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 THE NEAR 
 EAST 
 
 
 MAURICE- BARING
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 r 
 
 I H^'
 
 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 1909 AND 1 912 i 
 
 i
 
 LETTERS FROM 
 THE NEAR EAST 
 
 1909 AND 1912 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE BARING 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' WITH THE RUSSIANS IN MANCHURIA,' 
 ' LANDMARKS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE, EIC. ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 19-3 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 OR 
 
 -3^3 I 
 
 TO 
 
 GEORGE GRAHAME 
 
 ^tf^Qno.^
 
 NOTE. 
 
 My thanks are due to the Editors of the ' Times ' 
 and the ' Morning Post ' for kindly allowing me to 
 republish these letters. — M. B.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Preface 11 
 
 Opening of the New Regime ... 39 
 
 The Political Outlook .... 53 
 
 The Sultan's Visit to Eyoub ... 68 
 
 Future Prospects 79 
 
 Dissatisfaction with the New Regime 89 
 
 Bulgaria in Presence of War . . 101 
 
 With the Servians 119 
 
 Constantinople during the War . . 142 
 The Cholera at San Stefano . . .162
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This book consists partly of letters written 
 from Constantinople in 1909 to the 
 Morning Post, and partly of letters written 
 from the Balkans during the war of 1912 
 to The Times. 
 
 I 
 
 The letters to the Morning Post, 
 which were written during and after the 
 counter-revolution of 1909, are here re- 
 published without one word of alteration, 
 ' with all their imperfections on their 
 head.' Where I made mistakes I have 
 left them. They are not the letters of 
 an expert. They are the letters of a man 
 who had never been to the Near East 
 
 before, who knew little or nothing about 
 
 II
 
 12 PREFACE 
 
 the Balkan States, the history of the Turks, 
 or the compHcated conditions of poHtical 
 and social life at Constantinople. 
 
 When I arrived at Constantinople, at 
 the end of April 1909, I found all the 
 local foreign opinion, and especially the 
 local English opinion, in a ferment of en- 
 thusiasm for the Young Turks, and in a 
 tumult of indignation against the English 
 government, and its representatives at 
 Constantinople, for the lukewarm support 
 that they were said to be giving to the 
 new movement and the new regime. 
 
 I arrived at Constantinople with a 
 perfectly blank mind as to the merits 
 of the case. I cared neither one way nor 
 the other. I had no preconceived notions, 
 and no theories on the subject. My busi- 
 ness was simply to keep my eyes open 
 and to write down my impressions of 
 what I saw : choses vues. I started, as will
 
 PREFACE 13 
 
 be seen from the letters that I wrote, 
 with every desire to be as enthusiastic 
 about the new regime, and as hopeful 
 and confident, as my fellow-countrymen 
 whom I met in Constantinople. The five 
 letters that I here reprint, written in 
 1909, tell the story of a gradual disillusion- 
 ment. They begin by being enthusias- 
 tic, and then, little by little, enthusiasm 
 gives way to scepticism, scepticism to 
 doubt, and, finally, doubt to disbelief. 
 After five weeks, I left Turkey, and I did 
 not return thither until the autumn of 
 1912, when the war was already in full 
 swing. I found on returning that my 
 scepticism had been justified by facts, 
 and that in the space of four years, the 
 new regime of the Young Turks, and the 
 rule of the Committee of Union and Pro- 
 gress, which had been hailed so joyfully 
 by the Liberals of Europe, and which
 
 14 PREFACE 
 
 had raised such high hopes in the breasts 
 of all lovers and defenders of freedom 
 and of constitutionalism, had succeeded 
 in bringing the Ottoman Empire to the 
 very brink of ruin. 
 
 Since these letters were written the 
 Young Turks have come once more into 
 power and appear to be bent on dealing 
 the coup de grace or the coup de Bourse 
 (the two are synonymous) to their dying 
 Empire, and they seem to be desirous 
 of crowning their long and discreditable 
 record of incompetent statesmanship by 
 one final act of folly. 
 
 The experiment made by the Young 
 Turks, and its failure to restore order 
 and to inaugurate progress in the Ottoman 
 Empire, raises a question of immense 
 general interest, and of particular im- 
 portance to the English people. The 
 British Empire includes large dominions
 
 PREFACE 15 
 
 inhabited by Moslims, and ever since 
 the Russo-Japanese war, in all the Moslim 
 countries which are under British sway, 
 there have been movements and agita- 
 tions in favour of Western methods of 
 government, constitutionalism, and self- 
 government. There has been a cry of 
 ' Egypt for the Egyptians,' and of ' India 
 for the Indians,' and in some cases this 
 cry has been supported and punctuated 
 by bombs and assassination. Now the 
 question which arises is this : Is it possible 
 to pour the new wine into the old bottles ? 
 Is it possible to graft on to Oriental habits 
 the modes of thought, the systems and 
 forms of government of the West ? Can 
 Eastern and Moslim countries govern 
 themselves according to Western ideas ? 
 Is constitutional government possible in 
 the East ? At first sight, recent events 
 in Turkey seem to have answered the
 
 i6 PREFACE 
 
 1 
 
 question finally, and once for all, in the 
 negative ; but on looking closer into the 
 question, we find that this is not so really ; 
 for during the period in which Turkey 
 was at the mercy of the Committee of 
 Union and Progress, there was in Turkey 
 never for one moment the shadow of 
 anything like constitutional government 
 or Western methods--^there was, in fact, 
 merely a different and equally ruth- 
 less form of despotism. Turkish adminis- 
 tration went on exactly as it had done 
 before. That is to say, it didn't go on. 
 Armenians, and other Christian peoples 
 subject to the Turks, were massacred 
 exactly as they had been massacred before. 
 The organisers and the instruments of 
 these massacres went unpunished just as 
 they had gone unpunished before. There 
 was this difference only : that, whereas 
 under the old regime, when the Christians
 
 PREFACE 17 
 
 were massacred, the Powers used to put 
 pressure on the Sultan, under the new 
 regime the Powers merely replied to the 
 complaining sufferers, ' It is no longer 
 our business ; you must present your 
 grievances through the proper and legal 
 channel of Parliament, and your consti- 
 tuents will no doubt see that they are 
 speedily redressed.' But the influence of 
 the Young Turks was by no means simply 
 negative. Superficially they plunged head- 
 long into every kind of modern innovation, 
 and this was especially true as far as 
 the army was concerned. The old order y^ 
 was changed, but nothing was put in its 
 place, and the only result of such changes 
 was to sow in the hearts of the population 
 — and especially in the hearts of the-' 
 soldiers — the seed of disbelief in the 
 wisdom and the sound qualities of those 
 who brought the changes into effect.
 
 i8 PREFACE 
 
 The reasons why the experiment of the 
 Young Turks in constitutional government 
 failed, were, first, that the changes they 
 effected were superficial and not funda- 
 mental, and secondly that the changes 
 they made were premature and carried 
 out in a rash haste against the advice 
 of all mature opinion. Now, as I have 
 already said, the Turkish experiment does 
 not prove anything with regard to the 
 main question of whether it is possible 
 or not to introduce progress and new 
 forms of government into Eastern and 
 Moslim countries. Or, rather, all that 
 it proves is this : (a) it is impossible to 
 bring about any such changes in a hurry ; 
 (b) superficial changes will do more harm 
 than good. But let us return now to 
 the larger question, which is of vital 
 importance to England at the present 
 day in India, in Persia, in Egypt, in
 
 PREFACE 19 
 
 fact wherever there are any Moslim 
 British subjects. Is it possible gradually, 
 and by degrees, to instill such lessons 
 of progress into these peoples as will 
 ultimately end in their governing them- 
 selves according to Western methods ? 
 Some people say it is. And the people 
 who say it have had very large ex- 
 perience of the East ; but they say it 
 can only be done slowly and gradually, 
 and that the change must be fundamental 
 and not superficial. All intelligent ob- 
 servers of Eastern hfe and Eastern ideas, 
 who have had a long and first-hand 
 experience of Oriental countries, are agreed 
 that if you introduce into Eastern countries 
 the forms without the reality of Western 
 government and Western methods, the / 
 result will be ferocious despotism and 
 
 ultimate disintegration. This is exactly 
 
 J 
 what has happened in Turkey under the 
 
 B 2
 
 20 PREFACE 
 
 regime of the Committee of Union and 
 Progress. To a man who is not an expert 
 in such matters — to someone Hke my- 
 self whose knowledge of the East and 
 of Oriental life is of the slenderest and 
 of the most superficial kind — it is ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to understand how 
 progress can ever become a reality in 
 Moslim countries unless the Mahomedan 
 religion is changed out of all recognition, 
 unless, in fact, it ceases to be Mahome- 
 dan : unless the word Islam ceases to mean 
 resignation and becomes synonymous with 
 hustle. Here, for instance, is what one 
 of the wisest of all experts in Oriental 
 matters, and one of the most brilliant of 
 all writers on Eastern affairs, says on the 
 subject. In his classic book, ' Turkey in 
 Europe,' Sir Charles Eliot writes thus : 
 'The unprogressive character of Moham- 
 medanism is due mainly to the Koran.
 
 PREFACE 21 
 
 We have seen how the difference between 
 the Hves of Christ and Mohammed is 
 reflected in the differences between their 
 rehgions. Not less marked has been the 
 effect of the sacred books of Islam and 
 Christianity. One of the most remark- 
 able features of the Gospel is its indefinite- 
 ness, in the best sense of the word — that 
 is to say, there is so little in it applicable 
 to only one place or one epoch. 
 
 ' If one thinks of what are usually con- 
 sidered the crying faults of the times 
 in which Christ lived — such as idolatry, 
 slavery, and various forms of cruelty and 
 lust — it is surprising to find that they 
 are not denounced in the Gospel, or even 
 forbidden. A perfectly general system of 
 morality, applicable to all ages, is enun- 
 ciated, which renders these and other sins 
 impossible for those who practise it, but 
 detail and local colour are conspicuous by
 
 22 PREFACE 
 
 their absence. The Koran is the oppo- 
 site of all this. Mohammed denounces the 
 idolatry, infanticide, and other evil cus- 
 toms of the pagan Arabs, somewhat after 
 the manner of the prophets of the Old 
 Testament, and conferred an inestimable 
 boon on Arabia by changing the existing 
 condition of religion and society. Un- 
 fortunately, he also thought proper to 
 legislate in detail for the form of society 
 which he preferred — a state of things 
 far superior to that which he abolished, 
 but still not one to be forced on all nations 
 in all times and countries. He legalised 
 polygamy, slavery, and other things to 
 which objection may be taken, and it is 
 irnpossible to detach his theological teach- 
 ing from his legislation. The weakness 
 of Islam is that the liberal interpretation 
 of the Koran presents almost insuperable 
 difficulties. The New Testament lends
 
 PREFACE 23 
 
 itself to manj^ modes of treatment ; both 
 Roman Catholics and Broad churchmen 
 read it with approval ; it was not com- 
 posed by the founder of the Christian 
 religion ; it puts forward no claims on its , 
 own behalf, but appeals mutely to the 
 succeeding ages to interpret it as best suits 
 their need. The Koran, on the contrary, 
 after an introductory prayer, opens with 
 the notable words, " There is no doubt 
 in this book," and throughout constantly 
 asserts that it is a revelation sent b}^ the 
 Almighty. Its precepts are put forward, 
 not only as injunctions of the Prophet, 
 but as Divine orders. Such coherence 
 and thoroughness were, and still are, an 
 enormous force for Mohammedanism as 
 the church militant. They give it an 
 unequalled power of converting, drilling, 
 and disciplining savage nations. But the 
 same characteristics become a source of
 
 24 PREFACE 
 
 weakness in the religion of a great state 
 in contact with European powers. Much 
 of Mohammed's legislation is wholly 
 incompatible, not only with what is 
 commonly called civilisation, but with 
 commerce and other business which a 
 nation must carry on, if it does not 
 desire to be left behind. Yet there are 
 no means of modifying the law of the 
 Prophet, or of setting it aside as non- 
 essential. No Western critic or Eastern 
 heretic has ever disputed the genuineness 
 of a single chapter, or even verse, of 
 the Koran. The book announces itself 
 as the word of God, " a direction of 
 the pious," and must be accepted as a 
 whole and unreservedly or not at all. 
 As the Prophet left his Church and 
 State, so they are now, and so they 
 must remain — austere, rigid, unalterable, 
 with only a curse and a sword-thrust for
 
 PREFACE 25 
 
 those whose institutions do not harmonise 
 with their description.' 
 
 Now, if this is true, and I beheve it to 
 be incontrovertible — if there is indeed no 
 means of modifying the law of the Prophet 
 — if Mahomed's legislation is indeed wholly 
 incompatible with what is comm.only 
 called civilisation — if the Church and 
 State must ever remain as the Prophet 
 left them, austere, rigid and unalterable — 
 how, one asks oneself, can Islam ever 
 progress, and how can the new wine of 
 Western methods be poured into the old 
 skins of Moslim tradition ? And yet, there 
 are men who have lived in the East, and 
 know the Oriental mind thoroughly, who 
 say that the thing is not impossible ; 
 that although Islam has been and is a 
 static institution, it is none the less elastic, 
 and that with regard to many of its social 
 precepts, it is capable of an infinitely
 
 26 PREFACE 
 
 liberal interpretation, and that, slowly 
 and gradually, such a liberal interpreta- 
 tion could be introduced into it. I leave 
 the question for experts to decide. Only 
 the future can prove which view is right. 
 Speaking as an outsider, I am profoundly 
 sceptical myself of ever seeing the realisa- 
 tion of an elastic Islam, or rather of a 
 reformed Islam. But the question which 
 concerns the British race in dealing with 
 its Eastern dominions is this : that whether 
 the thing be possible or impossible this 
 at least is certain — you cannot do it in a 
 hurry and you cannot do it superficially 
 without courting disaster. So much recent 
 events in Turkey have proved. 
 
 Of course in saying that the Young 
 Turks are responsible for the recent dis- 
 asters to Turkish arms I do not mean to 
 say that the Young Turks are the sole 
 cause of the general decay of Turkey in
 
 PREFACE 27 
 
 Europe. That would be nonsensical as well 
 as grossly unfair. As everybody knows, 
 the decay of the Ottoman Empire, which 
 has been going on for years, and in fact for 
 centuries, was caused by the fact that the 
 Turks arrived as a conquering nation in 
 Europe, treated Europe as an armed camp, 
 and refused to assimilate or be assimi- 
 lated by the people whom they conquered. 
 Their military power declined, that of 
 the subject races progressed. The Turks 
 remained stationary in this as well as 
 in all other matters, and in 1897 Sir 
 Charles Eliot summed up the matter in the 
 following prophetic words : * The Turkish 
 reformer and the Christian have nothing 
 in common, and the mass of Turks mis- 
 trust the reformer. Even in such a matter 
 as military reform, where there can be no 
 doubt that improvements are in the inter- 
 est of the Moslim, and the Moslim only,
 
 28 PREFACE 
 
 the Turk will not take the view which his 
 friends think he obviously ought to take. 
 Foreign military instructors have again 
 and again presented recommendations, and 
 again and again they have been rejected, 
 sometimes openly, sometimes with a pre- 
 tence of acceptance, but always quite 
 firmly. The Turk has a dim perception that 
 even in military matters he cannot under- 
 stand and practise European methods. 
 If he tries to do so, the control will pass 
 out of his hands into those of people who 
 are cleverer than himself. But though he 
 may think them clever, he does not on 
 that account feel any respect for them. 
 He regards them as conjurers who can 
 perform a variety of tricks which may be, 
 according to circumstances, useful, amus- 
 ing, or dangerous ; but for all Christendom 
 he has a brutal, unreasoning contempt — 
 the contempt of a sword for everything
 
 PREFACE 29 
 
 that can be cut, and to-day the stupid 
 contempt of a blunt sword.' Here we 
 have in a sentence the whole secret of 
 the failure of the Turks to compete with 
 the races they had formerly conquered. 
 ' The stupid contempt of a blunt sword ' — 
 here also we have the explanation of the 
 failure of the Young Turks reformers as 
 far as military matters were concerned. 
 Under the new regime foreign military 
 instructors were introduced, foreign mili- 
 tary methods were adopted, foreign theories 
 of strateg}^ were applied. But all this 
 reform was superficial and negative. It 
 had a negative effect. Old-fashioned 
 officers were dismissed ; the young officers 
 talked French and German. The old- 
 fashioned sergeants were abolished. The 
 ancient and fundamental idea of Islam, to 
 fight for the faith against the unbeliever, 
 was deprecated. But the army retained
 
 30 PREFACE 
 
 its brutal and unreasoning contempt for 
 all Christendom, the sword remained blunt, 
 and the new-fashioned manner of using it, 
 which the foreign instructors attempted 
 to inculcate, had merely the effect of 
 bewildering the wielder of it. The result 
 of the reforms on the army was, roughly 
 speaking, to dig a gulf between the officers 
 and the men, and to bewilder the execu- 
 tive by an ill-digested theory of strategy 
 and practice. The result was disorganisa- 
 tion, confusion and chaos, and this result 
 has now been written in history. 
 
 In blaming the Young Turkish regime 
 I am in no way casting any reflection 
 on the Turks themselves. The Young 
 Turks were foreigners. They were puppets 
 whose strings were pulled in Europe. 
 Their temporary success was due to their 
 throwing dust in the eyes of Europe and 
 to the support of the Freemasons and of
 
 PREFACE 31 
 
 certain financiers. They obtained this 
 support because they appeared to be at 
 one time the only thing in Turkey which 
 there was to support. The story of their 
 doings resembles Hans Andersen's tale of 
 the Emperor's new clothes. The whole of 
 Europe admired the new clothes whose 
 manifold and brilliant qualities the cun- 
 ning tailors pointed out, until a little 
 boy cried out that the King was naked. 
 During the whole period of the Young 
 Turks regime Turkey was naked ; the 
 part of the little boy was played by the 
 Bulgarians and the Allies. 
 
 All this does not prevent one from 
 sympathising with the Old Turks — that is 
 to say, with the Turks ; for there are in 
 reality no such things as Young Turks ; 
 there are only Turks and foreigners. 
 Everybody who goes to Turkey is attracted 
 by the character of the Turk, especially
 
 32 PREFACE 
 
 by the poor Turk — his dignity, his self- 
 respect, his hospitahty, his perfect manners, 
 his infinite and never-faihng courtesy. 
 And now, in the hour of his disaster, one 
 cannot help feeling indignant with those, 
 his former friends, who for so many years 
 were so loud and ostentatious in their 
 support of him, and who now, in the dark 
 hour of his trial, have so suddenly veered 
 round, and are equally loud and ostenta- 
 tious in their denunciation, their scorn 
 and their jeers. If the Turks were now 
 to turn round and massacre every single 
 European in Constantinople and in Turkey 
 — much as I should feel for the Europeans — 
 I should recognise that they had brought 
 it upon themselves. There has never been 
 a country which has suffered such ruthless 
 exploitation at the hands of the foreigner 
 as Turkey ; and, since in all matters of 
 practical business the foreigner is cleverer
 
 PREFACE 33 
 
 than the Turk, the only means that the 
 Turk has of redressing the balance is to 
 turn round and to massacre the Christians. 
 This is the initial and central difficulty of 
 the situation of Turkey in Europe. The 
 Turks have so far refused, or been unable, 
 to assimilate Western methods. Westerners 
 employ these methods against them and 
 exploit them. The Turks' only answer 
 is the sword. So has it always been, so 
 will it always be. This leads one to 
 believe that the happiest thing that could 
 perhaps happen to the Turks would be 
 for them to shake the dust of Europe off 
 their feet and to seek the more congenial 
 clime of Asia, from whence they came, to 
 which they properly belong, and where 
 they would have nothing to fear from 
 Western competition. The blend of Turkish 
 administration and Christian population 
 is fatal and hopeless ; for Turkish adminis- 
 
 r
 
 34 PREFACE 
 
 tration does not practically exist. Turkish 
 rule is misrule. But of course the fact 
 remains that they have had an Empire in 
 Europe, that the Empire has decayed, 
 and that this decay is a sad thing. I 
 for one will not join in the paean of 
 triumph, much as I admire the patriotism 
 of the Allies, deeply as I believe in the 
 reality of their past grievances, and in 
 the justice and the logic of their cause. 
 However great the sins of the Turks 
 may be, it is none the less a sad 
 thing when we see that which has 
 once been great and proud betrayed, 
 humiliated and in the dust. Mentem 
 mortalia tangunt. 
 
 ' Men are we, and must grieve when even the 
 shade 
 
 Of that which once was great is pass'd away.'
 
 PREFACE 35 
 
 II 
 
 The second part of this Httle book 
 consists of letters written recently from 
 the Balkans. The time I spent there was 
 brief. I saw nothing of the fighting, and 
 little of the war. But I did have the 
 opportunity of getting some first-hand 
 knowledge of the Bulgarians and the 
 Servians, and I left both countries with 
 feelings of admiration. When I reached 
 Sofia the whole country seemed to be 
 emptied of men. The city was deserted 
 save by women, children and youths. All 
 the able-bodied men had gone to the war. 
 And what struck me throughout, during 
 my stay in Bulgaria, and in the dealings 
 I had with the Bulgarian people, was 
 this : that the ideals of their nation 
 and their people were concentrated in 
 one burning quality, namely patriotism. 
 
 C 2
 
 36 PREFACE 
 
 Patriotism was their religion, their art, 
 their ambition, their recreation, their 
 occupation, their inner hfe. Like the 
 Spartans or the Japanese, they seemed 
 to be imbued with one single purpose and 
 to subordinate all their desires, ambitions, 
 and feelings to one single aim. In Servia 
 you are struck by older traditions, by a 
 mass of historical associations, by the 
 tinge and hue which an ancient and rich 
 literature gives to a country. But here 
 also you were met by a vital spirit of self- 
 sacrifice and a strong motive power. But 
 in Servia, voice and expression were given 
 fully to the ideals of the people. In 
 Bulgaria, the patriotism of the people 
 was shrouded in a veil of impenetrable 
 modesty and reserve. I came back from 
 the war with the feeling that the cause of 
 the Allies was not only the just, but the 
 sensible one — that their victory was a
 
 PREFACE 37 
 
 logical one, and in accordance with the 
 larger interests of Europe and the only 
 possible solution of the Eastern Question. 
 Moreover I liked these peoples, and experi- 
 enced kindness at their hands ; but this 
 does not prevent me from feeling the 
 utmost sympathy with the fallen Turk 
 in the hour of his trouble ; and had I to 
 spend the rest of my life in the Near East, 
 I think I would choose the unreclaimed 
 rather than the reclaimed Turkey ; and 
 yet I should be glad if Brusa and not 
 Constantinople were the capital of Turkey : 
 not that I envy any country the possession 
 of the poisonous and cosmopolitan city 
 of Byzantium, where the men of the East 
 forget their virtues, and the men of the 
 West add to the store of their vices. 
 
 MAURICE BARING. 
 
 February 191 3.
 
 LETTERS 
 FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 1909 AND 1912 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 
 
 Constantinople : May 2, 1909. 
 
 Somebody once said that the Turks had 
 never conquered Constantinople, but that 
 Constantinople had conquered the Turks. 
 And certainly what strikes a man arriving 
 here for the first time is the existence, 
 the strength, and the baffling spell of that 
 influence and that atmosphere which we 
 call Byzantine, and the permanence of 
 the spirit of Byzantium. It is this atmo- 
 sphere and influence — so hazy and so 
 
 39
 
 40 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 enigmatic — which make it difficult for a 
 stranger to find out what facts are happen- 
 ing and to form any estimate of their 
 significance. For the hfe in this city 
 is deceptive as the Bosphorus, whose sur- 
 face gives no hint of the many conflicting 
 and perilous currents which it conceals. 
 And as to sounding the native mind, 
 besides being the work of a lifetime it 
 requires many rare qualities and an 
 exceptional equipment. However, Special 
 Correspondents must rush in where even 
 fools fear to tread, and record such impres- 
 sions as they receive, however misleading 
 and wide of the mark they may be. 
 
 The first thing I have gathered is 
 this, that the Young Turk movement 
 is not of Byzantine origin. It is an out- 
 side growth, and has therefore qualities 
 of energ}^ and strength which are alien 
 to Constantinople. Secondly, the most
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 41 
 
 important fact of all seems to be that 
 whatever the faults and deficiencies of the 
 Young Turks may be, they are now the 
 only hope of salvation for the country ; 
 the only element which deserves the 
 encouragement and support of Europe. 
 
 As to the origin of the recent mutiny, 
 opinions are widely conflicting. Some 
 people sa}^ that it is inconceivable that it 
 should have happened without the instiga- 
 tion and deliberate consent of the Sultan, 
 Abdul Hamid. Others, equally well in- 
 formed, maintain that the Young Turks 
 were determined to get rid of the Sultan, 
 coute qui coiite ; that the Sultan may have 
 made any quantity of mistakes in his life, 
 but that he cannot have been so foolish 
 as to have thought the mutiny would prove 
 successful. Against this it is argued that the 
 Sultan was ignorant of what was happen- 
 ing outside, and this argument is again met
 
 42 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 by the counter-statement that the Sultan 
 was admirably well informed. I leave the 
 problem to historians ; there is quite as 
 much matter in it to provide a quarrel 
 amongst historians as there is in the Casket 
 Letters or the identity of the Man in the 
 Iron Mask. Even a minor matter such as 
 the behaviour of Abdul Hamid at the end 
 of the crisis is pictured in absolutely con- 
 flicting colours by people who have heard 
 the stories of eye-witnesses. The probability 
 is that both versions in both cases are true. 
 But if the origin of the crisis is obscure, 
 the result of it at least is plain. A military 
 revolution has taken place, and it was 
 carried out with energy, decision, and 
 military competence. From a purely mili- 
 tary point of view I am told by those who 
 are able to judge that as far as the mobili- 
 sation and movement of the troops were 
 concerned the Turkish army deserved great
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 43 
 
 praise. What they did was very creditable 
 indeed for them and would have been 
 creditable for any army, but that we must 
 be on our guard against exaggeration, 
 and not think that because this military 
 task was well performed they could there- 
 fore beat the Bulgarians. If they attacked 
 the Bulgarians they would be beaten. 
 The problem which now arises is this : the 
 revolution having been successfully accom- 
 plished, the logical result of it, and, indeed, 
 the result to be most greatly desired from 
 any point of view, would be the estab- 
 lishment of a strong and wise military 
 dictatorship. 
 
 What Turkey wants is not legislation — 
 her laws (those of the Code Napoleon) are 
 excellent — but administration. On the 
 other hand the Dictator will not dictate. 
 General Mahmoud Shevket Pasha refuses 
 to assume a military dictatorship. And
 
 44 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 everybody is unanimous in praising this 
 General, who combines with competence, 
 patriotism, energy, and strength, an extreme 
 modesty and hatred of self-advertisement. 
 Therefore the question is : What is to be 
 done ? For the moment it has been ad- 
 mirably solved by the creation of a more 
 or less anodyne Ministry. It is generally 
 thought that this Ministry can only have 
 a temporary character. And it may have 
 resigned by the time this reaches you. 
 But in any case the main problem — namely, 
 that of insuring competent administration 
 of a new kind — has not yet been solved 
 to the satisfaction of those who are now 
 playing the part in Turkish politics ; nor 
 is the situation viewed with considerable 
 optimism. 
 
 * Nous avons gagn6 la victoire,* one of 
 the most notable of the Turkish Deputies 
 said to me yesterday, * mais nous ne
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 45 
 
 Savons pas comment en jouir.' And another 
 member said to me, ' Things are better, 
 but they are by no means all right : chez 
 nous il y a tout a faire.' 
 
 Some people had hoped that a Ministry 
 composed of young men would be formed, 
 but the instinct of the country is to choose 
 white beards to govern them, and, indeed, 
 it certainly would appear rash to confide 
 posts of high administrative importance 
 to young men whose sole experience of 
 administration consists in having written 
 leading articles. 
 
 If I had to choose out the two signal 
 facts from all that has occurred lately, I 
 should say that they were firstly, patriot- 
 ism and the energy of the Young Turkish 
 military element ; and, secondly, the want 
 of men in the civil element. Yet, altogether, 
 I should say the general tone was fairly 
 hopeful, if not wildly optimistic.
 
 46 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 In the meantime the surface hfe of 
 Constantmople goes on as if there had been 
 no storm at all. The only traces of the 
 crisis that remain are the bullet marks 
 and the damage made by shells in certain 
 walls. I suppose the population of Con- 
 stantinople is the most opportunist in the 
 world. When the mutiny occurred it was 
 apparently expected as a matter of course. 
 I asked a Greek yesterday what the Greeks 
 thought of the whole business. He 
 said : * We Greeks do not say a,nything 
 at present, because we are afraid. We 
 were quite content with the old regime, 
 which guaranteed us our liberties, and we 
 are afraid any change may be for the 
 worse ; but we are not going to say so.' 
 
 During the days immediately following 
 on the crisis the streets were crowded with 
 soldiers. All the tramcars and almost 
 every cab were full of men who looked as
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 47 
 
 though they were dusty and stained with 
 much campaigning, swart Albanians with 
 their rifles slung across their shoulders, 
 Macedonian gendarmes in their light blue 
 uniforms. The mosques were littered with 
 soldiers, who looked as though they had 
 encamped in them. Altogether all this 
 soldiery — which is now gradually diminish- 
 ing — has behaved extremely well. Shots 
 have been heard at night, but no outrages 
 appear to have been committed, the only 
 exception being the Marines, who were 
 turbulent from the first, and it was said 
 some days ago that they would have to be 
 dealt with. As Tacitus says : 
 
 ' Legioni classicae diffidebatur.' 
 
 They were dealt with this morning and 
 have been disarmed. 
 
 The most picturesque event which has 
 happened since I have been here, was 
 the Selamlik last Friday. An extreme
 
 48 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 casualness marked the proceedings. It was 
 like things happen in Russia, onty more 
 so. Until the last minute nobody seemed 
 sure as to whether the ceremony was 
 going to be held at St. Sophia or not. 
 Everybody was in doubt up to the very 
 last as to what the Sultan's route would 
 be. Most of the troops were drawn up 
 in places by which it was impossible 
 for the Sultan to pass. At the last minute 
 the whole cortege w^as stopped by a large 
 hay wagon, which leisurely took its way 
 along the road which had been cleared 
 for the Sultan. The whole of Stambul 
 was crowded with the brightest of crowds 
 — men and women of all colours, dressed 
 in all colours, chirruping like sparrows, 
 hanging out of wooden balconies beside 
 broken Byzantine arches, where you catch 
 sight of trailing wisteria and sometimes 
 of the Judas tree in blossom.
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 49 
 
 The Sultan had no military escort 
 and only one sais dressed in blue and 
 gold as an outrider. There was no pomp 
 and circumstance about the ceremony, 
 and no fuss. It passed off very well 
 and everybody seemed pleased. 
 
 A Turk told me with pride the fol- 
 lowing story, which has, I think, appeared 
 in the Turkish newspapers. He said that 
 the Sultan, on his accession, summoned 
 his two principal Generals and offered 
 them each a bag containing £50. They 
 refused, and the Sultan said to them : 
 ' Why do you not accept it ? I am your 
 father and you are my children.' But 
 they answered that the ex-Sultan had 
 made these kinds of presents and that it 
 had done harm. They therefore thanked 
 the Sultan very much, but refused to 
 accept the gifts. 
 
 Yesterday I went to the Turkish
 
 50 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 Parliament. It is not a big building. 
 The Debating Hall is on the first floor, a 
 long oblong room, full of desks, with a 
 small white tribune for the members to 
 speak from in the middle of one side of it, 
 and above this a place for the President 
 and his secretaries. There are small gal- 
 leries, not much bigger than two boxes 
 thrown together at a theatre, at each end, 
 and a gallery for the shorthand reporters 
 opposite the tribune. Alongside of this 
 Debating Hall there is a long corridor 
 forming the lobby. 
 
 The Parliament is a stone's throw 
 from St. Sophia, and I suppose not far 
 from the site where Justinian's Palace 
 stood, and the crowd which stood smoking 
 by the gates of the Parliament — the fickle, 
 opportunist, supple-minded, picturesque 
 crowd of Stambul — was, I suppose, not 
 unlike that which took sides for the ' blues '
 
 OPENING OF THE NEW REGIME 51 
 
 and the ' greens ' in the days of Justinian 
 and Theodora. What is needed is a strong 
 man and a wise ruler, not to keep that 
 crowd in order, which is a task anyone 
 can accomphsh, but to rule and administer 
 the Provinces and the peoples (with their 
 conflicting traditions, their racial differences 
 and their sharp religious differences), which 
 that crowd represents and which formed 
 the last shred of what was once the Otto- 
 man Empire. Therefore the Young Turks 
 should be encouraged and supported as 
 much as possible. For it is only from 
 their ranks that such a ruler can come. 
 The alternative is Young Turk or nothing. 
 But as the strength of the Young Turks 
 lies in its military rather than in its civil 
 elements, so one cannot help thinking 
 it would be more satisfactory to see their 
 whole energies devoted to the creation 
 of Government and administration rather 
 
 D 2
 
 52 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 than to the elaboration of a system of con- 
 stitutional Government and parliamentary 
 legislation. However, they will work out 
 their salvation their own way. Let us 
 give them a fair chance and wish them 
 well, and hope now that they have con- 
 quered Constantinople they will not, in 
 their turn, be conquered by that insidious 
 city.
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 
 
 Constantinople : May 6, 1909. 
 
 An event of immense importance happened 
 
 last evening. It rained. In the night it 
 
 rained again, and the sky is still cloudy. 
 
 The importance of this event, which is, 
 
 perhaps, not at first sight apparent, lies 
 
 in the fact that there has been no rain 
 
 here for a long time ; that the country 
 
 has been threatened with drought ; that 
 
 drought means famine and famine means 
 
 disorder and probably massacre and a 
 
 general break up. In spite of this rain (it 
 
 is of that kind which seems to bring little 
 
 freshness, but rather an increased sense 
 
 of weight), the energy of the European 
 
 is but little stimulated at Constantinople. 
 
 53
 
 54 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 The act of writing (always a painful 
 operation) become more distasteful than 
 ever in a city where all the manifold 
 energies of the human machine seem to 
 exhaust themselves in the acts of drinking 
 coffee and having one's boots cleaned. 
 You have your boots finished off out of 
 doors after they have been preliminarily 
 cleaned indoors. You sit on a chair and 
 a man in a shirt and a fez rubs them, 
 waxes them, greases them, kneads them 
 with his bare hand, brushes them, dusts 
 them, polishes them with a silk hand- 
 kerchief, and paints the edges of them 
 with a kind of spirit. And during all 
 this process you look on at the shifting 
 crowd, sip your coffee, and think long 
 thoughts which lead nowhere. 
 
 Last Monday morning streams of people 
 were walking briskly from Pera to Stambul, 
 all in the same direction. They were
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 55 
 
 making for the Galata Bridge, for the news 
 was in the air that they had been hanging 
 some Turkish Danny Deevers in the morn- 
 ing. Nobody quite knew whether they 
 had been hanged yet or not. Some people 
 said they had been hanged at dawn ; 
 others that they were about to be hanged ; 
 others that they had just been hanged. 
 They had, as a matter of fact, been hanged 
 at dawn ; three of them at the end of the 
 bridge, three of them opposite St. Sophia, 
 four, I think, opposite the House of Parha- 
 ment, and three somewhere else ; making 
 thirteen in all. They were soldiers, and 
 one of them was an officer. They were 
 hanged for having taken part in the 
 recent mutiny and for having murdered 
 some men. 
 
 As you walked further along the bridge 
 the crowd grew denser, and right at the 
 end of the bridge it was a seething mass,
 
 56 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 kept back by soldiers from the actual spot 
 where the victims were hanging. You 
 must think of the crowd not as a London 
 crowd, all drab and grey, but a living 
 kaleidoscope of brilhant colours ; the 
 colours of tulips and Turkish carpets and 
 poppy-fields, red, blue and yellow. The 
 gallows, which were in line along the 
 side of the street beyond the bridge, 
 were primitive tripods of wood, the 
 victim being strung up by a rope fixed 
 to a pulley. The men were hanged by 
 being made to stand on a low chair. 
 The chair was kicked away and the 
 sharp jerk killed them. They were 
 hanging not far above the ground. 
 They were each covered by a white gown 
 and to the breast of each one his sentence 
 was affixed, written in Turkish letters. 
 They did not look like felons or like 
 murderers but rather like happy martyrs
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 57 
 
 (in a sacred picture), calm with an in- 
 scrutable content. I had but a glimpse of 
 them and then I was carried away by the 
 swaying crowd, which soldiers were prod- 
 ding with the butts of their rifles. The 
 dead soldiers were to hang there all day. 
 I did not go any further. 
 
 As I was trying to make my way back 
 through the crowd a Hodja (a Moslim 
 priest) passed, and he was roughly handled 
 by the soldiers and given a few sharp 
 blows in the back with their rifles. I heard 
 some fragments of conversation, English 
 and French. Some people were saying that 
 the exhibition would have a satisfactory 
 effect on the populace. Also I saw a 
 Kurd, a fierce-looking man, who was 
 gnashing his teeth ; not at the victims to 
 be sure, but at the thing, at the sight of 
 three Moslims who had died, as they 
 thought, for their faith, and for having
 
 58 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 defended it against those whom they were 
 told were its enemies, being made a spectacle 
 after their death for the unbeliever and 
 the alien. I wondered whether it would 
 have a salutary effect on the population. 
 I felt convinced that many of that crowd 
 resented the sight and sympathised with 
 the dead. That very evening I was told 
 by a most intelligent Turk that certain 
 elements of the population had bitterly 
 resented the pubHcity of the executions. 
 So far they have not been repeated, 
 although it was announced that more 
 would be held yesterday and the day 
 before. A proceeding like this cuts both 
 ways. It may have a salutary effect on 
 certain people, but others will nourish 
 on account of it that dangerous bitter- 
 ness which sooner or later leads to an 
 explosion. 
 
 On Tuesday afternoon I was wander-
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 59 
 
 ing about the streets of Stambul when, 
 amongst the indolent crowd, I noticed 
 several men who were peculiar. The first 
 thing which was unusual about them was 
 that they were walking in a hurry. The 
 second thing which struck me was that they 
 were dressed like Russians, in long grey 
 shabby redingotes, what the Russians 
 call padevki, and that their hair, allowed 
 to grow long, was closely cropped at the 
 ends just over the neck, where it hung 
 in a bunch. They also wore high boots. 
 I knew they were Russians and paid but 
 little attention to them, since Constantinople 
 is not a place, like London for instance, 
 where the appearance of an obvious 
 foreigner is a remarkable sight. But I 
 met an English friend, who said : ' Have 
 you seen the Russian pilgrims ? ' and this 
 led me to run after them. I soon caught 
 them up, for they were delayed under an
 
 6o LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 arch by some soldiers who were escorting 
 some prisoners (soldiers also). 
 
 ' Are you Russian ? ' I asked one of the 
 pilgrims, a tall, fair man. 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered, ' I am from Russia.' 
 
 * You are a pilgrim ? ' 
 
 * Yes, I come from Jerusalem.' 
 
 The man was walking in a great hurry, 
 and by this time we had reached the 
 Galata Bridge. 
 
 * Who were those men the soldiers were 
 leading ? ' the pilgrim asked me. 
 
 * Those were prisoners — soldiers who 
 mutinied.' 
 
 Here two others, a grey-bearded man 
 and a little dark man, joined in : the grey- 
 bearded man had a medicine bottle stick- 
 ing out of his coat pocket. I am certain 
 it contained alcohol. 
 
 * Some soldiers were hanged here,' I 
 added.
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 6i 
 
 * Where ? ' said the man. 
 
 ' There,' I answered, showing him 
 the exact spot. ' They stayed there all 
 day.' 
 
 ' For all the people to see,' said the 
 pilgrim, much impressed. ' Why were they 
 hanged ? ' 
 
 ' They mutinied.' 
 
 * Ah, just like in our own country,' said 
 the pilgrim. 
 
 'But,' joined in the dark man, 'have 
 not you sent away your gosudar ? ' 
 (Sovereign) . 
 
 ' I am not from here, I am an English- 
 man.' 
 
 * Ah ! but did the people here send 
 away their gosudar ? ' 
 
 ' They did.' 
 
 ' And was it done,' asked the grey-haired 
 pilgrim, ' with God favouring and assisting 
 (no Bozhemu) or not ? '
 
 62 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 I hesitated. The brown man thought 
 I did not understand. 
 
 * Was it right or wrong ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' They said,' I answered, ' that their 
 Sultan had not kept his word ; that he 
 had given a '* Duma " and was acting 
 against it.* 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said the brown-haired man, ' so 
 now they have a " Duma 'M ' 
 
 * Yes,' I said, ' they have hberty now.' 
 ' Ah ! Liberty ! Eh ! Eh ! Eh ! ' said 
 
 the grey-haired man, and he chuckled to 
 himself. Oh, the scepticism of that 
 chuckle ! As much as to say we know 
 what that means. 
 
 ' And you have a Sovereign ? ' asked 
 the brown-haired man. 
 
 * Yes, we have a King.' 
 
 ' But your Queen, who was so old, and 
 ruled everybody, she is dead.' 
 
 * Yes, she is dead/
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 63 
 
 * Ah ! she was wise, very wise.' 
 Now we have crossed the bridge. The 
 pilgrims had hastened on to their steamer, 
 which was alongside the quay. They were 
 going back to Russia. But one of them 
 lagged behind and almost bought a suit 
 of clothes. I say almost, because it 
 happened like this : A clothes seller — 
 Greek or Armenian, or Heaven knows 
 what — was carrying a large heap of clothes ; 
 striped trousers, black waistcoats, and blue 
 serge coats. The brown pilgrim chose a 
 suit. The seller asked five roubles. The 
 pilgrim offered three. All the steps of 
 the bargain were gone through at an 
 incredible speed, since the pilgrim was in 
 a great hurry. The seller asked him 
 among other things if he would like my 
 blue serge jacket. The pilgrim said 
 certainly not ; it was not good enough. 
 Finally, after looking at all the clothes and
 
 64 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 trying on one coat, which was two sizes 
 too small, he made his choice and offered 
 three roubles and a half. The bargain was 
 just going to be closed when the pilgrim 
 suddenly said the stuff was bad and went 
 away as fast as he could, having said 
 good-bye to me. He was a native of 
 Voronezh. 
 
 At last a Cabinet has been formed, and 
 it seems to have been satisfactorily formed. 
 It contains some capable men, who are 
 at the same time men of experience — the 
 Grand Vizier Hussein Hilmi, for instance, 
 the Minister of the Interior, and the 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs. The danger 
 lies in a possible eventual clash of con- 
 flicting ambitions ; of each important unit 
 wishing to oust the other and to be supreme. 
 For this Cabinet not only contains capable 
 men, but men who are ambitious as well 
 as capable. The most important fact in
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 65 
 
 the situation at present is financial. There 
 is some money, partly that which is being 
 paid by the Austrians and partly that 
 which was found at Yildiz. Therefore it 
 is thought that things will remain quiet 
 for a month or two. The Macedonian 
 troops, who are at present ruling the city, 
 are admirable. The state of siege continues ; 
 everything is quiet for the moment, but 
 all the people whom I have met here and 
 who have had experience of Turkish affairs 
 regard the present situation as being 
 profoundly unstable ; and some of them 
 dread a great debacle in about three months' 
 time. All who are interested in Turkey 
 should remember one essential fact which 
 lies behind all the shifting combinations 
 of political personalities and ephemeral 
 intrigues, and that is this : in Turkey the 
 Turk must be on the top. The equality 
 of the Christian elements with the Turkish
 
 66 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 is just as much out of the question now as 
 it has ever been. As soon as the Christian 
 in Turkey is put on absolutely equal terms 
 with the Turk it means that the Christian 
 gets the best of the Turk, and then the 
 Turk will draw his sword, and nothing 
 will prevent him from doing so. If any- 
 body wishes to understand this he will 
 find the whole question lucidly and com- 
 pletely exposed on page 153 of Sir Charles 
 Eliot's monumental and brilliant book, 
 ' Turkey in Europe.' The situation has 
 not changed in its essentials since this 
 book was written, and every word that 
 Sir Charles Eliot writes applies to the 
 present. A Turk was quoting to me this 
 very passage a few days ago. 
 
 Again, as someone who has great 
 knowledge of this country said to me 
 yesterday : * Qui sont les jeunes Turcs ? 
 II n'y a que les Turcs.' It seems clear
 
 THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 67 
 
 that the Young Turks will realise this as 
 well as anyone else ; they know that if 
 there is to be any order in this country 
 the Turk must be top dog. Whether he 
 be young or old is a question of detail. 
 
 E 2
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 
 
 Constantinople : May 12, 1909. 
 
 After a short spell of cold weather, the 
 spring came back last Monday and opened 
 * her young adventurous arms * to greet 
 the day of the ' Coronation ' of the new 
 Sultan. There was that peculiar mixture 
 of warmth and freshness in the air, that 
 intoxicating sweetness, which you only 
 get in the South ; and after the recent 
 rain the mass of green foliage in which the 
 red-tiled houses of the city are embedded, 
 like red bricks in moss, gleamed with a 
 brilliant freshness. The streets were early 
 thronged with people eager to make their 
 way towards Eyoub, where the mosque 
 
 68
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 69 
 
 is in which the Sultan is invested with the 
 Sword of Osman. 
 
 I drove across the old bridge into the 
 straggling Jewish quarter on the other 
 side of the Golden Horn. The houses 
 there are square and wooden, rickety and 
 crooked, top-heavy, bending over the 
 narrow street as though they were going 
 to fall down, inexpressibly squalid, dirty, 
 dusty and rotten ; they are very old, and 
 sometimes you come across a stone house 
 with half-obliterated remains of beautiful 
 Byzantine window arches and designs. 
 Every now and then you get glimpses of 
 side streets as steep as Devonshire lanes 
 and as narrow as London slums, with 
 wisteria in flower trailing across the street 
 from roof to roof. All along the road 
 people were at their door-steps, and people 
 and carriages were moving in the direction 
 of Eyoub. After a time progress, which up
 
 70 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 to then had been easy and rapid, came to 
 a dead stop, and the coachman who was 
 driving my companion and myself dived 
 into a side lane and began driving in the 
 opposite direction, back, as it seemed, 
 towards Constantinople. Then he all at 
 once took a turning to the right, and we 
 began to climb a steep and stony track 
 until we reached the outside walls of 
 Constantinople. These walls, which were 
 built, I believe, by the Emperor Theo- 
 dosius, are enormously thick and broad. 
 As we reached them people were climbing 
 up on to the top of them. 
 
 Soon we came to a crowd which was 
 being kept back by soldiers, and the inter- 
 vention of an officer was necessary to let 
 us drive through the Adrianople Gate into 
 the very road along which the Sultan was 
 to pass on his way back to Constantinople 
 after the ceremony. We drove through
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 71 
 
 the gate right on to the way of the proces- 
 sion, which was stony, rough, and steep. 
 We were at the top of a high hill. To the 
 right of us were the huge broad walls, as 
 thick as the towers of our English castles, 
 grassy on the top, and dotted with a thick 
 crowd of men dressed in colours as bright 
 as the plumage of tropical birds. At this 
 moment, as I write, the colour of one 
 woman's dress flashes before me — a brilliant 
 caerulean, bright as the back of a kingfisher, 
 gleaming in the sun like a jewel. To the 
 left was a vista of trees, delicate spring 
 foliage, cypresses, mosques, green slopes 
 and blue hills. Both sides of the road were 
 lined with a many-coloured crowd — some 
 sitting on chairs, some in tents, some on 
 primitive wooden stands. Lines of soldiers 
 kept the people back. The road itself was 
 narrow. The crowd consisted mostly of 
 poor people, but it was none the less
 
 72 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 picturesque on that account. Vendors of 
 lemonade and water carriers walked up and 
 down in front of them. Some members 
 of the crowd hung small carpets from 
 their seats. The tents varied in size and 
 quality, some of them holding magnificent 
 embroideries, and others being like those 
 which gipsies pitch near a race-course. 
 We drove on and on through this double 
 line of coloured people and troops down 
 the narrow cobbled way until we reached 
 the level, and there, after a time, we were 
 obliged to leave the carriage and go on 
 foot. 
 
 What struck one most about the appear- 
 ance of this road, with its make-shift stands, 
 its extemporary decorations, and its untidy 
 crowd, was that in the East no elabora- 
 tion and no complicated arrangements are 
 necessary in order to make a pageant 
 effective. Nature and the people provide
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 73 
 
 colours more gorgeous than any wealth 
 of panoplies, banners, and gems could 
 give, and the people seem to be part 
 of Nature herself and to share her vivid 
 brightness. 
 
 We walked through a cordon of cavalry 
 until we reached the mosque of Eyoub. 
 The Sultan had already arrived and his 
 carriage was waiting at the gate. The 
 carriages of other dignitaries were standing 
 in a side street. Leading up to the mosque 
 was a small street of wooden houses. Into 
 the ground floor of one of these houses we 
 were beckoned by a brown personage in a 
 yellow turban. There was a small platform 
 divided into two tiers, crowded with Turkish 
 men and women ; others were standing 
 on the floor. Some of the people sitting 
 down were officers ; some wore uniform ; 
 among those on the lower tier were some 
 soldiers, a policeman, and a postman. We
 
 74 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 were welcomed with great courtesy and 
 given seats. But whenever we asked 
 questions, every question — no matter what 
 it was about — was taken to mean that we 
 were anxious to know when the Sultan was 
 coming. And to every question the same 
 answer was made gently by these kind and 
 courteous people, as though they were 
 dealing with children : ' Have patience, 
 my lamb, the Sultan will soon be here.' 
 
 Immediately in front of us was the 
 large French barouche of the Sultan, drawn 
 by four bay horses, the carriage glittering 
 with gilding and lined with satin. We 
 waited about an hour : the people every 
 now and then continuing to reassure us 
 that the Sultan would soon be there. Then 
 we heard the band. Two men spread a 
 small carpet on the steps of the carriage, 
 into which the Sultan immediately 
 stepped and drove off, headed by a sais
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 75 
 
 dressed in blue and gold and mounted 
 on a bay horse. 
 
 As this large gilded barouche passed, 
 with the Sultan in uniform inside it, the 
 spirit of the Second Empire seemed for 
 one moment to hover in the air, and for 
 one moment I half expected the band 
 to play : 
 
 •Voici le sabre, le sabre, le sabre, 
 Voici le sabre, le sabre de mon pere,' 
 
 which, as far as the words go, would have 
 been appropriate, as the Sultan had just 
 been girded with the sword of his predeces- 
 sors. And this sudden ghost of the Second 
 Empire was in curious contrast with the 
 people looking on with whom I was stand- 
 ing. For they belonged to the Arabian 
 Nights and to infinitely old and far-off 
 things, hke the Old Testament. They 
 were quite solemn when the Sultan 
 passed and murmured words of blessing.
 
 76 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 But there was no outward show of en- 
 thusiasm and no cheering or even 
 clapping. I beheve there was farther on, 
 but not to any great extent. 
 
 I wondered whether the ghost of the 
 Second Empire, which had seemed to be 
 present, was an omen or not, and whether 
 the ceremony which marked the inaugura- 
 tion, not only of a new reign but also of 
 a new regime — a totally different order 
 of things, a fresh era and epoch — was 
 destined really to be all this, or whether 
 under its gaiety and careless lightness, 
 it was in reality something terribly solemn 
 and fatal of quite another kind, namely, 
 the funeral procession of the Ottoman 
 Empire. 
 
 The main impression one receives at 
 Constantinople-to-day is one of instability. 
 Everything remains to be done. The re- 
 sults of thirty years' inaction are there.
 
 THE SULTAN'S VISIT TO EYOUB 'j'j 
 
 and the man who caused that inaction 
 and sacrificed everything in a desperate 
 struggle to maintain the pohtical exist- 
 ence of his country and the supremacy 
 of a Moshm minority in a country where 
 Christians preponderated, is gone. Every- 
 one is agreed that there is no great man 
 to deal with the situation. Everyone who 
 has been in Turkey for five minutes knows 
 that constitutional forms and political 
 theories mean nothing to the Turks in 
 themselves ; and that, unless they are 
 combined with administrative capacity, 
 they will be fruitless and useless. 
 
 If the new regime fails, the only re- 
 sult can be a great debacle. That is why, 
 without being pessimistic, the ceremony 
 of the other day inspired one with doubt- 
 ful thoughts, with clouded hopes and 
 shadowy fears. There is, however, no 
 doubt about one thing : there is — apart
 
 78 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 from the men at the head of affairs — a 
 large number of intelhgent men who 
 earnestly desire the regeneration of their 
 country. There is also a patriotic army, 
 which is well disciplined and well led. 
 Let us hope, therefore, that the ceremony 
 of the other day was indeed the marriage 
 day of Turkey and a new order, and not 
 the funeral of the Ottoman Empire. But 
 I wonder which it was.
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 
 
 Constantinople : May 19, 1909. 
 
 The atmosphere of Constantinople is 
 like that of an opal which is perpetu- 
 ally changing, and the inhabitants of 
 Constantinople are like chameleons, for 
 ever assimilating the shifting hues of 
 their surroundings. Events are the 
 solid things which count here. And it 
 will be impossible to form a true 
 estimate of the present state of things 
 until enough time has passed to enable 
 it to bear fruits in fact. 
 
 One of the fruits of the dissemination 
 of the idea of equality between the Moslim 
 and the Christian has been the massacres 
 of Adana, which are said, as far as brutal 
 
 79
 
 8o LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 details are concerned, to have surpassed 
 any massacres which have yet occurred. 
 The cause of these massacres is the same 
 thing which produced any massacres that 
 have ever happened in Turkey. The 
 Moshm felt the Christian was getting the 
 upper hand of him and therefore deter- 
 mined to diminish the number of Christians. 
 There is this difference, however, between 
 the old massacres and these. When the 
 Armenian massacres took place it was 
 known that the perpetrators of them 
 would be hien vus by many persons in 
 authority. Now those particular persons 
 are no more. The massacres, therefore, 
 whatever anyone may say to the contrary, 
 were made for the * wearing of the green ' 
 against those who did not wear it. 
 
 The Government of Turkey is at this 
 moment in the hands of the Committee 
 of Union and Progress, who are supported
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 8i 
 
 by an excellent and well-disciplined army, 
 and who have made a Cabinet — consist- 
 ing of men who have served under the old 
 regime. Every single Turk I have talked 
 with about the present situation has said 
 the same thing to me. You ask whether 
 he is an optimist or a pessimist about 
 the state of affairs, and he answers : ' I 
 am not a pessimist, I am an optimist, 
 only on one condition, and that is that a 
 military dictator be appointed.' 
 
 Again, a Turk said to me yesterday : 
 * We must have a strong man for the 
 people to obey ; they have bowed their 
 heads for so long that it is impossible for 
 them to cease doing so.' But I confess 
 I am puzzled when such things are said, 
 for this reason : That as far as one can see 
 there is practically at this moment a 
 military dictatorship. The state of siege 
 exists. Martial law exists. There is no
 
 82 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 reason why it should not go on existing 
 indefinitely. It causes nobody any in- 
 convenience and assures the maintenance 
 of order. 
 
 Since I have been here I have not 
 met a human being of any nationality 
 who believes that constitutional govern- 
 ment, such as we understand it, can ever 
 be a reality in Turkey. This does not 
 mean that they disbelieve in any possible 
 improvement ; but what they do dis- 
 believe is that the ideas of the French 
 Revolution or of the London County 
 Council will ever be living realities in 
 the Ottoman Empire. Here is a little 
 anecdote which will illustrate what is 
 meant better than pages of theory. After 
 the Revolution of July, when it was 
 announced all over Turkey that the era 
 of freedom had begun, a certain Vali 
 (Governor) in Asia Minor summoned the
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 83 
 
 people of his district and told them that 
 they had been granted freedom. ' What 
 does this all mean ? ' asked a Moslim 
 peasant who was present, indignantly. 
 * Were we slaves up till now ? ' 
 
 I remember a thing like this happening 
 in Russia, and the difference between the 
 stories enables one to estimate the vast 
 difference between the political status of 
 the two countries. When the Emperor 
 granted his constitutional manifesto, a 
 certain Governor, who was utterly be- 
 wildered by this novel Ukase, summoned 
 the local elders and told them they had 
 been granted freedom. ' But you must 
 remember,' he added, * that this means 
 you are free to do good and to behave 
 well, but you are not free to do evil.' 
 
 * Ah ! ' said a peasant, * it was just 
 like that before, your Excellency.' 
 
 The Russian was sceptical as to the 
 
 F 2
 
 84 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 efficacy of any manifesto granting freedom. 
 The Turk simply did not know what 
 it was all about, because he considered 
 himself already as free as the air, and 
 rightly so. 
 
 Therefore in Turkey it may be said 
 that the whole of this political panorama 
 of shifting interests only affects the lower 
 class, the poor, from the moment that 
 they will consider themselves to be equal, 
 and that is to say inferior, to the Christians. 
 Then they will draw the sword. This 
 has been said a hundred times. It can- 
 not be said too often, for it is the key- 
 stone of the whole situation. 
 
 Let us take for granted that nobody 
 here is really troubling about a Consti- 
 tution. There remains administration. 
 Turkey has excellent laws — why should 
 they not be efficiently applied ? The 
 answer is, as a Turk said to me two
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 85 
 
 days ago, the Turk will not administer. 
 He is like the Merovingian Kings, who 
 preferred that the dirty business of 
 governnaent should be done by inferior 
 people. During the last week long lists 
 of curtailed salaries have been published 
 in the newspapers. And it is thought 
 that great masses of officials are to be 
 sent away. If these dismissed officials 
 are replaced by new ones the discontent 
 would be so great — since the greater part 
 of the population here consists of officials, 
 that, unless troops remain in the town, 
 there would probably be a replica of the 
 recent mutiny amongst the civil elements 
 of the population. 
 
 However, with regard to this whole 
 question of administration, it is far too 
 soon to form an opinion. And it would 
 be unfair to take for granted that the 
 pessimistic opinion must be the right
 
 86 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 one. The new regime may organise some 
 admirable administration ; but so far the 
 only good administration which has ever 
 existed in Turkey has been the work of 
 the foreigners. 
 
 Progress means, first, economical pro- 
 gress. Economical progress is difficult in 
 Turkey, because Turkey is a pre-eco- 
 nomical country. If the country were 
 thrown open to foreigners and developed 
 according to European methods, if the 
 houses of the Turks were bought by 
 foreigners, companies formed and a buzzing 
 movement set going, what would happen ? 
 There is one thing which one can safely 
 say would not happen. The Turks would 
 not quietly and cheerfully co-operate with 
 such a movement. And the Europeans 
 who did such a thing would be obliged 
 to carry out their ideas to their logical 
 close and drive the Turks out of Turkey.
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 87 
 
 Here, again, the old question arises which 
 has struck all men who have dwelt in 
 the East and studied countries such as 
 Turkey and Egypt. How can progress 
 and Islam be blended ? How can you 
 urge a country to go on when the act 
 of going on necessitates doing certain 
 things which religion forbids ? How can 
 you change the social status of a country 
 when that social status has been pro- 
 nounced to be immovable by the law 
 of the Prophet ? 
 
 All that I have written so far seems 
 to point to pessimistic conclusions. This is 
 not necessarily so. It depends from what 
 point of view you look at the question. 
 If you judge the situation according to 
 the probability or the improbability of 
 realising in Turkey the methods of the 
 London County Council or the ideas of 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, then the outlook
 
 88 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 is indeed as black as pitch ; but if you 
 hope that Turkish affairs may slowly 
 develop on their own lines, that ad- 
 ministration may be improved, that there 
 may be less bad administration — then there 
 is no necessity to be pessimistic. I can 
 only repeat what I have said before. 
 The Young Turks are full of energy. 
 They have had one great lesson with 
 regard to the danger of doing things too 
 fast. They are quite alive to the necessity 
 of the Turkish element having the upper 
 hand. They have an excellent army at 
 their disposal. Therefore all we can do is 
 to wish them well. It is far too soon to 
 say whether the task the}^ have under- 
 taken is possible or impossible.
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH THE 
 NEW REGIME 
 
 Constantinople : June 21, 1909. 
 
 At the present moment the Cretan situa- 
 tion is occupying the attention of European 
 poHticians. It is, therefore, perhaps worth 
 while to consider somewhat closely the 
 point of view of the Greeks and their posi- 
 tion, their aims, hopes, and fears with 
 regard to the later developments of the 
 Eastern Question. 
 
 Before leaving Constantinople, I re- 
 ported to the Morning Post by telegraph 
 that there was a feeling of bitterness among 
 the Greeks with regard to the present 
 administration. In the Morning Post of 
 
 Thursday, June 3, an interesting letter 
 
 89
 
 go LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 from M. Alex Pallis appeared dealing with 
 this fact and explaining it. M. Pallis 
 tells us that, not to speak of bitterness 
 among the Greeks at Constantinople, there 
 is a strong reactionary feeling, but he tells 
 us also it is practically confined to the Greek 
 clergy, which is in favour of a ' reactionary 
 restauration.' The feeling appears to be 
 general, M. Pallis adds, because foreigners 
 as a rule obtain their information from 
 bishops or priests or from the Constanti- 
 nople Press, which is devoted to Greek 
 interests. 
 
 While I was at Constantinople I did not 
 happen to meet a Greek bishop, a Greek 
 priest, or a Greek journalist, but I did 
 meet several intelligent and cultivated 
 Greeks, who expressed to me sentiments 
 of bitterness, and especially of distrust, 
 with regard to the present administration, 
 but who at the same time were far from
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH NEW REGIME 91 
 
 desiring anything like a reaction or a 
 * reactionary restauration.' The point of 
 view of these people, of which I took care- 
 ful notes at the time, is perhaps worth 
 considering. One of my informants was a 
 man whose name is well known in modern 
 Greek literature, and, so far from being 
 influenced by priests, he was an avowed 
 agnostic, and so far from desiring a re- 
 action, his profession and peculiar circum- 
 stances had given him an ample and bitter 
 knowledge of the disastrous effects of the 
 old regime. 
 
 I have no wish to contradict or to dis- 
 pute M. Pallis' statements ; he must neces- 
 sarily be a far better judge of the situation. 
 I wish to supplement them by another 
 point of view, which I came across and 
 which seems to me to be worthy of notice, 
 as it was that of able, experienced, and 
 cultivated men. I will therefore make a
 
 92 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 short abstract of the notes I took in Con- 
 stantinople of several conversations with 
 several Greeks. 
 
 The first thing which struck me was 
 that these Greeks feared for their privileges. 
 Now, these so-called privileges guarantee 
 to the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire free- 
 dom of national education and the free 
 exercise of their religion. The Greek com- 
 munities of Turkey have been compared, 
 and not unjustly, with small autonomous 
 Republics under the jurisdiction of their 
 bishops. These bishops are responsible for 
 the political acts of the people in their 
 dioceses. Should these people be found 
 guilty of crime they appear before a tribunal 
 consisting of Greek bishops. Every bishop 
 is, in his diocese, the president of a tribunal 
 whose business it is to deal with matters 
 of civil and ecclesiastical law (such as 
 succession, inheritance, divorce, etc.). The
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH NEW REGIME 93 
 
 regime of Abdul Hamid respected these 
 privileges. The foundation of the Bul- 
 garian Exarchate dealt them a blow, for 
 since its establishment constant friction 
 was caused by questions such as that of 
 the Macedonian Archbishops and confis- 
 cation of churches, etc., but the main 
 point of my informants was that, under 
 the old regime, in spite of considerable 
 friction, the privileges were on the whole 
 respected. 
 
 The view of the new regime (I am, of 
 course, expressing the whole time the 
 opinions of my Greek informants) is that the 
 Turkish Constitution cannot tolerate privi- 
 leged bodies, especially that of the OEcu- 
 menical Patriarchate, which forms a state 
 within the state. Nevertheless, in the course 
 of recent debates in the Chamber, the Presi- 
 dent, Ahmed Riza, did not allow a debate 
 to take place on the privileges, but declared
 
 94 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 that they would be respected by the Con- 
 stitution. This proves that the Young 
 Turks do not dare to attack the privileges 
 of the Orthodox Church directly, but they 
 intend to accomplish their object by in- 
 direct measures, which are equivalent to 
 the annihilation of the privileges of Hellen- 
 ism. These measures are the Education 
 Bill and the proposed law with regard to 
 the military service of Christians. The 
 Turks, say these Greeks, will attempt 
 to do by means of the schools and their 
 barracks what time and calamity have not 
 yet been able to achieve — to make the 
 Greek into an Ottoman. The CEcumenical 
 Patriarchate is determined to struggle 
 against this with all its might, and it will 
 be sustained by the united efforts of the 
 Greek nation. 
 
 A Greek professor corroborated to me 
 the opinions which I have just written,
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH NEW REGIME 95 
 
 and cited the following as an instance. 
 About three weeks ago the Director of a 
 large Greek school at Constantinople re- 
 ceived a visit from the Inspector of Public 
 Instruction, who asked to be supplied with 
 written information on the functions and 
 progress of the school, the names of the 
 pupils and professors, their age, class, 
 nationality, etc. Other inspectors asked 
 for like information in all the Greek 
 schools. Everywhere they received the 
 same answer : ' Greek schools can only 
 furnish information to the (Ecumenical 
 Patriarchate.' The Government applied to 
 the patriarchate, which refused to answer 
 until precedents with regard to similar 
 demands under the old regime had been 
 examined. 
 
 The object of the Education Bill, say 
 the Greeks, is to destroy Greek schools 
 and to suppress Greek education and
 
 96 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 the knowledge of the Greek language. 
 Since instruction in Greek, according to 
 this Bill, is to be given in primary and 
 inferior schools only, and only if the 
 pupils are exclusively Greek, all Greek 
 secondary schools will be considered as 
 private, and they will probably meet with 
 the fate of the Greek schools in Bulgaria. 
 
 The proposed law with regard to military 
 service, insisting that the Greeks shall serve 
 with the Turks in the same regiments, 
 will finish what the Education Bill has 
 begun. The Patriarchate has determined 
 to consent to the military law only on 
 the condition that the Greeks should 
 form separate regiments, and that these 
 regiments should not leave the re- 
 gions where they are recruited. At this 
 moment a Committee is at work at the 
 Patriarchate examining these two questions, 
 which many Greeks regard as containing
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH NEW REGIME 97 
 
 between them the means of destruction of 
 Hellenism in Turkey. On the other hand, 
 no impartial person will have read what 
 I have just written without reflecting what 
 a difficult task it must be for the Turkish 
 Constitution to deal with what the Greeks 
 themselves say is ' a state within a state.' 
 Since the proclamation of martial law, 
 since the passing of the Press Law, many 
 Greeks say that they are hving under a 
 regime of sheer absolutism. They cannot 
 defend their cause in the Press, as they 
 were able to do before the recent events. 
 They cannot tell their people the facts 
 of the situation. Greeks of all classes 
 detest the Constitution and the regime of 
 liberty : not because it is a Constitution, but 
 because it is not one ; not because it is a 
 regime of liberty, but because it is a regime 
 of tyranny ; not because they think the 
 regime of Abdul Hamid was a good one.
 
 98 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 but because they think the present regime 
 is, for them, worse. Every day they are 
 victims of the present state of things. 
 In Macedonia the churches have not yet 
 been given to the Greeks, and the Govern- 
 ment favours the Bulgarians, and forbids 
 Greek archbishops to travel in their dioceses 
 and even goes so far as to arrest a Metro- 
 politan. * We admit,' say these Greeks, 
 ' that in order that the Turkish Constitu- 
 tion be successful the Turks and Greeks 
 must work hand in hand (as M. Pallis 
 said in his letter), but we maintain that 
 the Turks have done everything they 
 could to alienate us and to widen the 
 breach between us : witness the question 
 of Crete.' And the reason, they say, 
 the Turks have done this is that they do 
 not know what a Constitution means, 
 and that liberty in a European sense is 
 a thing which they will never be able to
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH NEW REGIME 99 
 
 understand. And the proof of this is 
 the manner in which they are dealing 
 with those of their own Liberals with 
 whom they happen to disagree. 
 
 Such are the opinions and such are the 
 arguments I heard from the educated 
 Greeks whom I met in Constantinople. 
 Three facts seem to me to stand out 
 clearly in all this : first, that the question 
 impartially considered is one of enormous 
 difficulty for the Turks ; secondly, that, 
 rightly or wrongly, the Greeks are exaspe- 
 rated, and their exasperation is increased, 
 so I hear from Greek correspondents in 
 Constantinople, with the increasing acute- 
 ness of the Cretan question ; thirdly, a cer- 
 tain substantiation has been given to the 
 accusation made by the Greeks against the 
 Young Turks, of their want of Liberalism, 
 by the more recent acts of the Young 
 Turks. They have hanged a journalist 
 
 G 2
 
 100 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 for his opinions, and they have con- 
 demned another journalist, Murad Bey, a 
 man, so a Turkish general told me, of 
 exceptionally great gifts and merit, and 
 a sincere Libera], to penal servitude for 
 life. Such acts savour more of despotism 
 than of liberty.
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 
 
 Sofia: October 31, 1912. 
 
 * On arrive novice a toutes les guerres,' 
 wrote the French philosopher ; or if he 
 did not, he said something very like it. 
 There is certainly no place in the world 
 where being on the spot makes so sharp 
 a difference in one's point of view as the 
 Near East, and where one's ignorance, 
 and the ignorance of the great mass of 
 one's fellow-countrymen, is so keenly 
 brought home to one. The change in 
 the point of view happens with surpris- 
 ing abruptness the moment one crosses 
 the Austrian frontier into what is, I sup- 
 pose, for the great mass of Englishmen, 
 
 lOI
 
 102 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 a vague land peopled by chocolate 
 soldiers. Other changes of a physical 
 nature happen also when one crosses 
 the frontier into any kingdom where war 
 is taking place. The whole of the super- 
 ficial luxuries of civilisation seem to dis- 
 appear in a twinkling ; and so adapt- 
 able a creature is man that you feel no 
 surprise ; you just accept everything as 
 if things had always been so. The trains 
 crawl ; they stop at every station, and 
 sometimes between stations ; you no 
 longer complain of the inadequacy of the 
 luxuries of your sleeping-car ; you are 
 thankful to have a seat at all. It is no 
 longer a question of criticising the quality 
 of the dinner or the swiftness of the ser- 
 vice. It is a question whether you will 
 get a piece of bread during the next 
 twenty-four hours, and a glass of water. 
 Belgrade Station was full of reservists
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 103 
 
 and peasants : men in uniform, men half 
 in uniform, men in the clothes of the 
 mountains, sheepskin coats, putties, and 
 shoes made of twisted straw ; dark, 
 swarthy, sunburnt and wind-tanned, hard 
 men, carrying rifles and a quantity of 
 bundles and filling the cattle vans to 
 overflowing. At every station we pass 
 trains, most of them empty, which are 
 coming back to fetch supplies of meat. 
 Every platform and every station is 
 crowded with men in uniforms of every 
 description. A Servian officer got into 
 the carriage in which I was travelling. 
 He was dressed in khaki. He wore a 
 white chrysanthemum in his cap, a 
 bunch of Michaelmas daisies in his 
 belt, and he carried, besides his rifle 
 and a khaki bag which had been taken 
 from the Turks, a small umbrella. He had 
 been wounded in the foot at Kumanovo.
 
 104 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 He was on his way to Uskub. He was 
 a man of commerce and had closed 
 his estabHshment to go to the war : the 
 majority of the officers in his regiment 
 were men of commerce also, he said. 
 They had sacrificed everything to go 
 to the war, and that was one reason why 
 they were not going to have the fruits of 
 the war, on the retaining of which they con- 
 sidered the very existence of their country 
 to be at stake, to be snatched from them 
 by a lot of diplomatists sitting round a 
 green table. * If they want to take from 
 us what we have won by the sword,' he 
 said, * let them take it by the sword.' 
 
 I asked him about the fighting at 
 Kumanovo. He said the Turks had fought 
 like heroes, but that they were miserably 
 led. Then he began to describe the horrors 
 of the war in the Servian language. As 
 I understood about one word in fifty
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 105 
 
 I lost the thread of the discourse, and 
 so I lured him back into a more neutral 
 language. He told me that someone had 
 asked a Turkish prisoner how it came 
 about that the Turks, who all the world 
 knew to be such brave soldiers, were 
 nevertheless always beaten. The Turk, 
 after the habit of his race, answered by 
 an apologue as follows : ' A certain man,' 
 he said, * once possessed a number of 
 camels and an ass. He was a hard task- 
 master to the camels, and he worked them 
 to the uttermost ; and after trading for 
 many years in different lands, he became 
 an exceedingly rich man. At last one 
 day he himself fell sick ; and feeling that 
 his end was drawing nigh, he wished 
 to relieve himself of the burden on his 
 soul, so he had bade the camels draw 
 near to him, and he addressed them 
 thus : "I am dying, camels, dying, only
 
 io6 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 I have most uncivilly kept death waiting, 
 until I have unburdened my soul to you. 
 Camels, I have done you a grievous wrong. 
 When you were hungry, I stinted you 
 of food, and when you were thirsty, I 
 denied you drink, and when you were 
 weary, I urged you on and denied you 
 rest ; and ever and always I denied you 
 the full share of your fair and just wage. 
 And now I am dying and all this Hes 
 heavily on my soul, and I crave your for- 
 giveness, so that I may die in peace. Can 
 you forgive me, camels, for all the wrong 
 I have done you ? " And the camels 
 withdrew to talk it over. After a while 
 the Head Camel returned and spoke to 
 the merchant thus : " That you ever over- 
 worked us, we forgive you ; that you 
 underfed us, we forgive you ; that you 
 never remembered to pay us our full 
 wage, we forgive you ; but that you
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 107 
 
 always let the ass go first, Allah may 
 forgive you, but we never can ! " ' 
 
 It took over twelve hours to get from 
 Belgrade to the Junction of Nish, where 
 there was a prospect of food. When 
 we stopped at one station in the twilight 
 there was a great noise of cheering from 
 another train, and a great crowd of soldiers 
 and women throwing flowers. Then in 
 the midst of the clamour and the murmur 
 somebody played a tune on a pipe. A 
 little Slav tune written in a scale which 
 has a technical name I have forgotten — 
 let us say the Phrygian mode — a plaintive, 
 piping tune, as melancholy as the cry 
 of a sea-bird. The very voice of exile. 
 I recognised the tune at once. It is in 
 the first ten pages of Balakirev's collec- 
 tion of Russian folk-songs under the name 
 * Rekrutskaya ' — that is to say, recruits' 
 song. Plaintive, melancholy, quaint and
 
 io8 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 piping, it has no heart-ache in it ; it is 
 the luxury of grief, the expression of 
 idle tears, the conventional sorrow of 
 the recruit who is leaving his home. 
 
 ' You are going far away, far away from poor Jean- 
 
 nette, 
 And there 's no one left to love me now, and you will 
 soon forget.' 
 
 So in the song of our grandfathers 
 the maiden sang to the conscript, adding 
 that were she King of France, * or, still 
 better, Pope of Rome,' she would abolish 
 war, and consequently the parting of 
 lovers. But the song of the Slav recruit 
 in its piping notes seems to say : * I 
 am going far away, but I am not really 
 sorry to go. They will be glad to get 
 rid of me at home, and I, in the barracks, 
 shall have meat to eat twice a day and 
 jolly comrades, and I shall see the big 
 town and find a new love as good as my
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 109 
 
 true love. They will mend my broken 
 heart there ; but in the meantime let me 
 make the most of the situation. Let 
 me collect money and get drunk, and 
 let me sing my sad songs, songs of parting 
 and exile, and let me enjoy the melancholy 
 situation to the full.' 
 
 That is what the wistful piping song, 
 played on a wooden flageolet of some 
 kind, seems to say. It just pierced through 
 the noise and then stopped ; a touching 
 interlude, like the shepherd's piping amidst 
 the weariness, the fever and the fret, the 
 delirious remembrance and the agonised 
 expectation, of the last act of Wagner's 
 Tristan und Isolde. And the train moved 
 on into the gathering darkness. 
 
 We arrived at Nish at 8 o'clock in 
 the evening. It was dark, and the station 
 was sparsely lighted, and the buffet to 
 which we had been looking forward all
 
 no LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 day was as crowded as a sardine-box 
 and apparently devoid of anything sug- 
 gesting food. Wounded soldiers, reservists, 
 officers filled the waiting-room and the 
 platform. The Servian officer dived into 
 the crowd, and returned presently bringing 
 his sheaves with him in the shape of 
 three plates of hot chicken. 
 
 Nish did not look like the meeting 
 place of a lot of triumphant soldiers, 
 but rather like the scene of an under- 
 ground conspiracy in a melodrama, where 
 a lot of tired conspirators were plotting 
 nothing at all. One felt cut off from all 
 news. In London, one knew, in every 
 sitting-room people were marking off the 
 movements of the battles with paper 
 flags on inaccurate maps. Here at Nish, 
 in the middle of a crowd of men who 
 either had fought or were going to fight, 
 one knew less about the war than in
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR iii 
 
 Fleet Street. One bought a newspaper, 
 but it dealt with everything except war 
 news. 
 
 A man came into the refreshment- 
 room — the name was in this case ironical — 
 and said, ' I have had nothing to eat, not 
 a piece of bread and not a drop of water, 
 for twenty-four hours,' and then, before 
 anybody could suggest a remedy — for food 
 there was — he went away. Afterwards 
 I saw him with a chicken in his hand. 
 One man was carrying about a small 
 live pig, which squealed. In the corner 
 of the platform two men, with crutches 
 and bandages, dressed in the clothes of 
 the country, were sitting down, looking 
 as if they were tired of everything. I 
 offered them a piece of cold sausage, 
 which they were too tired to refuse ; only 
 at the sight of a cigarette one of them 
 made a gesture, and, being given one,
 
 112 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 smoked and smoked and smoked. I know 
 the feeling. Suddenly, in the darkness, 
 a sleeping-car appeared, to the intense 
 surprise of everj^one — an International 
 sleeping-car, with sheets, and plenty of 
 room in it. My travelling companion and 
 myself started for Sofia, where we arrived 
 the next morning. 
 
 At Sofia the scene on the platform was 
 different. The place was full of bustle ; 
 the platform crowded with Red Cross men, 
 nurses, and soldiers, in tidy, practical 
 uniforms. The refreshment-room likewise 
 was crowded with doctors. You heard 
 fragments of many languages : the scene 
 might have been Mukden, 1904, or indeed 
 any railway station in any war anywhere. 
 An exceedingly capable porter got me my 
 luggage with despatch, and I drove to 
 the hotel in a ' phaeton,' but not with the 
 coursers of the sun. The horses here have
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 113 
 
 all gone to the war. At the hotel I was first 
 given — the only room said to be vacant — 
 a room which was an annexe to the cafe, 
 and the furniture of which consisted of 
 six old card-tables and nothing else. 
 
 Full of Manchurian memories, I was 
 about to think this luxurious, when the 
 offending Adam in me quite suddenly 
 revolted, and I was given instead a luxurious 
 upper chamber. The air in Sofia is keen 
 and bracing ; the weather cold, with a 
 touch of sleet. The town is clean, well 
 laid out, well paved, with good tramways, 
 and is going fast ahead in the building 
 line. Put away all ideas of comic opera 
 and all that pertains to Ruritania ; Sofia is 
 above all things businesslike, brisk and 
 capable, tough and strong. The very first 
 thing that strikes you here at the present 
 day is not that you are in the pictur- 
 esque show capital of an antiquated little
 
 114 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 kingdom, but that you are in the busy, 
 up-to-date centre of a Confederation 
 which is a great Power, and a great Power 
 of unguessed-of capabihties. 
 
 The next thing which strikes you is 
 the manner in which the people value the 
 war. To say that they are modest about 
 it would be to understate the case alto- 
 gether. Their attitude towards their 
 victories is like that of a public school boy 
 who, when in the company of his relations, 
 meets a schoolfellow in the holidays. They 
 seem discreetly to ignore their achieve- 
 ments and their prowess. The Servians 
 talk enthusiastically ; so do the Greeks, 
 I am told ; the Bulgarians say nothing. 
 Evidently they have known and they 
 know exactly what they want to do and 
 exactly how they mean to do it, and to that 
 great end everything else is subordinate. 
 About half the shops in the town are shut,
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 115 
 
 for the shopkeepers have gone to war, 
 
 and if there are any wine-vats here and 
 
 had the vintage been going on, then this 
 
 year 
 
 ' the must shall foam 
 
 Round the white feet of laughing girls 
 
 Whose sires have marched to Rome.' 
 
 By Rome I mean New Rome. But their 
 modesty, reserve, and sobriety are surely 
 remarkable. Not one syllable of self-praise 
 has been uttered, in their Press or else- 
 where. They have entirely resisted the 
 temptation to say ' I told you so,' or ' We 
 were right after all,' or ' You didn't expect 
 this.' 
 
 Considering that they had the experts 
 of Europe against them, and considering 
 that even those experts who had appreciated 
 at its true value the excellence of their 
 material and their organisation still thought 
 that they had an almost hopeless task 
 before them, the temptation must have 
 
 u 2
 
 ii6 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 been strong. Thej^ blew all theory to 
 bits, and never mentioned the fact after- 
 wards. Surely they must have been 
 tempted to say just once with Mephisto- 
 pheles, Grau, theiirer Freund, is alle Theorie, 
 after they had once more proved the truth 
 of the saying, but they didn't. 
 
 There is a toughness of fibre about this 
 people which is remarkable and strikes 
 one at first sight, an absence of sloven- 
 liness, and a directness, a unity, and a 
 singleness of purpose. Yesterday after- 
 noon I met by chance an Italian monk. 
 Talking of the war, he said : 
 
 * It has not surprised me. I know these 
 people well. I have lived among them 
 for years, and I have never in my life 
 seen such morally well- disciplined men. 
 It is necessary that such men should 
 defeat the Turks — / Turchi, poveretti, sono 
 Musulmani.'
 
 BULGARIA IN PRESENCE OF WAR 117 
 
 A few days ago here the Greek Minister 
 was carried in triumph, which in view of 
 past history is even more surprising than 
 if Sir Edward Carson were to be carried in 
 triumph by the NationaUsts through the 
 streets of Dubhn ; and although I have no 
 doubt that this will happen before long, if 
 it happened to-day we should be surprised. 
 It is more than this. It is as if the German 
 Emperor were carried in triumph through 
 Copenhagen. One is still more impressed 
 here, in this orderly city, by the magnitude 
 of the achievement of the new Great Power 
 than in the blare and clamour of Fleet 
 Street. There is very little about the war 
 in the newspapers here. Their despatches 
 are as laconic and unboastful as those of 
 the Spartans. The Bulgarians have mani- 
 fested a Spartan spirit not only in this, 
 but also in their moral discipline, in the 
 singleness of their purpose, and the concen-
 
 Ii8 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 tration of their patriotism ; and they have 
 shown something else — the achievement 
 of the paradoxical maxim : * To find out 
 what you cannot do, and then to go and 
 do it.' 
 
 That is certainly the secret of all great 
 military success ; and there can be no 
 doubt that the Bulgarians, in face and in 
 spite of the experts of Europe, have written 
 a new page in the military history of the 
 world.
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 
 
 Uskub, Servian Headquarters : Nov. 7, 1912. 
 
 I TRAVELLED froixi Sofia to Nish in the 
 still existing comfortable sleeping-cars ; 
 but when I arrived once more at the junc- 
 tion of Nish I learnt a lesson which I 
 thought I had mastered many years ago, 
 and that is, take in a war as much luggage 
 as you possibly can to your civilised base, 
 but once you start for the front or anywhere 
 near it, take nothing at all except a tea- 
 basket and a small bottle of brandy. I 
 had only a small trunk with me, but the 
 stationmaster refused to let it proceed. 
 War goes to the heads of stationmasters 
 
 like wine. This particular stationmaster 
 
 119
 
 120 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 had no right whatsoever to stop my small 
 trunk on the grounds that it was full of 
 contraband goods, and he could quite 
 perfectly well have had it examined then 
 and there ; instead of which he said it 
 would have to be taken to the Custom 
 House Office in the town, which would 
 involve a journey of two hours and the 
 missing of my train, I therefore left my 
 trunk at the station, nor cast one longing, 
 lingering look behind. The only reason 
 I mention this episode, which has no sort 
 of interest in itself, is to illustrate some- 
 thing to which I will come later. At 
 Nish I got into a slow train. The railway 
 carriage was full of people. There was 
 in it a Servian poet, who had temporarily 
 exchanged the lyre for the lancet, and 
 enrolled himself in the Medical Service. 
 His name was Dr. Milan Curcin — pro- 
 nounced Churchin. He showed me the
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 121 
 
 utmost kindness. Like all modern poets, 
 he was intensely practical and an admirable 
 man of business, and he promised to get 
 me back my trunk and either to bring it 
 to Uskub himself, as he was continually 
 travelling backwards and forwards between 
 Uskub and Nish, or to have it sent wherever 
 I wished. He spoke several languages, 
 and we discussed the war. He said the 
 Servians were very sensitive at the abuse 
 which had been levelled against them by 
 Pierre Loti. Pierre Loti, he said, accused 
 them of being barbarians and of falling 
 upon the Turks for no kind of reason. 
 ' We,' said the poet, * hate war just as 
 much as anyone else. What does Pierre 
 Loti know of our history ? And what 
 does he know of Turkish rule in Servia ? 
 He knows Stambul ; " but what does he 
 know of Turkey who only Stambul knows ?" 
 Besides which, if Pierre Loti's knowledge
 
 JQ2 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 of Turkey was anything like his knowledge 
 of Japan as reflected in that pretty book 
 called " Madame Chrysantheme " — a book 
 which made all serious scholars of things 
 Japanese rabid with rage, — it is not worth 
 much.' He had no wish to deny the Turks 
 their qualities. That was not the point. 
 The point was, the result of Turkish rule 
 in Servia in the past, and that was unspeak- 
 able. The poet was obliged to get out at 
 the first station we stopped at, and after 
 his departure I moved into another com- 
 partment, in which there were a wounded 
 soldier, a young Russian volunteer who 
 was studying at the Military Academy 
 at Moscow, two men of business who were 
 also soldiers, and a gendarme who had 
 been standing up all night, and who stood 
 up all day. I offered these people some 
 tea, having a tea-basket with me. They 
 accepted it gratefully, and after a little
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 133 
 
 time one of them asked me if I were an 
 Austrian. I said No, I was an English- 
 man. They said, * We thought it extremely 
 odd that an Austrian should offer us tea,' 
 The wounded soldier, thinking I was a 
 doctor, asked me if I could do anything 
 to his wound. As he spoke Servian I 
 could only understand a little of what he 
 said. It seemed heartbreaking, just as 
 one began to get on more or less in Bul- 
 garian, to have to shift one's language to 
 one which, although the same in essentials, 
 is superficially utterly different in accent, 
 intonation and in most of the common 
 words of everyday life ! Servian and 
 Bulgarian are the same language at root, 
 but Servian is more like Polish, Bulgarian 
 more like Slavonic. Servian is a great 
 literary language, with a mass of poetry 
 and a beautiful store of folk songs and 
 folk epics. Bulgarian compared with it
 
 124 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 is more or less of a patois ; it is like 
 Russian with all the inflections left out. 
 With the help of the Russian student I 
 gathered that the soldier had been wounded 
 at the battle of Kumanovo, and that his 
 wound had been dressed and bandaged by 
 a doctor, but that subsequently he had 
 gone to a wise woman, who had put some 
 balm on it, and the balm apparently had 
 had a disastrous effect. I strongly recom- 
 mended him to apply to a doctor on the 
 first possible occasion. It is travelling 
 under such circumstances, in war time 
 especially, that one really gets beneath 
 the crust of a country. Every man who 
 travels in an International sleeping-car 
 becomes more or less international ; and 
 it is not in hotels or embassies that you 
 get face to face with a people, however 
 excellent your recommendations. But 
 travel third class in a full railway carriage
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 125 
 
 in times of war and you get to the heart 
 of the country in which you are travelling. 
 The qualities of the people are stripped 
 naked — their good qualities and their bad 
 qualities ; and this is why I mentioned 
 the episode of the trunk, in order to call 
 attention to the extreme kindness shown 
 to me by the Servian poet, Dr. Curcin, who 
 rescued the trunk for me at great personal 
 inconvenience. Let us hope that the 
 ' Georgian ' poets would do the same for a 
 Servian war correspondent, supposing there 
 were a war in England and they were to 
 come across one. 
 
 After many hours we came to a stop 
 where it was necessary to change, at 
 Vranja ; and then began one of those 
 long war waits which are so exasperating. 
 The station was full to overflowing with 
 troops ; there was no room to sit down in 
 the waiting-room. We waited there for
 
 126 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 two hours, and then at last the train was 
 formed which was bound for Uskub. There 
 were several members of the Servian 
 Parliament who had reserved places in 
 this train, and in a moment or two it 
 appeared to be quite full, and there seemed 
 to be no chance of getting a place in it. 
 I was handicapped also by the fact of 
 carrying a saddle and a bridle, which it 
 was almost impossible to get into the narrow 
 corridor of the railway carriage. But that 
 I got a place in the train and that room 
 was found for the saddle was entirely due 
 to the kindness of an aviator called 
 Alexander Maritch, who was one of those 
 extremely unselfish people who seem to 
 spend their life in doing nothing but 
 extremely tiresome things for other people. 
 He carried my saddle in his hands for 
 half an hour and at last managed to find 
 room for it where it would not be in the
 
 WITH. THE SERVIANS 127 
 
 way of all the other passengers. He was 
 an astonishingly capable man with his 
 hands and his fingers. There appeared 
 to be nothing he could not do. He un- 
 coupled the railway carriages ; he mended 
 during the journey a quantity of broken 
 objects, and he spent the whole of the time 
 in making himself useful in one way or 
 another. 
 
 Towards nightfall we arrived at the 
 station of Kumanovo, and got out to have 
 a look at the battle-field. It was quite 
 dark and the ground was covered with 
 snow. Drawn up near the station were 
 a lot of guns and ammunition carts which 
 had been taken from the Turks. Here 
 were some Maxim guns whose screens were 
 perforated by balls, which shows that they 
 could not have been made of very good 
 material ; and indeed at Uskub I was 
 told that there were no doubt cases where
 
 128 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 the Turkish material was bad ; but what 
 seems to have been a more important factor 
 than this in the Turkish disorganisation is 
 the fact that the Turks evidently, in many- 
 cases, did not know how to deal with 
 their weapons. They forgot to unscrew 
 their shells ; they jammed their rifles. 
 This is not surprising to anyone who has 
 ever seen a Turk deal with an umbrella. 
 He carries it straight in front of him, 
 pointing towards him in the air, if it is 
 shut, and sideways and beyond his head 
 if it is open. 
 
 We arrived at Uskub about half-past 
 eight. The snow was thawing. The aspect 
 was desolate in the extreme. The aviator 
 found me a room in the Hotel de la 
 Liberte ; but the window in it was broken, 
 and there was no fuel. It was as damp 
 as a vault. We had dinner. I happened 
 to mention that it would be very nice to
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 129 i 
 
 i 
 
 smoke a cigarette, but I had not got any ' 
 
 more. At once the aviator darted out of ; 
 
 the room and disappeared. ' He won't j 
 
 j 
 come back/ said one of his friends, 'till > 
 
 he has found you some cigarettes, you j 
 
 may be sure of that.' In an hour's time j 
 
 he returned with three cigarettes, having j 
 
 scoured the town for them, the shops of ] 
 
 course being shut. i 
 
 Uskub is a picturesque, straggling place, i 
 
 and at this time of the year, swamped as | 
 
 i 
 
 it is in melting snow, an incredibly dirty i 
 
 place, situated between a mountain and i 
 
 the river Vardar. Like all Turkish towns, ] 
 
 it is ill-paved, or rather not paved at all, j 
 and full of mud. It is — or was — largely 
 
 inhabited by Albanian Mahomedans. As j 
 
 the headquarters of the Servian Army, it ! 
 
 is at present full of officers and soldiers ; | 
 
 there is not much food, and still less wood. j 
 
 Here are the war correspondents. They | 
 
 * I 
 
 1
 
 130 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 have not been allowed to go any farther ; 
 but the order has now gone out that they 
 can, if they like, go on to Kuprulu, a little 
 farther down the line, whence it is im- 
 possible to telegraph. A stay at Uskub 
 as it is now would afford a tourist a taste 
 of all the discomforts of war without 
 any of the excitement. The principal dis- 
 traction of the people here is having their 
 boots cleaned ; and as the streets are full 
 of large lakes of water and high mounds 
 of slush, the effect of the cleaning is not 
 permanent. Matthew Arnold was once 
 asked to walk home after dinner on a wet 
 night in London. ' No,' he said, ' I can't 
 get my feet wet. It would spoil my style.' 
 Matthew Arnold's style would have been 
 annihilated at Uskub. 
 
 The stories told by eye-witnesses of the 
 events immediately preceding the occupa- 
 tion of Uskub by the Servians are tragi-
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 131 
 
 comic in a high degree. In the first place, 
 the population of the place never for one 
 moment thought that the Turks could 
 possibly be beaten by the Servians. Sud- 
 denly, in the midst of their serene confidence, 
 came the cry, * The Giaours are upon us.' 
 Every Turkish official and officer in the 
 place lost his head, with the exception of 
 the Vali (head of the district), who was 
 the only man possessing an active mind. 
 Otherwise the Turkish officers fled to the 
 Consulates and took refuge there, trembling 
 and quaking with terror. 
 
 The two problems which called for 
 immediate solution were : (a) to prevent 
 further fighting taking place in the town ; 
 (b) to prevent a general massacre of the 
 Christians before the Servians entered the 
 town. To prevent fighting in the town, 
 the Turkish troops had to be persuaded 
 
 to get out of it. This was done. The only 
 
 I 2
 
 132 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 hope of solving both these problems 
 lay in the Vali. All the Consuls, as I 
 said, agreed that the Vali's conduct on 
 this occasion shone amidst the encircling 
 cowardice of the other officers and officials. 
 Already before the news of the battle of 
 Kumanovo had reached the town about 
 200 Christians had been arrested on sus- 
 picion and put in prison. They were not 
 of the criminal class, but just ordinary 
 people : priests, shopmen, and women. 
 In the prison were already about 300 
 Mahomedans. News came to the Russian 
 Consul-Gen eral, M. Kalnikoff, that these 
 prisoners had had nothing to eat for two 
 days. He went at once to the prison and 
 demanded to be let in. He heard shots 
 being fired inside. Some of the Albanians 
 were firing into the air. He asked the 
 Governor of the prison whether it was true 
 that the prisoners had had no food for two
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 133 
 
 days, and the governor said it was per- 
 fectly true, and that the reason was that 
 there was no bread to be had in the town. 
 
 ' In that case,' said the Consul-Gen eral, 
 * you must let all these prisoners out.' 
 
 ' But if I let them out,' said the Governor, 
 the Mahomedans will kill the Christians.' 
 
 Finally it was settled that the prisoners 
 should be let out a few at a time, the 
 Christians first, and the Mahomedans after- 
 wards, through a kind of hedge of soldiers ; 
 and this was accomplished successfully. 
 M. Kalnikoff told me that among the 
 prisoners were many people he knew. 
 
 Then came the question of giving up 
 the town to the Servians without incurring 
 a massacre. I am not certain of the 
 chronology of the events, and all this was 
 told me in one hurried and interrupted 
 interview, but the Vali took the matter in 
 hand, and as he was driving to the Russian
 
 134 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 Consulate a man in the crowd shot him 
 through the arm and killed the coachman. 
 This man was said to be mad. 
 
 In the meantime the various Consulates 
 were crowded with refugees, and in the 
 French Consulate a Turkish officer fainted 
 from apprehension, and another officer 
 insisted on disguising himself as a kavass. 
 The Servians, who were outside the city, 
 at some considerable distance, thought 
 that the Turks meant to offer further 
 resistance in the town. 
 
 It was arranged that the various Con- 
 suls and the Vali (in their uniforms) should 
 set out for the Servian headquarters and 
 deliverup the town. This was done. They 
 drove out until they met Servian troops. 
 Then they were blindfolded and marched 
 between a cordon of soldiers through the 
 deep mud until they reached those in 
 authority. They explained matters, and
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 135 
 
 the Servian cavalry rode into the town, 
 just in time to prevent a massacre of the 
 Christian population. As it was, the Al- 
 banians had already done a good deal of 
 looting. That there was no fighting in the 
 town, and consequently no massacre, was 
 probably due to the prompt action of the 
 Vali. 
 
 When the Turkish and Albanian soldiers 
 retired south from Kumanovo they were 
 apparently completely panic-stricken. At 
 Uskub horses belonging to batteries were 
 put in trains while the guns were left behind. 
 There is not the slightest doubt that the 
 troops massacred any Christians they came 
 across. At the military hospital at Nish 
 I saw a woman who was terribly cut and 
 mutilated. She told the following story. 
 Her house, in which were her husband, 
 her brother, his son-in-law, and her two 
 sons, was suddenly occupied by Arnaut
 
 136 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 refugees. These are Albanians from the 
 North, who are fighting with the Turks. 
 The Arnauts demanded weapons, which 
 they were given. They then set fire to the 
 house, killed the woman's husband and 
 everyone else who was there, and no doubt 
 thought that they had killed her also. 
 But she was found still breathing, and taken 
 to the hospital. The doctor said that she 
 might recover. Stories such as these, and 
 far worse, one hears on all sides. The 
 Arnauts are an absolutely uncompromising 
 people. They give and expect no quarter. 
 In the hospitals they bite the doctors who 
 try to help them. They fight and strike as 
 long as there is a breath left in their bodies. 
 And there are still bands of them in the 
 hills. 
 
 At the military hospital of Nish I saw 
 a good many of the wounded. The wounds 
 inflicted by bullets are extraordinarily clean,
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 137 
 
 and the doctors said that they were such 
 that the wounded either recovered and 
 were up and about in a week or else they 
 died. There were cases of tetanus, and I 
 saw many men who had received severe 
 bayonet wounds and fractures at the battle 
 of Perlepe, where some of the severest 
 fighting seems to have taken place. 
 
 At the beginning of this battle some- 
 body on the Servian side must have 
 blundered. A regiment was advancing, 
 expecting to meet reinforcements on both 
 sides. In front of them, on a hill, they 
 saw what they took to be their own men, 
 and halted. Immediately a hot fire rained 
 on them from all sides. The men they 
 had seen were not their own men but Turks. 
 The Servians had to get away as fast as 
 ever they could go, otherwise they would 
 have been surrounded ; as it was they 
 incurred very severe losses indeed.
 
 138 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 You have only got to be a day in Servia 
 to realise the spirit of the people. They 
 are full of a concentrated fire of patriotism. 
 The war to them is a question of life and 
 death. And they regard their access to 
 the sea as a question of life and death for 
 their country. They have been the driving 
 power in this war. They have had to make 
 the greater sacrifices ; and the part they 
 have played has certainly not yet been 
 fully realised or appreciated. The Ser- 
 vians are less reserved than the Bulgarians, 
 but they have the same singleness of pur- 
 pose and the same power of cleaving fast 
 to one great idea. Not only has justice 
 not been done to the Servians with regard 
 to the part they have played in the whole 
 campaign, but the actual fighting which 
 they accomplished has been inadequately 
 dealt with in the Enghsh Press. The French 
 and Italian newspapers have had the best
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 139 
 
 accounts of it. There is no doubt that at 
 the battle of Kumanovo and still more at 
 the battle of Perlepe some of the severest 
 fighting of the whole war took place. While 
 I was at Uskub the campaign started in 
 the Press complaining of Servian bar- 
 barities, massacres, etc. I did not come 
 across any direct or reliable evidence of 
 any such thing. The stories that Albanians 
 were shot down in the streets of Uskub 
 are mere inventions ; but it is quite possible 
 that the Servians dealt very severely with 
 the Albanians who, after the battles, 
 attacked them in the rear. There were 
 rumours also that they shot Albanian 
 prisoners. How far this is true I do not 
 know : but I do know from first-hand 
 evidence that the Arnauts dealt with the 
 utmost savagery with any part of the 
 Servian population that they came across 
 after the fighting. It is probably true
 
 140 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 that irregular bands or isolated units of 
 soldiery, 011 both sides, did each other the 
 maximum of harm in the most disagreeable 
 way possible ; just as the Catholics and 
 the Protestants did to each other in the 
 days of the religious wars. If the Albanians 
 complain of being massacred by the Ser- 
 vians, little sympathy can be given them, 
 for massacre has been a constant factor in 
 ordinary and everyday life. Likewise the 
 Bulgarians and the Servians cannot com- 
 plain of being massacred by the Turks. 
 The extermination of a village by a band 
 which was in a position to exterminate 
 has from time immemorial been a recognised 
 move in the code of Balkan warfare. I 
 only spent four or five days at Uskub, 
 and as there seemed to be no chance of 
 getting within range of any fighting, I 
 
 returned to Sofia. 
 
 I stopped on the way at Nish, and it
 
 WITH THE SERVIANS 141 
 
 i 
 
 was then that I inspected the mihtary 
 hospital, that I met once more the Servian 
 poet, and that I received my lost trunk \ 
 
 from his hands. Just outside the Servian 
 hospital there is a small church. This j 
 
 church was originally a monument erected | 
 
 by the Turks to celebrate the taking of ] 
 
 Nish, and its architecture was designed to j 
 
 discourage the Servians from ever rising 
 against them again, for the walls consist 
 almost entirely of the skulls of massacred \ 
 
 Servians. !
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING THE 
 
 WAR 
 
 Constantinople: November 21, 191 2. 
 
 * All this proves,' said an intelligent 
 foreigner to me at Uskub the other day, 
 talking of the failure of the recent Turkish 
 policy in Albania, ' that if you try to 
 reform Islam you must reform it altogether. 
 By reforming it altogether I do not mean 
 abolishing it, but I mean slowly and 
 gradually introducing a fundamental and 
 progressive change in its social and poli- 
 tical character. I mean by " reforming 
 Islam altogether" not introducing super- 
 ficial changes in its outward form of govern- 
 ment, but introducing fundamental changes 
 
 142
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 143 
 
 in its social structure which will convert 
 its government into one which is not 
 Western in form but Western in fact. 
 You may say that this is impossible. 
 You may argue that to reform Islam is to 
 abolish it. There is a great deal to be 
 said for that view : but in answer I would 
 urge that in certain Moslim countries the 
 thing is being done, only, of course, it can 
 only be done slowly ; it cannot be done 
 in a hurry. And in any case, whether it 
 be possible or not to reform Islam alto- 
 gether, one thing is certain : that if you 
 superimpose on it the forms without the 
 reality of a constitutional and Western 
 Government, the result wih be (a) a fero- 
 cious despotism ; (b) internal dissension 
 and ultimate collapse. This holds good 
 for Persia, India, and any country where 
 Islam plays a large part — not for China, 
 which is totally different— and what is
 
 144 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 happening in Turkey now is a tremendous 
 object-lesson for England.' 
 
 So spoke, at Uskub, a man who had 
 lived for many years in different parts 
 of the Near East, and his words seemed 
 to me to hit the nail on the head; but 
 you need to come to Constantinople itself 
 to realise to the full the nature and the 
 magnitude of that object-lesson. 
 
 Many people have recorded the intense 
 melancholy which they felt on arriving 
 at Constantinople for the first time, 
 especially in the autumn, under a grey 
 sky, when the kaleidoscopic, opalescent 
 city loses all its radiance, suffers eclipse, 
 and seems to wallow in greyness, sadness, 
 dirt, and squalor. A man arriving at 
 Constantinople three days ago would have 
 received this melancholy impression at 
 its very intensest. The skies were grey 
 and the air was damp, and the streets
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 145 
 
 looked more than usually squalid and 
 dishevelled. But besides all this there 
 was in the air a feeling of great gloom, 
 which was intensified by the chattering 
 crowds in Pera, laughing and making fun 
 of the Turkish reverses, by the chirping 
 women at the balconies, watching the 
 stragglers and the wounded returning 
 from the front, and listening, in case they 
 might hear the enemy sullenly firing. 
 Nevertheless, you felt that every Turk, 
 sublimely resigned as ever, and super- 
 ficially, at least, utterly expressionless 
 and indifferent as usual, was walking 
 about with a heavy heart, and probably 
 every thinking Turk was feeling bitterly 
 that the disasters which had come were 
 due to the criminal folly of a band of 
 alien and childishly incompetent poli- 
 tical quacks. You felt also above every- 
 thing else the invincible atmosphere of 
 
 K
 
 146 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 Byzantium, which sooner or later conquers 
 and disintegrates its conquerors, however 
 robust and however virile. Byzantium 
 having disintegrated two great Empires 
 seemed to be ironically waiting for a new 
 prey. One remembered Bismarck's say- 
 ing that he could wish no greater mis- 
 fortune to a country than the possession 
 of Constantinople. 
 
 But so quick are the changes here, 
 so chameleon-like is the place, that all 
 this is already out of date. I have only 
 been here three days, and during that 
 short period the mood of the city has 
 completely changed. Last night people 
 were talking of the enemy being driven 
 right back to Sofia ; the feast of Bairam 
 is being celebrated ; the streets are 
 decked with flags ; the men-of-war are 
 dressed ; yesterday, in the soft autumnal 
 sunshine, the city was glowing once
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 147 
 
 more ' like a dome of many-coloured 
 glass.' 
 
 The stories of the cholera, people said, 
 had been grossly exaggerated ; 8,000 Bul- 
 garians had been taken prisoners (800 
 was the subsequent figure, some people 
 say three, some people say one). Cholera 
 was raging in the enemy's lines. New 
 troops were pouring in. The main enemy 
 would be repulsed ; the others would 
 be dealt with piecemeal, * as before ' ; 
 in fact, everything was going well. 
 
 Possibly before I post this letter this 
 morning there may be another sharp 
 change in the moral atmosphere of the 
 place. In any case, one must always 
 remember that all news here is unre- 
 liable. 
 
 But before discussing anything else 
 I will tell of a thing which I saw wdth my 
 eyes, and which throws some light on the 
 
 K 2
 
 148 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 conditions under which the war is being 
 carried on here. On Tuesday morning 
 I drove out in a motor-car with two com- 
 panions and a Turkish officer with the 
 intention of reaching the Tchataldja Hues. 
 Up to Tuesday people had been able to 
 reach the lines in motor-cars. Probably 
 too many people had done this ; and very 
 properly an order had been issued to put 
 a stop to the flood of visitors. In spite 
 of the presence of a Turkish officer with us 
 we could not get beyond the village of 
 Kutchuk Tchekmedche, which is right on 
 the Sea of Marmora. Not far from the 
 village, and separated from it by a small 
 river, is a railway station, and as we drove 
 past the bank of the railway line we 
 noticed several dead men lying on the 
 bank. The station was being disinfected. 
 We stopped by the sandy beach to have 
 luncheon, and before we had finished a 
 cart passed us with more dead in it.
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 149 
 
 We drove back through San Stefano. 
 We entered through a gate and drove 
 down the suburb, where, bounded on one 
 side by a railway embankment and on 
 the other hand by a wall, there is a large 
 empty space intersected by the road. 
 Beyond this are the houses of San Stefano. 
 It was in this space that we were met 
 by the most gruesome and terrible sight 
 I have ever seen ; worse than any battle- 
 field or the sight of wounded men. This 
 plot of ground was littered with dead and 
 dying men. The ground itself was strewn 
 with rags, rubbish, and filth of every kind, 
 and everywhere, under the wall, on the 
 grass, by the edge of the road, and on 
 the road, were men in every phase and 
 stage of cholera. 
 
 There was nobody to help them ; no- 
 body to look after them ; nothing to be 
 done for them. Many of them were dead, 
 and lay like terrible black waxworks in
 
 150 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 contorted shapes. Others were movmg 
 and struggHng, and others again were 
 just gasping out the last flicker of hfe. 
 One man was making a last effort to 
 grasp a gourd. And in the middle of 
 this there were other soldiers, sitting 
 patiently waiting and eating bread under 
 the walls of the houses. There was not 
 a sound, not a murmur. Imagine a 
 crowd of holiday-makers at Hampstead 
 Heath suddenly stricken by plague, and 
 you will have some idea of this terrible 
 sight. Imagine one of Gustave Dore's illus- 
 trations to Dante's ' Inferno ' made into 
 a tableau vivant by some unscrupulous 
 and decadent artist. Imagine the wood- 
 cuts in old Bibles of the Children of Israel 
 stricken in the desert and uplifting their 
 helpless hands to the Brazen Serpent. 
 Deserted, helpless, and hopeless, this mass 
 of men lay like a heap of half-crushed
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 151 
 
 worms, to suffer and to die amidst 
 indescribable filth, and this only seven 
 miles from the capital, where the nurses 
 say that they cannot get patients ! 
 Farther on I believe it was still worse, 
 and up till the day before yesterday 
 people said the army was losing up to 
 a thousand men a day from cholera. 
 
 But since the day before yesterday 
 there has been a change. The dead 
 from cholera, it is reported, have been 
 buried at the front. The mortality has 
 dropped from 1,000 to 120 a day. For 
 this cholera is not of a very severe kind, 
 and could easily yield to treatment. 
 People are now saying that the whole 
 question has been exaggerated ; but I 
 do not think it was at first, and certainly 
 the sample of what one saw at San Stefano 
 leads one to think that exaggeration was 
 difficult. As I write the hopeful optimistic
 
 152 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 feeling in the air is still lasting. It is 
 reported that the preliminaries towards 
 an armistice have been arranged. I also 
 hear on good authority that Nazim Pasha 
 does not want to make peace, as he thinks 
 that the situation of the Turkish Army 
 has really taken a seriously favourable 
 turn. Order has been restored. The 
 troops are being fed. The dead are being 
 buried ; 800 prisoners (or in any case some 
 prisoners) 1 are said to have been taken, 
 and some guns. (This is quite unconfirmed 
 up to now.) That is the situation as I 
 write. Of course it may all change again 
 rapidly, and in Constantinople, the city 
 of a thousand rumours, it is difficult to 
 snatch a grain of truth. But there is no 
 doubt that at this moment, the morning 
 of November 21, the feeling in the city is 
 hopeful, although the hopes may be false. 
 
 ^ Nobody evei" saw those prisoners.
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 153 
 
 What one realises here to the full 
 is the cause of the Turkish reverses and 
 misfortunes : the cause of the lamentable 
 lack of organisation, order, and arrange- 
 ment ; and the cause is — you will find 
 no two opinions on the subject here — 
 the devastating poHcy of the Young Turks 
 and the Committee of Union and Progress. 
 Sincere, no doubt, in their aims, obstinate 
 and opinionated in their views, completely 
 lacking in political experience, without a 
 statesman or a leader of any real capacity 
 or competence, deaf to the advice of more 
 experienced men, deaf, in fact, to any 
 advice, they set about at a breakneck 
 speed to do what all those who know the 
 East have always been convinced is an 
 impossible thing to do, to modernise Islam. 
 That is to say, to make Islam modernist 
 (in the theological sense), which does not 
 mean to stretch the institutions of Islam
 
 154 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 and to allow them to include and to slowly 
 assimilate Western ideas (and it is dis- 
 putable whether even this can ever be 
 done), but to apply certain superficial 
 modern forms and formulas to it im- 
 mediately and at once, and to force these 
 forms and formulas down the throats 
 of a recalcitrant people, who could not 
 possibly understand them. ' Give the 
 Young Turks a chance,' said even the 
 sceptical in 1909, ' and let us pray that 
 they may not try to do everything in too 
 great a hurry.' The prayer was a vain 
 one. The Young Turks went ahead, neither 
 looking nor listening to the right nor 
 to the left ; and above all things they 
 tried to do everything immediately, at 
 once, and with the greatest possible des- 
 patch. They tried to revolutionise the 
 fundamentals of Islam in the space of 
 three years. They hypnotised Europe ;
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 155 
 
 they secured the support of the Free- 
 masons and all the parties affiliated to 
 them in the countries of Europe ; they 
 secured the support of a certain section 
 of the financial world, and what was the 
 result ? 
 
 They rent the Ottoman Empire in 
 two by their treatment of Albania, and 
 they disintegrated and disorganised the 
 army ; they in no way relieved, but, 
 on the contrary, accentuated the trouble 
 arising from the friction between Turkish 
 rulers and Christian subjects. They refused 
 to punish Turkish officials who were guilty 
 of oppressing the Christians. And when 
 they did punish, they chose the innocent 
 and the insignificant. Their rule was as 
 arbitrary as that of Abdul Hamid, only 
 they had not one jot of his statesmanship 
 or of his prestige. In Albania they tried 
 to crush the Albanian nationality, to
 
 156 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 make the peoples there speak one language 
 and to bend all one way. They failed. 
 And the result is that Turkey has lost 
 Albania. 
 
 But their most mischievous work was 
 in the army. And it all sounds so plausible 
 theoretically. * We will make the army 
 modern and up to date,' they said. ' We 
 must get rid of fanaticism ; we must 
 teach the soldiers that they must no longer 
 fight, as their unenlightened and rude 
 forefathers fought, for the Faith, the Din, 
 but for their country. They must no 
 longer think that if they fall in battle they 
 will go straight to Paradise ; but they 
 must learn that they will be mentioned 
 together with the names of Hannibal, 
 Caesar, and Napoleon, and the heroes of 
 the West.' But the Turk is a nomad. The 
 idea of country, Patrie, Vaterland, means 
 nothing to him. The idea of the greatness
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 157 
 
 of the Osmanli, or the defence of the Faith, 
 means everything to him. The soil of a 
 given place is no more to him than soil. 
 And if you take away from him the idea 
 of the defence of the Faith, you take away 
 half his fighting power. 
 
 Well, this theory was carried out. Older 
 officers of experience were dismissed in large 
 numbers because they were suspected of 
 being conservative. The old kind of non- 
 commissioned officer, who was the back- 
 bone of the army and the bridge between 
 the officers and the men, was abolished, and 
 the private soldier was left face to face 
 with young and scientifically trained officers 
 whose language and complicated instruction 
 he could not understand. Religious obser- 
 vances were diminished and discouraged. 
 The bugle calls, which used to be sounded 
 at the hours of prayer so that the soldiers 
 might know in their barracks that it was
 
 158 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 the hour of prayer, were done away with. 
 The officers were encouraged to be modern 
 in their habits. Terrible jealousies, dis- 
 sensions and conflicts were rampant in the 
 whole army, so that when the war began 
 the army was under-officered and badly 
 officered, disorganised, and bewildered. It 
 had got nothing to look up to, and in many 
 cases nobody to lead it. 
 
 This was the direct result of the policy 
 of the Committee of Union and Progress. 
 There were many people here who foresaw 
 this result in 1909. They were not only 
 ignored, but it was almost impossible 
 for them to state their views in Europe at 
 all. People talked of progress and of com- 
 bining the ancient virtues of the Moslim 
 with the enlightenment of our scientific age. 
 But anyone who has been five minutes 
 in a Moslim country knows that if Islam 
 is to retain any particle of what makes it
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR 159 
 
 Islam it cannot progress in a hurry. Islam 
 is by nature a static institution. Some 
 people say it is elastic and that its moral 
 code admits of infinite extension and 
 assimilation. This may be true. I am 
 not a competent judge of the matter ; 
 I am sceptical with regard to the question, 
 since it seems to me that reformed Islam 
 ceases to be Islam : the very word Islam 
 means resignation ; but the one thing I am 
 a competent judge of, and anyone who 
 has ever been in the East is a competent 
 judge of, and that is that you cannot change 
 or reform Islam in a twinkling, ' Dii jour 
 au lendemain.' Islam is the negation of 
 swift and sudden progress ; and if you want 
 to reform it you must reform it altogether 
 and slowly. This in some cases may be 
 possible. What is impossible and what 
 is disastrous, as facts have now proved, 
 is to tamper with and to tinker Islam, and
 
 i6o LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 to pour new theories into the old bottles. 
 To think vou can make a Moslim into a 
 sceptical Moslim, into a ' modernist ' Mos- 
 lim, who will retain his faith, but as a thing 
 that does not really matter, and as a pure 
 matter of form ; to expect to instil such 
 a frame of mind into the Turkish soldier, 
 was folly ; and the result of the attempt 
 to do so is now only too clear. And, as the 
 observer whom I quoted at the beginning 
 of this letter said, the object-lesson is 
 especially interesting for us in view of 
 the situation which faces us in India and 
 in Persia, and the existence in England of 
 those sincere and well-meaning but naive 
 committees who sit in the House of Com- 
 mons, and whose object is to help the Per- 
 sian and other peoples in their ' struggle 
 for freedom,' all unconscious of the fact 
 that the realisation of their well-meaning 
 and well-reasoned theories would lead, and
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE DURING WAR i6i 
 
 can but lead, to the disintegration and the 
 collapse of the countries whose welfare 
 they desire. ' C'est prodigieux tout ce 
 que les Anglais ignorent/ said an Austrian 
 statesman, or words to that effect.
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 
 
 Constantinople : December lo, 1912. 
 
 San Stefano is a small suburb of Constanti- 
 nople whose name, as we all know, has 
 been written in history. Possibly som.e 
 day Clapham Junction will be equally 
 famous, if there is ever a Treaty of Clap- 
 ham, subsequently ratified by the Powers 
 at a Congress of Constantinople or Delhi. 
 It contains a number of elegant white- 
 washed and two-storied houses, inhabited 
 by the well-to-do of Constantinople during 
 the summer months. San Stefano — why or 
 how I know not — became during the war 
 one of the smaller centres of the sick — in 
 
 other words, a cholera camp. 
 
 162
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 163 
 
 San Stefano, at the time of my writing, 
 is entirely deserted. The elegant summer 
 * residences ' are empty. The streets are 
 silent. You can reach San Stefano from 
 Constantinople either by steamer, which 
 takes a little over an hour and a half ; 
 or by train, which takes an hour (but there 
 are practically no trains running) ; or in a 
 carriage, which takes two hours and a half. 
 The whole place at present is lifeless. Only 
 on the quay you see porters and Red 
 Crescent orderlies dealing with great bales 
 of baggage, and every now and then in the 
 silent street you hear the tinkling stale 
 music of a faded pianoforte which plays 
 an old-fashioned — not an old — tune. I 
 wondered when I heard this music who in 
 the world could be playing the pianoforte 
 in San Stefano at such a moment. I need 
 hardly say that the effect was not only 
 melancholy but uncanny ; for what is 
 
 L 2
 
 i64 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 there sadder in the world than out-of-date 
 nausic played on an exhausted and wheezy 
 instrument ? 
 
 When you arrive at the quay you see 
 a line of houses fronting the sea. You then 
 turn up a muddy side street and you come 
 to a small square, where there are a few 
 shops and a few cafes. In the cafes, which 
 are run by Greeks, there are still people 
 drinking coffee. The shops are trading in 
 articles which they have brought from the 
 bazaars and which they think may be of 
 use to the cholera patients. A little farther 
 on beyond the muddy square, where a 
 quantity of horses, donkeys, and mules 
 are tethered to the leafless trees, you come 
 to a slight eminence surrounded by walls 
 and railings. Within these walls there is 
 a small building made of stucco, Grecian 
 in style. It is the deserted Greek school. 
 This is the place where cholera patients
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 165 
 
 at last found shelter, and this is the place 
 to which I was brought by the kindness of 
 Major Ford, U.S.A., and Mr. Philip, First 
 Secretary of the American Embassy, who 
 were both of them devoting themselves to 
 the relief of the cholera victims. 
 
 It was at San Stefano about a fortnight 
 ago that under the outside wall of the town 
 and on the railway embankment the dead 
 and dying were lying like crushed insects, 
 without shelter, without food, without 
 water. Since then Miss Alt, a Swiss lady 
 of over seventy, and a friend of hers, an 
 Austrian lady. Madam Schneider, seeing 
 that nothing was being done for these 
 people, and that no medical or other 
 assistance was being brought them, took 
 the matter into their own hands and started 
 a relief fund with a sum of £4, and gave 
 themselves up to the task of doing what 
 they could for the sick. They turned
 
 i66 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 the deserted Greek school into a hospital, 
 and they were joined by Mr. Frew, a Scotch 
 minister of the Dutch Reformed Church 
 in Constantinople. Funds were then sup- 
 plied them by the British and American 
 Embassies, and Major Ford, an American 
 surgeon, who was at Constantinople by 
 way of having a rest cure, and Mr. Philip, 
 joined these two heroic ladies and Mr. 
 Frew. And it was owing to the kindness 
 of Major Ford that I was allowed to visit 
 the spot. 
 
 The first day I arrived there was no 
 other medical aid, with the exception of a 
 Turkish sergeant ; but the day after, a 
 Turkish medical officer arrived and the 
 whole matter was nominally under his 
 charge. The medical work of the place 
 was undertaken by Major Ford, and the 
 commissariat was managed by Mr. Frew. 
 There are in the Greek school nine rooms
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 167 
 
 altogether. Of these six are occupied by 
 patients, one forms a kind of kitchen and 
 store-room, and two of the rooms are 
 occupied by the medical staff of the Turkish 
 Red Crescent. Besides this there is a 
 compound roofed over in the open air, 
 and there are a certain number of tents — 
 a dozen or so. In this house and in these 
 tents there were at first thrown together 
 over 350 men, all in various stages of 
 sickness. Some of them were in the last 
 stage of cholera ; some of them had 
 dysentery ; some of them had typhus ; 
 some were suffering from exhaustion and 
 starvation, and the greater part of them 
 were very sick. 
 
 At first there was some doubt whether 
 the disease was cholera. The disease which 
 was manifest — and terribly manifest — did 
 not include all the best-known symptoms 
 of cholera. It was plain also that a great
 
 i68 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 number of the soldiers were suffering 
 simply from exhaustion, exposure, and 
 starvation. But later on medical diagnosis 
 was made, and the cholera microbe was 
 discovered. A German cholera specialist 
 who came from Berlin, Dr. Geissler, told 
 me that there was no doubt of the existence 
 of the cholera microbe. Besides which, 
 some of the symptoms were startlingly 
 different from those of mere dysentery. 
 From the human point of view, and not 
 from the scientific point of view, the 
 question was indifferent. The solemn fact 
 from the human point of view was that 
 the Turkish soldiers at San Stefano were 
 sick and dying from a disease that in any 
 case in many points resembled cholera, 
 and that others were dying from what 
 was indistinguishable from cholera in its 
 outward manifestations. Every day and 
 every night so many soldiers died, but
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 169 
 
 less and less as the days went on. One 
 night thirty died ; another night fifteen ; 
 another night ten ; another night thirteen 
 again, and so on. 
 
 I have called the Greek school a hospital, 
 but when you think of a hospital you call 
 up the vision of all the luxury of modern 
 science — of clean beds, of white sheets, of 
 deft and skilful nurses, of supplies of 
 sterilised water, antiseptics, lemonade, 
 baths, quiet, space, and fresh and clean air. 
 Here there were no such appliances, and 
 no such things. There were no beds ; there 
 were mattresses on the dusty and dirty 
 floors. The rooms were crowded to over- 
 flowing. There was no means of washing 
 or dressing the patients. It is difficult to 
 convey to those who never saw it the 
 impression made by the first sight of the 
 rooms in the Greek school where the sick 
 were lying. Some of the details are too
 
 170 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 horrible to write. It is enough to say 
 that during the first few days after the 
 sick were put into the Greek school the 
 rooms were packed and crowded with 
 human beings, some of them in agony 
 and all of them in extreme distress. They 
 lay on the floor in rows along the walls, 
 with flies buzzing round them : and 
 between these rows of men there was a 
 third row along the middle of the room. 
 They lay across the doors, so that anybody 
 opening a door in a hurry and walking 
 carelessly into the room trod on a sick man. 
 They were weak from starvation. They 
 were one and all of them parched, groaning 
 and moaning, with a torturing and un- 
 quenchable thirst. They were suffering 
 from a multitude of other diseases besides 
 cholera. One man had got mumps. Many 
 of the soldiers had gangrened feet and legs, 
 all blue, stiff and rotten, as if they had
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 171 
 
 been frostbitten. These soldiers had either 
 to have their Umbs amputated or to die — 
 and there is no future for an amputated 
 Turk. There is nothing for him to do 
 save to beg. Some of them had swelHngs 
 and sores and holes in their limbs and in 
 their faces, and although most of them were 
 wounded, all of them were unwashed and 
 many of them covered with vermin. Most 
 of them besides their overcoats and their 
 putties had practically no clothes at all. 
 Their underclothes were in rags, and caked 
 with dirt. The sick were all soldiers ; 
 most of them were Turks ; some of them 
 were Greeks. 
 
 In such a place any complicated nursing 
 was out of the question. The main 
 duties of those who attempted to relieve 
 the sick consisted in bringing warm 
 clothes and covering to those who 
 were in rags and shivering, soup to those
 
 172 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 who were faint and exhausted, and water 
 to those who were crying for it ; and 
 during the first few days at San Stefano 
 all the sick were crying for water, and 
 crying for it all day and all night long. 
 You could not go into any of the rooms 
 without hearing a piteous chorus of * Doctor 
 Effendi, Doctor Bey, sou, sou, sou ' {so^t 
 is the Turkish for water). Luckily the 
 water supply was good. There was a clean 
 spring not far from the school, and water 
 mixed with disinfectant could be given to 
 the sick. The sick and the well at first 
 were crowded together absolutely indis-' 
 criminately. A man who had nothing the 
 matter with him besides hunger and faint- 
 ness would be next to a man who was 
 already rigid and turning grey in the last 
 comatose stage of cholera. 
 
 During the first week of this des- 
 perate state of things Miss Alt and Madam
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 173 
 
 Schneider worked like slaves and accom- 
 plished the impossible. They spent the 
 whole day and very often the whole night 
 in bringing clothes to the ragged, food 
 to the hungry, and water to the thirsty. 
 Mr. Frew managed the whole commissariat 
 and the food supply, and he managed it 
 with positive genius. He smoothed over 
 difficulties, he razed obstacles, and in 
 all the creaking joints of the difficult 
 machinery he poured the inestimable oil 
 of his cheerfulness, his good-humour and 
 his kindness. Major Ford acted with an 
 equal energy in taking over the medical 
 side of the school and in sorting from 
 the heaped-up sick those who were less ill 
 and separating them from those who were 
 dangerously ill ; and in this task he was ably 
 seconded by Mr. Philip. This sounds a 
 simple thing to say. It was in practice and 
 in fact incredibly difficult. During the first
 
 174 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 days there were scarcely any orderlies at 
 all and very few soldiers, and it was a 
 desperately slow and difficult task to get 
 people carried from one place to another. 
 One afternoon, which I shall never forget 
 as long as I live, Major Ford undertook 
 in one of the crowded rooms to shift tem- 
 porarily all the sick from one side of the 
 room to the other side of it, and while 
 they were there to lay down a clean piece 
 of oil-cloth. The difficulty of this was 
 immense. The patients of course were 
 unwilling to move. First of all it had to 
 be explained to them that the thing was 
 not a game, and that it would be to their 
 ultimate advantage ; and then they had 
 to be bribed from one s;de of the room 
 to the other with baits of lemons and 
 cigarettes. Nevertheless Major Ford man- 
 aged to do this and to get down a clean 
 piece of oil-cloth. When one spent the 
 whole day in this place, and one had seen
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 175 
 
 people like Miss Alt, Madam Schneider, 
 Major Ford, and Mr. Frew working like 
 slaves from morning till night, one still 
 had the feeling nothing had been done 
 at all compared with what remained un- 
 done, so overwhelming did the odds seem. 
 And yet at the end of one week there was 
 a vast change for the better in the whole 
 situation. 
 
 With regard to the sick, great as was 
 the distress of these wretched victims, 
 they were sublime in their resignation. 
 They consented, like Job, in what was 
 worse than dust and ashes, to the work- 
 ing of the Divine will. They most of them 
 had military water bottles ; they used to 
 implore to have these bottles filled ; and 
 when they were filled — thirsty as they 
 were — they would not drink all the water, 
 but they kept a little back in order to 
 perform the ablutions which the Maho- 
 medan religion ordains should accompany
 
 176 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 the prayers of the faithful. Even in 
 their agony the Turks never lost one par- 
 ticle of their dignity, and never for one 
 moment forgot their perfect manners. 
 They died as they lived — like the Nature's 
 noblemen they are — always acknowledg- 
 ing every assistance ; and when they 
 refused a gift or an offer they put into 
 the refusal the graciousness of an accept- 
 ance- 
 Only those who have been to Turkey 
 can have any idea of the politeness, the 
 innate politesse du cceur of the Turk. One 
 day when I was coming back from San 
 Stefano on board a Turkish Govern- 
 ment launch and together with an English 
 officer I was talking to the Turkish naval 
 officer who was in command of the launch, 
 the Englishman offered a cigarette to the 
 Turkish officer. He accepted it and lit it. 
 The Englishman then offered one to the
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 177 
 
 officer's younger brother, who was there 
 also. * He does not smoke,' said the 
 officer. Then he added, after a pause, 
 ' I do not either.' ' He has ht and smoked 
 the cigarette so as not to offend me,' 
 said tlie Englishman aside to me. This 
 is typical of the kind of politeness the 
 Turks show. Equally polite were the 
 soldiers who were dying of a horrible 
 disease amidst awful conditions. They 
 never forgot their manners or their dignity. 
 They were childlike and infinitely pathe- 
 tic in their wants. One man in a tent 
 where some of the convalescent were 
 assembled, cried out in Turkish his need — 
 which was interpreted to me by a Greek. 
 He wanted a candle, by which a man, 
 he said, might tell stories to the others ; 
 for, he added, it was impossible for a story- 
 teller to tell stories in the dark ; the 
 audience could not see his face. There was 
 
 M
 
 178 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 no candle in the place, but I am not 
 ashamed to say that I stole a small lamp 
 and gave it to this man to afford illumina- 
 tion to that story-telling. Another man 
 wanted a lemon. There were then no 
 lemons. The man produced a five-piastre 
 piece (a franc, nearly a shilling). This was 
 a large fortune to him, but he offered 
 it to me if I could get him a lemon. 
 One soldier refused either to eat or to 
 drink. He would not touch either soup 
 or milk or water or sour milk, which was 
 the favourite dish of the soldiers there and 
 which, being a national dish of Turkey, 
 could be supplied to them in great quan- 
 tities. He kept on reiterating one word. 
 It turned out to mean prune soup. He 
 was hankering after prune soup. He 
 wanted prune soup and nothing else. 
 Another man wanted a pencil, above all 
 things, which was duly given him.
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 179 
 
 The gratitude of these poor people 
 to anyone who did any httle thing for 
 them was immense. ' Allah will restore 
 to you everything you have done for us a 
 hundred-fold,' they would say. Or again, 
 * You are more than a doctor to us, you 
 are a friend.' One day Mr. Philip brought 
 some flowers to the sick soldiers. Their 
 gratitude and their delight knew no bounds. 
 The Turks love flowers. They treasured 
 them. They even sacrificed their water 
 bottles — and every drop of water was 
 precious to them — to keep the flowers 
 fresh a little longer. 
 
 The curious resignation of the Turkish 
 character used often to be manifest in 
 a striking way, in little matters. Here 
 is an instance which struck me. When 
 one used to distribute lemons or cigar- 
 ettes, or indeed anything else, to the 
 patients, one used to go round the room 
 
 M 2
 
 i8o LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 giving one cigarette or one lemon as the 
 case might be to each man. Sometimes a 
 patient would ask for two, and his demand 
 used to arouse the indignation of his fellow- 
 patients, which was often expressed in 
 violent terms. Nevertheless he would 
 persist in his demand, and would keep on 
 saying ' Give me two, Doctor, give me two ' ; 
 and finally one of the Turkish orderlies 
 present would nod his head, and say 
 * Yes, give him two ' ; and then he would 
 be given two, and the other patients, 
 instead of grumbling, would acquiesce 
 before the fait accompli, and say * Yes, 
 yes, give him two.' The curious thing 
 was they never dreamt of all of them ask- 
 ing for two of any one thing ; but the 
 very importunate were acknowledged to 
 be privileged if they were sufficiently 
 importunate. 
 
 After the first few days, the Turkish
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO i8i 
 
 medical authorities took steps in the matter 
 of the Greek school. And during the 
 first week of the work there a British 
 unit of the Turkish Red Crescent arrived 
 from England under the able direction 
 of Dr. Baines, and a further recruit joined 
 the helpers in the person of Lady West- 
 macott. Although it was impossible to 
 persuade any of the owners of the houses 
 at San Stefano to allow them to be used 
 as hospitals, a house was found for Dr. 
 Baines' unit, and he soon set up a lot 
 of tents, withdrew from the overcrowded 
 school a number of the patients, and 
 was able to do excellent work. But he 
 received this house for himself and his 
 staff on the express condition that no 
 sick of any kind whatsoever, and not 
 even the owner's father, should be allowed 
 to go into it. Later on a unit of the 
 Egyptian Red Crescent arrived, consisting
 
 i82 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 of some German doctors and an English- 
 man. Wooden barracks were built for 
 them in the plain outside the Greek school 
 fronting the sea. 
 
 Hard words have been said about the 
 Turkish medical authorities with regard to 
 this matter, and it is of course easy for 
 people who know nothing about the local 
 conditions and the local difficulties to 
 pass sweeping judgments in such matters. 
 On the whole, I have been told by compe- 
 tent authorities, the Turkish Red Crescent 
 did exceedingly well in dealing with the 
 wounded and the sick in the large field 
 of their operations. But an epidemic of 
 cholera such as that which I have described 
 seemed to paralyse them. It took the 
 Turks unprepared. Steps were taken but 
 tardily, and to Western minds the pro- 
 cedure seemed incredibly and criminally 
 slow ; but the fact remains that in the
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 183 
 
 East it is impossible to do things in a 
 hurry, and if you try to hustle you will 
 find that there will be less speed in the 
 long run. Taking all things into con- 
 sideration, the Turkish medical authorities, 
 and especially the Turkish doctor in 
 charge at San Stefano, did their best 
 when once they started to work. But 
 it is useless to slur over the fact that 
 when this appalling situation arose, 
 when the cholera victims were lying 
 like flies on the railway embankment 
 at San Stefano, they took no steps to 
 cope with the situation until they were 
 stimulated to do so by the heroic example 
 of Miss Alt and Madam Schneider and 
 the pressure of foreign opinion. This 
 was partly due to the fatalism of their 
 outlook, to the resignation of their tem- 
 perament, and partly to the disorder which 
 was rife throughout their military organi-
 
 1 84 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 sation. As far as San Stefano is concerned, 
 which is the small area I had the opportunity 
 of observing personally, had it not been 
 for the spontaneous efforts of Miss Alt, 
 Madam Schneider, and Mr. Frew, the 
 Turkish soldiers who were shut up in 
 the cholera camp at San Stefano, without 
 any possibility of egress, would have died 
 of hunger and thirst. And it must be 
 remembered, as I have said before, that 
 among the cholera patients there were 
 a great number of soldiers who were 
 suffering simply and solely from exhaustion 
 and starvation. 
 
 After the arrival of the British unit of 
 the Red Crescent and that of the Egyptian 
 Red Crescent, matters were got into shape 
 at San Stefano, and there was no longer need 
 of volunteers. The worst cases had died. 
 Those who had been suffering from ex- 
 haustion and starvation repovered and were
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 185 
 
 sent home. Those who had mild attacks 
 of cholera and dysentery became convales- 
 cent, and were moved into the tents. Rooms 
 were cleared out for the very sick, and it 
 was possible to introduce beds, and to 
 clear up matters. And what was at the 
 beginning an ante-chamber to Hell has been 
 now, I believe, converted into a clean 
 hospital with all the necessary appliances 
 and attendants. 
 
 That this was done was due to the initial 
 enterprise of Miss Alt and Madam Schneider. 
 They were the leading spirits and the soul 
 of this undertaking. Their work was un- 
 tiring and incessant. To have seen Miss 
 Alt at work was a rare privilege. Imper- 
 vious to disgust, but saturated with pity, 
 overflowing with love and radiating charity, 
 she threaded her way, bowed with age 
 and with silvered hair, like a good angel 
 or a kind fairy, from tent to tent, frorn
 
 i86 LETTERS FROM THE NEAR EAST 
 
 room to room, laden with gifts ; uncon- 
 scious of the filth, disdainful of the stench, 
 blind to the hideous sights, she went her 
 way, giving with both hands, helping with 
 her arms, cheering with her speech, and 
 healing with her smile. Miss Alt came to 
 San Stefano like an angel to Hell, and she 
 could have said, like Beatrice : 
 
 ' Jo son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, 
 Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, 
 Ne flamma d'esto incendio non m'assale.' 
 
 After working for several days like a 
 slave from morning till night Miss Alt broke 
 down, and had to be sent to the British 
 Hospital in Constantinople, where it be- 
 came plain that she had contracted a severe 
 attack of cholera. Later on Madame 
 Schneider also succumbed to the disease. 
 Fortunately both the ladies recovered, but 
 they have been left in a broken-down and 
 destitute condition, and it is hoped that
 
 THE CHOLERA AT SAN STEFANO 187 
 
 their heroism will be recognised in a tan- 
 gible way both in England and in America, 
 for as I write a fund has been opened for 
 them by Lady Lowther at the British 
 Embassy, Constantinople. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 iPOTTISWOODE AND CO, LTD., COLCHESTER 
 
 LONDON AND ETON
 
 The Land that is Desolate. An Account 
 
 of a Tour in Palestine. [Second Impression. 
 
 By Sir FREDERICK TREVES, Bart., G.C.V.O., &c., 
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