Acting under the authorization of Congress, the administration sold these ships on July 8, 1914, to Fred J. Gauntlett, for $12,535,276.98. Congress immediately voted the money realized from the sale to the construction of a great modern dreadnaught, the California. Mr. Gauntlett transferred the ships to the Greek Government. Rechristened the Kilkis and the Lemnos, those battleships immediately took their places as the most powerful vessels of the Greek Navy, and the enthusiasm of the Greeks in obtaining them was unbounded.
By this time we had moved from the Embassy to our summer home on the Bosphorus. All the summer embassies were located there, and a more beautiful spot I have never seen. Our house was a three-story building, something in the Venetian style; behind it the cliff rose abruptly, with several terraced gardens towering one above the other; the building stood so near the shore and the waters of the Bosphorus rushed by so rapidly that when we sat outside, especially on a moonlight night, we had almost a complete illusion that we were sitting on the deck of a fast sailing ship. In the daytime the Bosphorus, here little more than a mile wide, was alive with gaily coloured craft; I recall this animated scene with particular vividness because I retain in my mind the contrast it presented a few months afterward, when Turkey’s entrance into the war had the immediate result of closing this strait. Day by day the huge Russian steamships, on their way from Black Sea ports to Smyrna, Alexandria, and other cities, made clear the importance of this little strip of water, and explained the bloody contests of the European nations, extending over a thousand years, for its possession. However, these early summer
BUSTÁNY EFFENDI
Ex-Minister of Commerce and Agriculture in the Turkish Cabinet. He came to Mr. Morgenthau in January, 1914, seeking American assistance in financially rehabilitating Turkey
MOHAMMED V, LATE SULTAN OF TURKEY
His majesty was a kind-hearted old gentleman, entirely ignorant of the world and lacking in personal force and initiative. The lower picture shows the Sultan’s carriage at the American Embassy, waiting to take Mr. Morgenthau to an imperial audience
months were peaceful; all the ambassadors and ministers and their families were thrown constantly together; here daily gathered the representatives of all the powers that for the last four years have been grappling in history’s bloodiest war, all then apparently friends, sitting around the same dining tables, walking arm in arm upon the porches. The ambassador of one power would most graciously escort to dinner the wife of another whose country was perhaps the most antagonistic to his own. Little groups would form after dinner; the Grand Vizier would hold an impromptu reception in one corner, cabinet ministers would be whispering in another; a group of ambassadors would discuss the Greek situation out on the porch; the Turkish officials would glance quizzically upon the animated scene and perhaps comment quietly in their own tongue; the Russian Ambassador would glide about the room, pick out someone whom he wished to talk to, lock arms and push him into a corner for a surreptitious tête-à-tête. Meanwhile, our sons and daughters, the junior members of the diplomatic corps, and the officers of the several stationnaires, dancing and flirting, seemed to think that the whole proceeding had been arranged solely for their amusement. And to realize, while all this was going on, that neither the Grand Vizier, nor any of the other high Turkish officials, would leave the house without outriders and bodyguards to protect them from assassination—whatever other emotions such a vibrating atmosphere might arouse, it was certainly alive with interest. I felt also that there was something electric about it all; war was ever the favourite topic of conversation; everyone seemed to realize that this peaceful, frivolous life was transitory, and that at any moment might come the spark that was to set everything aflame.
Yet, when the crisis came, it produced no immediate sensation. On June 29th we heard of the assassination of the Archduke of Austria and his consort. Everybody received the news calmly; there was, indeed, a stunned feeling that something momentous had happened, but there was practically no excitement. A day or two after this tragedy I had a long talk with Talaat on diplomatic matters; he made no reference at all to this event. I think now that we were all affected by a kind of emotional paralysis—as we were nearer the centre than most people, we certainly realized the dangers in the situation. In a day or two our tongues seemed to have been loosened, for we began to talk—and to talk war. When I saw Von Mutius, the German chargé, and Weitz, the diplomat-correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, they also discussed the impending conflict, and again they gave their forecast a characteristically Germanic touch; when war came, they said, of course the United States would take advantage of it to get all the Mexican and South American trade!