Free The Great Fire by Lou Ureneck Page A

“square deal.” He also liked to think of himself as man who dealt in facts. He kept voluminous records, adhered to protocol, and forcefully advocated the interests of his country as he construed them. Sometimes, his construction of those interests was at odds with his superiors’ views back in Washington, but Washington was a long way from Constantinople, and Washington often had other things on its mind besides this bluff old salt.
    Bristol’s official title was U.S. High Commissioner to the Ottoman Empire. Since the two countries did not have diplomatic relations, Bristol did not carry the title of ambassador, but that essentially was his job—representing America and looking out for the interests of Americans in the Near East. So broad was his authority that its eastward boundary had never been established. Bristol also was the chief naval officer in the Eastern Mediterranean, officially the Commander of the U.S. Naval Detachment in Turkish Waters. STANAV, in naval jargon. He had two staffs, one diplomatic and the other military, and the broad authority and workload that came with the double assignment suited his industriousness. He had eight destroyers under his command, and on that day in September, six of them were in the Black Sea—two of them at Russian ports and four along Turkey’s northerly coast. The other two were at Constantinople, moored in the Bosporus, within view of the terrace of the American embassy and off Dolmabache Palace—a “wedding cake gone moldy.” Bristol had repeatedly asked the navy for a battleship to add heft and prestige to his naval force, but it had been repeatedly denied.
    THE NAVY HAD SENT Bristol to Turkey in 1919 with the title “Senior United States Naval Officer in Turkish Waters.” It was a modest title for what appeared to be a modest job. At the time, the United States already had a commissioner in Constantinople, Lewis Heck, a thirty-two-year-old graduate of Lehigh University who had worked as a secretary under the former ambassador, Henry Morgenthau.
    The State Department had directed Bristol to cultivate cordial relations with the Allies in Turkey and safeguard Americans and their interests in the Near East. Even before arriving at his new duty station, he had chafed at his title and the limits of his authority. He had construed the job as more like a high commissioner—an ambassador. He sought the help of his wife, Helen, and his friend Irving Thomas at Standard Oil to aright this injustice. He encouraged Helen to discuss his situation with Thomas in Washington and use her contacts to help him. “Anyway Irving is the one to fix things,” he wrote to her. “Wait until you see Irving then use your head and you can help me.” Then in a subsequentletter: “By the way be careful in regard to anything you do there not to go against the (Navy) Department especially so they know it. . . . I know what a ‘long head’ you have when it comes to doing things—you love to do—this is only a hint.”
    The letters between them show a determined couple working assiduously on his ascent. The young Heck was no match for Bristol, a tough inside politician with a well-connected wife. Heck was gone by the summer, and Gabriel Bie Ravndal, a Norwegian American and former newspaper publisher from North Dakota with long service in the Near East, replaced him. Ravndal and Bristol battled, and Bristol prevailed over him as well. In less than a year, by working his connections, assuming powers not explicitly denied him, moving uninvited into the former ambassador’s residence, and sending a torrent of correspondence to his naval superiors and the State Department about his need for a grander title, he was named U.S. high commissioner. Bristol had called in chits in all directions, but his promotion to high commissioner actually had come because of the Greek landing at Smyrna. (Ironical, that it was the Greeks who helped him get the job he craved.) The crisis that followed called