Jump to content

Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/202

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
160
AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY

than you are. Supposing that I go out, tell the Turks how you are simply using them for your own benefit—that you do not really regard them as your allies, but merely as pawns in the game which you are playing. Now, in stirring up anti-American feeling here you are touching my softest spot. You are exposing our educational and religious institutions to the attacks of the Turks. No one knows what they may do if they are persuaded that their relatives are being shot down by American bullets. You stop this at once, or in three weeks I will fill the whole of Turkey with animosity toward the Germans. It will be a battle between us, and I am ready for it."

Wangenheim's attitude changed at once. He turned around, put his arm on my shoulder, and assumed a most conciliatory, almost affectionate, manner.

"Come, let us be friends," he said. "I see that you are right about this. I see that such attacks might injure our friends, the missionaries. I promise you that they will be stopped."

From that day the Turkish press never made the slightest unfriendly allusion to the United States. The abruptness with which the attacks ceased showed me that the Germans had evidently extended to Turkey one of the most cherished expedients of the Fatherland—absolute government control of the press. But when I think of the infamous plots which Wangenheim was instigating at that moment, his objection to the use of a few American shells by English battleships—if English battleships used any such shells, which I seriously doubt—seems almost grotesque. In the early days Wangenheim had explained to me one of Germany's main purposes in forcing Turkey into the conflict. He