Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 23

Yeats-Brown, meanwhile, had been stalking about the streets of Constantinople as Mlle. Josephine Albert, in female clothes lent by Miss Whittaker. He was now at a loose end, for Paul and the Greeks were to have been the advance guard of a larger party, including Yeats-Brown and several civilians who wished to leave Turkey.

After weeks of excitement in the City of Disguises Mlle. Albert received an unexpected message from two old friends, who were living in a back room of Theodore's house. Fulton and Stone had escaped from a train at Haidar Pasha station two hours after my disappearance from the ferry stage. With the help of my map they made their way by moonlight to San Stefano aerodrome. There they waited for three days at the place of rendezvous appointed by John Willie, the Bosnian aviator. Made desperate by his nonappearance one of them called at the German officers' mess and enquired for him; but, as they then learned, John Willie had been arrested a week earlier as a suspect, and was in the Ministry of War Prison, awaiting court-martial.

Fulton and Stone returned to Constantinople, and bribed Theodore to hide them in his house. They were visited by Miss Whittaker, who brought money from Mr. S., and by Mlle. Josephine Albert Yeats-Brown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain Yeats-Brown, wearing the disguise in which as "Mlle. Josephine Albert" he lived for several weeks in Constantinople while doing propaganda work. The clothes were lent to him by Miss Whittaker (now Lady Paul), "the Edith Cavell of Constantinople," who helped several British officers to escape from the Turks.]

For want of a better opportunity the three British officers planned to buy a small sailing-boat, and take it across the Black Sea. Prince Avaloff, the Georgian officer who was a semi-prisoner at Psamatia, had kept in touch with Yeats-Brown, and promised to accompany them. Having landed somewhere near Poti their scheme would be to make for Avaloff's estate in Georgia. It was at this period that White and I heard from the trio, as a result of t.i.toff's visit to Theodore.

For many weeks the Maritza restaurant had been watched. A police spy suspected Theodore; and one afternoon gendarmes surrounded his house, while others entered and searched every room. Very unfortunately for Yeats-Brown, whose hiding-place lay elsewhere, he was visiting Fulton and Stone at the time. All three were captured.

A queer procession pa.s.sed through the winding alleys of Stamboul to the Ministry of War Prison. First went Theodore, blinking nervously behind his blue-gla.s.sed spectacles. Then came Yeats-Brown, in his brand-new disguise of a Hungarian mechanic. Fulton and Stone were behind him, wearing only shirts, pants, and socks; for they had been half dressed when captured, and the police refused permission to put on coats and trousers. Theodore's two sisters and his old mother brought up the rear.

When the police surrounded Theodore's house Miss Whittaker was on her way to visit Fulton and Stone. Seeing gendarmes before the door she pa.s.sed on, and returned to her home in Pera; but for long afterward she was conscious of being spied upon and followed. It was for this reason that she had to abandon her intention of bringing to the _Batoum_ the money which White and I were to receive from Mr. S.

The prison beneath the Ministry of War now contained an extraordinary gathering of characters in the melodrama of escape and capture. Paul was joined by Yeats-Brown, Fulton, and Stone; John Willie, the Bosnian, was in another cell, with some political prisoners; Theodore, weakened by lack of food, fell ill in a dreadful dungeon, and nearly died. A trial, he knew, could only have one result for him--sentence of hanging. His mother and his two sisters received rather better treatment, and were soon released.

The four Britishers lived through many strange days in the prison where they consorted with a variety of captives that included Greeks, Armenians, Turkish officers, two Mohammedan notabilities from Cairo, a young Turkish prince who had been imprisoned for brawling in the Sultan's palace, and the prince's eunuch. Yeats-Brown and Paul, meantime, planned to escape from the famous old jail, a feat which no captive had yet performed since it was built, six hundred years ago.

While walking in the garden one evening they slipped away from their guards, and mingled with a crowd of officials who were crossing the courtyard outside the Ministry of War. Swerving aside before they reached the sentried gate, the pair climbed over some railings--and were free once more. They walked across the Golden Horn Bridge, and so to Pera. There, once again, Miss Whittaker and her friends found them a place of concealment, near the deserted British Emba.s.sy.

Then began for the escaped couple a period of flitting from one excitement to another. They became involved in a succession of underground activities; and, with the help of Greeks and the clever cooperation of Miss Whittaker, they spread around the city reports, beliefs, hopes, and arguments likely to influence citizens in favour of the Allies and against the Germans and Young Turks. They buried their ident.i.ties under darkened hair, false moustaches, fezzes, and forged _vecikas_.

Yeats-Brown's propaganda work brought him into contact with a small group of politicians and malcontents who were plotting a _coup d'etat_ against the Young Turks. Although the miserable, exploited populace had no popular leader to voice its discontent there came a moment--while the Bulgars were at the gates of Adrianople, communications with Germany were cut, the Allied Fleet threatened Dedeagatch and the citizens of Aleppo were preparing to surrender to Allenby's victorious cavalry--when everyone in Constantinople knew that Turkey was beaten.

Open rebellion which was to have hanged Talaat, Enver, and Djemal Pashas high in the square of the Seraskarat then threatened.

But the rising was still-born, owing to treachery. The Prefect of Police suddenly quadrupled his patrols, a few Turkish officers were arrested, a few more civilians were hanged, a few conspirators disappeared into the submerged world where men walked cautiously and in the shadow, a few machine guns were placed so as to command a Greek cathedral, a couple of aged senators were executed for having "intrigued for a political resolution hostile to the Government"; and life went on as before--upon the surface....

But escaped prisoners did not live upon the surface. They were in touch with seditious elements beneath it. Once when Yeats-Brown was in a certain cafe with some Greeks, and the talk was becoming wild as the _arak_ bottle pa.s.sed, there entered a detective known to everybody, even to the British officer, who was the youngest initiate in "crime"

present. And without a whisper or a wink the talk swung, easily and naturally, from the rankest sedition to the most harmless commonplace.

"We will destroy the Young Turks!" said a speaker, "we will destroy the Young Turks and cut them in little pieces!"

He was harmonizing his words with indescribably graphic gesture, when his expressive hands opened in a bland expression of resignation.

"What, therefore, can we do, my friends?" he continued. "We must remain calm, and retain our dignity as citizens of a great city."

n.o.body looked round or betrayed surprise; but the alien presence was sensed by all. Soon after this scene the meeting adjourned to a cellar, where a quiet, elderly gentleman, the proprietor of an hotel inhabited chiefly by German officers, declared himself desirous of cutting his clients' throats.

In war-time Constantinople one grew accustomed to this atmosphere of melodrama, and learned not to regard it too seriously. The more one knows of the Constantinopolitans of to-day the less can one trust any estimate of them. Eternally fickle, like their forerunners who looked on with equal enthusiasm at the triumph and execution of emperors and sultans, they saw no incongruity in the city's hero-worship of Enver Bey in 1908 and its deep detestation of Enver Pasha in 1918. Even now, after welcoming the French and British with mad joy one short year ago, they are restless, and again wear the cloak of conspiracy.

The wayward fickleness of Constantinople ruined the Byzantine Greeks, and sapped the strength of the Roman Empire. Now, after a long period of fretful wedlock, she is shaking herself free from the Turk. Whoever next attempts to rule her will have some restless days and nights.

At the beginning of September there arrived in Constantinople another escaped prisoner, who was to play an important part in the sensational events that preceded the downfall of the Young Turks and their German partners.

Several months earlier Lieutenant-Colonel Newcombe, D.S.O., R.E., had been imprisoned in the Turkish Ministry of War, while awaiting court-martial for an attempted escape. After his acquittal, owing to lack of evidence, he was allowed into the city with the prison interpreter. In a Pera tea-shop he met Mlle. "X", a Franco-Greek lady of Entente sympathies, who offered to help him in any way possible. A secret correspondence followed; and when Colonel Newcombe was sent to the prison camp at Broussa, Mlle. "X", with her maid, followed him.

She stayed at a small hotel, on the pretence of taking the sulphur baths for which Broussa was famous. Several meetings took place, including a rendezvous at the house of the local Austrian Consul, whose daughters were school-fellows of Mlle. "X."

The final interview at Broussa was when Colonel Newcombe, having obtained the clothes of an Arab _imam_,[2] disguised himself in this dress and slipped out of camp un.o.bserved. He walked to the hotel, and there the scheme of escape was definitely arranged. He then returned, and by climbing over a wall, got back into the prison house without being seen.

[2] Priest.

Mlle. "X" left Broussa for Constantinople. On the way she stopped at Mudania (the port of Broussa) to bargain with two Greek boatmen, who agreed to take the British officer across the Sea of Marmora. From Constantinople she had a letter smuggled to Broussa, explaining how the boatmen might be recognized.

Having read the letter Colonel Newcombe again disguised himself as an Arab, and at dusk slipped away from the prison house, while another officer-prisoner distracted the guards' attention by running in the opposite direction. He walked all night by moonlight, and reached Mudania next morning.

Having found the Greeks, and paid a hundred dollars for the hire of their boat, he put to sea with them. A strong wind raged, so that he was fourteen hours on the Sea of Marmora, living during this time on bread and raisins. Finally he reached Constantinople and went to the house of Mlle. "X"'s parents.

Like White and myself, Colonel Newcombe planned to go to Russia. He, also, had his fill of adventure. Once, he remained safely hidden in Miss Whittaker's house while the police were searching it for Yeats-Brown and Paul.

He wrote several anti-German proclamations for distribution among the Turkish soldiers, and concocted a letter to the Turkish army commanders, advising them to refuse further service unless a new ministry were formed. But the Turco-German debacle in the Near East, of which General Allenby's victories in Palestine and the Bulgarian surrender were the beginnings, made him abandon this work for something more important. Soon he found himself drawn into the very centre of the vortex of plotting that swirled around the Sultan, the Cabinet, and the Sublime Porte.

The peace parties lacked a leader powerful enough to take open action; and when the old Sultan, who had been but a puppet dancing to the strings pulled by Talaat and Enver, died in July, they hoped to find one in his brother, the successor to the throne.

The new ruler, although he was neither strong enough nor able enough to challenge the Young Turk leaders until after the Bulgarian armistice, certainly leaned toward the Entente and favoured peace. His first act was to send for the only English tailor in Constantinople, a civil prisoner, and to order several uniforms from him.

The excitement among the Turkish politicians was indescribable.

"Have you heard about Mr. Hayden, the English tailor? The Sultan said to him----" And rumour made the Sultan tell the English tailor everything that was sensationally anti-German and anti-Enver.

Had the Sultan opposed the Grand Vizier and Enver Pasha in July, he would have found support; for three-fourths of Constantinople detested the Government. But the constabulary were faithful to Enver, who could likewise have relied upon the many thousands of German troops concentrated in the city; and a premature attempt by the Sultan to withdraw Turkey from the war would have risked his life and his throne.

The defection of Bulgaria had the effect of an unexpected cold douche on Enver and Talaat; who, after the Turkish occupation of Batoum and capture of Baku, had been dreaming of a Greater Turkey that was to include the Maritza basin, most of the Dobrudja, and the whole of the Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian, with a sphere of influence extending eastward to Bokhara and Samarkand. Agents and gramophone records were carrying the voice of Enver all over the Moslem world.

When the Balkan Railway was cut and daily reports of German retreats in France continued to arrive, even the Young Turk politicians began to desert the rotten ship of state. The opposition groups--the Liberal, the Navy, and the Khoja parties--raised their heads and began to intrigue for a complete surrender to the Allies. Djambolat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, resigned. Rahmi Bey, the powerful Vali of Smyrna, who throughout the war had shown every consideration to the Entente subjects in his _vilayet_, came to Constantinople with the avowed intention of working an immediate peace. Talaat was for bargain and compromise. Only Enver Pasha and his personal followers remained faithful to their German friends. The Sultan's chance had come.

Colonel Newcombe decided on an audacious plan of action. He wrote a convincing memorandum, which suggested that if Turkey now sued for a separate peace she would obtain better terms than if she waited until Germany was thoroughly beaten. This memorandum, originally the draft of a proposed proclamation to the Turkish army, was taken by Miss Whittaker to a Committee politician of her acquaintance. Eventually one copy of it was given to Fethi Bey, the new Minister of the Interior, and another pa.s.sed through the hands of the Sultan's dentist to the Sultan himself.

A week earlier--on September the twenty-ninth--the Young Turk Cabinet had met to consider the Bulgarian demand for an armistice; and the Grand Vizier, who arrived from Germany by the last Balkan express that pa.s.sed through Sofia, offered his resignation. At the time n.o.body could form an alternative ministry so Talaat again took up the reins of power.

The Sultan and the Minister of the Interior received their copies of Colonel Newcombe's memorandum on October the fifth. During the intervening days it had become more and more plain that Germany was doomed to defeat. The Sultan and the Peace parties, therefore, only wanted a suitable bludgeon for a _coup de grace_ to the Ministry.

They found it in this purely unofficial communication from an escaped prisoner of war. Colonel Newcombe's memorandum was produced and discussed at a stormy council of the Committee of Union and Progress, which resulted in the definite resignation of Talaat and Enver. Tewfik Pasha, Izzet Pasha, and other Opposition leaders were called into consulation by the Sultan.

From being a hunted fugitive Colonel Newcombe suddenly found himself a person of consequence. As a special favour he was asked not to carry out his plans for escaping from Turkey, because the Ottoman Government believed he would be useful in arranging an armistice. He met the Vali of Smyrna at the Tokatlian Hotel, and there the British prisoner and the high Turkish official shook hands and discussed the changing international situation.

On October the sixteenth Colonel Newcombe, accompanied by Miss Whittaker, went by appointment to the house of a politician, where he met the new Minister of the Interior, the Vali of Smyrna, and other notabilities. Over the dinner table the mighty questions of peace and war were then debated by an escaped prisoner of war and a prominent Minister of the country in which he was technically still a captive.

Colonel Newcombe explained that though he worked for Allied and not Turkish interests, his friendly advice was that the Ottoman Government should sue immediately for a separate armistice; because whereas Germany wanted to keep a weak Turkey whom she could dominate, the Allies' principle of the rights of nationality forbade any idea of complete domination.

The Turks' att.i.tude at this curious meeting was summed up in remarks made by the Minister of the Interior:

"We know we have lost our chance. There have been mistakes in the past.

We are practically bankrupt. But we honestly hate the Germans, and, without kowtowing to the British, look to them to help us and to be our friends, as we want to be friends with them."

Colonel Newcombe and the Turkish officials thrashed out such questions as Turkey's financial bankruptcy, the opening of the Dardanelles, the capitulations, autonomy for Armenia and Arabia, and punishment for the Armenian ma.s.sacres and for the maltreatment of British prisoners from Kut-el-Amara (whereby nearly 80 per cent. of the latter had died).

Then, after dinner was over, the Minister of the Interior dictated in French a long telegram, which the British officer was to send to Mr.