TURKEY: Divorced

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The engagement was generally welcomed. Papa, pleased, did the "heavy" by arranging a marriage dowry of a million Turkish pounds (then about $650,000). The marriage took place on Jan. 29, 1923. Latife was in the kitchen, so the story goes, superintending a feast being prepared in honor of the recapture of Smyrna. About 50 guests were present. Mustafa Kemal Pasha asked to see his fiancee. He suggested to her that they marry forthwith, to which proposal the girl readily assented after but a moment of blushing hesitation. A mufti was called in and speedily performed the ceremony.

The bride and bridegroom subsequently wended their way through Anatclia to Angora, the capital. Everywhere they were acclaimed; especially did the bride meet with unhesitating approval. She accompanied her husband everywhere, even to the battle front where Turks were administering a knock-out to the Greeks. Her position and her prestige she used to further the cause of women, but in a land, traditionally conservative, she was not able to get them enfranchised. But her advocation of monogamy has to a great extent been effective. Nonetheless, despite laws allowing only one wife to a man, except in "unusual cases," experts are divided over the permanency of the experiment, some asserting that its present success is due to economic conditions, both sides holding that polygamy and monogany have merit.

In Smyrna, where she once more resided under her father's roof, a diligent reporter discovered her. Said she to him with many gestures:

"It is a case of Napoleon and Josephine over again. I loved my husband and did all in my power to help him realize his ambitions for himself and the country. Our union stands in the way of his further progress, and as in the case of Josephine, it is the woman who must be sacrificed. "I have no complaints. If by parting I can make for his happiness I will be proud, but just a little heartsore at the time when I think of what has been." Then, pensively, she added: "It's a pity, isn't it, this parting of two whom Allah seemed to have brought together to work His will by a harmonious, happy association ? Ours was a love match even in the sense in which you understand the term in the West.

"My husband and I were as happy as a man and woman could be in our Garden of Eden until the serpent came. Who was the serpent? I can see the question shaping in your mind, but I can't answer it. That's my secret and it will die with me. Suffice it for the world that the point was reached where my husband was brought to the belief that he had to choose between his partner and his future. He chose."