Orientals, Christian as well as Moslem, are famous for bargaining. Nothing can be accomplished without an exchange of proposals and counter-proposals ad infinitum. In the Conference of London, the demands of the allies were the cession of all European Turkey, except Albania, whose boundaries were not defined, of Crete, and of the islands in the Ægean Sea. A war indemnity was also demanded. Turkey was to be allowed to retain Constantinople, and a strip of territory from Midia on the Black Sea to Rodosto on the Sea of Marmora, and the peninsula of the Thracian Chersonese, which formed the European shore of the Dardanelles. The boundaries of Albania, and its future status, were to be decided by the Powers.
I had a long conversation with the Grand Vizier, Kiamil pasha, on the day the peace delegates left for London. He was frank and unhesitating in the statement of his belief that Turkey could not continue the war. He denounced unsparingly the visionaries who were clamouring for a continuance of the struggle. "It is because of them that we are in our present humiliating position," he said. "They cry out now that we must not accept peace, but they know well that we cannot hope to win back any portion of what we have lost."
There were a number of reasons why the position of Kiamil pasha was sound. First of all, the army organization was in hopeless confusion. Although the Bulgarians were checked at Tchatalja, the conditions on the Constantinople side of the forts was terrible. The general headquarters at Hademkeuy were buried in filth and mud. Although the army was but twenty-five miles from the city, there were days on end when not even bread arrived. Cholera was making great ravages. Soldiers, crazed from hunger, were shot dead for disobeying the order which forbade their eating raw vegetables. There were neither fuel, shelter, nor blankets. Winter was at hand. At San Stefano, one of the most beautiful suburbs of Stambul, in a concentration camp the soldiers died by the thousands of starvation fever. It was one of the most heart-rending tragedies of history.
All the while, in the cafés of Péra, Galata, and Stambul, Turkish officers sat the day long, sipping their coffee, and deciding that Adrianople must not be given up. Even while the fighting was going on, when the fate of the city hung in the balance, I saw these degenerate officers by the hundreds, feasting at Péra, while their soldiers were dying like dogs at Tchatalja and San Stefano. This is an awful statement to make, but it is the record of fact. Notices in the newspapers, declaring that officers found in Constantinople without permission would be immediately taken before the Court-Martial, had absolutely no effect.
The navy failed to give any account of itself to the Greeks, who were waiting outside of the Dardanelles. Finally, on December 16th, after the people of the vicinity had openly cursed and taunted them, the fleet sailed out to fight. An action at long range did little damage to either side. The Turkish vessels refused to go beyond the protection of their forts. They returned in the evening to anchor. The mastery of the sea remained to the Greeks.[[1]]
[[1]] In this connection, it would be forgetting to pay tribute to a remarkable exploit to omit mention of the raid of the Hamidieh during the late winter. One Ottoman officer at least chafed under the disgrace of the inaction of the Ottoman navy. With daring and skill, Captain Reouf bey slipped out into the Ægean Sea on the American-built cruiser, the Hamidieh. He evaded the Greek blockaders, bombarded some outposts on one of the islands, and sank the auxiliary cruiser, the Makedonia, in a Greek port. The Hamidieh next appeared in the Adriatic, where she sank several transports, and bombarded Greek positions on the coast of Albania. The cruiser was next heard of at Port Said. She passed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea for a couple of weeks, and then returned boldly into the Mediterranean, although Greek torpedo-boats were lying in wait. Captain Reouf bey ran again the gauntlet of the Greek fleet, and got back to the Dardanelles without mishap. This venture, undertaken without permission from the Turkish admiral, had no effect upon the war. For it came too late. But it showed what a little enterprise and courage might have done to prevent the Turkish débâcle, if undertaken at the beginning of the war.
If the army and the navy were powerless, how about the people of the capital? From the very beginning of the war, the inhabitants of Constantinople, Moslem as well as Christian, displayed the most complete indifference concerning the fortunes of the battles. Even when the Bulgarians were attacking Tchatalja, the city took little interest. Buying and selling went on as usual. There were few volunteers for national defence, but the cafés were crowded and the theatres and dance-halls of Péra were going at full swing. The refugees came and camped in our streets and in the cemeteries outside of the walls. Those who did not die passed on to Asia. The wounded arrived, and crowded our hospitals and barracks. The cholera came. The soldiers starved to death at San Stefano. The spirit of Byzantium was over the city still. The year 1913 began as 1453 had begun.
The Government tried to raise money by a national loan. It could get none from Europe, unless it agreed to surrender Adrianople and make peace practically on the terms of the allies. An appeal must be made to the Osmanlis. For how could the war be resumed without money? There are many wealthy pashas at Constantinople. Their palaces line both shores of the Bosphorus. They spend money at Monte Carlo like water. They live at Nice, as they live at Constantinople, like princes—or like American millionaires! One of the sanest and wisest of Turkish patriots, a man whom I have known and admired, was appointed to head a committee to wait upon these pashas, many of them married to princesses of the imperial family, and solicit their contributions. The scheme was that the subscribers should advance five years of taxes on their properties for the purposes of national defence. The committee hired a small launch, and spent a day visiting the homes of the pashas. On their return, after paying the rental of the launch, they had about forty pounds sterling! Was it not two million pounds that was raised for the Prince of Wales Fund recently in London? Was not the French loan "for national defence," issued just before the present war, subscribed in a few hours forty-three times over the large amount of thirty-two million pounds asked for?
In the face of these facts, the Young Turks were vociferous in their demand that the war be continued. Adrianople must not be surrendered! Kiamil pasha decided to call a "Divan," or National Assembly, of the most important men in Turkey. They were summoned by the Sultan to meet at the palace of Dolma-Baghtche on January 22, 1913. I went to see what would happen there. One would expect that the whole of Constantinople would be hanging on the words of this council, whose decision the Cabinet had agreed to accept. A half-dozen policemen at the palace gate, a vendor of lemonade, two street-sweepers, an Italian cinematograph photographer, and a dozen foreign newspaper men—that was the extent of the crowd.