INSIDE CONSTAN1TNOPLE.• Ms. Emmen; has written an instructive but depressing
book on the Gallipoli affair as viewed from Constantinople. As a member of the American Diplomatic Service, he was attached to the Embassy to Turkey from April to September, 1015, and there he kept a-diary which he has now published. It must be premised that Mr. Einstein was not, like Mr. Gerard, in a position to know everything, and further that in the Turkish capital jesting Pilate'a query, " What is truth ? " would be received in the cynical spirit in which it was uttered. The diarist recorded the rumours that he heard from day to day, and the swaps of information which he received from fellow-diplomatists, and others who may or may not have been trying to deceive him. Thus the diary is of little value as an account of what really happened, but it throws a good deal of light on the state of feeling at Constantinople and in the Balkans generally during the critical menthe of the Dardanelles expedition, The author was impressed with the belief, wrongly as we think, that British diplomacy had needlessly let Turkey slip into the hands of Germany. He recorded on May let, a week after the landing at Helles, a conversation with a Turkish diplomatist—not the notorious Djevad Pasha—in which this point was made :-
" Djevad took me aside to complain about the fanaticism of Englishmen like B. and F. The latter, he said, liked only the old-fashioned Anatolian Turk, who said his prayers Ave times a day and turned to Englishmen for all advise. He thought the British made a great mistake not to work with the Committee— with all its faults it had energy and power, and a country like Turkey was not ripe for party government. With only a little skilful handling Turkey could have been so easily in British hands —quite-true to my multi. After all, the Turks prefer the English to other foreigners. I told him that the Young Turk treatment of Greeks and Armenians had given great offence. He asked why this could not have been overlooked in the same way as London overlooked Russians' atrocities in .Persia. He had been much impressed when, after every kind of horror, Grey declared he was without information on the subject. Djevad gave the usual 'Turkish argument for the war—the necessity of seizing the oppor- tune moment to fight Russia, and also to wipe out the stigrria of the Balkan War. I asked what Turkey would gain from it. Nothing,' he said. ' All we ask of Germany is that she should not be beaten.' " Nothing could illustrate more clearly the incurable levity of the Turkish mind. The Russians in Azerbaijan acted harshly in restoring order, but they never attempted a general proscription of whole races such as Enver and his Committee have carried out, with the implicit assent of their German paymasters. It was impossible for us to work with such a gang of criminals as the Committee had proved themselves to be. Some of them were unquestionably bought by Germany before the war. All of them agreed in staking the whole fortunes of Turkey on the chance of a German victory, which would be no less ruinous than defeat. The Grand Vizier, according to Mr. Einstein, was unwilling to massacre the Armenians because he had property in Egypt which could be confiscated, but he had no moral scruples and very little influence. His colleagues, with Talsat as the "main instigator," planned the massacres immediately after the British Fleet had failed to force the Narrows. In one province after another, and last of all in the capital, the Armenians were deported and murdered wholesale. Even the Turks began to see that the destruction of the commercial classes woe an economic blunder of the first magnitude, to say nothing of its horrible cruelty, but none dared to protest openly against the orders of the Committee. The Turk is as docile a subject as the German.
In regard to the military operations, Mr. Einstein heard that the Allies did not use their strength to advantage, but that the Turks suffered enormous losses and were running very short of munitione before August,1915. If the Russian disaster in Galicia in the spring of 1916 had not induced Rumania and Bulgaria to open their frontiers for the passage of guns and shells, the Turks might have been unable to maintain their bombardment of our trenches. If we could have thrown large reinforcements and more artillery • hullo Cosstantinopk. 11y Lenin Elaitclo. London: John ?tummy. Eta 554.1
into the peninsula in July, 1915, when the Turks were in very low spirits, wo might have overcome them. The landing at Suvla came late, but not too late if it had been well managed. After that the Turks were far better supplied. Tho author trays, inci- dentally, that the famous twelve-inch Austrian howitzers which were to blow our men into the sea reached Gallipoli, but -could not be used because the roads were too narrow. He repeatedly notes that the Turks gave no quarter until late in the campaign ; the inquiries as to missing British soldiers came to the American Embassy and could not be answered. On August 14th he visited fifteen wounded Australians and New Zealanders who had been brought to Constantinople :-
" The wounded with whom I spoke were confident and cheerful• certain of final success. They were prowl of themselves as Ana. tralians, and thought they had done their share. ' They say u•s were better than the English.' one pale lad, with a bullet through his leg, remarked. He had fallen in a bayonet charge at the foot of Hill 70l, and owed his life to shamming death. His comradee around him, who bad been left there wounded, had all been bayoneted like hundreds of others, he told me. He himself was finally polled into a Turkiah trench by an officer. Ho had been stripped of everything, but the officer gave him a pair of boots. Three times his few belongings were taken from him, and as often new ones given, for the Turks-are extraordinary in this. Ono-moment they will murder wantonly, and the next surprise every one by their kindneas. Thus when the first English submarine prisoner. were led into the hospital at Chanak, shivering in their wet clothes, the Turkish wounded called them guests, and insisted on their being given everything new, and such few delicacies as they possessed. At the Harbif hospital the men were in good hands.'
Four days later he found out the reason why a few prisonent were being taken :- " The authorities, who winced a little under the reproach of massacring the wounded, offer now a medjid and a half, or Ave shillings, to every soldier who brings in a captive-1h° officio! estimate for the life of an Englishman."
The statement may serve to correct the preposterous stories about the alleged " chivalry " of the Turks. A few of them may hese behaved humanely ; most of them were as bad as the Germane. It is interesting to notice the author's belief that Bulgaria was sitting on the fence till after the Suvla landing. He saw a good deal of the Bulgarian Minister in Constantinople, and he wrote on June 10th " The Turks are more afraid of Bulgaria than of England or France." On August 8th there were rumours of an arrangement between Bulgaria and Serbia, and a revival of the Balkan League. On August 31st the diarist wrote : " The Germans here are jubilant over the supposed agreement wills Bulgaria, which they affirm positively has now been concluded " ; he added that it was not signed, and that Bulgaria was still trying to play off the Allies against the Control Powers. At any rate, Ode seems to show—but does not prove—that the German Emperor anticipated events by many months when he claimed Bulgaria as an ally at the outset of the war, and that our Foreign Office was not so ill informed ne many of its critics thought. Tho Bulgarians, in Mr. Einstein's opinion, were mainly influenced by Russia's military failure in Galicia. Russia, he says, had " prevented pressure being brought on her favourite child," but when also required aid, her own defeats were used by Bulgaria against her. That indeed was " Pustie faith," and yet there are still a few honourable men in England who agitate for this perfidious and cruel people.
The author saw a good deal of Isis German colleagues, whom motto was said to be " Deutschland Ober Allah." He mention,: that Baron Wangenbeirn, the Minister, "called on kl[orgenthatij at the Embassy actually jubilant to announce the enticing of the ' Lusitania: Mr. Einstein saw at once that " if, as is proboble. American lives have been lost, it will cause a storm of indignation at home." On May 15th, 1916, the German Military Attaclel admitted to him that the Zeppelins were a disappointment, end said that the war would be a very long one—" to take any other view was to ignore the English character." This officer, Colonel von Leipzig, was shot at a railway station on his way back from Gallipoli ; his colleagues described it as an accident, but runs.ur said it was the work of a Turk assassin. The orthodox German view was different ; Mr. Einstein was assured in July that peace would come by November, 1915, as the Russians were " definitely crushed " and fifteen corps could go west to " open the road t Calais." The Grand Vizier in Atomst predicted that " the war would be over in twenty days --he had this from the Clerman General Staff—but no one paid attention to his folly. It is inter- esting to know that Hem GOpport, the Councillor at the Gennen Embassy, though an admirer of Marshal von Hindenburg OS all " educated Blucher," denied him the credit for Tannenberg, "where he had only taken over the command three days before, and the plans for which were due entirely to his predecessor Frio.. wits." Herr Coppert thus destroyed the legend that Tannenberg was won through the Marshal's special kilos ledge of the Masurian Lakes—a legend which, unlike most German statement, se:mcd credible. In conclusion, we may point out that Mr. Eirwtein confirms the story of the German War Council held early in July. 1914. He mentions it on May 5th, 1015, se " the famous council,"
to which Baron Wangenheim had been summoned, and at which " the Emperor turned to all the different leaders and captains of industry and asked them if they were ready for war." Six weeks later the diarist wont for a walk with the Italian Minister, Signor Garroni, who told him that on July 15th, 1914, Baron Wangenheins, who had returned from Berlin the day before, had said in confidence to him, as the representative of an ally, that " war had been irrevoc- eddy decided " at " a ninference of ambassadors, generals, and leaders of industry." The Archduke's murder was to furnish the pretext, and Italy would be forced by the expected German victory over Franco to fight beside her ally. Signor Garroni, as we 'mow, did not inform his Government of this amazing communication until long afterwards, and the Minister himself is now dead. It is well to have this independent version of Signor Carroni's statement, which he could not have invented. Despite the official German denials, there is no doubt that the Council was held in Berlin, and the war determined on, at least a fortnight before the ultimatum was presented to Serbia. The controversy which the Germans and their friends abroad have tried to stir up regarding the precise date and hour of the Russian mobilization is obviously beside the mark when Germany had deliberately decided to force on a war at least three weeks before Russia mobilized.
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