Chapter XIII: The Pulse of the Nation

A European official, who has lived here all his life (and he is an old man now), is astonished at my recklessness in trusting myself as I have done to the protection of the “unspeakable” Turks. He was born and bred with the idea that Turks were “unspeakable,” and consequently has nothing to do with them, unless he can possibly help it, and when he does he lets them see he dislikes them. Extraordinary it is, that there should be Europeans in this country who, after living almost a lifetime amongst a people, have not got to know them one little bit better! They make their whole existence, as it were, an island--their thoughts, their actions, their words, even their friends--and fondly imagine themselves to be patriots. “How uncomfortable! How nasty! Oh! I wouldn’t like that!” they exclaim, as I describe to them some of the customs of this people amongst whom they have lived over fifty years. “Whatever did you do in a household where there were no forks and knives?” The answer is not very difficult to guess; but they seem incapable of understanding my delight at eating with my fingers, like the primitive people who entertained me.

And yet, after only a short time, how different is my experience of these same “unspeakable” Turks! Every day since I have been here some woman comes with a present for me! I have received a wooden spoon, stuffs, embroideries, Brussels sprouts, melons, sweetmeats, yourout (curdled milk), and one poor woman has walked from a neighbouring village, bringing me a little lamb; I have explained to her, however, that although I much appreciate her gift, the fog of London would kill the little thing, and he had better, therefore, remain where he is in the sun. And why have all these women come bringing me presents? Simply out of gratitude (and gratitude is one of their chief characteristics) to a woman who loves their country, and because that woman is English.

Right into the very heart of Asia the word “England” stands for something almost superhuman. “We can never, never forget that England has shed her blood for us,” said one day the Turkish Heir to the throne. England stands for all that is good and honest and just. England is the fairy godmother, who, with a touch of her magic wand, could put everything straight for them. In the families where there are two governesses, an Englishwoman and a Frenchwoman, it is the Englishwoman who is given the position of trust, the Englishwoman who sleeps in the children’s room, the Englishwoman who buys their clothes; in short, whatever the mother cannot do herself she prefers the Englishwoman to do for her. “The Englishwoman told me so, therefore I believe her,” is a phrase which I myself have heard; and one mother, quite recently, who was, in spite of my presence, weeping bitterly because her son had gone to Paris to study, added, “It would have all been so different had he gone to England.” My host tells me, too, that when he was a little boy, and the Circassians were groaning under the Russian yoke, his mother and her friends used to comfort each other with the hope that the English most surely would come to deliver them. They did not think of the Turks, who were their natural deliverers, and who at that time were quite strong enough to come to their assistance; but their thoughts always turned to the great faraway England, who always came to help States in bondage, or States struggling for regeneration.

And so, when I think of this great prestige of my country, it seems a thousand pities that there are persons doing their best to destroy that prestige.

I hear the Turks called suspicious--during the reign of Abdul Hamid, perhaps, yes--they had every reason for being so. I have trusted them, and they of all the nations of Europe have never given me the wrong change.

I have trusted them, and they have not deceived me. One day, I remember, I had to cross the bridge without Fâtima, and pay my own toll. Not knowing the Turkish for what I wanted to say, I opened my purse, and the man took out what he wanted and put back the change. My boxes have never been locked since I left the boat. When I return from my afternoon drive Miss Chocolate takes off my “tcharchaff” and puts away my purse. My books, my papers, my letters are all open; the few jewels I possess are on my table. I close my eyes in the homes of these humble villagers confident that no harm will come to me; that they will not unfasten my pearls whilst I sleep. In our Western countries should I not be scolded for putting temptation in their way? And I, in my turn, feel sure they trust me.

My friend Zeyneb lives at No. 43. It is a luxury to have a number. Addresses are generally given in this manner: the district first, let us say “Kiz Tach,” for example; then, as further direction, “the house at the corner, near the fountain, near the convent, near the mosque.” One generally trusts to Providence, in the form of a kindly stranger, to find the way, and I must say they take unending pains to help one. With a number, then, I say to myself, it will be easy to find Zeyneb. But alas, there are other No. 43’s in the district, these numbers, for the most part, having been purchased at the bazaar and put on the door without rhyme or reason, and as a sort of decoration. To find my friend’s house, which is ten minutes’ walk from Pera, it took my coachman two and a half hours and cost me 20f., and “the way is so easy,” explained Zeyneb. After that I walked, following these instructions: “Always keep on the cobbles which lie on the earth from north to south. Although the road may turn and twist, mount and descend, as long as you keep on the north to south lying cobbles you will be all right.” And after dark, when I have taken that way, had the Turks been suspicious, what would they not have imagined I was doing when suddenly, from my little bag, I extracted a box of matches and examined the cobbles to be sure I had not strayed on to those lying from east to west. Once or twice a kindly old man brought his lantern, and came with me as far as the hillock, at the side of which Zeyneb’s No. 43 is situated.

When I remarked on the number of maps and the prominence given to drawing of maps in the Turkish schools, my guide answered, “You English on your comfortable island do not require to know the map of Europe.”

Yes, a thousand pities it is that we all of us, from the highest of the land to the schoolboy, should not have a more accurate knowledge of the map of Europe and a more accurate knowledge of the peoples on that map. If all those who are now working in the cause of peace turned their efforts towards making the nations of a country understand one another better war would be much less possible. If only we had more knowledge of the people of other lands, many diplomatic errors could be avoided. Over and over again we have slighted the Moslems of our Empire. How many of us even realize that King George rules over more Moslems than any other sovereign. Hear the asinine remarks of our young subalterns about the uncivilized Indian _niggers_ who must be kept in their place!! How dare they thus humiliate persons of a civilization older and greater than our own.

There is a wonderful brotherhood amongst the Moslems. Any injustice to their Moslem brothers of Turkey is counted as an insult to Moslem Indians; they have written so to me. Unfortunately we have not this same brotherhood amongst us Christians. I have in my possession a letter written by a Lazarist Father, deploring the possibility that Constantinople might fall into the hands of the Greeks. “They are waging war,” he says, “in the name of the Cross, but does Europe not know that that Cross is _tout ce qu’il a de plus Grecque_” (sic). What a splendid example of Christian brotherhood to show to the Moslems of the world! He prefers the _infidel_ Turk to another member of the Christian Church because the Turk has offered him hospitality and allowed him to have his churches and his missions, and has in no way interfered with his religious liberties, whereas from his brother Christian he could not expect such broad-mindedness. And what horrors would not have been committed at the Holy Sepulchre had not the Turks been there to guard it against the Christians. Sad, indeed, it is that this wonderful Christian religion of ours should be divided against itself to the detriment of its best interests.

Had the Bulgarians and the Christian natives of the Balkans gone out to wage war like Hottentots, or any of the other nations they have the impertinence to regard as savages, we might have pitied them; but that they should carry the Cross, and wage war in the name of the Cross, what Christian can ever forgive them? “We used to respect your Christian Cross,” one day a Turk said to me; “we used to bow respectfully when the Cross passed in the streets, but the Bulgarians have dragged that Cross in the mire.” I was one day reading with a friend the beautiful, wonderful story of Jesus of Nazareth.

“This is not the Christ of the Bulgarians,” she said. “No, indeed,” I replied.

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And Young Turkey--has she yet had a chance? We cannot pass judgment on them till they have had ten years’ fair trial. Unfortunately for them, their revolution was a little too idealistic. Theirs was to be a bloodless revolution! Bloodless revolution it was, and it astonished the whole civilized world. Alas! they have now to learn you cannot make a revolution without shedding blood, any more than a doctor can amputate a limb without shedding blood. The poison they should have cleared away at the time of their revolution they have to clear away now; the minions of Hamid, who earned a substantial living as spies, are still there to plot and plan for the return of the tyrant.

The Young Turks have had to pay a heavy price for their experience! Counter-revolutions and insurrections to the number of seven, and three European wars, and the last two against five nations! Add to this also, the humiliating interference of Europe. I have seen here households with a Greek cook, an Armenian _bonne à tout faire_, an Albanian cavass, and a Turkish gardener. It is no easy matter to rule such a household. See what tact and patience it requires. The Armenian, for some reason, insults the cook, who replies by throwing the chicken at her head; then the Albanian and the Turk are dragged into the quarrel, and you hear them cursing one another in their different languages. Who does not pity the mistress of a house like this? Who is the person so tactless as to interfere? And is it not the same with the Turkish Government, except that they have the Syrians and Arabs as well? When things seem to be going on fairly smoothly, the Powers, with bungling, interfering hands, come along and “demand reforms.” “We cannot make headway with our reforms,” writes my compatriot from Trebizonde; “some Power always objects to something.” And what will the Power say now, when I tell them that here in the schools of Asia Minor the walls are covered with German maps, the apparatus in the agricultural college is German, and most of the scientific instruments are German? Poor Turkey, will she ever have a soul to call her own?

* * * * *

Unfortunately, the world always seems to forget that the key to the understanding of a nation is in the hands of the women. One sex cannot achieve true greatness without the assistance of the other. “If I only had a woman who could tell me what to do and say just at the right moment,” a Turk said to me one day. How well I understand what he felt. Where would our political men be without their womenkind, not only to tell them what to do and say, but often to do and say it for them? This Turk in question had made a social mistake; he told me all about it. In my country a charming wife’s smile can atone for multitudes of social sins much more serious; but here----. Political men cannot be expected to bear on their shoulders both burdens political and burdens social.

I have been, whilst here, to see the Governor’s wife. She is a sister of the Khedive, and her husband a brother of the Grand Vizier, and, like his brother, he receives no salary for his services. This beautiful and accomplished lady, who dresses only in Turkish dresses, made of Turkish stuffs, whose very jewels are all set, not in Paris, but in the old Arabian Fâtima style--see of what assistance she could be to her husband if she took her place at the head of his table, as our Western women do! The Princess, who speaks five Western and three Oriental languages, has read, perhaps, more than most of her countrywomen (she is Egyptian), and she has supplemented her knowledge by travelling, not only in every European country with the exception of Russia, but right across to San Francisco and back through Canada, “and you see,” she added, charmingly, “I can give all my attention to travelling because I have no dressmaker worries.”

The man who has not beside him some woman who can judge instinctively for him, and whisper “Beware!” from the bottom of my heart I pity him. How many men can tell at a glance whether another is a gentleman or not? A woman generally can, a man sometimes. I have seen most charming Turks with friends unworthy of them. “Surely,” I have said to myself, “you would not have made a friend of such a man had your wife been there to guide you!” And so, in trying to solve the riddle of the Turk the answer is to be found behind that harem door. Both men and women blame the harem, and rightly so, for most of their disasters; the remedy they see in the education of the women.

I have come to Turkey at indeed an interesting time. Here in Broussa I have not marvelled, as did the Oxford professor of Arabic, in the visitors’ book, about the boys’ knowledge of that language. I have congratulated them on their first football match. I have admired the children’s first attempts at plain needlework (not embroidery, that is born in them), dancing, singing, and drawing. In all these arts they have made progress, and although the art students’ trees are a little bald and a little too green, and their cows’ eyes a little too near their tails, there is in that work a great promise of better.

The Belgian head-mistress of the School of Arts and Crafts, at the opening of which I was present, and who has allowed me to go so often to see the working of a school which, naturally, interests me, tells me, “double the number of children have arrived over the number for whom the Government provided accommodation,” and she added, “We must just put up with the discomfort. They are like hungry children asking for bread, and I dare not turn them away.”

And now Turkey is to find teachers of her own to instruct all these children. She cannot always be asking the assistance of the foreigner. She knows to her cost now what that means, and we who wish her well will leave no stone unturned to help her to help herself--to improve the teachers’ training college, and assist some of the most brilliant pupils to have the benefit of English and French methods of organisation.