Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1916 — The TURKS in CONFLICT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The TURKS in CONFLICT

qpHEIR women bring flowers and sweets to wounded enemy in hospitals—Nation has conducted warfare in a very clean-handed manner

C THE average American the Turk is a swarthy cutthroat waving a ■ scimitar, bellowing “Allah,” and / wallowing In the blood of infidel giaours. History is responsible for pjc*. the epithets “terrible” and “unit -J speakable” which have clung so tenaciously to the popular concepV if* *H tion o£ the Utt olllllll that lt comes D?“ H—as a rude shock to find the average Turk a human being, and, furthermore, decidedly “speakable.” Thus writes Theodore N. Packman in the New York Tribune. During the recent British campaign in Mesopotamia a band of Arabs, retaining all their ancient notions of warfare, proved a thorn in the flesh of both the English afiff Turkish forces. Hovering

about the flanks of both armies, they raided first one side and then the other, choosing opportunities for securing the most plunder with the least risk to themselves. Those tactics naturally proved so annoying to both sides that one commander sent his opponent the following message: “I am thoroughly tired of these Bedouin robbers and their treachery. You must be also. Let us, therefore, make a truce with one another for two or three days and mete out to these Arabs such punishment as will put an end to their tricks.” The author of this unusual request was not the British commander, but the “unspeakable" Turk! The Turk who writes of this incident does not add what answer was given, but it is safe to

say that such a sporting proposition could not be turned down by a true Britisher. From the very entrance of Turkey into this world war—a step repulsive to a people already heartily sick of being drafted into the ranks — the English press has taken a different attitude toward their Turkish foes than it has toward the Teutons. A gleaning of the leading periodicals reveals countless incidents of the Turks’ chivalry as fighters and above-board methods when not under the direct observation of their German officers. “I have such admiration for the Turks,” wrote a British officer .serving in Mesopotamia to the London Morning Post,” February 7, “the pukka Turks, I mean, not the Kurdish savages who butcher Armenians or the Bagdad Turco-Arabs, that I wonder more and more how they ever came into the war at all. They did a thing after Ctesiphon that commands recognition. “A bargeload. of 800 of our wounded stuck in the mud, and with some medical personnel on board had to be abandoned.’ The Turks towed the barge downstream, and under cover of the white flag sent the whole lot, Including the medical personnel, back to the British camp unharmed In any way.

“I know of two wounded British officers left out the night after the battle who were found by the Turks. In both cases the Turks took away all their equipment, haversack, belt, revolver, papers and field glasses, but both men #ay they were not harmed in any way. In the case of one man they gave him water to drink, loosened his coat and made him more comfortable. They left both for our people tq, collect the next morning, ilt Is the Arabs who maltreat our wounded and , commit all sorts of atrocities.” « Secent dispatches from that far distant front—bo brief as to escape general notice —have disclosed the same attitude between the lines of the meager official reports. After the fall of Kut-ei-Amara the Turkish commander gave General Townshend back his sword. Later reports announced the exchange of disabled prisoners, suggested by the Turks I From another theater of the war where the Turks have been fighting comes the story of an Incident of th? common soldier’s attitude. In a letter published in the London Times $f February 8 a British officer wrote from Saloniki : “Imagine this war! Some of our people went out on a reconnolssanee tn front of the line where there were a number of Turlp. The latter were as courteous as possible and showed them the ifeest places for geese and helped to stalk them!” From (the Gallipoli peninsula however, have pyme the most tales of the individual bravery and

courtesy of the Turk as a fighting man. A dozen Instances could be mentioned. Truces were suggested by the Turks to allow both sides to bury their dead; a dozen more of occasions where Red Cross flags and flags of truce were carefully respected. When the Turks were plunged into the war by the Germans English business men of fighting age in Constantinople immediately offered their services to the king, although on amicable relations with the Turks. In one Instance one of these Englishmen, who was assigned to the fleet at the Dardanelles as Interpreter with the rank of lieutenant, was sent forward to meet a Turkish officer advancing under a flag of truce. Imagine the lieutenant’s surprise to find the Turkish officer one of his respected friends of Constantinople. The truce quickly arranged, they chatted for a few moments, and while the lieutenant was returning to his lines a stray shrapnel burst near him. The next day a profuse apology for the accident reached him from the “unspeakable” Turk. The New Zealand and Australian forces, themselves no amateurs at the game of flghtmg from natural cover, found much to learn from the Turks, who as individuals showed great ingenuity and sportsmanship in their ruses. Often a Turk, completely disguised as a bush or a small tree by tying greens about him, picked off many a Tommy before the game was discovered. At one point in the Anzac region a Turkish sniper was giving the English some trouble, and an Irishman, who was a good shot was told off to deal with him. For the next few minutes the two, at no great distance, took turns in trying to account for each other. At last the Turk wounded the Irishman. Then those who were watching the marksmanship contest saw the Turk creep cautiously from his shelter, leaving his rifle behind him. He crossed the space to his enemy and assisted him in binding up his wounds from the emergency kit with which each British soldier is supplied. Then the two men shared a drink of water and some smokes and the Turk crept back to his trench. It is a long, long way from the Turk “set in authority” and entering into pacts with Germany to the simple-minded Individual sitting cross-legged tn a coffeehouse smoking a nargile reclining by his “sweet waters," making kef or even fighting a war In the trenches for a cause in which he himself Is sure to lose, no matter which side wins. The Turkish government, withal, is vile. American residents in Constantinople during the conflict have found the native newspapers full of officially Inspired articles designed to stir up pop-

ular feeling against the British when the underlying sentiment has tended dangerously against Ger ma n y’s aspirations. One preposterous news story related in great detail how, during the Turkish feast of Bairam, the Turkish troops th re w cigarettes over into the British frenches, and how the British retaliated by throwing back smokes which would explode and injure the faces of the Moslem troops. The writer remembers the startling dispatches to the press in the Turkish capital during the first Balkan war. In the week that the Bulgarians pushed the Turks back to Tchataldja the total num-

ber of kilometers news dispatches .would have p army somewhere in Scandinavia. “No nation could possibly have conducted warfare on a more aboveboard and man ner than the Turks,” said Norman Wllkinson the English artist, after a visit to Gallipo 1. .... sand pities that the Turks should have been gu y of such fiendish acts as the Armenian massac ’ for had It not been for this the Turk would have emerged from this trial with a <* aractar £r °™ which the stain of lust and cruelty had been es fectively reiuoved.” Visitors to the hospitals of Constantinople have been almost mobbed by slightly wounded solffier? in their eagerness to share the wild flowers brought in from the banks of the Bosporus. When the flowers are distributed the Inevitable cigarettes come next. If no other Incident could be cited to banish the adjective “unspeakable” in connection with Turk, the following related by an America served in a Turkish hospital would suffice: “A young Australian of twenty, with a nasty shrapnel wound in the thigh, chanced to be the only Britisher placed in a Turkish hospital u Bevlerbey, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus. As'the news of this lone English-speaking boy filtered through the native village, the old hanoums —the elder women—outdid themselves tn visiting the lad and bearing him flowers and sweets. “Perhaps he has a mother in England who is waiting for him." was the remark of one of them So much attention was given the Australian that the other wounded in the hospital took to groaning tremendously whenever visitors would enter, In the hope of attracting part of the attention. Of course, their motive was evident, for the wounded Turk is the last man in the world to give way o hls.feellngs under pain. “The Turkish doctor in charge was actually too kind to the lad, for In his solicitude to remove every fragment of the shrapnel he kept opening the wound every few days, until the boy cou stand it no longer and succumbed. “He was buried with full military honors, and, after the Turkish custom, the coffin was borne upon the shoulders of a squad for fully five miles from Beylerbey to the English cemetery at Haidar Pacha. There, beneath the cypresses that shelter the English troops killed |n the Crimean war —men whom Florence Nightingale could not save—they laid the Australian away. Rev. Robert Frew, the Englisfe pastor, beloved alike by the Turks and British, read the burial service. The lad had a Christian funeral, with a company at Moslem troops as a guard of honor.”