The Iron Ration Part 29

I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Rechad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the Faithful, etc., etc., etc.

"They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the battleships _Bouvet_ and _Irresistible_ whom I had seen go down with their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks.

We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up."

Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment.

Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat similarly. He was more diplomatically specific.

"The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them.

Guarantees--guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We joined the Germans because they offered none."

All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the line of Ayesha.

Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War, generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and what not, told me the same thing on several occasions.

"Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that!

They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it.

Nonsense! Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to h.e.l.l with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't like us don't have to. n.o.body need love us. Let them keep out of our way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance."

It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism.

He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed, shrewd.

"_Tres bien, cher frere_" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation by _concessionnaires_, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feel the same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia, forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what was left, which would have been not so little.

"When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we are doing. It's a mighty effort, _cher frere_, but there is no way out.

We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are terrible compet.i.tors, I have been told. So far we have not done so poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand Vizier Koprulu. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached.

But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that Turkey is developed for the benefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish."

Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of ma.s.s psychology in the Ottoman Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the government.

XIX

s.e.x MORALITY AND WAR

I have seen much comment on the increase of s.e.xual laxness in the Central European states, owing to the influence of the war. Those who have written and spoken on the subject have, as a rule, proclaimed themselves handicapped by either prejudice or ignorance--two things which are really one.

Much breath and ink has been wasted on certain steps taken by the several German and Austro-Hungarian governments for the legitimization of natural offspring by giving the mother the right to set the prefix _Frau_--Mrs.--before her maiden name. I have also run across the perfectly silly statement that the Central European governments, in allowing such women the war subsistence and pension of the legitimate widow and children, were purposely fostering that sort of illicit relations between men and women for the purpose of repeopling their states. On that point not much breath need be wasted, for the very good reason that each child is indeed welcome just now in Central Europe, and that the government's least duty is to take care of the woman and child who might ultimately have been the wife and legitimate offspring of the man who lost his life in the trenches. s.e.x problems are the inevitable result of all wars in which many men lose life and health. I may also say that in other belligerent countries this problem has as yet not been dealt with half so intelligently and thoroughly.

Monogamy and polygamy are usually economic results rather than purely social inst.i.tutions. A stay of nine months in Turkey showed me that polygamy in that country is disappearing fast, because the Turk is no longer able to support more than one wife. In the entire Bosphorus district, in which Constantinople lies and of which it is the center, there were in 1915 but seventeen Moslem households in which could be found the limit of four legitimate wives. Of the entire population of the district only seven per thousand Turks had more than one wife, so that, on the whole, legalized polygamy made a better showing in s.e.x morality than what we of the Occident can boast of, seeing that prost.i.tution is unknown among the Turks.

That the war increased illicit s.e.xual intercourse in Central Europe is true, nor was that increase a small one. It did not take on the proportions, however, which have been given to it, or which under the circ.u.mstances might have been looked for.

In the first place, many of the slender social threads that restrain s.e.x impulse in the modern state snapped under the strain of the war. Their place was taken by something that was closely related to the Spartan system of marriage. Free selection was practised by women whose husbands were at the front. The men did the same thing. The water on the divorce-mill took on a mighty spurt--evidence that this looseness did not always find the consent of the other party, though often his or her conduct may not have been any better.

This is a case in which generalization is not permissible. The good stood beside the bad and indifferent, and reference to the subject might be dispensed with entirely were it not that public subsistence is closely related to s.e.x morality.

War takes from his home and family the man. Though the governments made some provision for those left behind, the allowance given them was never large enough to keep them as well as they had been kept by the labor of the head of the family. So long as the cost of living did not greatly increase, the efforts of the wife and older children met the situation, but all endeavor of that sort became futile when the price of food and other necessities increased twofold and even more. When that moment came the tempter had an easy time of it. From the family had also been taken much of the restraint which makes for social orderliness. The man was away from home; the young wife had seen better times. Other men came into her path, and nature is not in all cases as loyal to the marriage vows as we would believe. In many cases the mother, now una.s.sisted by the authority of the father, was unable to keep her daughters and sons in check.

War has a most detrimental effect upon the mind of the juvenile. The romance of soldiering unleashes in the adolescent male every quality which social regulation has curbed in the past, while the young woman usually discards the common sense of her advisers for the sickly sentimentalism which bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on clothing cut on military lines is apt to rouse in the female mind. Soon the social fabric is rent in many places and governmental efforts at mending are hardly ever successful.

We have of this an indication in the remarkable increase in juvenile delinquency which marked the course of the European War. In thousands of cases the boys of good families became thieves and burglars. Even highway robbery was not beyond them, and, odd as it may seem, nearly every murder committed in the Central states in the last three years had a lone woman of wealth for a victim and some young degenerate, male or female, as perpetrator. In the cases that came to my notice the father or husband was at the front.

But apart from these more or less spontaneous failings of young men and women, there was the category of offenses in which external influence was the _causa movens_. Desperate need caused many to steal and embezzle; it caused many women to divest themselves of that self-respect which is decency and the glory of the _fille honnete_.

Nothing can be so cynical as the laws of social administration. That was shown on every hand by the war, but especially did it become apparent in the gratification of the s.e.xual appet.i.te by that cla.s.s which has nothing but money. While the father and husband was at the front, fighting for the state, and heaping the wealth of the community into the coffers of a rapacious industrial and commercial cla.s.s, his daughter and wife were often corrupted by that very wealth. Nor was it always bitter want that promoted the l.u.s.t of the wealthy profligate. The war had shaken the social structure to its very foundations. So great was the pressure of anxiety that the human mind began to crave for relief in abandonment, and once this had been tasted the subject would often become a confirmed "good-time" fiend.

There was a certain war purveyor of whom it was said that he seduced a virgin once a week. The cla.s.s he drew upon was the lowest. Most of his victims were factory-girls, and, such being the case, n.o.body thought much of it at a time when calamity had roused in all the worst qualities that may be wakened in the struggle for self-preservation. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost, and his Satanic Majesty did not overlook his chance.

For a few days these girls would be the paramours of their masters.

When, finally, they saw themselves cast off in favor of a prettier face, they would for a while frequent cafes where they would meet the officers on leave and small fry of civilians, and not long after that they did business on the street with a government license and certificate showing that they were being inspected by the authorities in the interest of public health.

That was the usual career of one of these war victims. But the thing did not end there. The thousands who had grown rich on war contracts and food speculation began to tire of the very uninteresting sport of ruining factory-girls and shop-women. They reached out into those social cla.s.ses in which refinement made a raid so much more delectable. To physical debauch had to be added moral and mental orgy. Taste had been stimulated to a degree where it demanded that social destruction should accompany l.u.s.tful extravagance. And that only the woman of the better cla.s.s could give. The gourmand became an epicure. Times favored him.

What proportions this state of affairs reached may be ill.u.s.trated by the "personal" advertis.e.m.e.nts carried at one time by one of Vienna's foremost newspapers, the _Tagblatt_. Throughout the week that paper would carry from forty to ninety inches, single column, of personal ads., each of them requesting a woman, seen here or there, to enter into correspondence with the advertiser for "strictly honorable" purposes. On Sundays the same paper would carry as much as two whole pages of that sort of advertising. Soon the time came when often as much as a quarter of these ads. would be inserted by women who disguised a heartrending appeal to some wretch in whatever manner they could.

Emperor Charles deserves the highest credit for finally putting his foot down on that practice. The "personals" in the _Tagblatt_ began to irritate him, and one day he let it become known to the management of the publication that further insertion of that sort of matter would lead to the heavy hand of the censors being felt. That helped. After that the _Tagblatt_ ran only matrimonial advertising. Yet even that was not wholly innocuous. The daughter of a colonel was corrupted by means of it. I am glad to say that the old soldier took the law in his own hand.

He looked up the man who had seduced the young woman and shot him dead in his tracks. The government had good sense enough to dispose of the case by having the colonel make a report.

To my own attention came, in Budapest, the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been sold by her own mother to a rich manufacturer. The woman had advertised in a Budapest newspaper that did business along the lines of the Vienna _Tagblatt_. The girl knew nothing of it, of course.

There was a sequel in court, and during the testimony the woman said that she had sold her daughter to the manufacturer in order to get the money she needed to keep herself and her other children. Josephus mentions in his _Wars of the Jews_ how a woman of Jerusalem killed, then cooked and ate, her own child, because the robbers had taken everything from her, and, rather than see the child starve, she killed it. He also mentions that the robbers left the house horror-struck. The war purveyor and food shark did not always have that much feeling left in them.

Poor little Margit! When my attention was drawn to her she was a waitress in a cafe in Budapest, and her patrons used to give her an extra _filler_ or two in order that she might not have to do on her own account what she had been obliged to suffer at the behest of her raven mother. As I heard the story, the manufacturer got off with a fine, and the mother of Margit was just then sorting rags in a cellar, with tuberculosis wasting her lungs.

Society at war is a most peculiar animal--it is anarchy without the safeguards of that anarchy which fires the mind of the idealist; for that system and its free love would make the buying of woman impossible.

But there were sorts of s.e.xual looseness that were not quite so sordid, which at least had the excuse of having natural causes as their background. Rendered irresponsible by s.e.xual desire and the monotony of a poverty-stricken existence, many of the younger women whose husbands were in the army started liaisons, _Verhaltnisse_, as they are called in German, with such men as were available. It speaks well for the openness of mind of some husbands that they did not resent this. I happen to know of a case in which a man at the front charged a friend to visit his wife. After I learned of this I came to understand that progress, called civilization, is indeed a very odd thing. The Spartans when at war used to do the same thing, and it was the practice of commanders to send home young men of physical perfection in order that the women should beget well-developed children. The offspring was later known as _partheniae_--of the virgin born. But the laws of the Spartans favored an intelligent application of this principle, while in Central Europe no regulation of that sort could be attempted.

An effort was made by the several governments to check this tendency toward social dissolution. For the first time in many years the police raided hotels. Now and then offenders were heavily fined. But authorities which in the interest of public health had licensed certain women were p.r.o.ne to be open-minded to practices due to the war. It was realized that the times were such that lat.i.tude had to be given; in the end it was felt that just now it did not matter how children were born.

The state began to a.s.sume what had formerly been the duty of the father and proceeded with more vigor than ever against the malpractice of physicians. One of them, convicted on the charge of abortion, was given a two-year sentence of penal servitude.

It cannot be said, however, that the woman who had made up her mind to remain a loyal wife or innocent was not given ample protection. The state was interested in the production of children, but had little patience with illicit s.e.xual intercourse that did not result in this.

There is the theory that the child whose father does not take some loving interest in the mother is not of as much value as that which has been born in the "wedlock" of love. With that in view, the government took what precaution there was possible. The profligate and _roue_ were given a great deal of attention, though little good came of this, since the times favored them entirely too much. But there is no doubt that the eyes of the law saw where they could see.

Food-lines were as a rule attended by policemen, whose duty it was to maintain order and keep off the human hyenas who were in the habit of loitering about these lines for the purpose of picking out women. That was well enough. But the policeman could not see these women home, nor prevent the man from surveying the crowd, making his selection, and later forcing his attentions upon the woman.

With the need for food and clothing always pressing, the ground was generally well prepared, and the public was inclined to be lenient in such matters anyway--as "war" publics have a knack of doing.

I had sc.r.a.ped up acquaintances with a number of policemen in the district in which I lived. Most of them I had met in connection with my investigation of food-line matters. They were all very fine fellows, and red blood rather than red tape was in their veins. The suffering of the women in the food-lines had made these men more human than is usual in their business.

"Another one of them has gone to the bad," said one of the policemen to me one day, as he pointed out to me discreetly a rather pretty young woman who had come for her ration of potatoes. "A fellow, who seems rather well-to-do, has been trailing her to and from this store for almost two weeks. I had my eye on him, and would have nabbed him quick enough had he ever spoken to the woman while in the line. Well, three days ago I saw the two of them together in the Schwarzenberg Cafe. The damage is done now, I suppose. You will notice that she has on a new pair of shoes. She must have paid for them at least one hundred and ten crowns."

I suggested that the shoes were not necessarily proof that the woman had done wrong.

"Under the circ.u.mstances they are," said the policeman. "Yesterday I managed to talk to the woman. She is the wife of a reservist who is now on the Italian front. The government gives her a subsistence of one hundred and twenty crowns a month. She has no other means. With two little children to take care of, that allowance wouldn't pay for shoes of that sort. It's too bad. She is the second one in this food-line this month who has done that."