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HE Germans were literally the masters of Turkey and the lords of Constantinople in 1917 and 1918. The Turkish cafés were full of them, drinking beer and champagne; they swanked in the streets and on the cars and trains; the dun-colored, swiftly flying automobiles of the German officers were everywhere; high living, concert and chamber music, garden parties, sangefeste occupied their days and nights. The very Professors of Turkish and Oriental languages in the colleges were supplanted by bespectacled Teuton pedants. The army, navy, the Cabinet, the railways, and all foreign policy were controlled by them.

Naturally those nationals of the allied nations who for various reasons remained in the Turkish capital after the departure of the allied missions were cordially hated by the swaggering Germans, and their feeling was reciprocated in kind, though with discretion. Americans, on the whole, were much better treated than other nationalities. They were at no time interned, and though always conscious of surveillance, enjoyed full freedom of movement; the American colleges and other institutions, despite the efforts of the Germans to have them confiscated, remained untouched owing to the favorable attitude of Djavid Bey, the Minister of Finance during the Armenian massacres, and of Talaat Pasha, the Grand Vizier, with both of whom on this matter Enver Pasha, Minister of War and virtual dictator under the Germans, stood constantly in opposition.

One of these American residents of Constantinople during the last two years of the war-Barnette Miller, a Professor of History in Constantinople-in a vivid narrative published by The Yale Review in its January issue, tells the story of German "occupation" of the Sultan's capital throughout this period.

This story, which might be entitled

Germany's Decline and Fall in Turkey," begins logically with the wrecking of all the German hopes of the famous Berlinto-Bagdad Railway as a result of the 'terrific explosion of the Haidar Pasha Arsenal on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus on Sept. 6, 1917. The writer says of this momentous and symbolic disaster:

Though we did not realize its full meaning at the time, this terrible event proved to be an important link in the chain that led to the victory of the Allies. For in those few hours on that fateful September day in 1917 the last great hazard of the Turks in the game of war literally went up in smoke. What had fed the flames that leaped half way across the Bosporus was the greater part of the ammunition, the rolling stock, the motor lor

ries, the artillery, and all the varied paraphernalia of modern war which the Turks and Germans had assembled for a colossal drive that was to retake Bagdad. The campaign had been christened in advance with the magic name Yilderim (Thunderbolt), by which one of the early Turkish Sultans was called Yilderim Bayazid ' whom, curiously enough, we Westerners know only in his eclipse as the Bajazet of Marlowe's Tamburlaine." "The Yilderim campaign-Yilderim-Yilderim "-one heard the phrase on the lips of the bearded old men in the cafés and in the bathhouse gossip of the Turkish hanums. * * #

All during the Summer of 1917 preparations for this great drive, which was to save the Turkish Empire, had gone on. The assembling of the materials was at its height, the Germans had promised 150,000 men, and the transportation had begun-there were even two trains loaded with troops ready to pull out of the station-when the end came.

lish women and children and two men, exiled from Bagdad on the approach of the British Army, were nine months on their journey across the desert and mountain. At Mosul, with other refugees to the number of thirty-six, they were confined for months in a black hole. When they finally reached Constantinople, after indescribable sufferings, two of their number had fallen in their tracks and died. But in the capital civilian Eng

ENVER PASHA

Turkish leader chiefly responsible for alliance with Germany

( Underwood & Underwood)

lishmen were in general discreetly treated, though several were exiled into the interior..

The Armenians and Greeks, who were counted among the pro-ally groups, were not deported in a body, but many incidents occurred which brought before the writer's eyes all the horror of the persecution to which the first-named nation was being subjected. One of these episodes, dramatic and horrible enough in its suggestion, is narrated in these words:

One day as I was riding on the tram

arm.

through the European suburb of Bechiktash I was startled by the sight of a great brute of a young Anatolian Turk-dressed in the shapeless, unpressed fez, the open shirt, the baggy blue trousers and the pointed shoes of the interior-dragging a handsome Armenian girl (a peasant of perhaps 15 or 16) along the street by the Evidently she had just been torn from her home, for she wore no head covering, and she half walked, half ran, with difficulty on the wooden clogs that Oriental women wear in the house. On the face of her captor was an expression of almost satyrlike glee as he hauled the girl along, while she looked absolutely paralyzed with terror. As the tram passed on we continued to hear the man's shouts of fiendish laughter. So dramatic was the incident that the German and Turkish officers, of whom the car was full, all stood up to see what was happening, yet not a single officer lifted a hand or a voice against the wanton brutality of the act.

The life of the German allies of the Sultan in the capital is graphically described by Professor Miller. The Germans were everywhere; they

filled not only the trams of Constantinople but the streets as well. Their wide, low, dun-colored cars, emblazoned with the Imperial German crest-the type used by the German superior officer-drove ceaselessly and recklessly through the crowded thoroughfares packed to full capacity. They were always parked near the War Office in great numbers. On Monday mornings these cars were lined up at the quays awaiting their owners, who would return to town loaded with flowers, fruits, vegetables and other spoils of a week-end at the Prince's Island. The lack of regulation of the food supply and higher pay for foreign service made life so much pleasanter in Constantinople than in Berlin that Germans openly expressed a preference for a billet in the Turkish capital during the latter part of the war. Here they not only enjoyed greater leeway themselves, but they were able to provide their families with extra supplies. In addition to the large quantities of food which the Germans forced the Turks to let them export from the country, individual officers smuggled out a great deal by post, and they filled to overflowing their compartments in the Balkanzug when they made journeys home.

GERMANS AND TURKS

There was of course no fraternization of the German officers with the Turkish officers, nor even with the Austrians, whose social life was quite apart. The German officers were generally very bumptious and overbearing in their de

meanor toward the Turk; in return they were cordially detested, and their assumption of authority was greatly resented. I think the heavy loans made by Germany to Turkey had convinced the Germans that the Turks were wholly in their power-as in fact they were. The Turks feared the sixty or seventy thousand German troops, said to have been kept in Constantinople for use in case of an antiGerman uprising, and especially the battleships Goeben and Breslau, whose guns could easily have terrorized the city.

It was a curious fact that, though the two ships had been rechristened the Selimie and the Medelli, the Turks were never allowed to man or officer them, and the several thousand German sailors did not even bother to change the original names on their caps. Near where the battleships were anchored in Stenia Bay on the upper Bosporus, in one of the broad valleys that intersect the hills at right angles to the strait, these sailors cultivated a large garden of twenty or thirty acres, from which they supplied themselves with the delicacies of the season. Its trellised gates and extremely neat asphalt paths were eloquent testimony to the idea of permanent occupation in the German mind. The wholesale corruption by the German sailors and soldiers of the Greek and Armenian, especially the Greek, women in the Bosporus villages, whose husbands had been drafted or deported, and who were compelled to choose between starvation and German money, was one of the most deplorable results of the German occupation.

An interesting account of the air raids on Constantinople by British bombing planes from the Summer of 1918 on is given by the narrator. During July, August and September of that year these raids occurred on all moonlight nights. The chief targets of the British aviators were the War Office in Stamboul, the arsenals at Haidar Pasha and Haskeuy, and the Goeben anchored off Stenia. The Turks had no airplane to defend themselves with, and they resented the fact that the Germans did not supply them with any.

Anti-aircraft guns, however, were mounted at all suitable places, and with the guns of the Goeben made a fine tumult when the British planes made their hits and flew back over the Thracian Hills.

The main Turkish representative of German influence in Constantinople was Enver Pasha. His exterior personality, as described by the narrator, is strange

ly at variance with his real characteristics. Professor Miller says:

Enver Pasha was, when I met him, still a slight, very youthful looking soldier with a noticeably shy manner. smile was winning, and his brown eyes were so gentle as to be positively gazellelike, if I may use a favorite Fstern figure. Yet, his appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, he was a man of absolutely iron will, who, though brilliant, knew what he wanted and how to get it; and he was totally devoid of the humanizing emotions. During the war he became, with German backing, practically an autocrat far more powerful than the Sultan or even the Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha.

THE END OF GERMAN POWER

News of the Bulgarian débâcle and of the opening of negotiations with the Allies reached Constantinople in September, 1918. On receipt of these tidings the Armenians showed self-restraint, the Turkish population apathy, but the Government and high officials were panicstricken. For two or three days the Germans tried to rally public opinion by guaranteeing that whatever happened they would keep open communication by railway between Turkey and Berlin. The impossibility of this was soon evident. They then promised to keep open a route by land and water via Bucharest. In this, too, they failed, and the second boat to try the route was forced to put back. Its return was a signal for panic among the Germans and the pro-German element.

The resignation of Talaat's Cabinet and the hasty flight of the committee followed. Enver Pasha, seeing that the game was up, gave an elaborate dinner at his palace on the Bosporus nine days before the entrance of the allied fleet, and bade farewell to his guests standing on his quay. He then went ostensibly to his harem; the lights of the palace were darkened, and the sentries went off guard. Half an hour later the launch which had taken away the guests returned without lights, took Enver on board, and steamed away to the Black Sea. Thus the famous Turkish triumvirate disappeared from the scene, to reappear, according to recent reports, in Switzerland and Germany. Enver Bey