July 4, iqi8 
Land & Water 
1 1 
nothing undone to start liostilities ; all he needed now was 
a favourable occasion. 
Even after G^irmany had closed the Dardanelles, the Ger- 
man Ambassador's task was not an easy one. Talaat was 
not yet entirely convinced that his best policy was war, and, 
as I have already said, there was still plenty of pro- Ally 
sympathy in official quarters. It was Talaat's plan not to 
seize all the Cabinet offices at once, but gradually to elbow 
his way into undisputed control. At this crisis the most 
popularly respected members of the Ministry were Djavid, 
Minister of Finance, a Deunme ; Mahmoud Pasha, Minister 
of Public Works, a Circassian ; Bustany Effendi, Minister of 
Commerce and Agriculture, a Christian Arab ; and Oskan 
Effendi, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, an Armenian — 
and a Christian, of course. All these leaders, as well as the 
Grand Vizier, openly opposed war ; all informed Talaat and 
Enver that they would resign if Germany succeeded in her 
intrigues. Thus the atmosphere was exciting ; how tense 
the situation was a single episode will show. 
Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, had accepted 
an invitation to dine at the American Embassy on October 
20th, but he sent word at the last moment that he was 
ill. I called on the Ambassador an hour or two afterward 
and found him in his garden, apparently in the best of health. 
Sir Louis smiled and said that his illness had been purely 
political. He had received a letter telling him that he was 
to be assassinated that evening, this letter informing him of the 
precise spot where the tragedy was to take place, and the 
time. He therefore thought that he had better stay indoors. 
As I had no doubt that some such crime had been planned, 
I offered Sir Louis the protection of our Embassy. I gave 
him the key to our back gate; and, with Lord G?rald 
WeUesley, one of his secretaries, I made all arrangements for 
his escape to our quarters in case a flight became necessary. 
Our two Embassies were so located that, in the event of an 
attack, he might get unobserved from the back gate of his to 
the back gate of ours. 
"These people are relapsing into the Middle Ages," said 
Sir Louis, "when it was quite the thing tu throw Ambassa- 
dors into dungeons," and I think that he anticipated some 
such demonstration. 
I at once went to the Grand Vizier and informed him 
of the situation ; and said that nothing less than a visit 
?rom Talaat Pasha to Sir Louis, assuring him of his p:;rs )nal 
safety, would satisfy his many friends. I could make 
this demand with propriety, as we had already made 
arrangements to take over British interests when the break 
came. Within two hours Talaat made such a visit. Though 
die of the Turkish newspapers was printing scurrilous attacks 
on Sir Louis he was personally very popular with the Turks, 
and the Grand Vizier expressed his amazement and regret — 
and he was entirely sincere— that such threats- had been 
mad''. 
But we were all there in a highly nervous state, because 
we knew that Germany was working hard to produce a 
castts belli. Souchon frequently sent the Goehen and the 
Breslan to manoeuvre in the Black 'Sea, hoping that the 
Russian Fleet would attack. There were several pending 
situations that might end in war. 
At one meeting Talaat frankly told me that Turkey 
had decided to side with the Germans and to sink or swim 
with them. He went agaifl over the familiar grounds, and 
added that if Germany won — and Talaat said that he was 
convinced that Germany would win — the Kaiser would get 
his revenge on Turkey if Turkey had not helped him to obtain 
this victory. Talaat frankly admitted that fear— the motive, 
which, as I have said, is the one that chiefly inspires Turkish 
acts— was driving Turkey into a German alliance. He 
analysed the whole situation mpst dispassionately ; he said 
that nations could not afford such emotions as gratitude, or 
hate, or affection ; the only guide to action should be cold- 
blooded policy. "At this moment," said Talaat, "it is for 
our interest to side with Germany ; if, a month from now, it 
is our interest to embrace France and England we shall do 
that just as readily." 
"Russia, is our greatest enemy," he continued ; "and we 
are afraid of her. If now, while Germany is attacking Russia, 
we can give her a violent kick, and so make her powerless 
for some time, it is Turkey's duty to administer that kick ! " 
And then turning to me with a half melancholy, half 
defiant smile, he summed up the whole situation. 
"Ich mil die Deutchen" (f am with the Germans), he said, 
in his broken German. 
Becau.se the Cabinet was so divided, however, the Germans 
themselves had to push Turkey over the precipice. The 
evening following my talk with Talaat, most fateful news 
came from Russia. Three Turkish torpedo boats had entered 
the harbour of Odessa, sunk the Russian gunboat Donelz, 
killing a part of the crew, and damaged two Russian dread- 
noughts. They also sank the French ship Portugal, killing 
two of the crew and wounding two others. Then they 
turned their shells on the town and destroyed a sugar factory, 
withV some loss of life. German officials commanded these 
Turkish vessels ; there were very few Turks on board, as the 
Turkish crew had been given a holiday for the Turkish reli- 
gious festival of Bairam. The act was simply a wanton and 
unprovoked one ; the Germans raided the town deliberately, 
simph' to make war inevitable. The German' officers on the 
General, as my friend had told me, were constantly threaten- 
ing to commit some such act, if Turkey did not do so. Well, 
now they had done it. When this news reached Constanti- 
nople, Djemal was playing cards at the Cercle d'Orient. As 
Djemal was Minister of Marine, this attack, had it been an 
official act of Turkey, could have been made only on his 
orders. When some one called him f/om the card table to 
tell him the news, Djemal was much excited. 
"I know notliing about it," he replied. "It has not been 
done by my orders." 
On the evening of the 29th I had another talk with 
Talaat. He told me that he had known nothing of this 
attack beforehand ; that the whole responsibility rested with 
the German Admiral, Souchon. 
Whether Djemal and Talaat were telling the truth in thus 
pleading ignorance I do not know ; my opinion is that they 
were expecting some such outrage as this. There is no ques-" ' 
tion that the Grand Vizier, Said Halim, was genuinely grieved. 
When Monsieur Bompard and Sir Louis Mallet called on him 
and demanded their passports, he burst into tears. He 
begged them to delay ; he was sure that the matter could 
be adjusted. TKe Grand Vizier was the only member of the 
Cabinet whom Enver and Talaat particularly wished to 
placate. Talaat called on me in the afternoon, saying that 
he hid just hid lunch with Wangenheim. 
He laughed and said: "Well, Wangenheim, Enver and 1 
prefer that the war shall come now." 
Bustany, Oskan, Mahmoud, and Djavid at once carried 
out their threats and resigned from the Cabinet, thus leaving 
the" Government in the hands of the Moslem Turks. The 
Grand Vizier, although he had threatened to resign, did not 
do so ; he was exceedingly pompous and vain, and enjoyed 
the dignities of his office so much that, when it came to the 
final decision, he could not surrender them. The Party of 
Union and Progress now controlled the Government in 
practically all its departments. 
One final picture I have of these exciting days. On the 
evening of the 30th I called at the British Embassy. British 
residents were already streaming in large numbers to my 
office for protection, and fears of ill treatment, even the mas- 
sacre of foreigners, filled everybody's mind. Amid all this 
tension I found one imperturbable figure. Sir Louis was 
sitting in the chancery, before a huge fireplace, with large 
piles of documents heaped about him in a semicircle. 
Secretaries were constantly entering, their arms iull 
of papers, which they added to the accumulations already 
surrounding the .Embassador. Sir Louis would take up 
document after document, glance through it and almost 
invariably drop it into the fire. These papers contained the 
Embassy records for probably a hundred years. In them 
were written the great achievements of a long line of dis- 
tinguished Anbassadors. There appeared the story of 'all 
the diplomatic triumphs in Turkey of Stratford de Redchffe, 
the "Great Elchi," as the Turks called him, who, for the 
greater part of almost fifty years, from iSio to 1858, prac- 
tically ruled the Turldsh Empire in the interest of England. 
The records of other great British Ambassadors at the Sub- 
lime Porte now went, one by one, into Sir Louis Mallet's 
blizing fire. \ 
The long story of British ascendancy in Turkey had 
reached its close. The twenty years' campaign of the Kaiser 
to destroy England's influence and to become England's 
successor had finally triumphed, and the blaze in Sir Louis's 
chancery was really the funeral pyre of England's vanished 
power in Turkey. 
We sat there before his fire and discussed tlie details of his 
departure. He gave me a list of the English residents who were 
to leave and who to stay, and I made final arrangements with 
Sir Louis for taking over British interests. Distressing in many 
ways as was this collapse of British influence in Turkey, the 
honour of Great Britain and her Ambassador was still secure. 
The diplomatic game that had ended in England's defeat 
was one which English statesmen* were not quahfied to play. 
It called for talents such as only a Wangenheim possessed — 
it needed that German statecraft which, in accordance with 
Bismarck's maxim, was ready to sacrifice for the Fatherland 
" not only life but honour." 
{To be continued.) 
