dower. What is it one admires the most? For me, certainly, the all-conquering gift of the truly brave.
As my father used to say of General Gordon: "In the service of God and humanity, he was the bravest of men; and in his sorest need or his greatest loneliness, his courage rose all the time. To have known Gordon is to say with certainty, 'God is courage!'"
This fragile and thoroughly feminine little lady was first in the field against Abdul Hamid, one of the first to understand Angora, to leave all for the Pasha, to work without ceasing for Nationalism and the new Turkey. She tells me that a true account of the Greek atrocities, as she saw them, will be an important feature of her memoirs, though I shall be, personally, more eager to read the story of her own courageous achievements.
There is only one of her judgments upon things as they are which I regret, and believe to be mistaken. Trained in an American college, and honoured as she is all over the States, it is but natural that she should blame England for leading America astray on the subject of Christian minorities. Here neither nation assuredly can plead not guilty; but the exaggeration and the fervour of the false appeal have come, I honestly believe, from across the Atlantic, and not to them from us.
Halidé's first literary achievement, for which she was decorated by the Sultan, was to translate "The Mother in the Home," by an American pedagogue of the sixties; just the kind of book one would expect an intelligent young girl to choose!
I first met Halidé Hanoum just after she had succeeded in ending her first marriage. The union was not a happy one—she was then only seventeen—but it brought her two fine sons, who are naturally very proud of their mother. Education and training among American-taught students had made it impossible for her to lead the old harem existence, but she was able to give herself up to deep study, absorbing from her husband's extensive library the many original ideas she is now giving to the world.
