_Haremlik_ was her second book. It made a wide and deep impression. There have been French, Swedish, German, Italian, Danish and Dutch translations. It is not fiction, and neither, essentially, is Mrs. Brown’s later book, _A Child of the Orient_, which is the tale of the author’s own childhood and early life in Constantinople, of a Greek girl with Turkish friends and playmates. The flavor of the _Arabian Nights_ fills the pages of _Haremlik_ and _A Child of the Orient_. The final chapters of the second book give Demetra Vaka’s first impressions of America, the effect upon a girl in her teens of a land almost as different from Paris as Paris had been from Constantinople and Athens.
Mrs. Brown’s latest book is a war book but of a quite exceptional character. To understand its genesis you must remember that she is, though by her marriage an American citizen, a Greek by race. Her love for Greece, her hopes for its future, are pretty clearly disclosed in the opening chapter of _Haremlik_. And so when the European War had passed its first stages and the political situation in Greece had developed into a struggle between King Constantine and Venizelos, a struggle in which the King’s attitude threatened national dishonor, Demetra Kenneth Brown resolved to go over to Greece, interview the leaders of both factions, and save Greece for the Allies--at least endeavor to see that Greece fulfilled her treaty obligations, such as those entered upon with Serbia.
Looking at the enterprise now Mrs. Brown is the first to concede its quixotism, its hopelessness, its ridiculousness from the start. And yet it proved immensely worth while in unsuspected ways. Going to London, the novelist succeeded in getting to Lloyd George; afterward she had access to other high personages in the Allied countries. Besides French she knows Italian. At Athens all doors were open to her. She interviewed not once but many times King Constantine himself and his generals. Afterward she went to Salonica and talked with Venizelos. When she had done she was able to write, purely as a reporter, _In the Heart of German Intrigue_, one of the notable exposés of the war. Out of the mouths of Constantine and his aides she convicted them. Her series of interlocking interviews built up a complete and fatal revelation of what Germany, with the connivance of Constantine’s government, had planned to do.