We are not so conceited as to arrogate to ourselves the claim that we are the only country that has accomplished such wonderful results in the last fifty years. In 1865 there was no German Empire nor United Italy; their creation and phenomenal development have taken place since then. I believe that a description of the industrial and commercial development of those and many other countries would make as fine a story as I have told you about the United States; but they are so near to you that it would lack the enchantment that distance lends to a view. I have shown you results and I now want to tell you that they have not been attained without a great many troubles and tribulations. We have had our severe panics and recessions; our droughts and floods; our pests of grasshoppers and bollweevils; our strikes and labour troubles, some of which have led to bloodshed. It was no easy task to assimilate the many different nationalities that reached our shores. The troubles of most nations are those of struggling against poverty. We have had the unusual experience of having to fight and suppress the excessive prosperity of the privileged classes of our country, because they were about destroying our free government and were depriving our people of their equal opportunities. Fortunately we found in our present President, Woodrow Wilson, a champion for justice and right, and he has, through his infinite skill and wisdom, practically after one year of administration, adjusted the matter.
If I were in America and wanted to compare our accomplishments to something definite, I would speak of a fifty-story building in contrast to some of the two-or three-story buildings. But being in Turkey I want to say that I have shown you the wonderful national rug that we have produced in the United States. It was woven by the millions that inhabit our land, natives and foreigners, whites and blacks, people from the North, South, East, and West, men and women, and from materials produced in our own soil and imported from all countries; and as far as we have finished it, we pride ourselves, notwithstanding some faults and defects, that it makes a fine, harmonious whole. And the sincerest compliments that any country could pay to us would be to adopt and imitate our pattern.
When I described the success we had attained in our endeavours during the fifty years since the Civil War, Talaat and some of his colleagues were visibly impressed. Shortly after this dinner both Talaat and Enver urged me to visit various parts of the Turkish Empire in order to be able to advise them as regards reforms in their administration and other means of public progress. While my instructions from my government, like those of every country to its foreign representatives abroad, forbade my intermeddling with purely domestic affairs, I felt that the situation in Turkey was wholly without precedent. So I set myself to study the country and its varied and most intricate problems. With Talaat and Enver I planned three trips—the first to Palestine and Syria, the second to the south shore of the Black Sea, and the third to the interior, as far as the Bagdad railway was then constructed. The coming of war prevented the second and third trips. The first I shall describe in the next chapter.
But, fascinating as were my discoveries in the novel field of diplomacy, and much as I enjoyed the effort to assist the Turkish leaders, I felt after all that my true function as American Ambassador was far removed from the intrigues of the Old World Powers and from the momentary struggles of the existing Turkish Government. On the one hand, America had no ambitions in Turkey that called for diplomatic gambling. Our interests there were almost wholly altruistic. We had, to be sure, a small commercial interest, and I had no disposition to shirk my responsibility for fostering its improvement. The Standard Oil Company was our most considerable business representative. The Singer Sewing Machine Company, served in Constantinople by Germans from its Berlin branch, was second. The third in importance were the American buyers of Turkish tobacco and Turkish licorice. Besides these, we had little commercial representation.
America’s true mission in Turkey, I felt, was to foster the permanent civilizing work of the Christian missions, which so gloriously exemplified the American spirit at its best. As I frequently explained to the Turkish Government officers, we had little need for foreign trade or foreign sources of raw material. Our territory was so vast, and our population relatively so small, that we had neither reason nor disposition to covet further territory. I explained to them further that our citizens were accustomed to achieve their own financial independence, and that this characteristic of rising from poverty to affluence had bred in them, as a national characteristic, a sympathy with those not yet arrived at fortune, and a helpful wish to place the means of advancement within the reach of those still struggling upward. This spirit had lavished itself in America upon the advancement of common schools and higher institutions of learning, and upon thousands of other forms of philanthropy and helpfulness. This spirit of good will, I explained further, overflowed our boundaries into other lands, partly because we wished to share our good fortune with others, and chiefly because it was prescribed by the Christian faith, which declared that good works should not be limited to those of one’s own family or kindred. America, I told them, is constantly receiving hundreds of thousands of emigrants from the Old World, and American generosity has placed among these newly arrived citizens the services of expert advisers, who use every means to make easy the path of the immigrant, and to induct him as rapidly as possible into the full fellowship of American life. The Christian missions in Turkey, I added, carried this work one step further: it went into other lands and tried to carry to them some of the benefits which our material prosperity made possible among us.
I think my words were received, at first, with some reserve, not only by the Turks themselves, but by my colleagues, the representatives of the European nations. They soon learned, however, to believe them, when they saw that I sought no concessions, that I devoted no more attention to the American commercial enterprises represented in the Levant than were necessary for the transaction of their ordinary business, and that I gave my chief attention to encouraging the work of the Christian missionaries and spreading the gospel of Americanism. I soon found that I could be of the greatest assistance to these people. It was generally believed in Turkey that I was unusually close to the President. Consequently the attentions which I took pains to shower upon the missionaries added enormously to the importance of their position in the eyes of the Turkish Government, and placed them upon an entirely new footing in their consideration. When it was observed that Dr. Gates, the president of Robert College, frequently accompanied me on my horseback rides, and that I made an invariable custom of entertaining at dinner at least once a week Dr. Mary Mills Patrick and Dr. Louise B. Wallace, the president and the dean, respectively, of the Constantinople College for Girls, the Turkish Government conceived an entirely new idea of the importance that America attaches to these institutions; and they gave a corresponding deference to the wishes of their presidents.
Even if I had not conceived these attentions to be one of my prime duties, I should have been drawn to these companionships by a native congeniality of temper. Dr. Patrick and Dr. Gates were splendid examples of American womanhood and manhood. Both had forsaken the opportunity of success in America to devote their lives unselfishly to the great task of human betterment. Their gifts of mind and graces of character would have made them delightful companions in any circumstances. But having, besides, as they did, a profound interest in the kind of work that had so deeply engrossed me in New York, I gravitated toward them in Constantinople by a natural attraction. With them I would mention Dr. Peet, the resident financial representative, in Constantinople, of the Mission Boards of America—a man of great experience and gracious person who had given a quarter of a century of his life to work in this field. Further along in this article, I shall describe some of the happy experiences I had in meeting some of the young men and women who were students at the colleges.
My relationships with the Jews of Constantinople were equally useful and equally pleasant. I cultivated the acquaintance of the Chief Rabbi Nahoun, a learned and brilliant man in his early forties. I took pains to show him every possible honour in public. I let it be generally known that I frequented the B’nai Brith Lodge at Constantinople, which, to my astonishment and gratification, I discovered to contain in its membership a group of men of higher average quality than are in any American lodge of the same order with which I am acquainted. My public attentions to these representative Jews gave to them also a new importance and a new dignity in the view of the Turkish Government. It was indeed gratifying to me to be able, with scarcely an effort, so greatly to improve the status of my co-religionists in the eyes of a government which controlled the historical birthplace of the Hebrew religion and the scene of its one-time temporal grandeur.
One of my ambitions at Constantinople was to make the Embassy truly the American Headquarters. Every American of whatever degree, whether resident or visitor, was welcome within its portals. I endeavoured to have every one of them enjoy even its formal hospitality—an invitation to a luncheon or a dinner. I felt that the Embassy was not intended merely to provide an opportunity for exclusive social distinction for the Ambassador. On the contrary, it belonged to the American people; and certainly part of my function was to see that it was of service to them. I soon observed how greatly an invitation to the Embassy was appreciated; and since my return to this United States I have had innumerable evidences of the enjoyment which the simplest courtesy I extended brought to its recipient. Time after time I have had strangers salute me in various parts of this country and remind me with great warmth of the pleasure they had enjoyed in a call at the Embassy in Turkey.
But perhaps the most satisfying of all my associations in Turkey was the privilege I enjoyed of constantly sharing in the problems and accomplishments of the two principal American colleges. To me their work was an endless source of satisfaction. To see these great evidences of American idealism functioning in this remote and backward land, spreading civilization among people long submerged in ignorance, was a profound reason for pride in my country. As a humanitarian, it was a corresponding delight to see the students themselves—their young minds expanding, their young spirits fired with enthusiasm, in the congenial atmosphere of these institutions which, but for America, would not have existed and for which there was no substitute within their reach.