When I described the success we had attained in our endeavours during the fifty years since the Civil War, Talaat and some of his colleagues were visibly impressed. Shortly after this dinner both Talaat and Enver urged me to visit various parts of the Turkish Empire in order to be able to advise them as regards reforms in their administration and other means of public progress. While my instructions from my government, like those of every country to its foreign representatives abroad, forbade my intermeddling with purely domestic affairs, I felt that the situation in Turkey was wholly without precedent. So I set myself to study the country and its varied and most intricate problems. With Talaat and Enver I planned three trips--the first to Palestine and Syria, the second to the south shore of the Black Sea, and the third to the interior, as far as the Bagdad railway was then constructed. The coming of war prevented the second and third trips. The first I shall describe in the next chapter.
But, fascinating as were my discoveries in the novel field of diplomacy, and much as I enjoyed the effort to assist the Turkish leaders, I felt after all that my true function as American Ambassador was far removed from the intrigues of the Old World Powers and from the momentary struggles of the existing Turkish Government. On the one hand, America had no ambitions in Turkey that called for diplomatic gambling. Our interests there were almost wholly altruistic. We had, to be sure, a small commercial interest, and I had no disposition to shirk my responsibility for fostering its improvement. The Standard Oil Company was our most considerable business representative. The Singer Sewing Machine Company, served in Constantinople by Germans from its Berlin branch, was second. The third in importance were the American buyers of Turkish tobacco and Turkish licorice. Besides these, we had little commercial representation.
America’s true mission in Turkey, I felt, was to foster the permanent civilizing work of the Christian missions, which so gloriously exemplified the American spirit at its best. As I frequently explained to the Turkish Government officers, we had little need for foreign trade or foreign sources of raw material. Our territory was so vast, and our population relatively so small, that we had neither reason nor disposition to covet further territory. I explained to them further that our citizens were accustomed to achieve their own financial independence, and that this characteristic of rising from poverty to affluence had bred in them, as a national characteristic, a sympathy with those not yet arrived at fortune, and a helpful wish to place the means of advancement within the reach of those still struggling upward. This spirit had lavished itself in America upon the advancement of common schools and higher institutions of learning, and upon thousands of other forms of philanthropy and helpfulness. This spirit of good will, I explained further, overflowed our boundaries into other lands, partly because we wished to share our good fortune with others, and chiefly because it was prescribed by the Christian faith, which declared that good works should not be limited to those of one’s own family or kindred. America, I told them, is constantly receiving hundreds of thousands of emigrants from the Old World, and American generosity has placed among these newly arrived citizens the services of expert advisers, who use every means to make easy the path of the immigrant, and to induct him as rapidly as possible into the full fellowship of American life. The Christian missions in Turkey, I added, carried this work one step further: it went into other lands and tried to carry to them some of the benefits which our material prosperity made possible among us.
