acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

290 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
one in whom the numbhicf effects of "It is written"
had gradually destroyed the natural faculty for hope.
He had lived too long and seen too much, all tending
the same way, to expect any such change in Turkish
destiny as would be indicated by the winning of a
great battle against troops of a first-class European
Power. I felt sure that at heart he had lost all faith
in his country, despite Young Turks, and Union and
Progress, and other outward signs of better things :
for him remained only to be a staunch Moslem and
patriot of a dying Empire. Even in the company
of a foreigner he could not affect an air of hope,
nor a nonchalance he did not feel.
No one, I think, who has seen Turkish officers and
men, can avoid the conviction that, as a class, the
officers are unworthy of the men they lead, and incapable
of getting from them all that is to be given.
Turkish officers are said to be quick at languages,
good at mathematics, and ready enough in acquiring
the theory of their profession. Their native
courage, too, is beyond question, and has been supplemented
and confirmed by the fatalism of their
creed, although thereby, perhaps, losing in active
quality. But when they have to pass from routine
and theory to execution in unfamiliar situations,
they show a lack of power, a want of grasp and
drive and decision, which would be the undoing of
any army. They are more capable of sacrificing
themselves in the confusion of disaster than of living
and organising their military affairs into a shape that
would produce success.
Nearly always, too, one is conscious of a curious
" silkiness " in Turkish officers. At first the characteristic
seems to border on and be part of a natural
courtesy and gentleness, but you soon find that it is
something more, something outside these qualities. It
comes from mind and body having no hardness, and
that is the result of deficient physical energy. There
may be physical energy in reserve, but it does not
reveal itself by that insistent impulse to severe effort