CHAPTER I

THE LAND OF THE WANING MOON

The Orient Express again—On the Black Sea to Constantinople—A disenchantment—My dragoman—How to bribe the Customs officers—Mud and dogs—A city of spies—Feebleness of British policy at the Porte—Turkish adoration of Germany—The basis of my confidential inquiries.

From Bucharest to Constantinople is not at all an unpleasant journey.

The Orient Express runs twice a week to Constantza, the Roumanian port on the Black Sea, where there is a fine and comfortable passenger-steamer service direct to Constantinople.

At Bucharest Station I was seen off by several kind friends, with many parting injunctions to “take care of myself” in Macedonia, and it was not without regret that I left the gay little Roumanian capital, where I had received so much hospitality, from Her Majesty the Queen down to some of the humblest of her subjects.

The “Orient,” on the Constantza line, is not so well fitted, nor is the food so good, as upon the direct line from Paris to Constantinople by way of Belgrade and Sofia.

The whole train was shabby, dusty, and over-heated, and the dinner, instead of the usual _table d’hôte_, was _à la carte_. The only item on the bill of fare, however, proved to be beef-steak. The small piece cooked for me was fit only for a dog, and served on a dirty tablecloth; therefore I was compelled to make my dinner off stale bread and soapy cheese. And this on a _train de luxe_—and one of the principal European Expresses!

The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et Grand Express Européenes are not very considerate towards travellers to the East. There is neither competition in sleeping accommodation nor buffets, therefore the rolling-stock is often old-fashioned and dirty, and the food leaves very much to be desired. Surely upon a journey of three or four days, the maximum degree of comfort should be secured! Why should the traveller who spends one night between Calais and Nice be better provided for than he who goes East from Ostend to Constantinople—a four days’ journey?

In the “Orient,” the old-fashioned coal-fire heating in every carriage is still in vogue, and consequently the person who is unfortunate enough to have a berth near the stove is half roasted, while he who is at the farther end is half frozen. The traveller who goes East would certainly welcome the up-to-date _wagons-lits_ of the Mediterranean or Carlsbad Expresses.

I travelled in the “Orient” from Paris to Vienna, from Belgrade to Sofia, from Bucharest to Constantza, and from Nisch in Servia to Paris, and on each of the trains were the same defects in sleeping comfort, and often in food.

It is to be hoped that the Company will shortly remedy this, for on some of their routes, notably Calais-Paris, or Paris-Marseilles, the food is all that can be desired.

The Express, after passing the wonderful bridge over the Danube, arrives at the quay at Constantza, or Kustendji, as is its local name, at eleven o’clock at night, where the mails from London and Vienna are quickly transferred on board, and we are soon under steam, with the flashing light of Cape Tusla fast disappearing at the stern.

The steamer _King Charles_ makes the voyage from Constantza to Alexandria, calling at Constantinople, and is a very comfortable and up-to-date boat, with excellent state-rooms and a fine saloon, and ladies’ drawing-room. Officers and men are Roumanians, but as the head steward speaks French there is no difficulty. An excellent supper at midnight, with Roumanian white wine, caviare, and a glass of _slivovitza_ to follow, and then a stroll on the deck in the white moonlight.

Past the Kamara and Shabaloh lights, we at last see the broad rays from the Kali Akra, and then we head straight out upon the lonely sea for the Bosphorus. One by one, the tired travellers, some of them from Ostend, Berlin, or Petersburg, make for their berths, and finding myself alone, I turn into the comfortable deck cabin kindly secured for me by telegram by my friend the Minister of Finance in Bucharest.

Rising early, I was already out on deck and taking photographs as we passed the two Turkish forts, Kilia and Poiraz, at the narrow entrance to the Bosphorus. And after stopping to take up our pilot, we crept slowly up the narrow channel amid delightful scenery, some of which I photographed and have reproduced in these pages, past the pretty summer resort of Therapia and Anatoli Hissar, until we approached the capital of Turkey, with her hundred domes and minarets, looking almost like a fairy city against the blue cloudless sky as we approached.

But what a disenchantment on landing! That terrible rabble at Galata in the midst of dirt and squalor, of shouting touts, scrambling porters, and scavenger dogs, is a thing to be ever remembered. Fortunately, I had a Greek dragoman, one Demosthenes Cambothecras, to meet me. I can recommend him as an excellent and honest fellow, and to the intending traveller I may say that a letter addressed to the Pera Palace Hotel will always find him.

He stood on the quay amid the thousand off-scum of Constantinople, and shouted my name. I shouted back, and ten minutes later we met. When I gave him over my baggage ticket, he said—

“The customs here, m’sieur, are difficult. But, with your permission, I will give the officer five francs.”

I assented readily, and my luggage was passed without inquiry, while that of a bespectacled Hungarian next me was examined piece by piece, greatly to the disgust and consternation of his obese wife.

I saw no money pass in the shabby, shed-like Custom House, but he told me that the chief of the Customs employed an agent out in the street to receive his bribes! So much for the morality of the Custom dues in Turkey. In that very same week the British Ambassador had made protest to the Sublime Porte regarding the same thing, but was promptly “snuffed out” by the all-influential Power, Germany.

Germany and German interests are always paramount in Turkey. If you are an Englishman, you may take a back seat and endure all your passport worries, but the German is, by the Turk, supposed to be his friend. German diplomacy is clever, wary, and unscrupulous, and in the Sultan’s capital you are treated with deference if you are a subject of the Kaiser William.

And how strange and ridiculous it all is! Germany intends ere long to wipe Turkey off the face of Europe—only Turkey cannot see it. She is fascinated and spellbound by German cringing and German goodwill, all pretence, and all directed towards the one end of traitorous abandonment.

Great Britain, notwithstanding her fine Embassy, is entirely eclipsed by the big white palace overlooking the Bosphorus which houses the German Ambassador. Tewfik Pasha, the Sultan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, lives beneath its shadow, and the Turks look upon Germany as their natural protector and friend. A British protest to the Porte passes unheeded, while a German protest receives attention and adjustment the very next day. A German diplomatist at the Sublime Porte told me this with a roar of laughter, adding—

“We are the only diplomatists here. We are listened to. You are merely tolerated.”

And verily he spoke a great truth.

Our big grey Embassy in Pera, with its gorgeous Montenegrin _kavass_, may be extremely ornamental and impressive, but nowadays of little use. The British taxpayer is paying for the glorification of Great Britain without one single farthing’s worth of benefit. The Turkish Government—clever as they are—laugh in the face of our persevering and well-meaning Ambassador. They give him, or his representative, cups of rather badly-made coffee in Tewfik’s shabby anteroom at the Sublime Porte, and put their fingers to their noses behind his back. It is not the fault of our Ambassador, or of his staff. All of them are practised diplomatists, who endeavour to their utmost to do their duty to King and Country, and to protect British interests in the East. The fault lies in the timid policy and shrinking politeness adopted by our present Government. The late lamented Lord Salisbury, or Lord Beaconsfield, would never for a moment have submitted to the open rebuffs which Great Britain daily meets with nowadays at Constantinople.

The Turk knows that Germany is behind him, and is therefore defiant. So British diplomacy is beaten every time.

Constantinople swarms with spies. If you have ever been there, and landed from a steamer, you will recollect that a crowd of unwashed porters swarm on board directly the ship is made fast. Every man of that ragged rabble is a spy. He is only allowed on board on condition that he gives information to the Custom officers ashore as to any concealment of revolvers, books, or prohibited articles. Respectable dragomans are constantly asked to assist in this, and offered monetary reward, as well as a permit to board the ship, but they refuse—and leave the espionage to the rabble.

And so it is all through the Turkish capital. Spies are everywhere—they haunt one in all the hotels, even in the much-advertised Pera Palace—and every movement of the stranger is noted. If you happen to be a German and have shown your passport in the Custom House, then you go hither and thither and do whatever you like. But if you are of any other nationality you will be suspected and haunted by all sorts and conditions of secret agents, until you kick the mud of Constantinople off your boots.

I have been more than once in the Sultan’s capital, and on each occasion, on entering it, have been seized with a fit of depression, which has only been removed when I have got my passport _viséd_ by the British Consul-General, and also by the Turkish police, preliminary to leaving the place.

The squalor in Galata, in Stamboul, and even in aristocratic Pera, sickens one. The streets, unswept for ages, are an inch deep in slimy mud, upon which one slides and slips at every step, and the grey, wolf-like dogs, held sacred by every Turk, prowl about in hordes, each in their own quarter, living in the streets and sleeping in doorways.

Constantinople, with the most picturesque and beautiful position in all the world, is the most filthy and uncomfortable of all cities. With the exception of the Grande Rue, at Pera, there is scarcely a single decent European business street. Every thoroughfare is crowded to excess by a motley throng of Mohammedans, both European and Asiatic, and every form of costume and physiognomy, from the Tartar to the Syrian, may be seen.

The pilgrimages were leaving for Mecca while I was there, and the whole city was filled with the Faithful from every part of the great Moslem world. The bridge at Galata was daily a perfect panorama of costume as the pilgrims assembled to embark.

Though I spent a little time in the great Bazaar—which is always attractive to the traveller from the West—and revisited Saint Sophia and other of the big mosques, my days in Constantinople were mostly occupied in having interesting chats with the heads of the Turkish Government.

I carried letters of introduction to His Excellency Tewfik Pasha, the Sultan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; to the Grand Vizier of the Sultan; to d’Aristarchi Bey, the Grand Logothete; to His Excellency Noury Pasha, Under-State Secretary for Foreign Affairs; to the British Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Geo. H. Barclay—the Ambassador being absent on leave; to His Excellency Monsieur George Simitch, the Servian Minister; to M. Dimetri Vlastari, the well-known banker; to Mehemed Ali Pasha; to Riza Pasha, Minister of War; and to many other of the leading people in the Turkish capital.

Thus I was enabled to go thoroughly into the present state of affairs. I was granted an audience of His Majesty the Sultan, as well as by the Grand Vizier, by Tewfik Pasha, the Khardjie-Naziri, and had many interviews with the persons named above.

My inquiries were mainly directed to ascertaining—first, what attitude Turkey was assuming towards Macedonia; secondly, whether the Turks were alive to the firm intention of Bulgaria for the protection of her subjects, and in what manner they viewed the prospect of hostilities; thirdly, the truth about the Macedonian reforms; fourthly, the extent of German intrigue in Constantinople; fifthly, the Turkish policy towards Austria; and sixthly, the policy towards Great Britain.

I went to the Porte in order to penetrate the veil of mystery surrounding diplomacy there, and to get at the true state of affairs. The task was very difficult, for in the East one is hardly ever told the real facts about anything. Nevertheless, unique opportunities were afforded me to obtain knowledge by the absolute facts and the future aims of both Turkey and Germany—opportunities of which, as will be shown in the following pages, I was not slow in taking advantage.

In view of the present situation in Turkey, the proclamation of the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress,” which was found posted upon all the walls of the Pera quarter of Constantinople on January 1 of this present year, is of great interest in showing the present state of public feeling in the Turkish capital.

This proclamation, which was issued by a very strong and formidable party in Turkey, began by stating that Abdul Hamid, after thirty years of impunity, was now on the verge of death. The fact that now and then he gives audience of a few minutes’ duration to an Ambassador, or that at the weekly Selamlik he drives to the mosque, a few yards from his palace, proves nothing. The Sultan Mahmud fell dead from his horse, returning from the Selamlik; while the Sultan Medjid was on his feet up to the very last. In reality Abdul Hamid, knowing the profound effect which his failure to attend the Selamlik would have upon the people, is expending all the energies that remain to him in fulfilling this religious observance and in granting an occasional interview to a foreign Ambassador.

The proclamation proceeded:—

“During the thirty years of his reign Abdul Hamid has brought ruin on the land; one half of our patrimony he has delivered to the enemy; he has destroyed our fleet, disorganised our army; he has reduced the people to misery; he has annihilated our governmental system, and has left nothing to the civil organisation or the civilisation of the past. He has concentrated the whole government into his own hands, and has dismissed all his tried and experienced Ministers, transferring the reins of office to self-seekers and traitors willing to become his tools.”

Grave troubles are predicted after his death, and the Committee urges the population of the Empire, Christian and Mussulman, to be on their guard and to consider seriously the following facts:—

“(1) Abdul Hamid and his accomplices are conspiring to hand over the sovereignty and the Caliphate to his fourth son, the youth, Burhaneddin, in defiance of the tradition and the civil and religious law of the Empire. The success of this stratagem would be a mortal blow to the aspirations of the nation.

“(2) To prevent the enemies of the country from provoking disorders in order to bring about foreign intervention, guarantees must be given to the Christian populations and, if necessary, written assurances to the Embassies.

“(3) The happiness and the future of the country being dependent upon the suppression of the despotic régime and the enforcing of the Constitution, which was recognised in 1876 as an inalienable right of the nation, and after being two years in operation was perfidiously abrogated by Abdul Hamid, our fellow-countrymen, Christian and Mussulman, must of one accord exact the application of that Constitution, which will restore to the country its vitality and safeguard the liberties of the people. United in heart and mind, the Ulemas, the notables of the capital and the provinces, must, through the intermediary of the Grand Vizier and the Valis, demand of the new Sultan that he proclaim and bring into force without delay the clauses of the Constitution.

“(4) The duty of preserving the essential rights of the nation belongs, above all, to the members of the guild of the Ulemas and to the high civil and military officials; the ceremony of the Biat, when the chosen of the people demonstrate the popular sovereignty by recognising and accepting the new Sultan, is the most propitious occasion for the exercise of that duty. It is an obligation that lies upon every Turkish subject to exact a pledge from the delegate he sends up to do his duty on that occasion.”

The Manifesto ended with an appeal to the Christian and non-Christian populations to prepare for the coming crisis.