“It is my desire,” I said, “to have a few words with the Napoleon of the Balkans.”
“That,” he replied, “is very difficult. Twenty or thirty Austrian and German journalists have been here, but the Minister of War has been so occupied that he has been unable to see any of them; but I will try,” he added, and taking up the telephone he called up the War Minister, and had some laughing conversation with him in Turkish, the nature of which I did not understand. So far as I was concerned, it was obviously satisfactory, and I was told to go to the War Office on the following morning, when Enver Pasha would grant me an audience.
The Turkish War Office stands on the top of a hill in the very heart of Stamboul, the native quarter of the city. It is a huge squat building surrounded by a railing some five yards high. The hill commands a magnificent view of Stamboul and the Sea of Marmora; but to a poor and over-tired journalist, unable to procure a carriage, who has for half-an-hour toiled laboriously up the hill to reach his goal, the glories of nature are somewhat discounted.
During my previous visit to Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of the War Office, then sadly dirty and neglected and typically Turkish in appearance. Now everything was so changed as to be scarcely recognisable. Inside and out it had been redecorated. It was obviously the intention of the Germans that, however neglected the other Turkish Government buildings might be, the War Office was to be a place that would impress itself upon the imagination.
Again I was struck by the number of German officers to be seen, albeit in Turkish uniforms for the most part. They were to be seen everywhere, and clearly the entire direction of affairs was in their hands.
On my arrival I was ushered into an anteroom, where I spent a few minutes in conversation with Enver’s German aide-de-camp.
As we sat chatting together I recalled an incident that occurred during my previous visit to the Turkish War Office in May, 1915. Through one of the windows I had noticed a huge mast belonging to the great wireless station of Osmanli.
“What do you think of it?” inquired a German lieutenant with whom I had been conversing. “With that wireless station we can communicate with Berlin.”
I doubted this at the time, but I have since discovered that the statement was quite correct. I inquired if it were the wireless from the Goeben, deliberately assuming innocence in order to stimulate the German to further disclosure.
“Oh, no,” was the reply, “ships do not carry masts of that size. This one came from Germany.”