The hostages had an uncomfortable time at Gallipoli; they were put into two wooden houses with no beds and no food except that which they had brought themselves. The days and nights were made wretched by the abundant vermin that is a commonplace in Turkey. Had Mr. Philip not gone with them, they would have suffered seriously. After the unfortunates had been there for a few days I began work with Enver again to get them back. Sir Edward Grey, then British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had requested our State Department to send me a message with the request that I present it to Enver and his fellow ministers; its purport was that the British Government would hold them personally responsible for any injury to the hostages. I presented this message to Enver on May 9th. I had seen Enver in many moods, but the unbridled rage which Sir Edward’s admonition now caused was something entirely new. As I read the telegram his face became livid, and he absolutely lost control of himself. The European polish which Enver had sedulously acquired dropped like a mask; I now saw him for what he really was—a savage, bloodthirsty Turk.
“They will not come back!” he shouted. “I shall let them stay there until they rot!”
“I would like to see those English touch me!” he continued.
I saw that the method which I had always used with Enver, that of persuasion, was the only possible way of handling him. I tried to soothe the Minister now, and, after a while, he quieted down.
“But don’t ever threaten me again!” he said.
After spending a week at Gallipoli, the party returned. The Turks had moved their military headquarters from Gallipoli and the English fleet, therefore, ceased to bombard it. All came back in good condition and were welcomed home with great enthusiasm.
CHAPTER XX
MORE ADVENTURES OF THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS
THE Gallipoli deportation gives some idea of my difficulties in attempting to fulfil my duty as the representative of Allied interests in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, despite these occasional outbursts of hatred, in the main the Turkish officials themselves behaved very well. They had promised me at the beginning that they would treat their alien enemies decently, and would permit them either to remain in Turkey, and follow their accustomed occupations, or to leave the empire. They apparently believed that the world would judge them, after the war was over, not by the way they treated their own subject peoples but by the way they treated the subjects of the enemy powers. The result was that a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Italian enjoyed far greater security in Turkey than an Armenian, a Greek, or a Jew. Yet against this disposition to be decent a persistent malevolent force was constantly manifesting itself. In a letter to the State Department, I described the influence that was working against foreigners in Turkey. “The German Ambassador,” I wrote on May 14, 1915, “keeps pressing on the Turks the advisability both of repressive measures and of detaining as hostages the subjects of the belligerent powers. I have had to encounter the persistent opposition of my German colleague in endeavouring to obtain permission for the departure of the subjects of the nationalities under our protection.”
Now and then the Turkish officials would retaliate upon one of their enemy aliens, usually in reprisal for some injury, or fancied injury, inflicted on their own subjects in enemy countries. Such acts gave rise to many exciting episodes, some tragical, some farcical, all illuminating in the light they shed upon Turkish character and upon Teutonic methods.
One afternoon I was sitting with Talaat, discussing routine matters, when his telephone rang.