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So I devoured every book that I could lay hands on about these interesting peoples; fought for introductions to anyone who could talk of them, from book-knowledge or personal acquaintance; studied medicine—that their women might suffer less.

It was in 1906 that I first met Pierre Loti’s “disenchanted” heroines, Zeyneb and Melek; and we soon became the closest friends. The tale of their daring, but unpractical, flight had stirred my imagination. Their father was one of Abdul Hamid’s Ministers, and two or three times during my visit they were almost kidnapped by order of the Sultan. On one occasion it was, indeed, only a miracle which disclosed the plot that was to have carried them off (by motor from Nice to Marseilles, thence back by boat to Constantinople) to the punishment awaiting them.

For hours they held me spellbound by their vivid descriptions of harem life, particularly the Sultan’s, and of the “Terror” under Abdul Hamid. With this clever monster at the helm, the Turks suffered a hundred times more than the Christians. Whole regiments of Albanians ceased to exist; whole companies went off to Yemen and were forgotten; Ministers died suddenly, and private families disappeared wholesale. Yet they must be thrown out of Europe, “bag and baggage,” because, in a minor degree, Christian Armenians, too, bled under Abdul Hamid!