Under Four Administrations Part 5

It is expected as a display of good will that the ministers and amba.s.sadors occasionally attend this ceremony. It was practically the only occasion on which Abdul Hamid appeared in public, for he constantly feared a.s.sa.s.sination, and his expression showed his timidity. Following Selamlik he quite frequently arranged to receive in audience. In the kiosque or small house beside the mosque, there is a special suite of rooms reserved for the diplomatic corps. An aide informs the Sultan what diplomatic representatives or other persons of distinction are at the kiosque, to each of whom His Majesty then sends some gracious message.

While prayers are being said in the mosque, the guests at the kiosque are served coffee and cigarettes.

One of the persons whom I met shortly after my arrival in the city was Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who was in Constantinople as Britain's special envoy to negotiate a convention regarding the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt. He had a suite at our hotel where we saw each other frequently and became very good friends. Drummond Wolff, as he was usually spoken of to distinguish him from the several other prominent Wolffs, was certainly a remarkable and clever man, and a great _raconteur_. He was then in his late fifties, had had wide experience as a diplomat, and was thoroughly familiar with the Turkish temperament. In fact, he was at home in all that part of the world. He was born in Malta, the son of the famous missionary, Rev. Joseph Wolff, a Jew who became a convert first to Catholicism and then to Episcopalianism, being ordained as priest in the Church of England. While in America he received the degree of Doctor of Theology from the College of St.

John's, Annapolis, Maryland.

Sir Henry advised me in dealing with the Turkish authorities always to be patient, pleasant, persistent. He also impressed upon me the importance of maintaining the most cordial relations with my colleagues and of returning all hospitalities; that a well-disposed colleague can often be of incalculable a.s.sistance in inducing the authorities to accede to any proper demand one might have to make. However, his own relations with the British amba.s.sador, Sir William White, were not so friendly. The estrangement between them was quite evident, caused no doubt by personal jealousy, which is so likely to result between a special envoy and the regularly accredited representative of the same country in a given territory.

We stayed at the Royal only about ten days, and then moved to summer quarters in a hotel at Therapia, a name given to the district some three thousand years ago by the Greeks because of its healthful and balmy climate. Here, too, Drummond Wolff had a neighboring suite, and later, when by reason of a longer stay than antic.i.p.ated he was obliged to give up his apartment before he was ready, we put a portion of ours at his disposal, which he much appreciated. It was a very pleasant arrangement, and diplomatically no less profitable. We dined together every evening, and often in our party were also Prince Ghika, Roumanian charge, and the Princess; Baron Van Tetz, Dutch minister, and the Baroness. The Baron was later accredited to Berlin, and then made Minister of Foreign Affairs in his own country. He has now retired and at this writing he and the Baroness still live at The Hague. They are charming people.

On June 21, 1887, the entire diplomatic corps was present in official dress at services in the English chapel, in honor of the Queen's Jubilee. The chaplain of the English emba.s.sy, the Reverend George Washington, officiated. He said he was of the same family as our own George Washington.

The day before my audience I presided at the commencement exercises of Robert College at Roumeli-Hissar, by invitation of the venerable president, Dr. George Washburn. The college in 1887 had about one hundred and eighty students, mainly Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians, with two or three Turks. The commencement was quite similar to those at home, except that the orations were delivered in the various languages of the East as well as in French and English.

I took this first occasion to refer in a larger way to the aims and purposes of Robert College and similar American inst.i.tutions. The Turks had not been able to understand the benevolence that prompted the establishment of schools and colleges by Americans throughout the empire. They were suspicious, and their att.i.tude was founded on experiences with various inst.i.tutions and societies of several of the other nations, notably the Greeks, who, under guise of scientific and benevolent activity, had fostered political design. The Turks believed that behind our inst.i.tutions lay a purpose inimical to the sovereignty of Turkey, a belief stimulated by Russia and by some of the French Catholics, who were opposed to the extended use of the English language and the influence of Protestant English and American ideas in the East.

This gave rise to many of the vexatious questions that the legation had to solve. By way of throwing some oil upon these troubled waters, therefore, I said, during my address:

For centuries the tide of progress and civilization has been making its way toward the West. Its course has been marked by blood and carnage. The history of the Middle Ages and of modern times chronicles the nations and empires that have sunk in this mighty current, and the new life and new civilization that have sprung up over the ruins of the old. That flood tide, pushing its irresistible course onward, still swept on, until in our day it mingled its waters with the Great Pacific Ocean. The Ultima Thule having at last been reached, the great ebb-tide began to course its way backward; and America, the youngest of nations, in grat.i.tude for all the past, as a token of her amity and her friendship, has sent back on the advance current of this return tide not ships of war nor armed troops, but her most cherished inst.i.tutions, a fully equipped American college.

So that here, to-day, on the beautiful and picturesque sh.o.r.es of the cla.s.sic Bosphorus, on the very spot where the nations of the East four and a half centuries ago erected and left the well-preserved monument of their pa.s.sage to the West, stands Robert College. What a tale and what a history! Robert College here and the Towers of Roumeli-Hissar there! The one the fortified remains of bygone wars, the other the tranquil emblem of returning peace.

What a double tale do these two inst.i.tutions speak to one another!

The tie that unites them is one of love and peace, a league more puissant than army or navy for the welfare and happiness of nations. When centuries shall have rolled by and another Gibbon shall come to write of empires, may it be his privilege to record no longer the decline and fall, but the rise and rejuvenation of this Orient to which we look with affection.

And now that I had been received and entertained by about everybody in Constantinople, it was time for my audience with the Sultan, who came last like the prima donna. Official functions at Yildis Palace, as the Sultan's residence is called (Yildis meaning star), were always most dignified and punctilious. Royal carriages were sent from the Palace with escorts for myself and staff. At the entrance to the Palace we were met by the Introducer of Amba.s.sadors; then we proceeded to the salon of the Grand Master of Ceremonies, where I was met by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and conducted by Osman Pasha, Grand Marshal, into the presence of His Majesty.

The Sultan was standing ready to receive me. He was a small man, of rather spare frame, sallow complexion, dark eyes that sparkled with a furtive expression, prominent aquiline nose, and short full black beard which later, when it turned gray, he dyed reddish with henna. He had on a black frock coat that b.u.t.toned to the neck.

According to custom I handed him the letters of recall of my predecessor, then presented my credentials, and made a brief address, a copy of which in writing I left with him. It read as follows:

The President of the United States has been pleased to charge me with the distinguished honor and agreeable duty of cultivating to the fullest extent the friendship which has so happily subsisted between the two Governments, and of conveying to Your Imperial Majesty the a.s.surances of his best wishes for the welfare of Your Imperial Majesty and for the prosperity of Turkey.

As the faithful representative of my Government, charged with the duty of protecting the interests of her citizens, permit me to express the hope that Your Imperial Majesty's Government will lend me its kindly aid in the efforts I shall at all times make to maintain and further cement a good understanding for the development of the relations of amity and friendship between the two Governments, and that the same courtesy and cordiality may be shown me which were so generously accorded to my honored predecessors.

The time has at last come, through the progress of science, when all nations by reason of the facility and rapidity of communication have been brought nearer together, so that their mutual interests and relations verily ent.i.tle them to be called one great family.

In the spirit of that relationship I have come to dwell near the Government of Your Imperial Majesty, and to greet you in behalf of and in the words of our Chief Magistrate as his "Great and Good Friend," with the hope "that G.o.d may have Your Imperial Majesty in His wise keeping."

Which is the customary language of such doc.u.ments, with the exception of the third paragraph. His Majesty replied in a brief address, expressing his pleasure in receiving me. He then sat down and bade me do likewise, whereupon we were served with cigarettes and Turkish coffee, the latter in egg-shaped cups resting in jewel-studded holders. The Sultan speaks only Turkish, and I spoke English, so we understood one another by means of the dragoman, Mr. Gargiulo, who had been for twenty years the very able Turkish adviser and interpreter of the legation and remained at that post for ten years thereafter.

The audience concluded, we returned to the legation in the same stately fashion we had come, following which we gave a reception to the American colony, composed almost exclusively of the missionaries resident in Constantinople, together with the president and faculty of Robert College and of the Home School for Girls, then located at Scutari, across the Bosphorus. I was now ready for the official business of my mission.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST TURKISH MISSION

Turkey's jealousy of foreigners--My protest against the closing of American mission schools--Diplomacy prevents drastic regulations proposed by Turkey--The schools are reopened--Defending the sale of the Bible--A cargo of missionaries and rum--Robert College--A visit to Cairo--"Bombe a la Lincoln"--Governmental reforms in Egypt--My protest against persecution of Jews in flight from Russia and Roumania--At Jerusalem--Huge delegation of Jews pleads with me for release of imprisoned relatives--I make drastic demands, and prisoners are promptly released--Their grateful memorial to me--Rights of American citizens on Turkish soil--Disputes regarding our Treaty of 1830--Uncle Sam gives $10,800 worth of presents to Turkish officials, on conclusion of a treaty--Diplomatic tangles; United States left without Treaty of Naturalization with Turkey--Baron de Hirsch, international celebrity--I am invited to arbitrate his dispute with the Sultan, and am offered an honorarium of 1,000,000 francs--I decline honorarium, but offer to mediate--Baroness de Hirsch's philanthropies--American capitalists consider Turkish railway concessions--Sultan grants permission for American excavation in Babylon--My resignation in 1888--The Sultan's farewell.

For several years the Turks had been very jealous of foreigners, especially in Asia Minor, and the result was many restrictions which manifested themselves in a variety of relations. The growth of the mission schools and their increase in number quite naturally enhanced the suspicion of the authorities, with the help, as I have mentioned, of those whose interests were served in helping the Turks to see danger in this growth of our inst.i.tutions.

At the legation the interests of the American missionaries with regard to their schools and their printed matter formed the major portion of the affairs requiring my immediate attention. About four hundred schools had been established in Turkey by the Presbyterian and Congregational missionary boards. Beginning with the winter of 1885, upon one pretext or another, thirty of these schools in Syria were closed, many of the teachers arrested and forbidden ever to teach in the country again, while the parents were threatened with fine and imprisonment if they continued to send their children to American schools. With few exceptions all the teachers and parents were natives and Turkish subjects. The official reason given for the closing of these schools was that their boards had not complied with the Turkish law requiring that textbooks, curriculums, and certificates of the teachers be submitted to the authorities for examination; although the missionary representatives gave a.s.surance that these requirements had been met.

Soon after my audience with the Sultan I took up the subject of these schools with the Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha, who was perhaps the most enlightened statesman of the Turkish Empire. Mr. King, while acting charge, had made an agreement with the Minister of Public Instruction whereby the missionaries at these schools were to submit the textbooks and other doc.u.mentary equipment to the local authorities. I protested to the Grand Vizier against the closing of the schools, and after some weeks we reached an understanding: he was to telegraph the vali or governor-general at Syria that the schools were to be allowed to reopen upon their compliance with the law, according to an arrangement between himself and myself. The outcome looked hopeful, though months dragged along without further result.

Meanwhile, and quite by accident, I learned that the Porte had formulated proposed additional regulations concerning all foreign schools, and that these regulations were about to be submitted to the Council of Ministers to be made law. I immediately requested a copy from the Grand Vizier. I found, to my surprise, that the regulations were calculated to place insuperable obstacles in the way of every foreign school in the empire. Among other things, in addition to the requirement that textbooks, curriculums, and teachers' certificates be submitted for examination, all schools were to obtain an irade or express sanction of the Sultan in order to function. Failing to receive that irade within six months from the date of the law embodying the new regulations, the authorities in the several provinces were commanded to close such schools.

I communicated my discovery to those of my colleagues who were interested with me in this dispute: Count de Montebello, French amba.s.sador; Baron Blanc, Italian amba.s.sador; and Sir William White, British amba.s.sador. At the same time I submitted copies of the proposed regulations to the Reverend Doctor Isaac Bliss and the Reverend Henry O.

Dwight, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Western Turkey. They all viewed the matter as I did.

The following day I again called on the Grand Vizier, informing him that I looked upon these regulations as seriously infringing upon the rights of American citizens in Turkey, and pointing out my objections in detail. The three colleagues just referred to did the same on behalf of their respective subjects who had mission or other schools in the empire. We succeeded in impressing the Grand Vizier with the force and validity of our objections, for he requested us to put them in writing and forward them to the Porte. With the aid of Drs. Bliss and Dwight I prepared such a doc.u.ment, and I am glad to be able to say that our protests came in time and were sufficiently forceful to prove effective in preventing this new legislation.

As I had now been negotiating for several months with reference to the Syrian schools, I decided that the most efficient way of translating into concrete result the repeated promises in regard to them was to visit some of our missionary schools throughout the empire. I obtained the necessary permission from Washington and took a journey to Cairo, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Beirut, Mersina, and Smyrna, where I conferred with our missionaries, with our several consuls, as well as with the respective governors and governor-generals. I found the relations between the local authorities and our consuls, and between the authorities and the missionary representatives, quite friendly, in some places indifferent, but nowhere hostile.

I had instructed the missionaries to get ready for the opening of the schools, and I planned the trip so as to be in Beirut about the time my order for the reopening was to be put in force. My plan had the desired effect. In antic.i.p.ation of my arrival at Beirut, fifteen of the schools were reopened; and while I was there five or six more. That was about as many of the total thirty as the missionaries cared to or were in a position to reopen then. For the time being I felt satisfied that I had sufficiently reversed the Government policy to check the progressive closing of the schools which, if continued, would seriously have threatened the existence of all American schools in Turkey.

I must here express my appreciation of the a.s.sistance given me by Erhard Bissinger, our consul at Beirut. He was an earnest, sincere man, formerly a New York merchant. Although his health was frail he worked with unremitting zeal and efficiency, discharging his official duties with rare judgment and tact. I could always rely on the correctness of his reports respecting the many difficulties as they arose, and I could always feel a.s.sured that in each instance he would apply every effort to bring about an adjustment with the local authorities, by whom he was as highly esteemed as by the missionaries.

Another expression of the Government's enmity toward the activities of our missionaries was the treatment being accorded the colporteurs, or persons who went about selling Bible tracts. The agents of the American as well as the British Bible Society were constantly and arbitrarily being arrested. They were charged with plying their trade without license, yet when they made application they were never able to get license. From time to time I protested against these arrests and secured the release of one after another of the agents; but the thing to be done was to prevent arrests.

The fact was they were being made without real cause. Before these tracts or any other material could be printed a permit had to be obtained from the Ottoman Government. The material had to pa.s.s censorship before it was allowed to be printed, so that the very fact of its appearing in print was proof of the authorization of the censors. I held that, once printed, to prohibit the sale of these tracts was in restraint of commerce; that there was no reason why book hawkers should be under different regulations from hawkers of any other wares.

I prepared an argument along these lines, which I presented to the Grand Vizier, and he agreed with my conclusions. He forthwith gave orders for the release of all colporteurs and that no further arrests were to be made. The British Bible Society, of course, benefited equally with our own by these orders, and I received their grateful appreciation through my colleague, Sir William White.

All this hostility toward the missionaries and their work might be construed to be founded upon an objection by the Government to having its subjects converted to Christianity. But it was rather foreign influence as a whole that was being fought, and religion was simply the convenient peg. Conversions from Mohammedanism were few and far between, and for the number of Mohammedans turned Christian in the course of a year there were as many Christians turned Mohammedan. The Mohammedans are intensely and sincerely devoted to their faith. On the whole they are convinced that their religion is the only true one and that Christianity is inferior and less rational. Such converts as the missionaries do make come almost exclusively from among the Armenians, Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and other Christian sects whose form of Christianity is of a mediaeval character. The chief missionary work in Turkey is educational, carried forward in a religious spirit. At the time of my visit to the various vilayets, the Presbyterian Board alone had over one hundred schools throughout Syria, all located in places where previously there had been no schools at all.

Many of the men who carried forward missionary work had consecrated their whole lives to it. Chief among these were Rev. Henry H. Jessup, venerable patriarch of the Presbyterian missionaries; Rev. Daniel Bliss, president of the Syrian Protestant College; and Dr. George Washburn, president of Robert College.

Dr. Jessup and Dr. Bliss had started for the field together in 1856, when, in bleak December, they both left Boston in the sailing vessel Sultana, which, according to Dr. Jessup's autobiography, "Fifty-Three Years in Syria," carried in addition to nine or ten missionaries a cargo of New England rum to Smyrna--a cargo spirited no less than spiritual.

Dr. Bliss was succeeded in 1902 by his distinguished son, Rev. Howard S.

Bliss, who conducted with renewed vigor the work of his father, enlarging the scope and curriculum of the college so that through its thousands of graduates in the arts, in science, and in medicine it became a potent force throughout the whole Near East. During my subsequent missions to Turkey I became very intimate with the younger Bliss, and during the Peace Conference in 1919, when he was in Paris in behalf of Syria, I was able to continue this intimacy. Unfortunately in Paris he was already suffering from a serious malady which resulted in his death in America the year following. He was honored, respected, and beloved in both the old world and the new.

Dr. Washburn was a man of statesmanship as well as erudition. His book of recollections, "Fifty Years in Constantinople," is valuable for the light it throws on political issues in Turkey no less than on questions educational and religious. He was recognized as an authority on Turkish and Balkan affairs, and the influence of the college was by no means limited to the Turkish Empire; it was felt quite as much throughout the Balkan States. Bulgaria at one period was largely governed by officials who had been graduated from Robert College, and they looked to Dr.

Washburn as their chief adviser. The British amba.s.sador at Constantinople frequently consulted him and was swayed by his advice, for Dr. Washburn understood the Turks and spoke their language. He was the second president of the college, having succeeded his father-in-law, the Reverend Cyrus Hamlin, D.D.

On the faculty of Robert College were a number of other very able men: Dr. Albert L. Long, Professor of Natural Science, distinguished as an archaeologist as well, was a man of engaging personality. He had a large acquaintance among the learned Turks, whose estimate of our country was materially influenced for the good by their a.s.sociation with him. Then there was Dr. Edwin A. Grosvenor, Professor of Latin and History, who resigned shortly afterward to accept a professorship at Amherst. He was then at work on his scholarly "History of Constantinople," which I consider the best and most reliable work on that subject.

In 1888 I secured for Robert College, after arduous negotiation, permission for the erection of two new buildings, one a house for the president and the other an addition to the college itself. When the permits came through there was no mention of the addition to the college, and as work on it meanwhile had been begun, no little anxiety ensued. It developed that some one on the staff of the Grand Vizier had been bribed by an enemy of the college to tamper with the permits.

However, because of the good relationship between Kiamil Pasha and myself, he acknowledged this bit of chicanery and duly rectified it.