Wangenheim again suggested that the Armenians be taken to the United States, and once more I gave him the reasons why this would be impracticable.
“Never mind all these considerations,” I said. “Let us disregard everything—military necessity, state policy, and all else—and let us look upon this simply as a human problem. Remember that most of the people who are being treated in this way are old men, old women, and helpless children. Why can’t you, as a human being, see that these people are permitted to live?”
“At the present stage of internal affairs in Turkey,” Wangenheim replied, “I shall not intervene.”
I saw that it was useless to discuss the matter further. He was a man who was devoid of sympathy and human pity, and I turned from him in disgust. Wangenheim rose to leave. As he did so he gave a gasp, and his legs suddenly shot from under him. I jumped and caught the man just as he was falling. For a minute he seemed utterly dazed; he looked at me in a bewildered way, then suddenly collected himself and regained his poise. I took the Ambassador by the arm, piloted him down stairs, and put him into his auto. By this time he had apparently recovered from his dizzy spell and he reached home safely. Two days afterward, while sitting at his dinner table, he had a stroke of apoplexy; he was carried upstairs to his bed, but he never regained consciousness. On October 24th, I was officially informed that Wangenheim was dead. And thus my last recollection of Wangenheim is that of the Ambassador as he sat in my office in the American Embassy, absolutely refusing to exert any influence to prevent the massacre of a nation. He was the one man, and his government was the one government, that could have stopped these crimes, but, as Wangenheim told me many times, “our one aim is to win this war.”
A few days afterward official Turkey and the diplomatic force paid their last tribute to this perfect embodiment of the Prussian system. The funeral was held in the garden of the German Embassy at Pera. The inclosure was filled with flowers. Practically the whole gathering, excepting the family and the ambassadors and the Sultan’s representatives, remained standing during the simple but impressive ceremonies. Then the procession formed; German sailors carried the bier upon their shoulders, other German sailors carried the huge bunches of flowers, and all members of the diplomatic corps and the officials of the Turkish Government followed on foot.
The Grand Vizier led the procession; I walked the whole way with Enver. All the officers of the Goeben and the Breslau, and all the German generals, dressed in full uniform, followed. It seemed as though the whole of Constantinople lined the streets, and the atmosphere had some of the quality of a holiday. We walked to the grounds of Dolma Bagtche, the Sultan’s Palace, passing through the gate which the ambassadors enter when presenting their credentials. At the dock a steam launch lay awaiting our arrival, and in this stood Neurath, the German Conseiller, ready to receive the body of his dead chieftain. The coffin, entirely covered with flowers, was placed in the boat. As the launch sailed out into the stream Neurath, a six-foot Prussian, dressed in his military uniform, his helmet a waving mass of white plumes, stood erect and silent. Wangenheim was buried in the park of the summer embassy at Therapia, by the side of his comrade Colonel Leipzig. No final resting-place would have been more appropriate, for this had been the scene of his diplomatic successes, and it was from this place that, a little more than two years before, he had directed by wireless the Goeben and the Breslau, and safely brought them into Constantinople, thus making it inevitable that Turkey should join forces with Germany, and paving the way for all the triumphs and all the horrors that have necessarily followed that event.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ENVER AGAIN MOVES FOR PEACE—FAREWELL TO THE SULTAN AND TO TURKEY
MY failure to stop the destruction of the Armenians had made Turkey for me a place of horror, and I found intolerable my further daily association with men who, however gracious and accommodating and good-natured they might have been to the American Ambassador, were still reeking with the blood of nearly a million human beings. Could I have done anything more, either for Americans, enemy aliens, or the persecuted peoples of the empire, I would willingly have stayed. The position of Americans and Europeans, however, had now become secure and, so far as the subject peoples were concerned, I had reached the end of my resources. Moreover, an event was approaching in the United States which, I believed, would inevitably have the greatest influence upon the future of the world and of democracy—the presidential campaign. I felt that there was nothing so important in international politics as the reëlection of President Wilson. I could imagine no greater calamity, for the United States and the world, than that the American nation should fail to indorse heartily this great statesman. If I could substantially assist in Mr. Wilson’s reëlection, I concluded that I could better serve my country at home at this juncture.
I had another practical reason for returning home, and that was to give the President and the State Department, by word of mouth, such first-hand information as I possessed on the European situation. It was especially important to give them the latest side lights on the subject of peace. In the latter part of 1915 and the early part of 1916 this was the uppermost topic in Constantinople. Enver Pasha was constantly asking me to intercede with the President to end the war. Several times he intimated that Turkey was war-weary and that its salvation depended on getting an early peace. I have already described the conditions that prevailed a few months after the outbreak of the war, but, by the end of 1915, they were infinitely worse. When Turkey decided on the deportation and massacre of her subject peoples, especially the Armenians and Greeks, she had signed her own economic death warrant. These were the people, as I have already said, who controlled her industries and her finances and developed her agriculture, and the material consequences of this great national crime now began to be everywhere apparent. The farms were lying uncultivated and daily thousands of peasants were dying of starvation. As the Armenians and Greeks were the largest taxpayers, their annihilation greatly reduced the state revenues, and the fact that practically all Turkish ports were blockaded had shut off customs collections. The mere statement that Turkey was barely taking in money enough to pay the interest on her debt, to say nothing of ordinary expenses and war expenses, gives a fair idea of her advanced degree of exhaustion. In these facts Turkey had abundant reasons for desiring a speedy peace. Besides this, Enver and the ruling party feared a revolution, unless the war quickly came to an end. As I wrote the State Department about this time, “These men are willing to do almost anything to retain their power.”
Still I did not take Enver’s importunities for peace any too seriously.