Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/55

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AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY
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an army in Tripoli against the Italians in 1912—but certainly there was nothing Napoleonic about that campaign. Enver himself once told me how, in the Second Balkan War, he had ridden all night at the head of his troops to the capture of Adrianople, and how, when he arrived there, the Bulgarians had abandoned it and his victory had thus been a bloodless one. But certainly Enver did have one trait that made for success in such a distracted country as Turkey—and that was audacity. He was quick in making decisions, always ready to stake his future and his very life upon the success of a single adventure; from the beginning, indeed, his career had been one lucky crisis after another. His nature had a remorselessness, a lack of pity, a cold-blooded determination, of which his clean-cut handsome face, his small but sturdy figure, and his pleasing manners gave no indication. Nor would the casual spectator have suspected the passionate personal ambition that drove him on. His friends commonly referred to him as "Napoleonlik"—the little Napoleon—and this nickname really represented Enver's abiding conviction. I remember sitting one night with Enver, in his house; on one side hung a picture of Napoleon; on the other one of Frederick the Great; and between them sat Enver himself! This fact gives some notion of his vanity; these two warriors and statesmen were his great heroes and I believe that Enver thought fate had a career in store for him not unlike theirs. The fact that, at twenty-six, he had taken a leading part in the revolution which had deposed Abdul Hamid, naturally caused him to compare himself with Bonaparte; several times he has told me that he believed himself to be "a man of destiny." Enver even affected to believe