Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
“What have you got against him?” I asked.
“In 1876,” Wangenheim replied, “that man was pro-Russian and against
Turkey!”
Such are the long memories of the Germans! In 1876, Sir Edwin wrote
several articles for the London _Daily News_, describing the Bulgarian
massacres. At that time the reports of these fiendish atrocities were
generally disbelieved and Sir Edwin’s letters placed all the
incontrovertible facts before the English-speaking peoples, and had much
to do with the emancipation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule. This act of
humanity and journalistic statesmanship had brought Sir Edwin much fame
and now, after forty years, Germany proposed to punish him by casting
him into a Turkish prison! Again the Turks proved more considerate than
their German allies, for they not only gave Sir Edwin his liberty and
his papers, but permitted him to return to London.
Bedri, however, was a little mortified at my successful intervention in
this instance and decided to even up the score. Next to Sir Edwin Pears,
the most prominent English-speaking barrister in Constantinople was Dr.
Mizzi, a Maltese, 70 years old. The ruling powers had a grudge against
him, for he was the proprietor of the _Levant Herald_, a paper which had
published articles criticizing the Union and Progress Committee. On the
very night of the Pears episode, Bedri went to Dr. Mizzi’s house at
eleven o’clock, routed the old gentleman out of bed, arrested him, and
placed him on a train for Angora, in Asia Minor. As a terrible epidemic
of typhus was raging in Angora, this was not a desirable place of
residence for a man of Dr. Mizzi’s years. The next morning, when I heard
of it for the first time, Dr. Mizzi was well on the way to his place of
exile.
“This time I got ahead of you!” said Bedri, with a triumphant laugh. He
was as good-natured about it and as pleased as a boy. At last he had
“put one over” on the American Ambassador, who had been unguardedly
asleep in his bed when this old man had been railroaded to a fever camp
in Asia Minor.
But Bedri’s success was not so complete, after all. At my request Talaat
had Dr. Mizzi sent to Konia, instead of to Angora. There one of the
American missionaries, Dr. Dodd, had a splendid hospital; I arranged
that Dr. Mizzi could have a nice room in this building, and here he
lived for several months, with congenial associates, good food, a
healthy atmosphere, all the books he wanted, and one thing without which
he would have been utterly miserable--a piano. So I still thought that
the honours between Bedri and myself were a little better than even.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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