The attitude of prayer on the part of the bystanders during this ceremony was one I had never observed at the ordinary services in the mosques. They all stood erect, arms horizontally extended forward from the elbow, palms turned upward. The simplicity of the whole service impressed me very much. The entire dramatic scene, in its picturesque surroundings, was unforgettable. The day was bright and beautiful, and the Bosphorus wore its most attractive coloring. Turkish functions, whether official or ceremonial, are always arranged with quiet dignity and precision.
Among the pleasant things during this sojourn in Constantinople was a trip to Cairo to meet Roosevelt. On New Year's Day, 1910, I received a note from him scribbled off in pencil, asking that I meet him if possible about March 22d at Cairo; he would wire me later from the upper Nile a more exact date. He could not come to Constantinople because he had to include Christiania in his itinerary, which made it a little difficult to carry out his plans.
In due time I received a telegram from him from Gondokoro, on the lower Nile, to meet him on March 23d. Accordingly Mrs. Straus and I started from Constantinople on March 7th in the embassy dispatch boat, Scorpion, a ship of about seven hundred and fifty tons, manned by a crew of seventy-five or eighty bluejackets. We left a little early in order to be able to make stops at several ports on the way, notably Salonica, which in many respects was the most advanced city of the empire. It had about 135,000 inhabitants, of whom some 20,000 were Greek, 15,000 Bulgarian and other Balkan peoples, and the rest chiefly Jews. The ancestors of many of the latter had settled there centuries before as refugees from Spain at the time of the Inquisition. As was the case with many of the other Jews of Turkey their language was Ladino, a Spanish dialect.
We stayed at Salonica three days and visited the principal institutions of the city, and the Jewish hospitals and schools, all of which I found superior to any I had seen in Turkey proper. They were conducted on modern scientific lines. The leaders of finance and industry were the Jews and the Greeks, while at the same time the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, those who loaded the ships and did the hauling, were also principally Jews.
Next we stopped at Athens, where we met my brother Isidor and his wife, who were making a tour of the Orient. Our six-days' stay in Athens was made delightful for us by the courtesies of our minister, George H. Moses, now and for some years past United States Senator from New Hampshire. We visited the Boulé, or Greek Chamber, one afternoon. What mainly impressed one was the lack of decorum and dignity. The Minister of War, who also represented the military league, was the dominating power. I thought then how unfortunate it was for a country to be ruled by the sabered politician. Then truly does the army become a curse to the Government, as well as inefficient for the protection it is supposed to give. When the army enters politics, then politics also enters the army, a double calamity for any state. But that seemed to be the lamentable condition of Greece as I saw it at that time.
We were received in audience by King George, who spoke perfect English. I had met him before, on my visit to Athens in 1888. He conversed freely and with the objectiveness of an outsider about the disturbed political conditions of Greece, which was at the time dominated by a military league, a secret organization of army officers. Referring to this league, the King said that outsiders probably regarded him as weak in giving way to its demands, but that they did not appreciate conditions; he did it to prevent a revolution, and he hoped that unity among the people might be promoted by the approaching meeting of the Assembly for the revision of the constitution.
He seemed remarkably well informed regarding our system of government and American affairs generally. He said that Greece needed a council of state with coördinate legislative power, rather than a senate. He appeared to favor a small appointed body rather than an elective senate. He said he had been in Greece for fifty years; he had come there when he was eighteen and was educated for the navy. He added drily that it might have been better if he had stuck to the profession of his training.
He knew I was on my way to Egypt to meet Roosevelt for whom he expressed the greatest admiration. He said he had read several of Roosevelt's books and had always had a desire to meet him.
We went on to Alexandria by the Roumanian boat. The sea seemed rough, so we thought best to send the Scorpion on ahead so that we might make the trip leisurely, and on March 21st we arrived in Cairo, where Consul-General Iddings had reserved rooms for us at the Shepheard Hotel, adjoining the suite reserved for the Roosevelts.
The Roosevelt party arrived from Luxor at about nine o'clock on the morning of March 24th. We went to the station to meet the train, and there was quite a gathering, including the consul-general and his wife, an aide of the Khedive, an aide of the Sirdar, a number of American missionaries, and several others. Cairo was astir. American flags were flying on many buildings, and at the hotel a great crowd cheered as Roosevelt entered.