Testimony of Ambassador Morgenthau about Armenian Genocide and the Exodus of Greeks by Henry Morgenthau

Author:Henry Morgenthau [Morgenthau, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Memoir
ISBN: 4064066384760
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2020-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter XVII

Enver as the Man Who Demonstrated “The Vulnerability of the British Fleet”—Old-Fashioned Defences of the Dardanelles

Table of Contents

When the situation had reached this exciting stage Enver asked me to visit the Dardanelles. He still insisted that the fortifications were impregnable, and he could not understand, he said, the panic which was then raging in Constantinople. He had visited the Dardanelles himself, had inspected every gun and every emplacement, and was entirely confident that his soldiers could hold off the Allied fleet indefinitely. He had taken Talaat down, and by doing so he had considerably eased that statesman’s fears. It was Enver’s conviction that, if I could visit the fortifications, I would be persuaded that the fleets could never get through, and that I would thus be able to give such assurances to the people that the prevailing excitement would subside. I disregarded certain natural doubts as to whether an Ambassador should expose himself to the dangers of such a situation—the ships were bombarding nearly every day—and promptly accepted Enver’s invitation.

On the morning of the 15th we left Constantinople on the Yuruk. Enver himself accompanied us as far as Panderma, an Asiatic town on the Sea of Marmora. The party included several other notables: Ibrahim Bey, the Minister of Justice, Husni Pasha, the General who had commanded the army which had deposed Abdul Hamid in the Young Turk revolution, and Senator Cheriff Djafer Pasha, an Arab and a direct descendant of the Prophet. A particularly congenial companion was Fuad Pasha, an old Field-Marshal, who had led an adventurous career. Despite his age, he had an immense capacity for enjoyment, was a huge feeder and a capacious drinker, and had as many stories to tell of exile, battle, and hair-breadth escapes as Othello. All of these men were much older than Enver, and all of them were descended of far more distinguished lineage, yet they treated this stripling with the utmost deference.

Enver seemed particularly glad of this opportunity to discuss the situation. Immediately after breakfast he took me aside, and together we went up to the deck. The day was a beautiful sunny one, and the sky in the Marmora was that deep blue which we find only in this part of the world. What most impressed me was the intense quiet, the almost desolate inactivity of these silent waters. Our ship was almost the only one in sight, and this inland sea, which in ordinary times was one of the world’s greatest commercial highways, was now practically a primeval waste. The whole scene was merely a reflection of the great triumph which German diplomacy had accomplished in the Near East.

For nearly six months not a Russian merchant ship had passed through the straits. All the commerce of Rumania and Bulgaria, which had normally found its way to Europe across this inland sea, had long since disappeared. The ultimate significance of all this desolation was that Russia was blockaded and completely isolated from her allies. How much that one fact has

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