Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/213

 loyalty to the Fatherland by knowing the fine story of its growth. "We need schools, and good foreign schools," said Rauf Bey, "but until they will work under our supervision and control we show no favour to any offender, French, American or Italian—we close all."

I hear that in the American College at Broussa a Turkish woman has been appointed to teach geography and history, a concession one hopes will soon be generally adopted.

Rauf Bey had told me, on board the Agamemnon, what had been said to Admiral Calthorpe when the Armistice was signed: "We are here to end the terrible bloodshed of so many years. We accept these terms because we know that the great English nation and the Allies will keep their words." Then, to his own officers: "Is it not true, gentlemen, England always keeps her word?" and they all answered, "Yes."

But we know what happened!

So much has been written about his unfortunate reception in London in 1922, that Fethi Bey, the Minister of the Interior, is well known to us. Seeing that everyone is given a courteous hearing in Turkish Ministries, one feels this unnecessary discourtesy the more. And Fethi Bey, like Mustapha Kemal Pasha and Rauf Bey, was an ardent admirer of England, cured for ever by the war of any affection for Germany.

As an Army officer, for two years military attaché in Paris, secretary to the Committee of Union and Progress in Sofia, and Minister of the Interior in Izzet Pasha's Cabinet, Fethi Bey has had a varied and useful career. During his stay in Sofia, Mustapha Kemal was his military attaché, and they were both staff captains at Salonika. It was as a prisoner in Malta that he learnt the fluent English he had so little occasion to speak in London.

He is very observant and far-seeing, undemonstrative, and, despite his charming smile, bitingly sarcastic;