“All the rest will have to go,” was his final word. “Moreover,” he added, “we don’t purpose to have the enemy submarines in the Marmora torpedo the transports we are sending to the Dardanelles. In the future we shall put a few Englishmen and Frenchmen on every ship we send down there as a protection to our own soldiers.”
When I returned to our embassy I found that the news of the proposed deportation had been published. The amazement and despair that immediately resulted were unparalleled, even in that city of constant sensations. Europeans, by living for many years in the Levant, seem to acquire its emotions, particularly its susceptibility to fear and horror, and now, no longer having the protection of their embassies, these fears were intensified. A stream of frenzied people began to pour into the Embassy. From their tears and cries one would have thought that they were immediately to be taken out and shot, and that there was any possibility of being saved seemed hardly to occur to them. Yet all the time they insisted that I should get individual exemptions. One could not go because he had a dependent family; another had a sick child; another was ill himself. My ante-room was full of frantic mothers, asking me to secure exemption for their sons, and of wives, who sought special treatment for their husbands. They made all kinds of impossible suggestions: I should resign my ambassadorship as a protest; I should even threaten Turkey with war by the United States! They constantly besieged my wife, who spent hours listening to their stories and comforting them. In all this exciting mass there were many who faced the situation with more courage.
The day after my talk with Enver, Bedri, the Prefect of Police, began to arrest some of the victims.
The next morning one of my callers made what would ordinarily have seemed to be an obvious suggestion. This visitor was a German. He told me that Germany would suffer greatly in reputation if the Turks carried out their plan; the world would not possibly be convinced that Germans had not devised the whole scheme. He said that I should call upon the German and Austrian ambassadors; he was sure that they would support me in my pleas for decent treatment. As I had made appeals to Wangenheim several times before in behalf of foreigners, without success, I had hardly thought it worth while to ask his coöperation in this instance. Moreover, the plan of using non-combatants as a protective screen in warfare was such a familiar German device that I was not at all sure that the German Staff had not instigated the Turks. I decided, however, to adopt the advice of my German visitor and seek Wangenheim’s assistance. I must admit that I did this as a forlorn hope, but at least I thought it only fair to Wangenheim to give him a chance to help.
I called upon him in the evening at ten o’clock and stayed with him until eleven. I spent the larger part of this hour in a fruitless attempt to interest him in the plight of these non-combatants. Wangenheim said point blank that he would not assist me. “It is perfectly proper,” he maintained, “for the Turks to establish a concentration camp at Gallipoli. It is also proper for them to put non-combatant English and French on their transports and thus insure them against attack. As I made repeated attempts to argue the matter, Wangenheim would deftly shift the conversation to other topics. According to my record of this talk, written out at the time, the German Ambassador discussed almost every subject except the one upon which I had called.
“This act of the Turks will greatly injure Germany——” I would begin.
“Do you know that the English soldiers at Gaba Tepe are without food and drink?” he would reply. “They made an attack to capture a well and were repulsed. The English have taken their ships away so as to prevent their soldiers from retreating——”
“But about this Gallipoli business,” I interrupted. “Germans themselves here in Constantinople have said that Germany should stop it——”
“The Allies landed 45,000 men on the peninsula,” Wangenheim answered, “and of these 10,000 were killed. In a few days we shall attack the rest and destroy them.”
When I attempted to approach the subject from another angle, this master diplomatist would begin discussing Rumania and the possibility of obtaining ammunition by way of that country.