These details are, perhaps, useful for the better understanding of the disturbances that came thick and fast when in August, 1914, the war-madness broke out among the nations of Europe.  The repercussion was at once felt even in our remote corner of the earth.  Soon after the German invasion of Belgium the Turkish army was mobilized and all citizens of the Empire between nineteen and forty-five years were called to the colors.  As the Young Turk Constitution of 1909 provided that all Christians and Jews were equally liable to military service, our young men knew that they, too, would be called upon to make the common sacrifice.  For the most part, they were not unwilling to sustain the Turkish Government.  While the Constitution imposed on them the burden of militarism, it had brought with it the compensation of freedom of religion and equal rights; and we could not forget that for six hundred years Turkey has held her gates wide open to the Jews who fled from the Spanish Inquisition and similar ministrations of other civilized countries.

Of course, we never dreamed that Turkey would do anything but remain neutral.  If we had had any idea of the turn things were ultimately to take, we should have given a different greeting to the mouchtar, or sheriff, who came to our village with the list of mobilizable men to be called on for service.  My own position was a curious one.  I had every intention of completing the process of becoming an American citizen, which I had begun by taking out “first papers.”  In the eyes of the law, however, I was still a Turkish subject, with no claim to American protection.  This was sneeringly pointed out to me by the American Consul at Haifa, who happens to be a German; so there was no other course but to surrender myself to the Turkish Government.

CHAPTER II

PRESSED INTO THE SERVICE

There was no question as to my eligibility for service.  I was young and strong and healthy—­and even if I had not been, the physical examination of Turkish recruits is a farce.  The enlisting officers have a theory of their own that no man is really unfit for the army—­a theory which has been fostered by the ingenious devices of the Arabs to avoid conscription.  To these wild people the protracted discipline of military training is simply a purgatory, and for weeks before the recruiting officers are due, they dose themselves with powerful herbs and physics and fast, and nurse sores into being, until they are in a really deplorable condition.  Some of them go so far as to cut off a finger or two.  The officers, however, have learned to see beyond these little tricks, and few Arabs succeed in wriggling through their drag-net.  I have watched dozens of Arabs being brought in to the recruiting office on camels or horses, so weak were they, and welcomed into the service with a severe beating—­the sick and the shammers sharing the same fate.  Thus it often happens that some of the new recruits die after their first day of garrison life.