Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/312

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258
AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY

guardedly asleep in his bed when this old man had been railroaded to a fever camp in Asia Minor.

But Bedri's success was not so complete, after all. At my request Talaat had Dr. Mizzi sent to Konia, instead of to Angora. There one of the American missionaries, Dr. Dodd, had a splendid hospital; I arranged that Dr. Mizzi could have a nice room in this building, and here he lived for several months, with congenial associates, good food, a healthy atmosphere, all the books he wanted, and one thing without which he would have been utterly miserable—a piano. So I still thought that the honours between Bedri and myself were a little better than even.

Early in January, 1916, word was received that the English were maltreating Turkish war prisoners in Egypt. Soon afterward I received letters from two Australians, Commander Stoker and Lieutenant Fitzgerald, telling me that they had been confined for eleven days in a miserable, damp dungeon at the War Office, with no companions except a monstrous swarm of vermin. These two naval officers had come to Constantinople on one of that famous fleet of American-built submarines which had made the daring trip from England, dived under the mines in the Dardanelles, and arrived in the Marmora, where for several weeks they terrorized and dominated this inland sea, practically putting an end to all shipping. The particular submarine on which my correspondents arrived, the E 15, had been caught in the Dardanelles, and its crew and officers had been sent to the Turkish military prison at Afium Kara Hissar in Asia Minor. When news of the alleged maltreatment of Turkish prisoners in Egypt was received, lots were drawn among these