“Ja, ja, es ist sehr schrecklich” (Yes, yes, it is very terrible), he answered, almost in a whisper.
“Serbia will be condemned for her conduct,” he added. “She will be compelled to make reparation.”
A few days later, when Pallavicini called upon me, he spoke of the nationalistic societies that Serbia had permitted to exist and of her determination to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said that his Government would insist on the abandonment of these societies and these pretensions, and that probably a punitive expedition into Serbia would be necessary to prevent such outrages as the murder of the Grand Duke. Herein I had my first intimation of the famous ultimatum of July 22nd.
The entire diplomatic corps attended the requiem mass for the Grand Duke and Duchess, celebrated at the Church of Sainte Marie on July 4. The church is located in the Grande Rue de Pera, not far from the Austrian Embassy; to reach it we had to descend a flight of forty stone steps. At the top of these stairs representatives of the Austrian Embassy, dressed in full uniform, with crêpe on the left arm, met us, and escorted us to our seats. All the Ambassadors sat in the front pew; I recall this with strange emotions now, for it was the last time that we ever sat together. The service was dignified and beautiful; I remember it with especial vividness because of the contrasting scene that immediately followed. When the stately, gorgeously-robed priests had finished, we all shook hands with the Austrian Ambassador, returned to our automobiles, and started on our eight-mile ride along the Bosphorus to the American Embassy. For this day was not only the day when we paid our tribute to the murdered heir of this medieval autocracy; it was also the Fourth of July. The very setting of the two scenes symbolised these two national ideals. I always think of this ambassadorial group going down those stone steps to the church to pay their respect to the Grand Duke, and then going up to the gaily-decorated American Embassy to pay their respect to the Declaration of Independence. All the station ships of the foreign countries lay out in the stream, decorated and dressed in honour of our national holiday; and the Ambassadors and Ministers called in full regalia. From the upper gardens we could see the place where Darius crossed from Asia with his Persian hosts 2,500 years before—one of those ancient autocrats the line of which is not yet entirely extinct. There also we could see magnificent Robert College, an institution that represented America’s conception of the way to “penetrate” the Turkish Empire. At night our gardens were illuminated with Chinese lanterns and good old American fireworks, lighting up the surrounding hills and the Bosphorus, and the American flag flying at the front of the house seemed almost to act as a challenge to the plentiful reminders of autocracy and oppression which we had had in the early part of the day. Not more than a mile across the water the dark and gloomy hills of Asia, for ages the birthplace of military despotisms, caught a faint, and, I think, a prophetic, glow from these illuminations.
In glancing at the little ambassadorial group at the church, and later at our reception, I was surprised to note that one familiar figure was missing. Wangenheim, Austria’s ally, was not present. This somewhat puzzled me at the time, but afterward I had the explanation from Wangenheim’s own lips. He had left some days before for Berlin. The Kaiser had summoned him to an Imperial Council, which met on July 5th, and which decided to plunge Europe into war.
CHAPTER IV
GERMANY MOBILISES THE TURKISH ARMY
In reading the August newspapers which described the mobilisations in Europe, I was particularly struck with the emphasis which they laid upon the splendid spirit that was overnight changing the civilian populations into armies. At that time Turkey had not entered the war, and her political leaders were loudly protesting their intention to maintain a strict neutrality. Despite these pacific statements, the occurrences in Constantinople were almost as warlike as those that were taking place in the European capitals. Though Turkey was at peace, her army was mobilising, merely, as we were told, as a precautionary measure. Yet the daily scenes which I witnessed in Constantinople bore few resemblances to those which were taking place in Europe. The martial patriotism of men and the sublime patience and sacrifice of women may sometimes give war an heroic aspect, but in Turkey the prospect was one of general listlessness and misery. Day by day the miscellaneous Ottoman hordes passed through the streets. Arabs, bootless and shoeless, dressed in their most gaily-coloured garments, with long linen bags, containing the required five days’ rations, thrown over their shoulders, shambling in their gait and bewildered in their manner, touched shoulders with equally dispirited Bedouins, evidently suddenly snatched from the desert. A motley aggregation of Turks, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and Jews, showing signs of having been summarily taken from their farms and shops, constantly jostled one another. Most were ragged, and many looked half-starved; everything about them suggested hopelessness and a cattle-like submission to a fate which they knew they could not avoid. There was no joy of approaching battle, no feeling that they were sacrificing themselves for a mighty cause; day by day they passed, the unwilling children of a tatterdemalion empire that was making one last despairing attempt to gird itself for action.
These wretched marchers little realised what was the power that was dragging them from the four corners of their country. Even we of the diplomatic group had not then clearly grasped the real situation. We learned afterwards that the signal for this mobilisation had not come originally from Enver or Talaat or the Turkish Cabinet, but the General Staff in Berlin and its representatives in Constantinople, Liman von Sanders and Bronsart, were really directing the variegated operation. There were unmistakable signs of German activity. As soon as the German armies crossed the Rhine work was begun on a mammoth wireless station a few miles outside of Constantinople. The materials all came from Germany by way of Rumania, and the mechanics, industriously working from daybreak to sunset, were unmistakably Germans. Of course, the neutrality laws would have prohibited the construction of a wireless station for a belligerent in a neutral country like Turkey; it was therefore officially announced that a German company was building this heaven-pointing structure for the Turkish Government and on the Sultan’s own property. But this story deceived no one. Wangenheim, the German Ambassador, spoke of it freely and constantly as a German enterprise.
“Have you seen our wireless yet?” he would ask me. “Come on, let’s ride up there and look it over.”
He proudly told me that it was the most powerful in the world—powerful enough to catch all messages sent by the Eiffel Tower in Paris! He said that it would put him in constant communication with Berlin. So little did he attempt to conceal its German ownership that several times, when ordinary telegraphic communication was suspended, he offered to let me use it to send my telegrams.