The Girls’ College especially appealed to my sympathy. Here, in a land in which the position of women was the most unfavourable, was an institution which was offering to the future mothers of the Near East an entrance into a new world of freedom and opportunity. Girls were gathered here from all parts of the Turkish Empire—Turkish girls, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Albanians. It was a delight to see how they responded to their opportunity. On numerous occasions, Dr. Patrick invited me to address them, and one such occasion I recall with a special pleasure. I described to them the American profession of social worker, tracing the reasons which gave rise to the movement for social betterment in our country and explaining how this new profession arose out of the need for trained workers in that field. I was astonished to see how deep an impression my description made upon them. It appealed to the universal instinct of women to cherish life and to work for its improvement. So enthusiastic were these young Oriental women that afterward Dr. Patrick told me more than half of them had expressed an ambition to devote their life to social service.
These girls, touched by the stimulation of the new intellectual world freely opened to them, attempted many imaginative experiments. One of the most interesting that I observed was the product of a debate held in the college, in which one team had maintained the position of the Greek Stoics against the other group which had defended the philosophy of the Epicureans. Not satisfied with debating the subject abstractly, the girls had resolved to put the two philosophies to the practical test of experience; and for a week the Senior Class was divided into two groups, one of which attempted actually to live for that period according to the Stoic dogma and the other according to the Epicurean. They took the experiment seriously, but of course, with the lightheartedness of youth, they found it an entertainment as well. The essays written on their experiences as Stoics and Epicureans would make interesting reading. I could not refrain from speculating with hope and enthusiasm upon the numerous influences which this college, through these eager young spirits, would wield in directing the future destiny of the millions of backward people among whom they would be scattered as torch bearers of civilization.
Robert College was an institution for men, founded fifty years ago by Christopher R. Roberts, a wealthy leather merchant of New York. Its early destiny was directed by Dr. Hamlin and Dr. Washburn, two far-seeing statesmen of education. They had steered a course for the institution which had gained at least the passive coöperation of the Turkish Government, while in America it had gained the enthusiastic support of great philanthropists like Cleveland H. Dodge and John S. Kennedy. Gradually there had been added to its faculty men of strong character and profound learning, so that by the time I reached Constantinople it was an institution worthy of all the care that had been lavished upon it. These earnest men had made a real impression upon the life of the Near East. Being the only great seat of learning in that whole large territory, it had attracted the ambitious youth from the remotest Armenia and all the Balkan countries. Bulgaria especially had appreciated its opportunity. Hundreds of the leaders of Bulgarian political and economic life received their training here.
In Dr. Gates, the president of Robert College, I found a man who was very useful to me. He had lived many years in Turkey, knew all the chief figures in its public life, and was a profound student of Turkish psychology. In return, I had the pleasure of being useful to him during the trying days after Turkey entered the war.
Such was the picture of Constantinople as I saw it during the first four months of my embassy. It was a picture full of strange anomalies and apparent contradictions. Here was I, a native of Europe, representing the greatest republic of America at the court of an Oriental sovereign. Here was I, a Jew, representing the greatest Christian nation of the world at the capital of the chief Mohammedan nation. Here was I, a man without any previous diplomatic experience whatsoever, suddenly projected headlong into one of the most difficult diplomatic posts in the world, as one of the ten personal representatives of the President. Here was a nation, ruled in name by a proud descendant of Mohammed, and ruled in fact by a group of desperate adventurers whose chieftain was an ex-railroad porter. Here was the capital of an ancient and decaying nation, which was soon, because of its strategic position, to become one of the very vital centres of world diplomacy. Here was a wornout empire dying, which in its death agony clutched other peoples still with its withered fingers and was soon to reach up and draw within its fatal embrace, in the death grapple of a world war, boys from the cattle ranges of Australia, aboriginal Indians from the wilds of northwest Canada, peasants from farthest Russia, cockneys from the East End of London, shepherds from the Carpathian Mountains—vast aggregations of soldiers as polyglot as the population of Constantinople itself—that mongrel city which, sitting at the cross roads of ancient trade routes, had for centuries drawn citizens from every people under heaven. How could I realize, during those peaceful first months of my embassy, that I, the representative of remote and isolated America, should soon be involved in diplomatic complications that should involve the very continuance of American institutions. It was well that I had those few months of peaceful education into that society before the storm of the World War burst upon us. It was well, too, that I had my trip to Egypt and Asia Minor, where I met and learned much from Lord Kitchener, Lord Bryce, and the wise Americans and Jews whom I there encountered. This journey was of so much importance to me that it deserves a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XI
MY TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND
ALL through the winter of 1913-14, though busily engaged in mastering my other duties as Ambassador, there were constantly two problems interesting me.
The first was the American missionary activities, whose ramifications reached into all parts of Turkey, and whose many and varied requests, though intelligently interpreted by Dr. W. W. Peet, I could not fully grasp, owing to the meagreness of my knowledge of the men and women concerned, and of the physical conditions surrounding them in their activities in the interior of Turkey. I was at the seat of government of all these missionary activities, and had become well acquainted with the directing forces. Doctor Peet had shown me his vast records, and had acquainted me with the many branches, and told me of the many representatives that they had scattered throughout Turkey. Occasionally, visits from some of the interior missionaries had impressed me so favourably both as to their sincerity and sympathy for their flocks, that I became thoroughly aroused with a desire to see the entire mechanism of the missionary activities in Turkey. I personally wanted to know the administrative and educational forces, and visit the buildings and surroundings in which they were operating, so that I might be able properly to present their claims to the Turkish officials, and finally give an intelligent account to those of my friends in America who had so anxiously impressed upon me the deep interest felt by such a vast number of them in the welfare of the missionaries.
My second problem was the Jewish question, which I will discuss in a separate chapter. Naturally I concluded to visit first the Holy Land and the Mediterranean Coast of Asia, where so many of the important Christian missions were located. When I spoke to different people concerning this trip, everyone urged me to go. The Turkish authorities felt that it would greatly benefit them if I could, with my own eyes, see the possibilities of an industrial and agricultural revival of Turkey, for, thereafter, I might be useful to them in influencing foreign capital to invest in their prospects. The missionaries were enthusiastic. They expected—and I afterward ascertained were justified in this—that a visit to their main stations by the American Ambassador would so impress the local authorities both at those places and at Constantinople that their standing with, and their treatment by, the Turkish officials would be greatly improved. My Jewish friends, similarly, felt that such a tangible evidence of American and my personal interest in their condition would greatly benefit them with the authorities. The men in the Embassy who now realized how easily an “outsider” could master the knowledge that lay buried in the records of the Chancery also encouraged my scheme to delve further into the outside ramifications of American activity in Turkey.
The best and most direct transportation to Palestine was supplied by the splendid Russian steamship lines that were then plying weekly between Odessa and Alexandria, and as these boats stopped for a day at Smyrna, and another day at Piræus, I should thereby be enabled to visit the Consul and the American College at Smyrna, and to view the interesting sights of Athens. I therefore chose this route.