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[Page 10]

I was somewhat bored with having to revisit Rome. In the evening at the Grand Hotel I met my old Constantinople friend Prince Djmil Tossoun, who is married to a sister of the Khedive or else his sister is married to that Prince. He told me he had been living in Paris for some time, but had been obliged to leave when England and France declared war on Turkey. He asked me to dine with him that evening, to meet the Military Attache of the Turkish Embassy in Rome, and the First Secretary.

Thinking I might be able to obtain some valuable information from these two gentlemen, I consented, to break the strict etiquette of war and to meet my enemies at dinner. We dined at
a little restaruant, the name of which I forget, and I found the Military attache a man I had previously known, and extremely agreeable. He was out of sympathy with the Committee of Union in progress, and deplored the fact that England and Turkey were at war. He told me many interesting facts about the attack of our Fleet on March 18th. He said the Turks had been greatly frightened by the volume and intensity of the fire of the ships' guns, but that the actual damage was almost nil. Two guns had been actually put out of action and about 35 men killed. He said that if I would come around to the Embassy on the following morning he would show me their official report, and I said I would do so. We ended up the evening at a Cafe Chantange.

Sunday March 28th
This morning I went to the Embassy a gaudy building, with a typical Turkish scheme of decoration, and there read through the official account of the operations, from the Turkish standpoint. It was an extremely interesting document, very soberly

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