Fatherland “not only life but honour.” CHAPTER XII THE TURKS ATTEMPT TO TREAT ALIEN ENEMIES DECENTLY, BUT THE GERMANS INSIST ON PERSECUTING THEM Soon after the bombardment of Odessa I was closeted with Enver, discussing the subject which was then uppermost in the minds of all the foreigners in Turkey. How would the Government treat its resident enemies? Would it intern them, establish concentration camps, pursue them with German malignity, and perhaps apply the favourite Turkish measure with Christians--torture and massacre? Thousands of enemy subjects were then living in the Ottoman Empire. Many of them had spent their whole lives there; others had even been born on Ottoman soil. All these people, when Turkey entered the war, had every reason to expect the harshest kind of treatment. It is no exaggeration to say that most of them lived in constant fear of murder. The Dardanelles had been closed, so that there was little chance that outside help could reach these people; the capitulatory rights, under which they had lived for centuries, had been abrogated. There was really nothing between the foreign residents and destruction except the American flag. The state of war had now made me, as American Ambassador, the protector of all British, French, Serbian, and Belgian subjects. I realised from the beginning that my task would be a difficult one. On one hand were the Germans, urging their well-known ideas of repression and brutality, while on the other were the Turks, with their traditional hatred of Christians and their natural instinct to maltreat those who are helplessly placed in their power. Yet I had certain strong arguments on my side, and I now had called upon Enver for the purpose of laying them before him. Turkey desired the good opinion of the United States, and hoped, after the war, to find support among American financiers. At that time all the Embassies in Constantinople took it for granted that the United States would be the peacemaker. If Turkey expected us to be her friend, I now told Enver, she would have to treat enemy foreigners in a civilised way. “You hope to be reinstated as a world power,” I said. “You must remember that the civilised world will carefully watch you; your future status will depend on how you conduct yourself in war.” The more educated Turks, including Enver, realised that the outside world regarded them as a people who had no respect for the sacredness of human life or the finer emotions, and they keenly resented this attitude. I now reminded Enver that Turkey had a splendid opportunity to disprove all these criticisms. “The world may say you are barbarians,” I argued; “show by the way you treat these alien enemies that you are not. Only in this way can you be freed permanently from the ignominy of the capitulations. Prove that you are worthy of being emancipated from foreign tutelage. Be civilised--be modern!”