The Making Of A Novelist: An Experiment In AutobiographyMurray, David Christie
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The Making Of A Novelist: An Experiment In Autobiography
Murray, David Christie
Murray, David Christie, 1847-1907; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
I hardly like to leave Constantinople without a memory of the Polish
Legion. I took a journey by the Shooting Star Railway with a chance
companion, to see him sworn in and receive his commission as an officer
of that regiment The place of assignation was a loft over an untenanted
stable, for the time being the head-quarters of the corps. I never heard
of their having any others; and I remember with unusual distinctness an
interview one of the officers had with Said Pasha, who told him, with a
perfect absence of reserve, that the Legion 'would be sent to the front
and would be dissipated.' As a matter of fact, it never got really into
form. I believe that there was never at any moment a solitary private
in its ranks. So long as it lasted it consisted entirely of officers of
various grades. Many of these, seeing how hopeless the whole enterprise
had grown to be, abandoned it openly; others quietly slipped away
without warning; and a good many willingly allowed themselves to be
drafted into other regiments, where some of them did good service.
The English journalists in Turkey were divided by faction. We were
mainly Philo-Turkish or Philo-Russian, according to the political
colours of the journals we represented; and I know now very well that
I was, for my own part, so impressed by the Bulgarian atrocities scare
that I hardly knew how to look for mercy or right feeling in a Turk.
The plain truth was very hard to get at, but now, through the far
perspective of the years that lie between, it is easier to see with a
judicial eye. If there is to be found anywhere in the world a gentler,
a more hospitable, a more sober, a more chaste, truthful, and loyal
creature than the citizen Turk, I confess that I should like to meet
him. If there is anywhere to be found a man more devoted to duty,
braver, simpler, gentler than the common soldier of the Turkish army, I
would walk a long way to find him.
While the war went on, half of the men who sent the news of it out to
the civilised world found the Turk _anathema maranatha_, and the other
half were persuaded that the Bulgarian was a beast altogether despicable
and cowardly. Since the Bulgarians have had a chance to govern
themselves they have amply disproved that unfavourable theory, and 'the
unspeakable Turk,' of whom we heard so much in those days, was in the
main as good a sort of fellow as might be found in Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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