"The Turkish people have realised long ago that Turkey, as a nation, resisted as long as she did because the European nations could not agree on her partition. The only thing to do was to keep quiet and try to avoid any struggle. We should have done that if Abdul Hamid had not been deprived of his power; our new rulers had the dream of making Turkey once more a Great Power. But their efforts had quite an opposite result."
All this may sound rather tragic, but it was spoken as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a modern Turk to regard himself as simply the citizen of a country that was up for sale by auction.
My informant did not even seem to care to know who the buyer might be.
The dragoman represents the most patriotic part of the population of Turkey--the Turks. As for the other elements--Greek, Bulgar, Armenian, Serbian, Wallach, Gipsy, and Jewish, which are in numbers ten times superior to the Turks--they have different aspirations, and naturally look for a change in the direction of their own nationality or, at least, of their own religion.
The only people who have sympathy for Germany seem to be the Jews and Gipsies, the former, who live mostly on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, being closely connected with Germany by commercial interests.
It is in this attitude of complete passivity that the population of Constantinople is waiting. The attempt to wake up the Islamic feeling is not likely to have a great influence in European Turkey.
To-day in most places meetings have been arranged, and muezzins have started promising the paradise of Allah, the Houris and all the rest, to those who are ready to die for the Motherland and the true God.
My dragoman told me they did not arouse much enthusiasm amongst the population. I heard a Moslem preacher myself address the Mevlevis, the dancing Dervishes, who were giving an extra performance.
Of course, I could not understand a word of the sermon, but the Mevlevis, if not the public, got much excited, some wounding themselves with swords as they offered their blades to Allah.
The cry of "Damour Kaffir" (dogs of infidels) and a few suspicious glances in my direction persuaded me that it was better to leave the Dervishes alone, and I made my way out of the dense crowd.