added, had greatly influenced them. They had reached the formal decision that enemy aliens could leave or remain, as they preferred. There would be no concentration camps, civilians could pursue their usual business in peace, and, so long as they behaved themselves, they would not be molested.
"We propose to show," said Talaat, "by our treatment of aliens, that we are not a race of barbarians."
In return for this promise he asked a favour of me: would I not see that Turkey was praised in the American and European press for this decision?
After returning to the embassy I immediately sent for Mr. Theron Damon, correspondent of the Associated Press, Doctor Lederer, correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, and Doctor Sandler, who represented the Paris Herald, and gave them interviews, praising the attitude of Turkey toward the foreign residents. I also cabled the news to Washington, London, and Paris and to all our consuls.
Hardly had I finished with the correspondents when I again received alarming news. I had arranged for another train that evening, and I now heard that the Turks were refusing to visé the passports of those whose departure I had provided for. This news, coming right after Talaat's explicit promise, was naturally disturbing. I immediately started for the railroad station, and the sight which I saw there increased my anger at the Minister of the Interior. A mass of distracted people filled the inclosure; the women were weeping, and the children were screaming, while a platoon of Turkish soldiers, commanded by an undersized popinjay of a major, was driving everybody out of the station with the flat sides of their guns. Bedri, as usual, was there,
