A PROFESSORIAL MONARCH
FROM G. WARD PRICE. CONSTANTINOPLE, NOV. 24 (DELAYED). The new Sultan of Turkey is a very different man from his two brothers who were on the throne before him. The character of Abdul Hamid is well remembered. His successor, Mehmed Reshid, was an amiable but ineffective invalid, helpless in the despotic grip of the Committee of Union and Progress. I had an interview with him six years ago, and remember gathering the impression of a stout, slow-speaking, slow-thinking man, clearly incapable of resisting the growing domination of the gang of politicians that was already aiming at absolute power in Turkey. But the youngest of the three Royal brothers, Sultan Mehmed Vahiddedin, by whom I was received in audience to-day, conveys the impression of a strong character and considerable intellectual force.
He is a rather tall man, of 56, with a spare, slender frame, a slight stoop, and the face of a student. The Sultan might well pass for a university professor. White hair under the red fez, an aquiline nose, rimless eye-glasses, a grizzled moustache, passing from brown to grey, hands delicate and frail.
It was at Yildiz Kiosk that the audience took place, the pleasant little palace on a steep hill overlooking the Bosporus, which was the close retreat where Abdul Hamid spent the last years of his fear-haunted reign. The Sultan was in a small sitting-room, with heavy gilded furniture and hangings of silk brocade. Beneath the windows passed the peasants and bullock-carts of a country road.
The new Sultan was dressed in a very well-cut frock-coat and patent-leather boots, and his figure had dignity and distinction. The First Chamberlain, Lutfi Bey, who was once Consulgeneral at Liverpool, was acting as interpreter. While listening the Sultan would sit with his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, and an appearance of abstraction, but when he spoke his face took on immediately a look of lively energy.
“The participation of Turkey in the war,” his Majesty told me, “came about by what amounted to an accident. If we had taken seriously into consideration our political situation, our geographical position, and our national interests, it would have been clear that this step was utterly unwise. Unfortunately, the lack of foresight of the Government of the country at the time led us on, and has brought us to calamity. If I myself had been upon the Throne this sad occurrence would never have happened.”
“The old feeling of friendliness that had existed in England towards the Turks did not immediately die out,” I said, “when the war began. But the massacres of Armenians profoundly changed the sentiments of Englishmen towards Turkey.”
“It was with great sorrow that I learnt of the treatment which certain political committees in Turkey instigated against the Armenians,” replied the Sultan. “Such misdeeds and the mutual slaughter that occurred between sons of the same fatherland have broken my heart.”