The Communists understood perfectly well that Enver Pasha was not at the Oriental Conference as a sudden and sincere convert to Internationalism, and he knew that they knew. Both Zinoviev and Enver were actors taking the leading rôles in a significant historical pageant. The results are really all that matter, since the motives will soon be forgotten.
When Enver turned to Moscow he had no other place to turn to and when Zinoviev took him to Baku, Zinoviev knew no other means of effectively threatening the English in order to change their attitude on the blockade. Zinoviev could not complain about Enver’s shallow attitude towards Socialism since there was hardly anything Socialistic about Zinoviev’s appeal for a “holy war.” Enver summed up his feelings about the new alliance thus: “For the future of Turkey and the future of the East a friendship with Russia is worth more to the Turks than any number of military victories. And we have to build that friendship while we have the opportunity.”
His way of living without any regrets and as if there were no to-morrows is rather startling at times. I remember when Talaat Pasha, his lifelong friend, was murdered by an Armenian in Berlin, he read the message with no show of emotion and his only comment was: “His time had come!” But against an excessive temptation on the part of fate to record Enver’s death prematurely, in his own words, he “sleeps with one eye open,” carries a dagger and a loaded automatic. Once when we talked about the possibility of his being assassinated he said, “I have been near death so many times that these days I live now seem to be a sort of present to me.”
Enver is no open sesame to those who do not know him well. He really has the traditional Oriental inscrutability. The first two or three times I talked with him, we stumbled along rather lamely in French. Someone suggested to me that he probably spoke several languages which, for some unknown reason, he would not admit. So one day I said abruptly, “Oh, let’s speak English.” He looked at me with one of his sudden, rare smiles and answered in my own language, “Very well, if you prefer it.”
When I asked him how he learned English he told me he had learned it from an English spy. “He came to me as a valet and professed deep love for Turkey. For several months we studied diligently. One day I thought I would test his love for Turkey so I ordered him to the front. He was killed. Later, we found his papers.”
“Were you surprised?” I asked him.
“Why, not at all,” said Enver. “He really showed a great deal of pluck. The only thing I had against him was that he taught me a lot of expressions not used at court.”
“Like what?”
“Like ‘don’t mention it,’” said Enver, laughing. “And the terrible thing about learning such an expression,” he said, “is that it is so sharp and so definite and often fits an occasion so aptly that it flashes in one’s mind and can’t be forgotten. American slang is extremely picturesque and expressive, but it is not dignified enough to be used by diplomats.”
Everyone is familiar with Enver’s “direct action” method of playing politics. One of the ways he was wont to remove troublesome rivals in the days of the Young Turk Revolution was to go out and shoot them with his own hand. This “impulsiveness” got him into grave trouble with the Soviets in spite of all his sensible utterances to the contrary. When he was “shifted” to Bokhara so that he would not be in the way of either Kemal or the Russians, he got bored and started a war of his own. One night he fled into the hills of Afghanistan and soon began to gather recruits around him. A few nights after that one of the principal officials of the Bokharan Republic also fled to join Enver. This performance was repeated until over half the Bokharan cabinet had fled. Then fighting began and we got vague rumors of battles, but only through the Soviet press.