Sidney Whitman

“ Is it to be wondered at that people nurtured on misleading data can scarcely be brought to believe that there is less crime in Turkey than in almost any other country; that the punishment for crime is far more lenient than in most countries; that the deposed Sultan was never known to sign a death-warrant; and that the Mohammedan Turks, as distinct from the Christian inhabitants of the Levant, are so kind to animals of every variety, beast or bird, that a Society for the Protection of Animals, however vigilant, would find its occupation gone in Turkey? ”

“ One of his exploits was to join the representative of another Power in bullying the Sultan and ultimately blackmailing the Turks shamefully, who thus had good reason to hurl their maledictions at his head when he departed.
A pitiable figure of the diplomatic world is the poor Ambassador: one whose private income is unequal to the calls upon his position and whose life is besides bankrupt in happiness. He sits alone in glittering dejection in his beautiful palace, with no money to entertain and no wife to comfort him and cheer his solitude. ”

“ Russia has not yet forgotten the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war. If she scents obstacles ahead, she will hesitate to advance too rapidly on the path of adventure. But hesitation is not synonymous with withdrawal. Russia is still true to Gortschakoff’s famous phrase, ‘La Russie ne boude pas, elle se recueille.’ Turkey would be in less danger from her if she could enlist the sympathies and engage the material interests of Great Britain and Germany upon her side, as Abdul Hamid evidently considered that they might be enlisted in regard to his Asiatic dominions. ”

“ Like Bucharest—another preparatory school of budding Ambassadors—Constantinople has long been a seminary, a high school for diplomatists of every country. Here it is that uncouth youths, taken raw from the Foreign Office, their hands everlastingly thrust in their pockets, a pipe in their mouth, with slouching gait and pitiable embarrassment, on entering the room of their official superiors come gradually to discard their angularities and are taught to behave themselves in accord with cosmopolitan usage. ”

“ Among the chief dragomans of the Embassies of the Great Powers were to be found some of the ablest, most astute and cultivated of men, particularly Levantines of Italian or Greek origin. The dragomans form so conspicuous a feature of diplomatic life at Constantinople that the Turks declare the souls of those who have passed away in the course of time flit on the waters of the Bosphorus in the bodies of the flocks of birds so often seen skimming the blue waters at sunset. ”

“ Shakespeare Englishmen who are old enough to remember the Crimean war might well rub their eyes on coming to Constantinople to-day, where the stranger, after being shown the public fountain in Stamboul dedicated by the German Emperor to the Sultan, is taken over the water to Scutari, where, in the most picturesque cemetery in the world, England’s dead warriors sleep under the cool shade of the cypress-tree. ”

“ At one time it has been my lot to sleep on couches covered with the costliest products of the Turkish loom; at another on the bare floor in a dirty wayside han (camel shed) , with camels and oxen as bedfellows, typhus and small-pox hovering around us. Hospitality has been extended to me in the underground mud-hut of the fierce, though hospitable, Kurdish chieftain, armed to the teeth, and next morning I have beheld the snow-capped summit of Mount Ararat, peering seventeen thousand feet high through the clouds. ”

“ You must know the best type of Turk intimately to realize the extent of his generosity, of his sense of gratitude, the delight he takes in giving pleasure to others—that true test of love of our fellow-men. Then note his freedom from envy, the petty jealousies, trickeries, and arrogance which are such unlovable traits of my own countrymen, the Germans, whose overbearing demeanour of late years has become more and more objectionable in Turkey. ”

“ I was once a witness to a desperate encounter between some Montenegrins and Greeks in a German beer-house in Pera, and the memory of the diabolical fury of the Montenegrins is still present to my mind, together with the quiet self-control of the proprietor, an old Prussian soldier of ’66 and of ’70, who at last succeeded in calming the disputants. The passionate hatreds of the Near East are practically unknown to us. ”

“ TURKISH TRAITS: II
Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,
Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,
When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens The conditions of life under an autocracy naturally tend towards a sense of loyalty degenerating into adulation and servility on the part of public servants, as well as towards greed and corruption on the part of those whose high position places endless opportunities for dishonesty within their reach.
To estimate the character of the Turk, therefore, by the corruption at the Palace would not be fair to him. ”

“ I knew a Minister-Plenipotentiary and Envoy-Extraordinary of distinguished family and high intellectual attainments who, after being summarily recalled from his post, haunted the antechamber of the Sultans secretaries at the Palace for ten years without obtaining another appointment in all that period; nearly half a lifetime wasted in idleness, chewing the bitter cud of hope deferred. No wonder that such a man became disgusted with Hamidian conditions and longed for the introduction of European institutions. ”

“ You will never hear a Turk refer to a man as being rich, or as being “worth so much.” All the time I spent among them I never once knew a Turk single out such qualifications as worthy of remark. A man’s value lies in his character. Thus he is “instruit, fidèle, un homme qui a rendu de grands services et en rendra encore.” Neghib Bey, a dark-eyed Syrian, exclaims: “Speak not to me of politicians, nor of men of wealth. ”

“ If procrastination and dilatory methods of business are sometimes calculated to bring a highly strung European or American to despair in Turkey, patience and forbearance and long-suffering, on the other hand, rise with the Turks to the dignity of virtues. Rarely are these virtues more striking than in connexion with the calumny to which the Turk is continually subjected. Mehmet Izzet said to me, in the midst of a storm of invective let loose by the English Press upon the Turks: “Mon cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne, nous ne pouvons pas nous défendre.” ”

“ The reckless extravagance of Sultan Abdul Aziz and his Court had left the finances of the Empire in hopeless embarrassment. The Ottoman Empire was practically bankrupt. Corruption reigned supreme in every department of the State. The governorships of the provinces had frequently been sold at enormous prices to men who were utterly corrupt and unfitted for their positions, and who oppressed the unfortunate populations under their charge, extorting from them, often by torture, the profits of their industry. ”

“ A few years in the social whirl of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or London does not improve them: the Mohammedans in particular are apt to acquire undesirable habits and modes of thought. They become imbued with the worldly cunning, the artificiality and insincerity of European fashionable life, with the extravagant homage Europeans pay to social position, so different from the patriarchal instincts of home, and they are consequently disenchanted when they return to Constantinople to find that they are nobodies, mere hangers-on at the Palace, perhaps destined to spend years as suppliants for work. ”

“ Alas! those who have travelled through Turkey in Asia and witnessed the absolute lack of roads, bridges, and almost every other civilized convenience which marks a certain mean level of social organization, can only come to the conclusion that the Turk is more or less of a nomad: a nomad horseman, as he was a thousand years ago, leading the life of a nomad, even though his predatory instincts are now and then dormant, and, when exercised, are impartially put into practice at the expense of both the Mohammedan and the Christian. ”

“ With due reservation regarding these fierce outbursts, commonly, but in my humble opinion most unjustly, attributed to religious fanaticism, I am still of opinion that the Turk is far from being inclined by nature to cruelty. His kind treatment of animals, of horses and dogs, and of the birds in the air, which he takes no pleasure in shooting, speaks volumes for the humane attributes of the Turk, whose deep attachment to his own family and kindness to dependents nobody who knows the East can call into question. ”

“ There have never been any powerful social elements in Constantinople, as in other capitals, to compete with diplomacy. A millionaire banker might be knocked on the head with impunity in the streets of Pera, but the obscure Vice-Consul of a Great Power is sacrosanct. In every case the social as well as the intellectual life of Constantinople, such as it is, is largely made up of and regulated by the staff of the different Embassies, Legations, and Consulates, of which “his Excellency,” the full-blown Ambassador, is the supreme embodiment. ”

“ I have often signed contracts with Turks without understanding their contents (for I read their writing with difficulty) ,” continued Avellis, “and I would not hesitate to do so again. I know them to be incapable of falsehood or deception, unless debased by intercourse with Europeans. The unspoilt Turk is incapable of dishonesty. No one practises the virtues of humanity, the tenets of faith and charity to such a degree as he. Be a Turk ever so poor, no beggar will appeal to his hospitality in vain. ”

“ He was said to have hoarded fifty millions, whether in francs or pounds sterling matters little, which he invested in German banks. And it was these millions which excited the cupidity of his conquerors, and upon which they were bent on laying hungry hands.
“The power of kings is based upon the reason and folly of the people, but more upon their folly. The greatest and most important thing in the world has human weakness as its basis; and this very basis is admirably secure; for nothing is more certain than the fact that the people are weak. ”

“ A fine, dignified-looking man in the prime of life, wearing the garb of a Sheikh or a Ulema or Mollah, crosses the room and takes a seat quite close to Izzet Pasha. He is evidently a personage of importance, for the two converse a long time in whispers, and whereas the Sultan’s favourite is most courteous to his interlocutor, the latter maintains a dignified, almost severe demeanour. As I was told afterwards, he is one of the most influential of Ulemas in Constantinople, learned in law, and of high standing as regards personal character. ”

“ It can only be in Constantinople that old men indulge in such fancies, and it is wondrous strange how they are received and reciprocated at times. In a beautifully appointed konak on the hill there dwells a haughty beauty, one of the loveliest women in the Empire. She sails into the room and tosses her empty little thoroughbred head in lofty disdain as she passes her Greek servant. ”

“ Mosques, minarets, and cypresses float out of the grey mist as it lifts slowly off land and water. Turkish ironclads become substantial things as they lie at anchor in the Golden Horn alongside the battered old wooden hulks of Navarino’s bloody memory. At first the iron prows only are visible, tipped with light. But as the sun grows more 8powerful and plays on the water, streaks of silver quiver serpent-like—a veritable Greek fire—round the hulls, until finally the ironclads themselves appear majestically before the vision like antediluvian monsters. ”

“ When a man rises to high position in Turkey he remembers only too readily those who belong to him, and now and then gets himself into trouble by helping his poor relations or those who have been friends of his obscure youth; and this often without any other motive than the satisfaction to be derived from a kind action. For in Turkey high position is supposed to be a reward for zeal in service, for conduct, and is freely open to all classes. That it is often bestowed upon the unworthy is only to say that judgment and selection are fallible in Turkey as elsewhere ”

“ Many a young attaché has found in the wife of his chief a motherly and sympathetic confidante whose counsel has kept him out of mischief in this dangerous centre of temptation. For the family life of the English diplomatic world in Constantinople has long been an exemplary one: one to look up to. English diplomacy can boast of having always preserved personal integrity, an aloofness from every species of sordid and illegitimate transaction and from all concession-mongering and cadging for favours of any and every description in the Turkish capital. ”