Part 47

In Austria things were slightly different. The Austrian-German is probably more of Celtic than of Germanic blood. He is more volatile. Great issues do not hold his attention long. He becomes easily a slave to habit.

To the Austrian-German the war was never more than a nuisance. It interfered with his business; above all, his enjoyments; it drove him from his favorite café and his clandestine lady-love. It upset life for him thoroughly. What was the preservation of the Austrian Empire to a man who shared that empire with Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, Italian, Bosniak Mussulman, and in a sense with the Magyar and Roumanian? The feeling of race interest would have to remain foreign to such a man, just as it was a stranger to all the others who fought at his side. Of the ten races in the Dual Monarchy only the Slav group could understand one another without special study of the other's language. Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, and Bosniak could with little difficulty master one another's language. German, so far as it was not familiar in the form of military commands, was unknown to most of them. Magyar was a total stranger to Slav and German alike, and Italian and Roumanian meant nothing to any of these.

I remember philosophizing a bit at the execution wall of the fortress of Peterwardein in Hungary. To the left of me stood a little gallows--one of those peculiar strangulation implements they use in Austria-Hungary--descendant of the Spanish garrote, I believe. On the ancient brick wall were the marks left there by chipping steel bullets. Many a Serb seditionist had seen the light of day for the last time in that old moat. More of them were behind the grilled peepholes of the casemate. That morning two or three had died where I stood.

In that there was nothing unusual, perhaps. But on my right was a large poster, framed with the Hungarian national colors, red, white, and green. The poster drew attention to a certain paragraph of the treason laws. It defined treason poignantly, precisely.

I read the paragraph in German, concluded that the Hungarian said the same, surmised that the Slav languages in the country did not differ greatly from one another, found that Roumanian I could almost read, and saw that the Italian version said the same thing as the German. I suppose French had been left off the poster for the reason that the Austro-Hungarian inter-monarchical classes, which now use that language instead of Latin, as in the days of Marie Therese, did not need to have their attention drawn to the danger of sedition.

The gallows and execution wall seemed fit companions to that poster. One might not have missed the other when seeing the one, but still there was harmony between the two. People who do not understand one another, be that a question of language or temperament, have no business to live together. But the thing happens often in wedlock, and governments at peace and leisure say that it is perfectly feasible from the viewpoints of state interests.

I found that Das Reich--the empire--had no meaning to any member of the Austro-Hungarian group. But what held that conglomerate together? The Emperor-King.

Soon I found that nothing had changed in Austria-Hungary since the days when the Empress-Queen Marie Therese, with her infant son in her arms, and tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, had implored the Magyar nobles to come to her assistance against Frederick the Great. The Magyar nobles tore off their fur kalpacks, drew their swords, and cried:

"Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!"

That was still the mass psychology in the dual monarchy. The old Emperor-King called to battle, and that was enough. Later the new Emperor-King renewed the call, and it was still enough.

What the soldiers did in the trenches the civilian population did at home--a little half-heartedly at times, a little slovenly occasionally, but reliably at all times.

"We must help our Macedonian brothers. The Bulgars can no longer remain deaf to their prayers to be relieved of the oppression of the Serbs," said the Bulgarian Premier, Doctor Radoslavoff, to me in February, 1915.

In October of the same year he said during an interview:

"There is not enough room for two strong states on the Balkan peninsula. Yet there must be a strong state if the Balkan problem is to be eliminated. That strong state will be either Bulgaria or Serbia. We desire that it be Bulgaria. It will be Bulgaria when the Macedonians are permitted to join her. The time has come when they can do that. For that reason we go to war on the side of the Central Powers."

The two statements picture Bulgarian mass psychology exactly. The Bulgar wanted the Macedonian to be one with him nationally, as he is racially. He wanted the ancient Bulgar capital of Monastir to lie again within Bulgarland. With that in perspective he had driven the Turk from the peninsula; for that purpose he wanted to make the Serb small.

I found the same iron determination throughout Bulgaria and in all walks of life. The shope farmer, the shepherd in the planina, the monks at Rila Monastir, the fishermen at Varna, the city and towns people, were all for that idea. And in so stern a manner! To me the Bulgar will always be the Prussian of the Balkan. He is just as morose, just as blunt, and just as sincere.

I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the Faithful, etc., etc., etc.

"They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the battleships Bouvet and Irresistible whom I had seen go down with their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks. We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up."

Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment.

Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat similarly. He was more diplomatically specific.

"The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them. Guarantees--guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We joined the Germans because they offered none."

All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the line of Ayesha.

Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War, generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and what not, told me the same thing on several occasions.

"Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that! They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it. Nonsense! Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to hell with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't like us don't have to. Nobody need love us. Let them keep out of our way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance."

It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism. He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed, shrewd.

"Très bien, cher frère" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation by concessionnaires, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feel the same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia, forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what was left, which would have been not so little.

"When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we are doing. It's a mighty effort, cher frère, but there is no way out. We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are terrible competitors, I have been told. So far we have not done so poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand Vizier Köprülü. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached. But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that Turkey is developed for the benefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish."

Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of mass psychology in the Ottoman Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the government.