DJEMAL PASHA, MINISTER OF MARINE
In 1914 Djemal headed the Police Department; it was his duty to run down citizens who were opposing the political gang then controlling Turkey. Such opponents were commonly assassinated or judicially murdered. Afterward Djemal was Minister of Marine, and as such violently protested against the sale of American warships to Greece. Then he was sent to Palestine as Commander of the Fourth Army Corps, where he distinguished himself as leader in the wholesale persecutions of the non-Moslem population
taken up permanent headquarters in the Bosphorus, Djavid Bey, Minister of Finance, happened to meet a distinguished Belgian jurist, then in Constantinople.
“I have terrible news for you,” said the sympathetic Turkish statesman. “The Germans have captured Brussels.”
The Belgian, a huge figure, more than six feet high, put his arm soothingly upon the shoulder of the diminutive Turk.
“I have even more terrible news for you,” he said, pointing out to the stream where the Goeben and the Breslau lay anchored. “The Germans have captured Turkey.”
CHAPTER VI
WANGENHEIM TELLS THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR HOW THE KAISER STARTED THE WAR
BUT there was one quarter in which this transaction produced no appreciable gloom. That was the German Embassy. This great “success” fairly intoxicated the impressionable Wangenheim, and other happenings now aroused his furor Teutonicus to a fever heat. The Goeben and the Breslau arrived almost at the same time that the Germans captured Liége, Namur, and other Belgian towns. And now followed the German sweep into France and the apparently triumphant rush for Paris. In all these happenings Wangenheim, like the militant Prussian that he was, saw the fulfilment of a forty-years’ dream. We were all still living in the summer embassies along the Bosphorus. Germany had a beautiful park, which the Sultan had personally presented to the Kaiser’s government; yet for some reason Wangenheim did not seem to enjoy his headquarters during these summer days. A little guard house stood directly in front of his embassy, on the street, within twenty feet of the rushing Bosphorus, and in front of this was a stone bench. This bench was properly a resting place for the guard, but Wangenheim seemed to have a strong liking for it. I shall always keep in my mind the figure of this German diplomat, in those exciting days before the Marne, sitting out on this little bench, now and then jumping up for a stroll back and forth in front of his house. Everybody passing from Constantinople to the northern suburbs had to pass along this road, and even the Russian and French diplomats frequently went by, stiffly ignoring, of course, the triumphant ambassadorial figure on his stone bench. I sometimes think that Wangenheim sat there for the express purpose of puffing his cigar smoke in their direction. It all reminded me of the scene in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, where Tell sits in the mountain pass, with his bow and arrow at his side, waiting for his intended victim, Gessler, to go by:
“Here through this deep defile he needs must pass;
There leads no other road to Küssnacht.”
Wangenheim would also buttonhole his friends, or those whom he regarded as his friends, and have his little jollifications over German victories. I noticed that he stationed himself there only when the German armies were winning; if news came of a reverse, Wangenheim was utterly invisible. This led me to remark that he reminded me of a toy weather prophet, which is always outside the box when the weather is fine but which retires within when storms are gathering. Wangenheim appreciated my little joke as keenly as the rest of the diplomatic set.