After spending a week at Gallipoli, the party returned. The Turks had moved their military headquarters from Gallipoli, and the English fleet, therefore, ceased to bombard it. All came back in good condition and were welcomed home with great enthusiasm. CHAPTER XX MORE ADVENTURES OF THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS The Gallipoli deportation gives some idea of my difficulties in attempting to fulfil my duty as the representative of Allied interests in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, despite these occasional outbursts of hatred, in the main the Turkish officials themselves behaved very well. They had promised me at the beginning that they would treat their alien enemies decently, and would permit them either to remain in Turkey, and follow their accustomed occupations, or to leave the Empire. They apparently believed that the world would judge them, after the war was over, not by the way they treated their own subject peoples, but by the way they treated the subjects of the enemy Powers. The result was that a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Italian enjoyed far greater security in Turkey than an Armenian, a Greek, or a Jew. Yet against this disposition to be decent a persistent malevolent force was constantly manifesting itself. In a letter to the State Department I described the influence that was working against foreigners in Turkey. “The German Ambassador,” I wrote in substance, “keeps pressing on the Turks the advisability both of repressive measures and of detaining as hostages the subjects of the belligerent Powers. I have had to encounter the persistent opposition of my German colleague in endeavouring to obtain permission for the departure of the subjects of the nationalities under our protection.” Now and then the Turkish officials would retaliate upon one of their enemy aliens, usually in reprisal for some injury, or fancied injury, inflicted on their own subjects in enemy countries. Such acts gave rise to many exciting episodes, some tragical, some farcical, all illuminating in the light they shed upon Turkish character and upon Teutonic methods. One afternoon I was sitting with Talaat, discussing routine matters, when his telephone rang. “_Pour vous_,” said the Minister, handing me the receiver.