Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
I then entertained him for an hour or so with a few pages from our own
“American rights.” I told him how Jay Gould had arrived in New York, a
penniless and ragged boy, with a mousetrap which he had invented, and
how he had died, almost thirty years afterward, leaving a fortune of
about $1,000,000,000. I told him how Commodore Vanderbilt had started
life as a ferryman and had become America’s greatest railroad “magnate”;
how Rockefeller had begun life sitting on a high stool in a Cleveland
commission house, earning six dollars a week, and had created the
greatest fortune that had ever been accumulated by a single man in the
world’s history. I told him how the Dodges had become our great “copper
kings,” the Cranes our great manufacturers of iron pipe. Enver found
these stories more thrilling than any that had ever come out of Bagdad,
and I found afterward that he had retold them to almost all the
important people in Constantinople.
Enver was immensely impressed also by what I said about the American
institutions, especially at my statement that they also had not
converted--or attempted to convert--a single Mohammedan to Christianity.
He went through all the buildings and expressed his enthusiasm at
everything he saw, and he even suggested that he would like to send his
brother there. He took tea with Mrs. Gates, wife of President Gates,
discussed most intelligently the courses, and asked us if we could not
introduce the study of agriculture. The teachers he met seemed to be a
great revelation.
“I expected to find these missionaries as they are pictured in the
Berlin newspapers,” he said, “with long hair and hanging jaws, and hands
clasped constantly in a prayerful attitude. But here is Dr. Gates
talking Turkish like a native and acting like a man of the world. I am
more than pleased, and thank you for bringing me.”
We all saw Enver that afternoon in his most delightful aspect. My idea
that this visit in itself would protect the colleges from disturbance
proved to have been a happy one. The Turkish Empire has been a
tumultuous place in the last four years, but the American colleges have
had no difficulties, either with the Turkish Government or with the
Turkish populace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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