Turkey’s Firebrand.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 20, 14 May 1913, Page 4

Turkey’s Firebrand.

Enver Bey, the Picturesque and Reckless Leader of the Young Turks.

©NLY so uproarious and swashbuckling a type as Enver Bey, the most picturesque of all the Young Turks, could have effected that revolution in Constantinople which so recently thrust the mask of war up-on the face of Europe. He is held, responsible by the best informed dailies abroad for the eleventh-hour tragedy in the Sultan's capital, which thrust the Aged and pacific Kiamil Pasha out of the post of Grand Vizier and put the noble but irresponsible Mahmoud Shevket Pasha at the head of a war government. Enver Bey is, to be sure, very young, very reckless. But he is the darling of the troops, the hero of the great rising against Abdul Hamid, the one glorious figure on the Turkish side In the inglorious war with Italy. No one imputes to Envei- Bey—not even his most devoted followers—either wisdom or experience or caution or the least conspicuous of all the qualities which make a man the saviour of his country. His friends as well as his enemies concede his rashness, his insolence, the violence of his methods. He has but his untamed spirit and the love of all who know iiim with which to rise to the emergency he has brought about. He Incarnates that secret society by which supreme power has again been seized in Jurkey. He is no figurehead, not even tin acknowledged leader. Yet lie laid the plot that overthrew Kiamil and cost the life of Naxim Pasha. He goes about his country in disguise, spreading the spirit of revolution. He is served by one of the most elaborate spy systems in a land of spies. Suddenly he emerges, (overturning' the established order. Who fe he 2 h Elegant in Figure. Now nearing his thirty-second year, Jhe handsome Enver Bey ij distinguishable from his brothers in arms through the detail that, like another Mark Antony, he is barbered ten times over. There is no more elegant figure, according to the Paris Figaro,” at the whole court of Vienna. He has escaped that tendency to aggressive stoutness which spoils the looks of so many Turks in ths sil-my. He can don colours with no suggestion, oj the grotesque. Many an pfficer less beribboned tlian Enver Bey, far less flaming in scarlet and red, with fewer buttons of upon his breast, and with boots that reach less conspicuously to his knees in their Resplendence of leather, seems to strut operatic-ally, prettily. No one would t ike Envei- Bey in all the glory of blue, yellow and gold for a carpet knight. He loves the uniform and parade, but those things become him. The noise he makes proclaims him — a loud click of the spurs’, a heavy tread of monstrous blaek boots, the clank, clank of an enormous sword, stud the inces-ant thud of heavy leather glove on hand always clapping. All that he wears is real, too. The buttons are not gilded but refined gold. His sash is of purest silk. His collarette is all rare lace. European Tastes. The exquisite and somewhat dull-llks personal beauty of Enver Bey is traced by till- Paris " Action” to his Egyptian mother. Kite was a lady, it seems, of juire-t Moslem birth, brought up in Turkey amid the luxuries of a wealthy Jittber'e house. From her Enver Bey derived his swimming eyes, “soft and pleading like the gazelle's in his romantic moods, but flashing as the Damascus blade flashes when this fiery spirit is most itself.” Enver Bey has the personal habits of the German .army officer, with whom his Jot was Jong cast. This Turk twirls his moustache skyward uncom-

promisingly. lie shaves close beforo breakfast, smokes 'innumerable cigarettes, and ia far from squeamish in consuming unholy beverages like cognac. Ho prefers hit coffee in the French stylo at iiis morning meal, imbibing the Turkish distillation of tin- berry only at rare intervals, and then not from habit, but only us a matter of -•cr- mony. Indeed, the ono drawback to Enver Bey's

is this Europeanising of his manners, ami even of hie morals. He was given a niece of the Sultan for a wife, and she is the one wife he has. The lady dwells in some seclusion, but only for tho reason, we read, that a too radical departure from the traditions of the centuries would compromise her husband with the faithful of an older generation. The lady shares her husband’s taste for French novels. However, Enver Bey remains sufficiently a Moslem in the old Turkish sense to render any inquiry after his wife's health a gross indelicacy. A Real Soldier. Enver Bey is first and foremost a man of -the cape and sword, the soldier ot

fortune, says the Paris “ Gaulois,” and he is a diplomatist ami a statesman incidentally. This young Turk is a real soldier. He learned to handle infantry in the school of experience, leading his company under hot lire in the Yemen, in Albania, and even as far away as Bagdad. He belonged to a class of well born young mon in tho military academy near Constantinople, of whom great tilings were expected by their German instructors. Enver Bey, while still a roundcheeked youth, went to Prussia to im-

prove his knowledge of artillery. Liko nearly all Turks he has proved an indifferent cavalry officer;, but he knows how to hammer the raw material in the ranks of the Sultan's army into shape. He works, although his elegance of aspect belie the suggestion. It is the secret of his ascendancy. Fanatical Idealisation. Vanity is a personal weakness from which, if we are to trust the disparagements of certain Old Turks repeated in the I'A-neh dailies, Enver Bey will never ■be free. The trait is a form of his peculiar piety. Although firm as the caliph Omar himself in devotion to the true faith, Envei- Bey neglects some of its most .solemn ceremonies. Nor is he strict in his observance of the Holy season of Ramadan. It is alleged that he enters mosques without removing his boots, just as if he were a European. Certainly he does not sink upon his knees in the streets at sundown, nor are his ablutions in public many or conspicuous. These things disedify the faithful. He redeems himself by his fury in fighting for the faith, his resistance to any gurpose to abandon an inch of the soil won with the sword, hia eager-

ness for a Jehad or holy war. But that, according to the Old Turks who disparage Enver Bey, is proof of the very vanity they abominate. Enver Bey clings to a fanatical idealisation of himself as tho twentieth-century paladin of Islam, the reviver of its ancient glories through tho sword, the man ot Allah’s choice to scourge the infidel. Yet ho neglects his prayers. Ho flouts tho Hheri laws expounded, and enforced by the Ulemas.

The Art of Notoriety. . — „ As a manifestation of the vanity dovouring him the enemies of Enver Bey, complain of his propensity to get hintself interviewed by the correspondents of European journals. He is forever to the fore when despatches have to be filed for transmission to leading organa, Nevertheless, observes the French daily; last mentioned, this incarnate thunderbolt never knows what is going on. Ini the height of the excitement over Abdul Hamid, Enver Bey predicted the continuation of that Sultan upon the throne, The leaders, knowing him to be no maq for the council, did not take him int® their secrets. Enver Bey has a foudnes® for telling Europe what will happen tn Turkey, and he never knows. We need not look far for an explanation. men who make up the party of th® Young Turks admire his dash, his courage, his pugnacity, tire eagerness with which he will seek the post of peril, They know, at the sametime, his hotness of temper, his incurable indiscretions, his want of tact, and the fatal readiness with which he thrusts his personality into a delicate situation, only to makaj i{e confusion worse confounded. The Psychological Blow. < The redeeming traits of Enver Bey being as great as his defects, he creditably from the conflict of irreconciD able temperaments in the thick of whiclfl lie lives. He risked Ills life a hundred times, we are reminded by the Paris) “ Temps,” in that desperate march front Salonika that led to the deposition of the late Sultan a few years ago. He had, his valet—a Frenchman—with him. Hd was embraced and kissed in the of the Turkish capital at the time, but, remarks the French organ, he wur it) too invitingly clean, cool figure to kiss among the ragged and uusty veterans of that campaign. Enver Bey took his Jifei in his hands again when he slipped disguised into Tripoli and le.l the Aral! resistance to the Italian invasion. Hd is alive mainly because he is so nuicA quicker in the use of a revolver than any man he meets. His health is of thaq rugged type which the slothful ease ot a life at court cannot undermine, aud which the blazing heats of the African! sun leaves unimpaired. His gift, then, is not for council Neither is it for leadership. He is the hero pure and simple, the performer ol preposterous and impossible exploits thafi save the day at a crisis. He has what the "Figaro” calls a ” flair for th® right moment. He never rushes prema-i turely against a locked door. But uheii. the time comes to kick it in, says outt contemporary, he never shrinks. He id most himself when presenting a pistol a& the head of an exalted dignitary likel the Sultan, or when kicking a reactionary old Pasha downstairs, or when raiding Yildiz Kiosk. The energetic blow of S physical kind at a time of high excitement is his speciality. Enver Bey rushed at the head of a dozen men into thd presence of Abdul Hamid and plucked him by the beard to hasten the abdication. Enver Bey again broke down th® door behind which the Grand Kiamil Pasha was signing an peace, and, once more pistol in hand| forced a signature to a resignation, Enver Bey is supreme when tacties~siitay a knocking down and dragging OU& Violence is his business. Yet, as th® French daffy explains, his is not the! coarse and brutal violence of the bully or the hired thug. It is a way, indeed, of seizing with perfect comprehension or a crisis, its truly psychological moment, They are all superb gestures, these act® of violence, and often carry the dajG The men who work with Enver Bey understand this quality of his genius, "When Old Turks have to be kicked downstairs, they let Enver Bey do it. j Well-bred Gentleness. -j Nothing is so bewildering in the Whole aspect of -the glorified ruffian of th® Young Turk movement—so tho Frencß, daily deems him—as his sweetness, hl® look of well-bred gentleness. He cherises no animosities whatever. Enver Bey will knock you down and drag you out, wa read, and then invite you to break fas p next morning with a sincere and perfect! cordiality. He lias put his pistol to tho head of old Kiamil Puslia, kicked downf the door of Ghazi Mukhtar's cabinet, and shot holes in the windows ot Yussul Izeddin'a palace without forfeiting th® esteem of one of those dignitaries. Thq explanation of the anomaly la found id tho birth and breeding of Enver Bey. Hd is related by ties of blood and man-lag® to all that is greatest in thq world M

Islam. He inherited a large fortune. Ho has travelled much. He was lon • connected with the Turkish embassy in Berlin. He is the fine flower of Moslem culture, a species of Mohammedan Alciblades, with an instinct for adventure. He has acquired much European culture, it is true, but beneath it is the Turk, the ■blend of the janissary ant the giaour. He gets these traits, it is said, from one of his renowned ancestors, the terrible Sultan Bajazet.

A Genius for Revolution. Lest it be suspected. that Enver Bey is a lawless resolute, an anarch obey ing the dictates of his own mercurial temperament, one should make a note of that devotion to constitution and principle Z.hieh he so frequently professes in the Paris “Debats.” He avows lumBelf a democrat, wedded to those liberal theories upon which the French republic js built. The difficulty is that Enver Bey has the most unconstitutional ■temperaments. genius for revolution runs away with his devotion to the pillars of society. He maintained h s conviction that Abdul Hamid should remain on the throne until he drove that potentate from his palace. So contagious is the excitement injected by Enver Bey into any atmosphere he breathes, 'that he renders his associates at times as inflammable as himself .He has, for instance, converted into a. perfect Jacobin among Young Turks the quiet Talaat, an energetic and determined man who passed in a few months from the felool of a telegraph clerk to a post in the cabinet. He agitates even the serene jDjavid Bey, the clever, the resourceful vdung schoolmaster whom the revolution called to be Minister of Finance, who fell (When Enver Bey was in temporary iobscuration a few months ago, and who was in prison on a charge of sedition Ipntil his friend effected an Upon iMahmoud Shevket Pasha, the handsome, Courtly, mild-voiced Arab general who led the Young Turk troops so victoritously into Constantinople against the Sultan’s bodyguard four years ago, the influence of Enver Bey seems to act at times like strong wine. Shevket Pasha became Grand Vizier not long since, the European dailies tell us, because Enver Bey made a revolution. Shevket is quiet, but Enver Bey can make him loud. He is a man of peace, but his hot-headed young friend has spurred him to battle. TThen there is Prince Said Halim, one of the suarest of tpen. transformed for the moment into a furious belligerent. The personality of Enver Bey has worked the Spell. He had fired them with his own jdetermination to hold on to Adrianople land the isles of the Aegean, to maintain Ottoman sway over them. The allies may rage and fume, as the London “Telegraph ” observes, the Powers may coax and menace, but tlFe Young Turks, roused by Enver Bey, mean to fight until their last man is dead. Nor does Enver Bey exercise over his in arms a fascination less complete than his sway over the men now jn power at Constantinople. In the cafes ipf the city lie is the most brilliant talker Hie correspondents quote. He is most himself among his brother officers, convivial, gay, laughing, his well-filled purse always at their disposal, and his high spirits their best tonic. He will shoot a cork out of the neck of a champagne

bottle at a moment’s or sing a rollicking song, or dance on the table. His ringing laugh is heard high above the gale of merriment that rages about ■the mess unceasingly wherever he sits down. He is the born leader of every wild adventure in Constantinople, thoughtless, ardent, living by the sword, and, as the London daily fears, likely to perish by it, too. The fact that he has just ■been stabbed by hie own men lends piquancy to this theory. A Real “Grande Dame.” By the death recently, in her 87th year, of Lady Dorothy Nevill, London society loses one of its most interesting and best-known personalities. Lady Dorothy was a daughter of the Earl of Oxford, and since her marriage to Mr Reginald Nevill. a grsyidson of the first Earl of Abergavenny sixty-six years ago, she has -held an almost unique position in society. No woman of her time had such a genius for making friends, and no woman was ever more catholic in her friendships. For more than two generations Lady Dorothy Nevill lived in close personal touch with most of the great men and women whose names have adorned our literary, artistic, and political annals. A woman of considerable intellectual and great social gifts, she took the keenest pleasure in drawing brilliant people around her. The attraction was mutual. ■Statesmen, poets, novelists, painters, actons were among those who delighted to meet at her table. In her interesting volume of ‘Reminiscences” published some seven years ago she exclaims: ‘•Looking back through the long vista of many years, what a countless procession of figures seems to flit by in the magic lantern of memory!” In that procession were included men of such distinction as Lord Beaconsfield, Fawcett, Gladstone, Cobden, the late Lord Salisbury, Sir William Harcourt, Samuel Wilberforce, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr Chamberlain, Lord Justice Cockburn, George Watts, Thomas Moore, Bulwer Lytton, Charles Lever, Thackeray, Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, the Emperor Napoleon 111., Sir Henry Irving, Lord Duflerin, the second Lord Lytton, and Lord Wolseley. “Dear, delightful Lady Dorothy,” as the late Lord Lytton described her, was in. close contact with the intellectual life of the day to the last, and her death leaves a-big gap in English society. Lady Dorothy Nevill, though strongly Conservative, did not follow the example of some of her friends in allowing her political views to embitter social relations. For Richard Cobden, for instance, she personally entertained great respect and friendship. Lady Dorothy made the acquaintance of Mr Chamberlain in his early' Radical days. She was at the time expecting a turkey from Lady Chesterfield, who was in the habit of sending one. On writing to inquire whether it bad miscarried, she received from Lady Chesterfield the following indignant note: —

I hear you have had Mr Chamberlain to lunch. I cannot therefore send you a turkey to feed such a democrat, and 1 am angry at your seeing him so much. Lady Dorothy Nevill thus replied:

You are wrong. Sir Stafford Northeote has been my only political gnest of late, and 1 promise, if you send me the turkey, no-

thing but a Conservative tooth shall touch it. She received the. turkey. In “Under Five Reignjs,” 'the delightful work with which Lady Dorothy Nevill supplemented her “Reminiscences,” she shows that her friendship with Mr Chamberlain continued up to the end. She quotes several letters from Mr Chamberlain. In one, written In 1883, he commented on the policy advocated in Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty” and Walton’c “Land Nationalism,” and expressed the opinion that “peasant proprietorship, in some form or other, and on a large scale, is the antidote to the doctrines of confiscation which are now making converts.” Lady Dorothy gives an interesting account of a visit paid to Mr Chamberlain a short time before the General Election of January, 1910. While dealing mainly with the political struggle, it contains one of those pleasing human touches with which her literary work abounds: The whole Chamberlain household, indeed, had thrown themselves heart and soul into the fight, with the exception of the great Tariff Reformer’s grandson—dear little Joe, who had not yet taken to the stump and stayed at home, an infinite joy and source of pleasure and amusement to his grandfather, by whom he is adored.

Among the things that Mr Chamberlain and Lady Dorothy Nevill had in common was a great love of flowers; but while Mr Chamberlain devoted himself chiefly to orchids, Lady Dorothy—as in her friendships—was most catholic in her floral tastes. With reference to Lord Beaconsfield's liking for the primrose, Lady Dorothy gives the following anecdote:—

I sat next Mr Gladstone at a dinner some time after Lord Beaconsfield's death, and in the course of conversation he suddenly said: “Tell me, Lady Dorothy, upon your honour, have you ever heard Lord Beaconsfield express any particular fondness for the primrose?" I was compelled to admit that I had not, upon which he said: “The gorgeous lily, 1 think, was more to his taste.”

In “Under Five Reigns” Lady Dorothy says, when writing about Lord Beaconsfield: “We used to correspond a good deal about horticultural matters, for he was fond of his garden. . . . Curiously enough, however, .1 never heard him express any particular admiration for the primrose, which it is always said was his favourite flower. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that it was. An old lady, Mrs Brydges Willyams, of Torquay, who is a great admirer of his, used every spring to send him this flower from hex Devonshire garden.”