This may be considered as the real War Office in Constantinople at the present moment. Near the door, on a large blackboard, is exposed the latest news from the theatres of war.
Stringent police regulations allow nobody to pass near the wireless station.
I am just passing on, when a coach, similar to that one in which the Sultan reviewed his troops, stops in front of the Embassy. A little man in fez and morning coat alights. At the first glance I recognise him as Enver Pasha. This was the only glance of Turkey's great man that I could get during my stay in Constantinople.
I walked down the great road of Pera, generally full of tourists, motor-cars, and carriages, where smart European society in Constantinople meets.
Since last Sunday half of the few shops and hotels which were still open have closed. The war has completely spoiled the most flourishing of Pera's industries.
A large building on the left-hand side, over which the Red Cross flag waves, attracts my attention. It is the German school turned into a hospital, and placed under the direction of Princess Najieh, Enver Pasha's wife. Only a few years ago it would have been impossible to imagine a Turkish woman doing useful work, still less nursing soldiers; but now old Turkey is dying.
The German ladies in Constantinople have organised another large emergency hospital in the Skating Rink a few hundred yards lower down the same street. Over a hundred wounded have already arrived from the Russian frontier, I am told. All the Red Cross materials have been ready here for a long time, and doctors and nurses came from Berlin three or four days before the declaration of war. A curious coincidence that they should know exactly when their services would be required!
Down the great route of Pera, near the Tunnel, the crowd is getting thicker, a crowd, as usual, composed almost exclusively of German or Germanophile elements. Here is the German Club, the famous centre of the Pan-German movement in Constantinople.
I easily mix with some of the impromptu politicians; all the Germans in Constantinople who are too old to bear arms try to do what they can for the Fatherland by carrying out a sort of advertising campaign. They can fight no more, but they can talk.
In a few minutes I learn that the Russians are "no good"; that the British Fleet was "all bluff"; that the French soldiers are "running away like rabbits," and other interesting revelations. But my fat little man, who is, I learn, the manager of the German Bazaar near Andria's Passage, begins really to attract my attention when he describes what will happen on the day of final German victory.