idle boasting of our ex-Premier: "You've got to speak to these people with guns."
No charge could be more ridiculous or untrue than to say that Mustapha Kemal is ever influenced by Camerad Areloff. Bolshevism and Nationalism are poles apart. Yet the Pasha could scarcely refuse invitations to conversation with any credited representative from a country like Russia; though no words of his are likely to change M. Kemal's invariable habit of using his own judgment and making up his own mind.
Though he seldom speaks without a practical purpose, I was honoured by an intimacy that nearly approached that of an old school friend. There were changes, however, to rather puzzling reserve, almost frigid politeness, in his case probably not caused by any reminder of my nationality. He knows not only whom, but when, to trust, and I suppose I had unwittingly opened some dangerous topic.
One almost wishes at times that he need not live so perpetually in the heat of the fray. Driven, perhaps, by greater intelligence or stricter integrity, to some unpopular action, he might lose his halo, or at least dim its lustre, while the new country was still too unstable for any weakening of his guiding hand. There are fanatical members of the Assembly who, bien entendu, are far more extreme than he, whose unchecked counsels might spell disaster. I sought, indeed, for the opposition within of which we have heard so much, and found only a very small group of rather small-minded men, at present with little power.
Nevertheless, foolish measures, that might prove a real menace, and were certainly false to true freedom, have been put forward and discussed. The schemes for excluding Albanians and Arabs from the Assembly, and for requiring five years' residence in one place, hit "The Pasha" himself. Telegrams of angry protest came in from all quarters, and he soon stopped the mischief.
