My friends have told me, and I can well believe, how much one loses of beauty in her exquisite style of writing from ignorance of the language. One envies her the rare combination of a first-class Eastern and Western culture.
During the reign of Abdul Hamid she was condemned to death, and her "Memoirs" will, one day, reveal to us the terrible suffering of those years. Now, however, the pendulum has swung back, and she is reaping the reward of her courageous work for young Turkey by the high esteem and consideration she universally receives. She was frequently consulted by the late Talaat Pasha and the late Djémal Pasha, owing to her exceptional knowledge of Western institutions. It was at her house, too, I met the able and charming editor of the Tanine, Hussein Djahid, afterwards with us at Lausanne. All Turkey's great men have visited her, and visit her still; and, without doubt, much of the destiny of her country has come to birth, if not maturity, in her home.
Under the shadow of renewed war, this citizen in the Great Republic of Letters could not refrain from the sad topics of Greek atrocities and Lausanne, but soon turned our talk to more congenial thoughts.
She asked after John Masefield, and I told her that he had been a stretcher-bearer during the war, and recently I sent him a laurel leaf from Rome with an enclosed note: "Coming events cast their shadows before!"
I believe in frankly telling an author how much one enjoys his work, and have myself often appreciated the pleasures of such spontaneous flattery. Was I not myself grateful to receive from Australian mothers letters thanking me for "having written the truth about the Turks." Their sons were prisoners in Turkey.
Sarojini Naidu, also a friend of Halidé Hanoum, sent me an exquisite poem during the world's despair. As the words went perfectly to the tune of "Rose in the Bud," I have sung them again and again for conquest in sorrow, and rejoiced in their magic power. To
