Chapter X: The Social Side of Constantinople (2)

It is just fifty years ago that our country finished one of the
bloodiest and most expensive internecine wars recorded in history,
and you all know that the worst strifes are those that are waged
between brothers. All the southern states had been completely
devastated; a large part of their white male population was killed
during the war; millions of slaves had been set free and were
unprepared to take care of themselves and would not work; both the
North and the South were in a complete state of physical and
financial exhaustion. The cost of the war exceeded 1,500 million
dollars; our Government bonds were selling below par and were
mostly owned in foreign countries; we had just been deprived of the
wise leadership of the great Abraham Lincoln who had been foully
murdered. We had fought for a principle and had won, but the hatred
of the sections for each other survived and the great problem was
to reconcile the combatants to the new conditions and again to
absorb into our commercial and business activities the hundreds of
thousands of members of the disbanded army and to have our
communities resume their normal condition and bring about a
reconstruction of the southern states. We were confronted by a
tremendous problem, and it took wise statesmanship, great grit,
patient toil, and unswerving enthusiasm born from an absolute and
abiding faith in the future to solve it. We had only 35,000 miles
of railroads and many of these traversed the devastated country. I
say “only,” because to-day we have more than 250,000 miles of
railroad which have brought into easy communication with the large
markets of our country all our developed farms and mines, etc., and
have given the country four transcontinental routes. We had a
population of 34 millions which has now grown to more than 95
millions, of which 19 millions attend our public and two millions
our private schools, and 320,000 attend 596 universities and
colleges in which there are thirty thousand professors and
instructors and which have libraries containing 16 million volumes
of books. Our imports in 1870 were 436 millions and our exports 393
millions, showing a balance against us of 43 millions; while in
1913, our imports were 1,813 millions and our exports 2,465
millions, so that we had a balance of trade in our favour of 652
millions, and for the last seven years the average annual balance
of trade has been more than five hundred million dollars. We have
gained by immigration about 30 million people of which the year
1913 brought 1,200,000--practically equal to the population of the
city of Constantinople. This great army, besides bringing their
energy, strength, and capacity to work, also brought with them 30
million dollars in cash! I wonder if these figures give you the
faintest idea of this tremendous growth.

How was this all done?

We invited, urged, and welcomed help from every source and there
was a generous response. We utilized English, French, German, and
Dutch money to help build our railroads. We opened our portals wide
to immigrants who overflowed our shores in a most unprecedented
fashion. It first relieved Ireland and Germany of their surplus
population and thereby bettered the condition of those that
remained at home; later on Italy and Russia sent us hundreds of
thousands of their people. And it was thus that the native
population received the necessary reinforcements to help develop
the new districts that were being opened for settlement. As fast as
the railroad development pierced the West, villages and cities
followed it. The Northerners and Southerners found a common ground
in the great and almost boundless West which was then entirely
undeveloped and they worked side by side in this new land of
promise and soon forgot their past differences. They started out in
log cabins which they erected with their own hands; they slept on
pine boughs and were willing to forego all comforts to enable them
rapidly to recoup their lost fortunes. Gradually they acquired the
almost luxurious surroundings in which they live to-day, for there
is hardly a farmhouse without an organ or a piano, a sewing
machine, a small library and carpets on the floor, and most of them
own considerable agricultural machinery and a great many of them
their own automobiles.

We adopted a system of protection so as to foster our then infant
industries which are now managed by wonderful corporations that not
only can stand alone but compete with the world. We encouraged
thrift and habits of saving so that the deposits in the savings
banks to-day amount to 4,450 millions and the assets of the life
insurance companies to more than 4,400 million dollars.

What do such accumulated assets mean?

They mean opportunities realized, steady thrift, thousands of
thrills of pleasure at individual progress toward independence and
protection against want in old age, provisions for rainy days; the
renewed prosperity of the natives of the South, North, East, and
West; conversion of millions of stalwart immigrants into prosperous
farmers, businessmen, mechanics, etc., who are the owners of these
and other assets. I am going to leave to your imagination and
poetic temperament to analyze still further what are the component
parts when reduced into human endeavours that constitute this
monument of prosperity.

We are not so conceited as to arrogate to ourselves the claim that
we are the only country that has accomplished such wonderful
results in the last fifty years. In 1865 there was no German Empire
nor United Italy; their creation and phenomenal development have
taken place since then. I believe that a description of the
industrial and commercial development of those and many other
countries would make as fine a story as I have told you about the
United States; but they are so near to you that it would lack the
enchantment that distance lends to a view. I have shown you results
and I now want to tell you that they have not been attained without
a great many troubles and tribulations. We have had our severe
panics and recessions; our droughts and floods; our pests of
grasshoppers and bollweevils; our strikes and labour troubles, some
of which have led to bloodshed. It was no easy task to assimilate
the many different nationalities that reached our shores. The
troubles of most nations are those of struggling against poverty.
We have had the unusual experience of having to fight and suppress
the excessive prosperity of the privileged classes of our country,
because they were about destroying our free government and were
depriving our people of their equal opportunities. Fortunately we
found in our present President, Woodrow Wilson, a champion for
justice and right, and he has, through his infinite skill and
wisdom, practically after one year of administration, adjusted the
matter.

If I were in America and wanted to compare our accomplishments to
something definite, I would speak of a fifty-story building in
contrast to some of the two-or three-story buildings. But being in
Turkey I want to say that I have shown you the wonderful national
rug that we have produced in the United States. It was woven by the
millions that inhabit our land, natives and foreigners, whites and
blacks, people from the North, South, East, and West, men and
women, and from materials produced in our own soil and imported
from all countries; and as far as we have finished it, we pride
ourselves, notwithstanding some faults and defects, that it makes a
fine, harmonious whole. And the sincerest compliments that any
country could pay to us would be to adopt and imitate our pattern.

When I described the success we had attained in our endeavours during the fifty years since the Civil War, Talaat and some of his colleagues were visibly impressed. Shortly after this dinner both Talaat and Enver urged me to visit various parts of the Turkish Empire in order to be able to advise them as regards reforms in their administration and other means of public progress. While my instructions from my government, like those of every country to its foreign representatives abroad, forbade my intermeddling with purely domestic affairs, I felt that the situation in Turkey was wholly without precedent. So I set myself to study the country and its varied and most intricate problems. With Talaat and Enver I planned three trips--the first to Palestine and Syria, the second to the south shore of the Black Sea, and the third to the interior, as far as the Bagdad railway was then constructed. The coming of war prevented the second and third trips. The first I shall describe in the next chapter.

But, fascinating as were my discoveries in the novel field of diplomacy, and much as I enjoyed the effort to assist the Turkish leaders, I felt after all that my true function as American Ambassador was far removed from the intrigues of the Old World Powers and from the momentary struggles of the existing Turkish Government. On the one hand, America had no ambitions in Turkey that called for diplomatic gambling. Our interests there were almost wholly altruistic. We had, to be sure, a small commercial interest, and I had no disposition to shirk my responsibility for fostering its improvement. The Standard Oil Company was our most considerable business representative. The Singer Sewing Machine Company, served in Constantinople by Germans from its Berlin branch, was second. The third in importance were the American buyers of Turkish tobacco and Turkish licorice. Besides these, we had little commercial representation.

America’s true mission in Turkey, I felt, was to foster the permanent civilizing work of the Christian missions, which so gloriously exemplified the American spirit at its best. As I frequently explained to the Turkish Government officers, we had little need for foreign trade or foreign sources of raw material. Our territory was so vast, and our population relatively so small, that we had neither reason nor disposition to covet further territory. I explained to them further that our citizens were accustomed to achieve their own financial independence, and that this characteristic of rising from poverty to affluence had bred in them, as a national characteristic, a sympathy with those not yet arrived at fortune, and a helpful wish to place the means of advancement within the reach of those still struggling upward. This spirit had lavished itself in America upon the advancement of common schools and higher institutions of learning, and upon thousands of other forms of philanthropy and helpfulness. This spirit of good will, I explained further, overflowed our boundaries into other lands, partly because we wished to share our good fortune with others, and chiefly because it was prescribed by the Christian faith, which declared that good works should not be limited to those of one’s own family or kindred. America, I told them, is constantly receiving hundreds of thousands of emigrants from the Old World, and American generosity has placed among these newly arrived citizens the services of expert advisers, who use every means to make easy the path of the immigrant, and to induct him as rapidly as possible into the full fellowship of American life. The Christian missions in Turkey, I added, carried this work one step further: it went into other lands and tried to carry to them some of the benefits which our material prosperity made possible among us.

I think my words were received, at first, with some reserve, not only by the Turks themselves, but by my colleagues, the representatives of the European nations. They soon learned, however, to believe them, when they saw that I sought no concessions, that I devoted no more attention to the American commercial enterprises represented in the Levant than were necessary for the transaction of their ordinary business, and that I gave my chief attention to encouraging the work of the Christian missionaries and spreading the gospel of Americanism. I soon found that I could be of the greatest assistance to these people. It was generally believed in Turkey that I was unusually close to the President. Consequently the attentions which I took pains to shower upon the missionaries added enormously to the importance of their position in the eyes of the Turkish Government, and placed them upon an entirely new footing in their consideration. When it was observed that Dr. Gates, the president of Robert College, frequently accompanied me on my horseback rides, and that I made an invariable custom of entertaining at dinner at least once a week Dr. Mary Mills Patrick and Dr. Louise B. Wallace, the president and the dean, respectively, of the Constantinople College for Girls, the Turkish Government conceived an entirely new idea of the importance that America attaches to these institutions; and they gave a corresponding deference to the wishes of their presidents.

Even if I had not conceived these attentions to be one of my prime duties, I should have been drawn to these companionships by a native congeniality of temper. Dr. Patrick and Dr. Gates were splendid examples of American womanhood and manhood. Both had forsaken the opportunity of success in America to devote their lives unselfishly to the great task of human betterment. Their gifts of mind and graces of character would have made them delightful companions in any circumstances. But having, besides, as they did, a profound interest in the kind of work that had so deeply engrossed me in New York, I gravitated toward them in Constantinople by a natural attraction. With them I would mention Dr. Peet, the resident financial representative, in Constantinople, of the Mission Boards of America--a man of great experience and gracious person who had given a quarter of a century of his life to work in this field. Further along in this article, I shall describe some of the happy experiences I had in meeting some of the young men and women who were students at the colleges.

My relationships with the Jews of Constantinople were equally useful and equally pleasant. I cultivated the acquaintance of the Chief Rabbi Nahoun, a learned and brilliant man in his early forties. I took pains to show him every possible honour in public. I let it be generally known that I frequented the B’nai Brith Lodge at Constantinople, which, to my astonishment and gratification, I discovered to contain in its membership a group of men of higher average quality than are in any American lodge of the same order with which I am acquainted. My public attentions to these representative Jews gave to them also a new importance and a new dignity in the view of the Turkish Government. It was indeed gratifying to me to be able, with scarcely an effort, so greatly to improve the status of my co-religionists in the eyes of a government which controlled the historical birthplace of the Hebrew religion and the scene of its one-time temporal grandeur.

One of my ambitions at Constantinople was to make the Embassy truly the American Headquarters. Every American of whatever degree, whether resident or visitor, was welcome within its portals. I endeavoured to have every one of them enjoy even its formal hospitality--an invitation to a luncheon or a dinner. I felt that the Embassy was not intended merely to provide an opportunity for exclusive social distinction for the Ambassador. On the contrary, it belonged to the American people; and certainly part of my function was to see that it was of service to them. I soon observed how greatly an invitation to the Embassy was appreciated; and since my return to this United States I have had innumerable evidences of the enjoyment which the simplest courtesy I extended brought to its recipient. Time after time I have had strangers salute me in various parts of this country and remind me with great warmth of the pleasure they had enjoyed in a call at the Embassy in Turkey.

But perhaps the most satisfying of all my associations in Turkey was the privilege I enjoyed of constantly sharing in the problems and accomplishments of the two principal American colleges. To me their work was an endless source of satisfaction. To see these great evidences of American idealism functioning in this remote and backward land, spreading civilization among people long submerged in ignorance, was a profound reason for pride in my country. As a humanitarian, it was a corresponding delight to see the students themselves--their young minds expanding, their young spirits fired with enthusiasm, in the congenial atmosphere of these institutions which, but for America, would not have existed and for which there was no substitute within their reach.

The Girls’ College especially appealed to my sympathy. Here, in a land in which the position of women was the most unfavourable, was an institution which was offering to the future mothers of the Near East an entrance into a new world of freedom and opportunity. Girls were gathered here from all parts of the Turkish Empire--Turkish girls, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Albanians. It was a delight to see how they responded to their opportunity. On numerous occasions, Dr. Patrick invited me to address them, and one such occasion I recall with a special pleasure. I described to them the American profession of social worker, tracing the reasons which gave rise to the movement for social betterment in our country and explaining how this new profession arose out of the need for trained workers in that field. I was astonished to see how deep an impression my description made upon them. It appealed to the universal instinct of women to cherish life and to work for its improvement. So enthusiastic were these young Oriental women that afterward Dr. Patrick told me more than half of them had expressed an ambition to devote their life to social service.

These girls, touched by the stimulation of the new intellectual world freely opened to them, attempted many imaginative experiments. One of the most interesting that I observed was the product of a debate held in the college, in which one team had maintained the position of the Greek Stoics against the other group which had defended the philosophy of the Epicureans. Not satisfied with debating the subject abstractly, the girls had resolved to put the two philosophies to the practical test of experience; and for a week the Senior Class was divided into two groups, one of which attempted actually to live for that period according to the Stoic dogma and the other according to the Epicurean. They took the experiment seriously, but of course, with the lightheartedness of youth, they found it an entertainment as well. The essays written on their experiences as Stoics and Epicureans would make interesting reading. I could not refrain from speculating with hope and enthusiasm upon the numerous influences which this college, through these eager young spirits, would wield in directing the future destiny of the millions of backward people among whom they would be scattered as torch bearers of civilization.

Robert College was an institution for men, founded fifty years ago by Christopher R. Roberts, a wealthy leather merchant of New York. Its early destiny was directed by Dr. Hamlin and Dr. Washburn, two far-seeing statesmen of education. They had steered a course for the institution which had gained at least the passive coöperation of the Turkish Government, while in America it had gained the enthusiastic support of great philanthropists like Cleveland H. Dodge and John S. Kennedy. Gradually there had been added to its faculty men of strong character and profound learning, so that by the time I reached Constantinople it was an institution worthy of all the care that had been lavished upon it. These earnest men had made a real impression upon the life of the Near East. Being the only great seat of learning in that whole large territory, it had attracted the ambitious youth from the remotest Armenia and all the Balkan countries. Bulgaria especially had appreciated its opportunity. Hundreds of the leaders of Bulgarian political and economic life received their training here.

In Dr. Gates, the president of Robert College, I found a man who was very useful to me. He had lived many years in Turkey, knew all the chief figures in its public life, and was a profound student of Turkish psychology. In return, I had the pleasure of being useful to him during the trying days after Turkey entered the war.

Such was the picture of Constantinople as I saw it during the first four months of my embassy. It was a picture full of strange anomalies and apparent contradictions. Here was I, a native of Europe, representing the greatest republic of America at the court of an Oriental sovereign. Here was I, a Jew, representing the greatest Christian nation of the world at the capital of the chief Mohammedan nation. Here was I, a man without any previous diplomatic experience whatsoever, suddenly projected headlong into one of the most difficult diplomatic posts in the world, as one of the ten personal representatives of the President. Here was a nation, ruled in name by a proud descendant of Mohammed, and ruled in fact by a group of desperate adventurers whose chieftain was an ex-railroad porter. Here was the capital of an ancient and decaying nation, which was soon, because of its strategic position, to become one of the very vital centres of world diplomacy. Here was a wornout empire dying, which in its death agony clutched other peoples still with its withered fingers and was soon to reach up and draw within its fatal embrace, in the death grapple of a world war, boys from the cattle ranges of Australia, aboriginal Indians from the wilds of northwest Canada, peasants from farthest Russia, cockneys from the East End of London, shepherds from the Carpathian Mountains--vast aggregations of soldiers as polyglot as the population of Constantinople itself--that mongrel city which, sitting at the cross roads of ancient trade routes, had for centuries drawn citizens from every people under heaven. How could I realize, during those peaceful first months of my embassy, that I, the representative of remote and isolated America, should soon be involved in diplomatic complications that should involve the very continuance of American institutions. It was well that I had those few months of peaceful education into that society before the storm of the World War burst upon us. It was well, too, that I had my trip to Egypt and Asia Minor, where I met and learned much from Lord Kitchener, Lord Bryce, and the wise Americans and Jews whom I there encountered. This journey was of so much importance to me that it deserves a separate chapter.