Constantinople at last!—The Threshold of the Russian Assignment—A Nation in Convulsion

I always supposed that the Japanese were the most suspicious people in the world until I went to Russia, where I discovered a brand of officials that was so much worse than the Japanese that there was no comparison. In fact, for years I had them marked in my mind as the criterion for entertaining doubts as to other people’s business, but the Turks can give the Russians cards and spades when it comes to having an evil mind for the intents of all strangers. As far as I can make out, every officer in Turkey, from the general down to the policemen, is firmly convinced that every foreigner who comes to their dismal country does so with the intention of “stalking” the Sultan, bombing the Premier, or starting a revolution. The unfortunate monarch is no doubt the ring-leader in this quaint idea. Anyway, he sits inside a fortified palace, surrounded by troops, and chatters his teeth from sunrise to sunset. The days he comes out of his hole, the reserve is called out and the foreigners have to have permits from the embassies to stand on a hill and watch him through a telescope as he scuttles from his palace to his carriage. Nobody can get into Turkey without a pass-port, nor can he get out of it without having it elaborately visÉd.

The Ismalia anchored at sundown, but as it was two minutes after six, there was nothing doing! Allow us to land that night! The police who had boarded us to watch for a conspiracy before morning shivered at the idea, and at once viewed us as dangerous and suspicious characters, therefore it was nearly eight in the morning when, the sun being fairly under way, we pulled up our anchor and started for the mouth of the Bosphorus.

Constantinople is really three cities in one, and is perhaps the only town in the world that has the distinction of being in two continents. The whole is situated at the junction of the Sea of Marmora and the Bosphorus, that narrow defile which leads into the Black Sea. The three cities are separated the one from the other by arms of the sea. In Europe are Stamboul and Pera Galata, divided by the inlet of the Golden Horn, a half mile wide, where it joins the Bosphorus and gradually narrowing as it curves upward towards the Sweet Waters, some six miles distant. On the eastern side of the Strait is the Asiatic town, Scutari. One may travel well the regions of the world and find no more picturesque scene than that which greets him as he approaches the Turkish capital from the Sea of Marmora. The gorgeous architecture and rich color make a picture unique throughout the globe. On the European side are the historic battlements of the old Byzantine city which Constantine made the capital of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, and the picturesque confusion of domes, terraced roofs and minarets of Stamboul, the cypress groves and white marble mansions of Scutari skirt the Asiatic shore as far as one can see. In the center is the mouth of the Bosphorus itself, bending toward the Euxine between rugged hills not unlike a Norwegian Fjord. The inbound steamer passing around Seraglio Point enters the Golden Horn which old Procopius described as “always calm and never crested into waves, as though a barrier were placed there to the billows, and all storms were shut out from thence through reverence for the city.” Above the crowded building of old Galata are the heights of Pera, on which the new and more modern part of the town is located. Looking northward, one sees the winding course of the Bosphorus, the shores lined with palaces, villas and terraced gardens. No port in the world presents such a cosmopolitan aspect as does the Golden Horn. Old pre-historic Turkish iron-clads lie at anchor near the shore. Passenger and mail steamers from every large nation in Europe and beyond Europe swing at their moorings or lie along the quays. Wheat laden ships from Odessa and others deep with the golden harvest of the Danube country lie side by side with the graceful Greek and Turkish coasting vessels, while hundreds of tugs, launches and ferry-boats pass to and fro in the harbor.

There are nearly a million inhabitants in Constantinople, and a more disreuptable and miscellaneous combination has never been herded together in one spot since history began. At least, that is my opinion. Moslems, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgars, and assorted Asiatics mingle with a meager handful of foreigners. The great bulk are ignorant and fanatical, easily aroused by their priests to any form of atrocity, and are generally useless. Most of the population are poor, and all are lazy. The official figures do not include the dogs, which are roughly estimated at about a million. They are a sad lot, and the most dismal creatures in the world. As far as I could make out, their diet consists of a guttural abuse and ashes. The billy-goat of the comic weekly fame, with his menu of tin cans and old rags, is an epicure compared with the Constantinople dog. The home of this animal is everywhere, and in the winter one sees fifteen and twenty sleeping, piled the one on top of another in a heap three feet deep to keep warm. The day is devoted to slumber, and the consumption of rubbish, while the night is given over exclusively to vocal activities. As soon as night comes and people are just going to sleep, the dogs wake up and in sad, disconsolate tones, sitting on their haunches, with eyes closed and noses pointed heavenwards, they proceed to unburden themselves of all their troubles. The hours of performance are from 11 p. m. until daylight. They all suffer from the mange and acute melancholia. The guide book says that their numbers have materially diminished, but I was unable to trace any symptom of race suicide during my brief sojourn in town.

The Turkish Christians, Greeks, Armenians, and Bulgarians have nothing whatever in common. They hate one another as much as all loathe the Turks, which, it may be added, is in the superlative degree. There are a few cultivated and wealthy people of these races, but the bulk of them are as poverty stricken and illiterate as are the Moslems themselves. From eight to a dozen languages are spoken in the streets, and five or six appear in the advertisements and on the shop fronts. These races have nothing to bring them together, no relations except trade with one another. Everybody lives in perpetual horror and dread of all the other elements in the community; there is no common patriotism or civic feeling. However, as I am not writing a guide to ethnological conditions in Constantinople, I will return to my own immediate troubles, and give over the discussion of those of the people who compose the population, for my purpose is to write one book, and not a dozen.

Leaving the baggage in the hands of the faithful Morris, I hurried ashore. Rows of cadaverous and dirty officials and understrappers lined the pier. Between the wharf and the street were innumerable badly soiled sentinels, clothed in what appeared to be second hand ready made garments. Armed with my pass-port I slipped through this phalanx, giving it out that Morris would attend to the customs and the balance of my affairs. The Turk is slow, and if you talk fast, wave your pass-port, crowd a bit and look fierce, you have him bluffed. Incidentally, this is not a bad receipt in other quarters of the globe. Anyway it worked here. Upon Morris fell the heat and burden of the day, as I learned afterwards. It would seem that there is a law against guns and big knives coming into the sacred precincts of the Golden Horn. I had moved so fast, that if anyone had asked me if I had anything, I didn’t hear him. I had, of course, a modest little 38 caliber revolver stowed away unostentatiously. Morris had my big army Colt in his hip pocket, where it bulged out like a mountain gun. A dozen eagle eyes saw the bulge and a dozen voices asked if he had any fire-arms. With injured dignity Morris drew himself up and proceeded to defend himself. “Certainly not!” Why should he, a peaceful colored man, traveling with an American gentleman, carry such things? He, Morris, would have it known that he regarded such allegations as little better than an insult, and no doubt his master would take the matter up with the American Embassy. He could not tell exactly what would happen to the perpetrators of this outrage, but from past experience he had no doubt that everybody present would be dismissed and disgraced from the Turkish service, etc., etc. Morris was never short of words, and once started he launched out and was really working himself up into a bona fide rage when one of the officers drew back his coat, exposing the committal black butt of the revolver. Not even for a moment was Morris non-plussed. “Yes! Certainly it is a revolver. Why not? No, he had not understood. Was it fire-arms they had asked about? Oh! He thought it was dynamite they were looking for, and he was sorry, but he misunderstood—there were so many people talking at once, and, besides, he was not entirely conversant with the Turkish language. He would like to speak Turkish, and thought if he remained any time he would soon pick it up. Yes, he spoke many languages already, but he knew of none which was more euphonic than that of the Moslems. But to return to the subject, why yes, certainly he had a revolver. As a matter of fact, he usually carried two. Yes! Everybody did in America. No gentleman would dress without one. Why, my friends,” he continued, “do you know that in America,” and here he sat down on a trunk and started in on a story about President Roosevelt. At this point a man from the hotel, whom I had met outside, arrived to his aid, and by a judicious use of piastres, Morris and the fourteen pieces of baggage got through, though unfortunately the revolver stuck in the hands of the law and remained there, too, until I paid $25.00 to some man who arranges those delicate matters, and got it back. Everything, I find, can be arranged in Turkey. The secret of it is to arrange first. After you have been denied anything, or held up, it takes three times as much to have things adjusted. In the first place, there is the diplomat, who enters into negotiations for remuneration; then the injured dignity involved for the change of the official heart is much more of an item to be considered. The safe rule in Turkey, if you are in a hurry, is to pass out a five piastre piece to any official who raises an outcry. If he has much gold lace, make it ten. This is enough to soothe the conscience up to Majors. No doubt Colonels and Generals get more, but they are all really very reasonable, if one is only thoughtful of them. I learned all these things later. After I had gotten rooms and had a bath at the hotel, I went down to the office, where a superb creature in gorgeous uniform, with a sword and two revolvers, was talking with Morris. In the center of the hall were my fourteen much-labeled pieces of baggage. As I came down Morris came to attention, saluted with great respect, and then asked for a few words. When we were alone he grinned, winked, and remarked:

“No, he ain’t no general. His name is Leo, and he is the head guy here. I got the tip from the runner who got our baggage through. He don’t run the hotel, but he is the works all right! I was just giving him a ‘stall’ on the situation. He thinks we are ‘it.’ In another interview the hotel will be ours,” and he rubbed his hands, grinned and clicked his heels.

Morris as a “staller” was certainly a daisy. By a “stall” he referred to a knack he had of creating an impression within an hour that we were entitled to everything within reach the moment we landed. He was never ostentatious, usually truthful. If we entered a train where there were no places left, Morris would be off to see the station master, conductor, anyone, in fact, who was handy. In a moment he would have the station aroused and come back with half a dozen officers at his heels, saluting and bowing, and in a few minutes some unfortunate would be turned out, and I would have the best place on the train. If we boarded a steamer, Morris would be busy for an hour and everything on the boat was at my disposal, while even the Captain would stop and inquire, with the utmost solicitude, as to the state of my health. I first observed this interesting course of procedure applied on the P. & O. Egypt on the way from Bombay to the Suez Canal. The rates from India to the Canal are something exorbitant. I found that to take Morris second cabin would cost me the equivalent of a first cabin trip on an Atlantic greyhound. The only accommodations below the second were called “native passage” and was intended for East Indians, who are quite contented to sleep on the deck and eat slops and rice. I regretted the extortionate sum demanded for the second cabin, but did not want to see my chief of staff in such a wretched plight, so told him I would stand for the second cabin ticket. He had heard my negotiations with the agent, and insisted on the deck passage.

“Just you watch me, sir,” he confided, when I closed the deal. “Give me a few pounds and watch Monroe D. Morris make a great ‘stall.’” So I gave him two pounds and I went aboard. He objected a little at being fumigated by the health authorities, but it lasted only a few minutes, and he swallowed his pride. No sooner were we under way than he directed his attention to the second steward, who had charge of the second class passengers. In great confidence he unfolded to this haughty dignitary, from whom I had been unable to get a pleasant look, that he, Morris, wasn’t really a valet or servant at all, but my private secretary. That he was making a secret and most exhaustive study of the native races of the east, and that he, Morris, had taken a third class ticket that he might mingle with the lowly steerage, gain their confidence and draw them out on the ideas current in the lower walks of Indian life. Yes, he had done this all over the world, and had had great success in passing himself off as a lowly fellow. The first steward might not believe it, but it was true. Of course, if he had a second cabin passage, his fellow deck passengers would view him as an intruder.

Then followed a brief sketch of his career, altered and amended to suit the case in hand. Little by little the stony steward thawed, and at just the psychological moment, Morris slipped two golden sovereigns into his lordship’s hands and begged that his true character might be concealed, and that the steward would see to it that while openly he was allotted to the deck passage, that privately he should receive accommodations suited to his true position in life. He further intimated that such a co-operation on the steward’s part would not pass unnoticed, and even hinted that perhaps his chief (meaning me) might be as much impressed with the character and intelligence of the steward as was Morris himself, in which case it was more than probable that the steward might be appointed to the staff of his master’s new yacht, which was now building in America. Yes, this would be an exceptionally fine position, and he, Morris, felt that of all the candidates who were eager for this position, that there was none so suitable as the steward himself. To make a long story short, by night he had the best cabin in the second class, while his friend, the steward, detailed a special man to attend to his wants at a private table. By the time we reached Aden the entire staff of the boat were greeting him deferentially as “Mr. Morris” and urging his intercession on their behalf for positions of all sorts on the new yacht. When we finally embarked at the Canal, half the crew were at the gangway to shake hands and give a cheer for my “Black Prince.” As an accessory to one’s credit Morris was certainly worth his weight in gold bullion.

After I had listened to his account of Leo I told him to get the interpreter of the hotel and go out and find the first boat sailing for Odessa. Also to look up the latest arrivals from there, and see what the captain and crew had to relate on the situation in Russia. In the meantime I made the usual rounds where one is apt to pick up information,—the American and other legations and consulates. I did not get beyond the first, however. Mr. Leishman, to whom I presented my letters of introduction from the state department, shook his head.

“My boy,” he said, “I am sorry to disappoint you, but I really can’t advise your going to Russia just now. Honestly, I don’t think it is safe.”

This was rather amusing, and I told him I was obliged to go, whatever the situation might be. He smiled and said that he “guessed not. The boats had stopped, the trains weren’t operating and the cables were cut.” For half an hour we chatted, and he told me all that he knew about affairs Russian, and then very kindly gave me letters to the various members of the diplomatic and consular service whom he thought could help me.

In a few hours I found that nobody in Constantinople knew anything definitely. This, however, as I soon learned, was the chronic state of affairs in the Turkish capital. The papers are so vigorously censored that nothing of local importance ever by any chance filters through. The natives themselves know nothing about outside politics, and care less, while the foreign residents must rely for all their news on the papers that come from the outside. Books pertaining to Levantine politics or history are almost as hard to get over the frontier as are fire-arms, but even here in suppressed Turkey rumors of everything were rife. From the talk, I was more than ever convinced that Russia was the place for me, and at once. For two weeks refugees had been pouring in from Odessa and Crimea and the Caucasus. The Russian consul-general thought at least 50,000 people had left Odessa. Conditions in the agrarian districts, it was reported, were at a crisis. There had been a fearful spasm at Moscow, a free-for-all fight in the streets, and anywhere from five to twenty-five thousand people were said to be killed, the reports differing according to the ideas of the narrator as to the number of dead required to make a good story. The fleet in Sebastopol had mutinied and there had been a fight, and the town, so it was said, had been bombarded and destroyed, and heaven only knew how many people were killed. As to the Caucasus, well, no one could ever guess at the dreadful state of affairs there. As a matter of fact, no one knew anything. Everyone suspected everything. The last steamer from Odessa had come in ten days before, and the captain painted a lurid picture of what he expected to happen. No, he was jolly well sure he wasn’t going back to Odessa. Any man who went there was an ass. He thought that by this time the place was in ashes and every ship in the harbor burned, and those of the foreigners who were still alive weren’t worth reckoning. Being the last one in, he had the field all to himself, and his story had grown more lurid day by day, so I took little stock in his report. In a word, Constantinople was stiff with the most promising rumors that ever gladdened the ear of a war correspondent.

At two o’clock that afternoon I returned to the Pera-Palace Hotel and went to my room, where I found Morris disconsolately gazing out over the terraced expanse of the Bosphorus.

“Well,” I said, “what do you know?”

“Nothing doing,” he replied, and then told of his trip up and down the water front and his talk with various captains. He was heart-broken at the discovery that steamers were no longer running to Odessa, or any other point of interest.

“Why, sir,” he said, “I regard this, sir, as one of the most promising situations in the world, sir, for people in our line of business, sir. Here is Russia all going to the devil, sir. Odessa, sir, is, no doubt, razed to the ground. Yes, sir, I believe it, reduced to ashes. Why, a day in Odessa, and what a story. I repeat, sir, what a story! And what is our position? Not a boat going there, not a train to Russia, not a cable available. I am discouraged, sir; yes, sir, I admit it, discouraged!” And he turned back to gaze again over the strip of water that lay below. Morris regarded my business as his always. It was never what I was going to do, but always what “we” were doing.

“It does look bad,” I admitted. On the table stood my typewriter and beside it, two piles of stationery, the one of cable blanks and the other for letter use. The moment we landed these were the first things Morris unpacked. As soon as we entered a room in a new hotel, he would ring for the bell boy and freeze him with a look, as he called for cable blanks. I considered the situation for a moment. Obviously there was nothing definite to be learned here. The rail to Russia was no longer to be figured on. The wires were not working. No news was coming out. The first thing to do was to get on the spot, and the second to provide myself with the means of getting my stories out. The boats had stopped running. Clearly enough there was but one thing to do. These thoughts ran through my mind, and I sat down and wrote a cable to Chicago—“Nothing definite obtainable here. Rumors indicate excellently. If you consider situation warrants, propose charter steamer and cover all points interest Black Sea, answer.” I handed it to Morris. From the depths of gloom to the radiancy of bliss his spirits leaped in an instant. He grinned from ear to ear.

“Fine business! Yes, sir, I call that fine business,” and he was off down the hall like a shot out of a gun. I looked out the window, and a moment later saw him dash off in a two-horse carriage for the cable office. Heaven only knows what he told Leo, the performer of everything in that hotel. Anyway Leo had mounted on the box with the driver, some A D C to his own august person, and with a gallop the horses plunged through the narrow streets, while the assistant on the box called out to clear the way.

While Morris was sending my first dispatch, I was embodying in a three-hundred-word news cable the estimate of the general situation in the Black Sea, as seen from the haze of Constantinople ignorance and aloofness from the outer world. This message was the boiling down of my interviews with the various consuls and ambassadors and the information which Morris had gotten from his tours along the water front among the captains and officers of incoming steamers.

As soon as the first message was out of the way I sent my Ethiopian Mercury with No. 2, and he paid down 243 francs for charges to London, where my paper maintained an office, as a sort of clearing house for European news. As there were some seventy-five men in the various European cities corresponding for the paper, all messages were sent through the English office where news that had already been printed and duplications were “killed,” and the valuable stuff “relayed” to America, thus saving cable tolls on unusable copy.

If the Turkish customs officials were annoying the cable authorities were beyond the pale. Their theory was that every sender of a cable was a suspicious character and must be watched until he has proven his innocence of evil intents towards the Sultan. The very act of sending a dispatch was ground for grave doubt as to his true business in Turkey.

For two days I supposed that my “situation” cable had gone. On the third, in reply to a personal cable, I sent a code message to Minnesota. An hour later it was returned, and with it, to my disgust, my first newspaper story, unsent. The cable office had been unable to read English in the first instance, and thought it best to be on the safe side, and had calmly held the message until it should develop whether or not I really was a safe person to be trusted with such an important privilege as sending a dispatch. My code message of two words had convinced them that something was wrong, with the result that neither story went, and my 243 francs were refunded. I afterwards learned that the operators were not required to know much English, but were carefully drilled in a few important words, such as “riot,” “revolution,” “disorders,” “bomb,” “anarchist,” etc. The instructions were that any message containing any such dreadful words should be held pending an investigation. The fact that the allusions in my cable were to Russia, and not Turkey, had no bearing on the case whatever. The operator did not know anything about that, but did know that no peaceable man should be sending any such inflammable words. Anyway it was against the rules, so for the moment I was blocked on my cables, but it was only for the hour which it took me to arrange by wire for an agent in Sansum (which is just across the frontier in Bulgaria) to whom I might mail my cables, thus creating a delay of but a few hours. I reinforced this arrangement by closing a deal with a sad-looking German, whose first name was Lewis, and whose last name I never knew, who stood ready to start at a moment’s notice for the frontier, to carry my dispatches in case the mailing system failed. A wire from London the next day told me that my mail wire had been telegraphed from the frontier and had come through safely, with only a few hours’ delay, so I held Lewis as a reserve, but as a matter of fact, I only used him once during activities in Turkey. On that occasion I did not dare trust a world beat of 2000 words to the mail, and so it was that the melancholy Lewis went for a trip over the frontier.

But to return to my first morning in Turkey, it was obvious that at least a day must elapse before I could receive the necessary authority to charter a boat (for even the Turks had passed that telegram) could be expected, so that afternoon I spent in a pouring rainstorm on a tiny launch among the shipping interests of the Bosphorus, looking for a boat that might answer my purposes.