Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
I saw that it was useless to discuss the matter further. He was a man
who was devoid of sympathy and human pity, and I turned from him in
disgust. Wangenheim rose to leave. As he did so he gave a gasp, and his
legs suddenly shot from under him. I jumped and caught the man just as
he was falling. For a minute he seemed utterly dazed; he looked at me in
a bewildered way, then suddenly collected himself and regained his
poise. I took the Ambassador by the arm, piloted him down stairs, and
put him into his auto. By this time he had apparently recovered from his
dizzy spell and he reached home safely. Two days afterward, while
sitting at his dinner table, he had a stroke of apoplexy; he was carried
upstairs to his bed, but he never regained consciousness. On October
24th, I was officially informed that Wangenheim was dead. And thus my
last recollection of Wangenheim is that of the Ambassador as he sat in
my office in the American Embassy, absolutely refusing to exert any
influence to prevent the massacre of a nation. He was the one man, and
his government was the one government, that could have stopped these
crimes, but, as Wangenheim told me many times, “_our one aim is to win
this war_.”
A few days afterward official Turkey and the diplomatic force paid their
last tribute to this perfect embodiment of the Prussian system. The
funeral was held in the garden of the German Embassy at Pera. The
inclosure was filled with flowers. Practically the whole gathering,
excepting the family and the ambassadors and the Sultan’s
representatives, remained standing during the simple but impressive
ceremonies. Then the procession formed; German sailors carried the bier
upon their shoulders, other German sailors carried the huge bunches of
flowers, and all members of the diplomatic corps and the officials of
the Turkish Government followed on foot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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