In a few days there were to be no more opportunities for any of us to see this dear lady!
When, later, in Constantinople, I ventured upon some allusion to the great devotion he always evinced to his mother, a Turk said: "That is only natural—Oriental, if you will. The man whose hands are steeped in blood, whose soul is black with crime, yet bows in respect to his mother. You might as well be surprised that the sun shines."
The story of M. Kemal's youth and of his brilliant career is, of course, well known in Anatolia. He was born in Salonica in 1880, and there are legends that many who saw the boy, "fair as the corn," at his games, would say: "Look well at that little fellow. He will one day be the saviour of his country."
St. Jeanne d'Arc's "Life," you remember, begins with a description of the countryside on the night of her birth—"all the animals seemed strangely excited. There was a chorus of approval from the chickens, the geese, and the pigs." "Very possibly," as a friend once commented on this passage, "it all happened again on the night each of us was born, but no one noticed it."
So I will speak only of facts. A year ago, how few had even heard his name! How often the Unknown Personality has appeared, just when hope seemed dead, to save his country!
M. Kemal's father died when he was quite a child, though already attending the school of Chemsi Effendi. Then, for a few years, his mother took him to stay with an uncle in the country, and life became one glorious game in the sunny fields, shooting at rooks, stealing Nature's secrets, and flourishing on all the delights of being naughty with no one to interfere.
Although his mother seems to have felt, however, that young minds cannot safely be left long undisciplined, and, therefore, brought him back to school at Salonica, the experiment did not prove a success. Like other unusual boys, he was always in hot water
