Pasha" (as M. Kemal is here known to all) in his Presidential Bureau.
Honestly, I believe the men "understood" all my questions, however indiscreet, and did not take offence. They seemed so eager for me to meet everyone and learn everything.
It was, indeed, a very pleasant and most human pursuit of knowledge—a continual succession of brilliant and zealous men, interpreting themselves and their dreams to an eager listener.
Among other matters, I was particularly anxious to know whether Constantinople or Angora was to be the permanent capital of the new State, and to understand all the reasons that would determine their choice.
I love every inch of Constantinople. There are obvious and important religious-historical associations with its mosques and its public buildings; comfort and dignity, space and beauty, are, as it were, already at hand. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, to me it lacks, and will always lack, the marvellous atmosphere of a Great Birth that so impresses one in Angora.
The Turks, I found, were unanimous in having a similar preference and, naturally, put forward more precise and practical reasons for their choice. There may be occasion for a temporary sojourn in Constantinople.
But they want an "Asiatic" capital; they want to govern their own country beyond the reach of possible interference from dreadnoughts; they want to maintain an intimate continuity of association with the cradle of the movement that begot the State.
There is, moreover, a primitive and Asiatic charm in Angora, which should serve, as it were, to "keep them holy" from the materialisms and the intrigues of Western commerce-Empires.
Here we are all brothers, fellow-labourers in a common cause. All have suffered—at Malta, in Egypt, or from corrupt Ottoman Imperial Government. Could such union and natural intimacy exist elsewhere?
The "Brotherhood" of the East does not mean
