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Nevertheless “I keenly resent the clamour of Mr. Morgenthau for ‘an ideal republic of his own making on the banks of the Bosphorus, to be backed by all that “Tammany” means in the U.S.A.’ I am for asking him, then, to start by making an ‘ideal’ republic on the banks of the Hudson.”

American oil-hunters are always boasting that they never declared war on Turkey. “You did not,” I have admitted, “but you urged, nay begged and almost ordered, us to do it for you.... Your Literary Digest printed at least one eloquent appeal to Great Britain for a ‘holy’ war against the ‘unspeakable Turk’!” And if they resent my protest at being called “an American,” I am convinced they would have done the same in my place. They, too, have the virtue of national pride.

The train was held up once more for a little excursion to what had been the prosperous town of Alaşehir, a well-wooded district with abundance of fresh water. Here out of four thousand eight hundred houses only one hundred remain, and the women and children have been simply wiped out! Unfortunately, we had not time to visit the Hodja, who had found a quite comfortable lodging in the trunk of an oak tree—a philosopher and a man of letters. “I cannot live in a tub, like Diogenes, because I do not possess a tub; but there is nothing wrong with this oak, which I suspect will prove even warmer.”