks to-day amount to 4,450 millions and the assets of the life insurance companies to more than 4,400 million dollars.
What do such accumulated assets mean?
They mean opportunities realized, steady thrift, thousands of thrills of pleasure at individual progress toward independence and protection against want in old age, provisions for rainy days; the renewed prosperity of the natives of the South, North, East, and West; conversion of millions of stalwart immigrants into prosperous farmers, businessmen, mechanics, etc., who are the owners of these and other assets. I am going to leave to your imagination and poetic temperament to analyze still further what are the component parts when reduced into human endeavours that constitute this monument of prosperity.