There would seem to be two distinct strains of character influencing principle and conduct in the Turks. The one is that of the Turanian, the conquering Asiatic as typified, even before the Christian era, in a Mithridates, and subsequently in Attila, Tamerlane, Timur, Ghingiz Khan. The other is that of the Arab, whose code of life is contained in the teaching of Islam, with its gospel of placability and charity. Sultan Selim I represented the one in causing 40,000 Schiites to be exterminated. It is related that when he proposed to convert by force or exterminate the Christian population of his dominions, he was opposed, as already mentioned, by the Arab element in the person of the Sheikh ul Islam, who exhorted him to remember that Mohammed inculcated the duty of protecting, not harming, the Christians. These antagonistic currents were blended most harmoniously in the person of the renowned Saladin of Crusading fame. Down to the present day the Turks have instinctively recognized this duality and accepted it in the person of the Sultan, whilst they themselves have adhered to the teaching of Mohammed and by it regulated their own conduct. This explains why the Turkish people view the irresponsible acts, the extravagances, and the severities of their rulers so leniently as rightly appertaining to their exalted position; whereas the Turk himself is remarkably free from such tendencies. It explains their appreciation of the hard-working, industrious qualities of their Sultan as these were typified in Abdul Hamid, and their contempt for a lazy Sovereign like Abdul Aziz, though they themselves as a people rather incline to the indolence of a tranquil and contemplative life. Only when roused beyond endurance, excited and perplexed, is the Turk galvanized into quick action and apt to be resentful and cruel. Great crises find him placid and calm. The vast mass of the Mohammedan people is deeply imbued with its own code of ethics, and carries it into practice with a single-minded sincerity to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. From this point of view the Turk may be considered not so much “worldly” as “other-worldly.”

A deal of the mental acumen which with us is directed towards business and the accumulation of wealth is devoted in the case of the Turks to other and higher objects. While wealth and worldly position are our aims, and failure to achieve either spells life bankruptcy, the Turk appreciates conduct and good deeds as expounded in the Koran above everything else. According to Guglielmo Ferrero, “the Moslem can never pardon the unlimited materialism of Europeans.” Right conduct in all the situations of life is impressed upon him by the law of Mohammed, and in this respect the Moslem is more removed from European thought than in any other, inasmuch as there is a harmony between his precepts and his practice. He sees the stranger bowing down to rank and worldly position, whereas with him class distinctions are scarcely more than official. In Turkey, outside a comparatively few wealthy families—many of which are Phanariote Greek Christians who have supplied high official servants for generations to the Turkish State, and hold themselves somewhat aloof from the Mohammedans—there is little superiority of caste or the arrogance of class consciousness. The current standards are, in conformity with the teaching of the Koran and the New Testament, humanely democratic. Ahmed Midhat was at one time talked of as a possible Grand Vizier, for the Sultan was convinced of his integrity as well as of his ability. The fact that his father was a seller of cloth, or that he himself began life as an apprentice, was so far from constituting any disadvantage that neither he nor his friends would have been able to understand the idea of his humble parentage being in any way derogatory. All the less so since he was a man of magnificent presence, one of the comparatively few in Constantinople who by their appearance recalled the Sultans of the zenith of Ottoman power, who were fathers at sixteen and still added to their family at the age of seventy. So little does obscurity of birth constitute a stigma that a Turk, after having once been a servant who took charge of the goloshes of visitors left outside on entering a Turkish private house, became a pasha and was given the name of Papoudji (or slipper) Pasha; this cognomen was accepted by him and his friends rather as a compliment than otherwise. A Turk would be despised who was ashamed of, or endeavoured to hide, his humble antecedents, or denied his poor relations. He has no understanding of those who, having got on in the world, neglect or cut themselves adrift from their connexions because these have become irksome and they are ashamed of them. When a man rises to high position in Turkey he remembers only too readily those who belong to him, and now and then gets himself into trouble by helping his poor relations or those who have been friends of his obscure youth; and this often without any other motive than the satisfaction to be derived from a kind action. For in Turkey high position is supposed to be a reward for zeal in service, for conduct, and is freely open to all classes. That it is often bestowed upon the unworthy is only to say that judgment and selection are fallible in Turkey as elsewhere; but there can be no doubt that service rendered is in the first instance the test.

It is only among the Turks who have mixed with Europeans, particularly in diplomacy, that you find that hauteur, that “class-selfish arrogance,” and that degree of cynicism which have been acquired in social intercourse in the capitals of Europe. From the ranks of these Europeanized Turks sprang the artificial element who upset the ancient rÉgime, with small prospect, as we now see, of putting anything better in its place.

But if obscurity of origin does not constitute a bar to advancement it would be a mistake to suppose that the Turks attach no weight to an illustrious ancestry. Izzet Pasha introduced me, as already mentioned, to a Ulema at the Palace who, he assured me, could trace his descent not only from Mohammed, but back to Abraham. Their conception of an aristocracy is one of descent from men renowned for their virtues.

So great is the value which the Turks attach to conduct that, even in their favourite authors, they do not rest satisfied with precept or with doctrine, but look, besides, for conduct. Thus those of philosophic bent are not attracted by Voltaire or even by Schopenhauer. They are influenced by such thinkers as BÜchner, Justus MÖser, Spinoza, and Herbert Spencer, who lived as they taught. Conduct is verily the keystone of Mohammedan ethics, for while the Sultan is accepted as the direct representative of Mohammed in the eye of the Faithful, the Sheikh ul Islam, although in a sense himself a nominee of the Sultan, possesses final authority as interpreter of the word of the Prophet. He is invested with far more real authority than that possessed by any priest in the world with the single exception of the Pope of Rome. The Sheikh ul Islam may be said to be the spiritual watchman set by Mohammed to control the conduct of his worldly successors. The most ominous feature, as I was repeatedly assured in connexion with the later years and tragic end of Sultan Abdul Aziz, was that he had incurred the censure of the Sheikh ul Islam and through this had lost caste with the Sheikhs, Mollahs, and Ulemas, and lastly had aroused the hostility of the Softas. They accused him of neglecting his duties and leading a life of idleness. Months before his dethronement the mosques of Constantinople were deserted even on days of high festival.

Whatever some Turks may think of the form of government under which they live, and more particularly of the centralization of power in the hands of a Sultan, their appreciation of Abdul Hamid as a man could be gauged by anybody who had the opportunity of mixing freely with them. Most illuminating were casual comments, inasmuch as they often reflected the ideals of the people. The Turk never talks for the sake of talking, and scorns the rhetorical tricks of the actor. He is a sincere and a dignified man. You never heard the Sultan extolled as a great sportsman or a war lord, rarely as a statesman, although Abdul Hamid enjoyed a high and probably an exaggerated reputation in this respect. But you would often hear him praised as being good and kind. “Sa MajestÉ est si bon; il est un vrai gentilhomme,” and above all, “C’est un Sultan travailleur,” “Il travaille jour et nuit pour le bonheur de son peuple, ses sujets,” were expressions I often heard in private conversation.

If a visitor felt that he had been slighted where he deemed he was entitled to some attention on the part of the Sultan, the Turks would apologize for their ruler and tell the stranger that he must not be harsh in his judgment, as His Majesty was busy day and night working for the good of his vast dominions. More than this, the Sultan was not above apologizing himself to quite minor folks if they had done him good service and he fancied that he had failed in attention towards them. “Tell Mr. X I have been so busy with one thing and another that I have not been able to see him and thank him as he deserves for the services he has rendered our country.” This was by no means an unusual message for a stranger to receive from the Sultan. Indeed, it is a question whether the Sultan did not owe his popularity rather to his being a true representative of some of the most marked Turkish traits of character, such as a sense of gratitude, generosity, simple distinction, and hospitality, than to his political abilities as a ruler.

It has been asserted that the sentiment of democratic brotherhood and disregard for the privileges of birth and caste are responsible for the downfall of the Turkish rÉgime. I am inclined to think that it has been largely the human attributes indicated above which enabled an anachronistic system of uncontrolled autocracy to live so long.

Nobody knew the Turkish character more thoroughly than my good friend Avellis. Never have I met a more enthusiastic champion of their virtues or a more earnest apologist for their defects.

“Believe me,” Avellis would say, “if you find a Turk is dishonest, you may be sure that he belongs to the gang of pashas at the Palace, or that he has imbibed roguery from contact with Levantine Christians or Europeans. A long residence in European capitals deprives him of his most sterling and attractive characteristics. It robs him of his faith and his unspoilt patriarchal virtues, with their intensely human attributes. When he loses his faith he acquires in its place the sceptical cynicism which distinguishes the upper classes in every European capital.” Avellis believed that European society had a debasing influence on the Turk, just as the European on coming to Constantinople, unless of an exceptionally fine type, becomes vitiated by associating with the Levantine. “There is no finer man on earth than the uncontaminated Turk. I have often signed contracts with Turks without understanding their contents (for I read their writing with difficulty),” continued Avellis, “and I would not hesitate to do so again. I know them to be incapable of falsehood or deception, unless debased by intercourse with Europeans. The unspoilt Turk is incapable of dishonesty. No one practises the virtues of humanity, the tenets of faith and charity to such a degree as he. Be a Turk ever so poor, no beggar will appeal to his hospitality in vain. Let us suppose it is the end of the Ramadan Fast. He is just sitting down to his first frugal meal after the prescribed fast, and one still poorer than he enters and solicits a morsel of food. As often as not he will exclaim: ‘Boujourun Effendem,’ meaning ‘Welcome, sir, help yourself.’ If there is not enough for two he may even invite the stranger to partake of what he himself was about to eat, too proud to let his guest think that he had not already satisfied his own hunger.

“You must know the best type of Turk intimately to realize the extent of his generosity, of his sense of gratitude, the delight he takes in giving pleasure to others—that true test of love of our fellow-men. Then note his freedom from envy, the petty jealousies, trickeries, and arrogance which are such unlovable traits of my own countrymen, the Germans, whose overbearing demeanour of late years has become more and more objectionable in Turkey.

“Think of the patience and forbearance of the Turks in tolerating abuses of the liberty granted to aliens. No Government in any other country of the world would put up with the like of it. The Greeks are the most unabashed offenders. They parade their dead through the streets of Constantinople with the face of the corpse exposed, a morbid exhibition which is not allowed in Greece. Look at the disgraceful orgies of disorder among the Greek colony of Constantinople on the celebration of the Orthodox Greek Easter Day, with men discharging firearms promiscuously in the street from Saturday evening till Monday morning. Every year a number of people are wounded, if not killed, by accidents on these occasions.”^[26]

During my various visits to Turkey I have had ample opportunities of hearing the opinions held by those who have mixed with the best Turks with respect to them. No testimony is more valuable than that of cultured Englishmen who have lived long in the East, more particularly such as have been engaged in a large way in commerce, or held positions in the Turkish naval and military service. In this connexion I may mention the well-known English family of merchant princes of which at that time the late Sir William Whittall was the head. The very name of Whittall has long been a passport throughout Asiatic Turkey, guaranteeing safe conduct in remote regions where scarcely a European is seen for years and years together. Such Englishmen are thorough-going admirers of the Turkish character and are distinct from those who have done so much by journalistic work to estrange England from Turkey, and Turkey from England.

Many are the stories told of the simple-minded attachment of the Turks to their employers, their superiors, even though these be Christians, and thus presumably with little affinity with them. Prince Alexander of Battenberg could not speak too highly of the fidelity of the Mohammedan element among his Bulgarian subjects: their orderliness, their freedom from crime, their childlike loyalty to him. After an important debate in the Sobranje—the Bulgarian Parliament—the Mohammedan members would call upon him privately at the Palace of an evening and seek instructions from him how he wished them to vote.

My old friend, Admiral Sir Henry Woods Pasha, who has been more than thirty years in the Turkish service, could never tell me enough of the devotion of the Turkish sailors under his command. Count Szechenyi Pasha, the Hungarian nobleman who for many years was at the head of the Constantinople Fire Brigade, which he originally organized, after having learned the business as an apprentice under the late Captain Shaw in London, is another of those who hold a high opinion of the fidelity and devotion of the Turks. Such evidence from men in whom the gentleman was innate before they had been lifted into rank and position by the Sultan is most valuable. They were inspired with gratitude towards their benefactor and declined to turn against him in the hour of his difficulties. One who had been approached with this object in view during the Armenian crisis indignantly replied: “No, I cannot, I will not bite the hand that has fed me.” Alas, that there were too few of this stamp among the men Abdul Hamid distinguished by his favour.

There is probably no city, Moscow not excepted, in which so many fires take place as in Constantinople. The flimsy woodwork of the houses in the Turkish quarters, which the heat of a Constantinople sun turns in course of time to tinder, partly accounts for it. Nor must the temptation to arson among the Greeks and Armenian trading element be lost sight of. Most of the insurance is done in English offices, for the English insurance offices have hitherto been those which have met claims most handsomely and with fewest awkward questions. I have repeatedly watched the firemen as, with bare legs and chests, they rushed breathless in a body in the wake of the fire-engine across the Galata Bridge to some fire in the Stamboul quarter. One could not help being impressed by their evident whole-hearted enthusiasm, though they got little pay and no reward, and it was easy to understand how in times gone by a rush of half-naked Turkish warriors, sword in hand, has proved well-nigh irresistible against clumsily moving knights in armour and awkward pikemen. This might even explain victorious inroads up to the very walls of Vienna. The development of modern firearms and tactics, for which the Turk by his temperament is ill-fitted, seems to account for the modern defeats of the Turks far more than any racial decline. Where the virtues of courage, sincerity, piety, and self-sacrifice have admittedly remained unchanged, it would be absurd to talk of degeneration. What can be admitted is that the character of this fine race may be no longer fitted to cope successfully with the intricate demands of a modern, highly systematized civilization.