To Djemal and the other Turkish officials who kept pressing me I suggested that their ambassador in Washington should take up the matter directly with the President. They acted on this advice, but the Greeks again got ahead of them. At two o’clock, June 22d, the Greek chargé d’affaires at Washington and Commander Tsouklas, of the Greek navy, called upon the President and arranged the sale. As they left the President’s office, the Turkish Ambassador entered--just fifteen minutes too late! I presume that Mr. Wilson consented to the sale because he knew that Turkey was preparing to attack Greece and believed that the _Idaho_ and _Mississippi_ would prevent such an attack and so preserve peace in the Balkans. Acting under the authorization of Congress, the administration sold these ships on July 8, 1914, to Fred J. Gauntlett, for $12,535,276.98. Congress immediately voted the money realized from the sale to the construction of a great modern dreadnaught, the _California_. Mr. Gauntlett transferred the ships to the Greek Government. Rechristened the _Kilkis_ and the _Lemnos_, those battleships immediately took their places as the most powerful vessels of the Greek Navy, and the enthusiasm of the Greeks in obtaining them was unbounded. By this time we had moved from the Embassy to our summer home on the Bosphorus. All the summer embassies were located there, and a more beautiful spot I have never seen. Our house was a three-story building, something in the Venetian style; behind it the cliff rose abruptly, with several terraced gardens towering one above the other; the building stood so near the shore and the waters of the Bosphorus rushed by so rapidly that when we sat outside, especially on a moonlight night, we had almost a complete illusion that we were sitting on the deck of a fast sailing ship. In the daytime the Bosphorus, here little more than a mile wide, was alive with gaily coloured craft; I recall this animated scene with particular vividness because I retain in my mind the contrast it presented a few months afterward, when Turkey’s entrance into the war had the immediate result of closing this strait. Day by day the huge Russian steamships, on their way from Black Sea ports to Smyrna, Alexandria, and other cities, made clear the importance of this little strip of water, and explained the bloody contests of the European nations, extending over a thousand years, for its possession. However, these early summer [Illustration: BUSTÁNY EFFENDI Ex-Minister of Commerce and Agriculture in the Turkish Cabinet. He came to Mr. Morgenthau in January, 1914, seeking American assistance in financially rehabilitating Turkey] [Illustration: MOHAMMED V, LATE SULTAN OF TURKEY His majesty was a kind-hearted old gentleman, entirely ignorant of the world and lacking in personal force and initiative. The lower picture shows the Sultan’s carriage at the American Embassy, waiting to take Mr. Morgenthau to an imperial audience]