_February 21, 1913._ DEAR MR. WHITMAN,—I have gone through your manuscript with great pleasure, and all I can say is that indulgence, nobility of mind, gratitude, and gentlemanly feeling form the ruling features of the paper, whereas the manifold harm resulting from the personal idiosyncrasies of the Sultan is only occasionally touched upon. From your point of view, and judging as a foreigner, you were quite right to use subdued colours, but having acted as a political writer who endeavoured and intended to turn the Sultan on the right way, I am sorry to say I could not follow your example. Nor could any modern Turk who had witnessed the ever-increasing calamity of his country do so. At all events your book will call forth much comment and varied criticism. Yours sincerely, A. VAMBÉRY. X _April 28, 1913._ DEAR MR. WHITMAN,—In reading your well-conceived and well-written book on the “Realm of the Habsburgs” I could not refrain from feeling regret at not having been blessed by nature with that rare gift of literary skill and eminence which distinguishes your pen. Having seen and experienced so much in many countries and in many nations, where I passed as a native, what attractive and truthful pictures could I not have furnished of my variegated experiences, and how considerably I could have facilitated the intercourse between man and man! Well, _non omnes omnia_—and writers like yourself, in whose works I delight, do sometimes darken the distant horizon of my past. Your book, like the last one I read, is a masterpiece, in spite of the disadvantages resulting from the changes caused by the quick pace of our times, when so many features must obviously alter. It reminds me of an Oriental remark about a decayed beauty: “The mosque has fallen into ruins, but the altar where people worshipped still stands upright.” With some slight alterations your book could be advantageously republished. I am exceedingly sorry to be so far from dear old England, for, owing to this distance, many interesting items culled from my daily Turkish, Persian, and Tartar reading are lost to the public. Germany is not the place for practical Eastern topics: a long essay written on the slippers of Goethe is more appreciated there than a detailed description of recent political events in Turkey, Persia, etc. I was certainly not wrong in saying one day to a great German: “Hätte Deutschland weniger Orientalisten aber mehr Orientkenner gehabt, so brauchten sie heute Englands Stellung in Asien nicht mit neidischen Augen zu betrachten.”[44]