The electoral laws provide heavy punishments for those who employ violence, intimidation, or corruption at elections. By Article 72 of the Constitution the penalty for influencing elections by false statements and calumnies is a fine of forty pounds and a period of imprisonment of from one year up to five years, according to the gravity of the offence; so it would be a dangerous thing in Turkey for partisans to post the walls with cartoons such as those which have exerted no small influence at General Elections in England. Another curious regulation, the object of which is to prevent rioting, compels the elector to return to his home as soon as he has registered his vote. It is also laid down that electors, before they drop their voting papers into the urn, must attend the prayers of the imam (or priest in the case of a Christian voter) for the prolongation of the Sultan’s life and the increase of his glory.

In the late autumn, throughout the Turkish Empire, the elections took place. Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Wallachs, Armenians, Jews, Latins, Arabs, Syrians, Kurds, Druses, elected their Deputies to a Chamber which represents so many races, interests, creeds, and languages that Turkey’s new Parliament in all probability would have been a Babel of vain talk and no doing had it not been that the cause of the Committee of Union and Progress triumphed in European Turkey and in Anatolia, and secured many adherents in other parts of the Empire, with the result that the nominees of the Committee formed a large majority in the Chamber.

I was in Constantinople during the election operations, and very interesting and picturesque they were. On the night preceding the polling the big drums were beating loudly in the Turkish quarters of the capital to remind the electors that it was their duty as good citizens of a free country to go on the morrow to the appointed places and drop their voting papers in the ballot boxes. On the following morning the great city presented a very animated appearance. Large processions were formed to carry with due ceremony the urns, or ballot boxes, to the various mosques, Greek and Armenian churches, synagogues, police stations, and other public buildings, in which the voting was to take place. A typical Mussulman procession which passed me was composed as follows: First came a military band and a small escort of infantry; next a carriage draped with Turkish flags, containing the voting urn and a few officials; lastly, a motley Mussulman crowd of voters and others, including imams, accompanied by theological students, pupils of the artillery and naval academies and numbers of happy school children, conspicuous among which was a band of tiny Moslem girls, wearing veils and waving miniature Turkish flags as they toddled along by the side of some tall gendarmes who brought up the rear of the procession. This and the other processions which I met moved through the crowded streets to the accompaniment of martial music, the singing of patriotic songs, occasional cheers for liberty and justice, and the waving of many flags. These were, indeed, the most good-humoured and happiest election demonstrations one remembers to have seen in any country; there were no party cries or manifestations of party feelings of any sort; all seemed to be thinking of the good of their country alone, and to be rejoicing in its liberation. The Greeks and Armenians had similar processions, also headed by military bands (for these had been lent to all sections of the electorate by the authorities), and here, too, the priestly element was largely represented. At one manifestation which I saw in Stamboul the Turk and Armenian electors joined forces, and there were to be seen in the combined procession Mussulman hodjas and Armenian priests in their full Mohammedan and Christian canonicals, walking hand in hand in amity. For a while good-fellowship reigned everywhere in this city of rival creeds and races. To judge from appearances it might have been concluded that “Fraternity,” which has been the watchword of all revolutions, has for the first time in history been brought about in Turkey, of all countries in the world.

But when the voting commenced it was made manifest that the brotherhood of creeds and races in Turkey had not yet been realised. The Turks, Armenians, Latins, Syrians, and Jews recorded their votes without any difficulties arising, and in many instances voted for the same candidates. But the Greeks, who, according to the [OE]cumenical Patriarch, number one hundred and fifty thousand in Constantinople, created a good deal of disturbance, after the manner of their brethren in Athens on similar occasions. In many parts of Turkey the Greeks complained bitterly of the electoral irregularities which, so they alleged, had been committed at their expense, and rioting occurred in Smyrna and elsewhere. So the Greeks in the capital, protesting that they had been very badly treated, organised noisy demonstrations which caused the elections to occupy several more days than had been intended.

The polling opened on a Friday, and it was made evident that the Greeks had come into the streets on the lookout for trouble. It was noticeable that when a man of another race was not permitted to register his vote on account of some irregularity in his papers or other disqualification, he went away quietly, whereas the Greeks in like circumstances stayed to protest and bluster until they formed crowds of disappointed voters who blocked the way to the urns, and by so doing considerably delayed the course of the election. On the following morning the Greek leaders hurried about Pera collecting the people, and ordered all the Greek shop-keepers to close their shops, which they promptly did. Others got into the belfries of the Greek churches and rang the bells violently to summon the crowds, and soon the main streets were packed with excited and clamouring men. Seeing that they practically all carried revolvers and knives it is wonderful that but few accidents occurred throughout the demonstration. The authorities took due precautions. Certain points were occupied by troops, and bodies of cavalry and infantry patrolled the streets, in no way interfering with the demonstration, but awing the demonstrators by their very presence, for the inhabitants of Constantinople knew of what stuff are made these soldiers who trooped slowly by, silent, stolid, apparently indifferent to all that was going on around them, in striking contrast to the noisy rabble which gave way before them. On the Sunday the church bells again rang out their appeal, and thirty thousand Greeks having assembled in Pera marched through Galata, crossed the Golden Horn by the bridge of boats and came to the Sublime Porte, where they insisted that the Grand Vizier himself, Kiamil Pasha, should come out to speak to them. When that aged statesman did appear to explain that full justice would be done to them by Parliament should they be able to show that the alleged irregularities had occurred, these people, who but a few months before were afraid to open their mouths if any representative of the dreaded Government was near, insulted Kiamil Pasha by shouting out to him that his verbal assurances would not suffice for them, and that they must have his undertaking in writing. This attitude, of course, brought the conference to an end, and the Grand Vizier retired. It became necessary later to employ the cavalry to clear the streets, but, wonderful to say, only two casualties, and these slight ones, were reported for this day. The troops displayed a great forbearance and behaved admirably under conditions calculated to try their temper.

Observing the indignation and distress of the Greeks, one would have supposed that they had been very badly treated. As a matter of fact their clamour was chiefly caused by disappointment at the failure of their scheme to obtain a much larger representation in Parliament than their numbers warranted. Their point of view was that the Greek element of the Turkish population, being the most civilised and cultured, was the best fitted to undertake the Government of the country, and, being Greeks, they considered that any means were fair which could forward their aim. The Greeks are the only people in Turkey who understand election trickery, and they were assisted in their recent campaign by clever and, of course, absolutely unscrupulous electioneering experts from Athens. Taking advantage of the ignorance of the lower class Moslems they obtained votes by various fraudulent devices and misrepresentation. The Greeks flocked to the polls whether they were entitled to a vote or not. Impersonation both of the living and the dead was largely practised. In Turkey, each voter, on coming up to the voting place, has to show his hamidieh—the official paper testifying to Ottoman nationality and date of birth. It was discovered that Greeks not entitled to the vote had been provided with the hamidiehs of dead men and of people who had left the country. In some cases, too, the stamps which are impressed upon the hamidiehs to show that the vote has been registered had been erased, thus enabling an hamidieh to be used by a succession of would-be voters.

The Greeks would now be represented by a powerful party in the Turkish Parliament had not the Committee of Union and Progress kept a close watch on them during the elections. The Greeks have themselves to blame for the under-representation of which they now complain. They compelled the Committee to exercise an influence in the elections which, though technically unfair, was fully justified by the circumstances. The liberty so recently won had to be safeguarded by the return of a solid majority of patriotic Turks to the Chamber of Deputies.

The Greeks, gifted as they are with administrative capacity, held high appointments under the old régime, and will no doubt do so to a greater extent under a constitutional Government; but as a people they have yet to prove themselves loyal Ottomans. During the elections their one thought was for the interests of their own race. Headed by the [OE]cumenical Patriarch, they demanded the maintenance of all the privileges that had been granted to them from the time of the Turkish conquest. The Moslems have had to give up their special rights, but the Greeks refused to surrender a single one of their privileges for the sake of Ottoman unity. The Greeks chatter about liberty, equality, and fraternity, but their aim is to secure to themselves advantages over the other Christian peoples; and the Patriarchate, the most cruel and intolerant ecclesiastical tyranny remaining in the world, makes use of “liberty” to increase its persecutions of the exarchists and other schismatics. In the ranks of the reactionaries are to be found many Greeks who profited much by the Despotism whose parasites they were. A large number of the Greeks in Turkey still cling to their separatist aspirations. Even as I write this the Greeks in Macedonia are breaking the peace which the Young Turks brought to that long harassed land; for large Greek bands are once more in the field, with no shadow of a grievance as their excuse for brigandage this time, but agitating for various things, including the annexation of Crete to Greece. If the great Powers would act together and let it be clearly understood that under no conceivable circumstances will Greece be permitted to annex another foot of Ottoman territory, the Greeks in Turkey might become the useful citizens of a united country; for they, like all the other peoples in European Turkey, would prefer even a Hamidian despotism to the domination of Germany, Austria, or Russia.

CHAPTER XX

THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT

ON December 17 Abdul Hamid drove through the streets of his capital between cheering crowds to open the Turkish Parliament. The scene has been often described, and it is unnecessary here to relate again the events of that memorable day. That night I sailed through the Dardanelles, and on either side of me, on the shores of both Europe and Asia, every little town and village and the anchored fleets of fishing craft in the harbours were brightly illuminated; isolated farm-houses on snowy hillsides had their windows full of lights; fires blazed on many a lonely peak; and so it was all along the shores of Turkey from the Adriatic and the Ægean to the Black Sea and the shores of the Persian Gulf. It was a day and a night of rejoicing, and so contagious was the sincere enthusiasm that even the most cynical foreigner in the land had not the heart to speak otherwise than hopefully of the future of this freed country.

Some months have passed since that winter’s day. As might have been expected, things have not gone altogether smoothly in Turkey, and there have been reports of internal dissensions that have puzzled and alarmed the English well-wishers of the new régime. As regards the open rebellions against the Government that have occurred in various portions of the Empire, no one imagined that the proclamation of a Constitution would suddenly bring peace, once and for all, to restless races that have been fighting and raiding for centuries. The complete pacification of these regions cannot but be a work of time. The lawless Albanian tribes are again carrying on their organised brigandage, even in that Dibra district where Niazi Bey’s propaganda had been so wholly successful; the Northern Albanians are agitating for autonomy, even as they were thirty years ago when I wandered through their highlands; Turkish troops, even as I am writing this, are defending Armenians against raiding Kurds;1 risings of fanatical Arabs in Arabia are being suppressed; and the Greek bands are once more troubling Macedonia. These are unfortunate happenings, but with a Government that combines firmness with justice and patience, this lawless state of things will disappear; and it must be remembered that sheer love of fighting and raiding rather than political disaffection is the cause of some of these disturbances. These revolts and raids had become almost chronic complaints under the old régime; the world is now watching Turkey; events that would have passed almost unnoticed a year ago are reported in the European press, and their importance is naturally overrated by those who read of them.

But the political dissensions among the Turks themselves—which have been much embittered of late—are more alarming to the friends of Turkey than are any of these risings of lawless peoples. This is no time for the patriotic element to be divided against itself, and it behooves the Young Turks to present a solid and united front to the many external and internal enemies of Turkey’s liberty and the Empire’s integrity. The Committee of Union and Progress, the deliverer of Turkey from the Despotism, has enemies in the land who are unsparing and unscrupulous in their attacks, and most cunning in their intriguings. The anomalous position of the organisation has naturally invited some honest criticism. Almost immediately after the proclamation of the Constitution, not only reactionary Turks and politicians jealous of the Young Turk party, but also European friends of Turkey, including certain British diplomatists and a section of the Press that voices their views, began to urge that the Committee, its work having been accomplished, no longer had a raison d’être and should be dissolved at once. It was pointed out that an irresponsible power behind the Parliament was unconstitutional, and that the Committee, with its unknown leaders, had become an illegal institution now that Turkey had been granted representative government.

Now surely this argument savours of a legal pedantry that ignores surrounding conditions. The Committee was, of course, an illegal institution from its inception; it saved Turkey by illegal methods; a revolution cannot but be an illegal operation: and it would be obviously unsafe on the morrow of a successful revolution—when a nation is still in confusion, when the people have yet no idea how they should exercise their new rights, when the new institutions from their very freedom lie open to the attack of cunning foes—to adhere strictly to constitutional technicalities and legalities, and to break up the strong organised power that has brought about the overthrow of a régime. After the English revolution Cromwell had no scruples in violating law to save a cause. If there had been a strong Committee of Union and Progress behind the Constitution which the Sultan swore to observe on his coming to the throne, Turkey might have been saved thirty years of despotism and the loss of much territory.

The Young Turks fully realised the difficulties and dangers before them. Many were the foes of the newly freed fatherland. There were those of the Great Powers to whom constitutional liberty in Turkey meant interference with their designs to enrich themselves and obtain territorial expansion at Turkey’s expense; there were the smaller Powers on the frontier, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, eager to scramble over the partition of Macedonia; and, far more dangerous than these, there were the Turkish reactionaries, who began to intrigue everywhere against the Constitution immediately after its proclamation, ready to seize their chance when they saw it. The Young Turks in their hour of triumph had freely pardoned all save a few of the worst of the creatures of the Palace, but this great clemency gained them no gratitude. It was also a source of no small danger that the Young Turks, having but few trained administrators in their own ranks, had retained the services of such high officials of the old régime as had no notoriously evil records for corruption or oppression. Some of these men are the secret enemies of the new order of things. The Young Turks, therefore, determined to remain on their guard and see to it that Turkey’s newly won liberty was not wrested from her. As I have stated in a previous chapter, they held that, far from losing its raison d’être on the opening of Parliament, the Committee of Union and Progress would be more necessary than ever for the protection of the country, and they decided not to dissolve this powerful organisation, but to maintain it, legally or illegally, supported as heretofore by the army, until such time as the Constitution should be firmly established. Such was their justification, and they were sincere in their explanations of their resolution.

As will have been gathered from what I have said in this book the Committee of Union and Progress is no small body of patriots. When I was in Turkey it numbered seventy thousand members. I understand that it now has a membership of about a hundred thousand. It includes all that is best and most patriotic of the educated young Moslem manhood of the country. There are now the many Christians, too, on the Committee who have rejected the idle separatist aspirations of their several races and have Ottoman unity as their ideal, and also many of those Jews who from the beginning have co-operated loyally with the Young Turks. When I was in the country last autumn it looked much as if this Committee had as its members nearly all the men to whom it would be safest to leave the guidance of the Empire.

Unfortunately, it seems to be an undoubted fact that the Committee of Union and Progress has made many enemies even among those who cannot be accused of reactionary tendencies. The Committee has undoubtedly done some ill-advised and tactless things, and its arbitrary methods have raised up against itself some relentless foes; but there can, I think, be no doubt that it has been actuated throughout by pure and patriotic motives, and that its errors have been those of zeal and inexperience. I have met several members of the party recently, and they all sincerely believe that the Committee had very good reasons for compelling Kiamil Pasha to resign the Grand Vizierate in February last; they are confident that the aged statesman had been misled by the plausible enemies of Turkey’s liberties and was being duped by reactionaries. The friction between the Committee and the Grand Vizier commenced some months before the opening of the Parliament; Kiamil, being a Pasha of the old school, naturally resented the dictation of the Committee, and complained that while his was the responsibility the Committee held all the power. The Committee was alarmed by Kiamil Pasha’s friendly relations with the Liberal Union, the party in opposition to the Committee, and recognised the insidious work of reactionary influence when Kiamil despatched from Constantinople to Macedonia certain battalions that were faithful to the Committee, thus imperilling, in the eyes of the Young Turks, the safety of the constitutional cause in the capital. When the Grand Vizier, without consultation with his ministers or with the party, suddenly dismissed the Ministers of War and Marine, the nominees of the Committee, and placed others in their stead, the crisis was precipitated. The Young Turks, above all things, were determined that those in whom they did not place implicit confidence should not control the army, so the Committee, even as it had compelled the resignation of Said Pasha, because he had left the appointment of the Ministers of War and Marine in the hands of the Sultan, now insisted upon the resignation of Kiamil Pasha, and effected its purpose in so peremptory a way that it lost much of its popularity with the people and afforded its unscrupulous enemies a handle for attack. The intrigues connected with the fall of Kiamil Pasha need not be discussed here; but one gathers that the man chiefly to blame is Kiamil’s own son, Said, a worthless person who enriched himself by co-operating with the brigands in the neighbourhood of Smyrna. On several previous occasions he has compromised by his intrigues his aged father, the one person in Turkey who believes that there is no real harm in this very bad specimen of a young Turkish gentleman. Of Kiamil Pasha’s successor to the Grand Vizierate, Hilmi Pasha, I have already spoken.

The Committee justified its treatment of Kiamil Pasha and its other arbitrary acts by pleading the necessity of protecting the nation against the strong reactionary forces which certainly do exist, despite the assertions of the organs of the Liberal Union, which have ever ridiculed the possibility of a reactionary movement, and have accused the Committee of having invented this bogey as an excuse for its own despotic methods. Kiamil Pasha had ever been the friend of the English, and his removal from the Grand Vizierate produced—to the great regret of the Young Turks—a somewhat bad impression in England, the country above all others whose friendship is valued by patriotic Turks. Those who had held that the Committee was an illegal institution and ought to be dissolved became alienated for a while from the men who had been the saviours of Turkey; and it is a great pity that this was so, for at that critical time the Young Turks, who never before had trod the tortuous ways of politics, and were apt to fall into the traps that were cunningly laid for them, were much in need of the sympathetic help and advice from those whose experience and knowledge qualified them to offer these. The result is, I think, that the Young Turk side of the question has not been understood in England.

The Young Turk party, as represented by the Committee of Union and Progress, is now but one of several parties in Turkey professing Liberal principles. In Parliament the Committee’s nominees form the large majority; but the rival parties, though they may be numerically small and were regarded as insignificant when I was in the country, have displayed great energy in winning supporters outside the Chamber, and are no longer a negligible quantity. Though diametrically opposed to each other in their principles, they appear to be united in their hatred and jealousy of the Young Turk party, without whose self-sacrificing struggle for freedom they would never have had an opportunity of existing at all. The Young Turks, as I have explained, desired Ottoman unity, perhaps an impossible but certainly a noble ideal, and it was a disappointment to them that, so soon as Parliament met, the Deputies who were not partisans of the Committee divided themselves into distinct nationalist groups, some of them impracticably socialistic in their aims, others separatist at heart.

By far the most powerful of these groups, a composite party, composed of Moslems, Christians, and others, calls itself the Liberal Union. Whereas the Young Turks, while advocating equality without distinction of race or creed, insists that the supremacy of the Mussulman Turks should be safeguarded, desires to bring about a fusion of the different elements, and wants no greater administrative decentralisation than is necessary; the Liberal Union, on the other hand, is opposed to what it terms Turkish Chauvinism, and asks for a degree of decentralisation which the Young Turks regard as dangerous to the integrity of the Empire. The Liberal Union therefore stands for home rule. It is largely supported by the Greek element, and this fact does not commend it to those who desire Ottoman unity. It is understood that the party has been well supplied with funds by the Greek merchants in Turkey, who are ever generous in their subscriptions to a Greek national cause; but one cannot feel that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire is safe in their hands. A source of weakness to the Committee are its self-denying principles, whereby there are to be no known leaders, no gratification of personal ambition by its members, and no seeking for the plums of office. The Liberal Union has no such principles of self-abnegation, and it has for its leader the Albanian Ismail Kemal Bey, a victim of the Despotism and for some time an exile, a man of marked ability and of great ambition. He left the Young Turk party on the grounds that its principles were not sufficiently Liberal, and formed this party of his own, which is the bitterest and most unscrupulous enemy of the Committee of Union and Progress.

The organs of the Liberal Union have been carrying on a press campaign against the Committee of Union and Progress. Among other things they have asserted that the best men have deserted the Committee, that the heroes of the revolution, such as Niazi Bey and Enver Bey, have left it in disgust, that reactionaries and self-seeking adventurers have worked their way into the Committee’s centre and are directing its policy. It is, of course, possible, and even probable, that some unworthy men have been admitted into the Committee, but I am certain that they have exercised no influence, and I am of opinion that they would not have been allowed to remain in it after their true characters had been discovered. When I was in Turkey last autumn it was not altogether an easy matter to become a member of the Committee. On more than one occasion when I have asked a member whether some mutual friend was in the Committee, he has replied in the negative, explaining that the person in question had expressed his wish to join the Committee, and that he seemed a fitting person, but that the Committee would not elect him until more was known concerning him. As to the allegations made by the organs of the Liberal Union, many of the most active members of the Committee, men obviously actuated by the sincerest patriotism, are my friends, and I know that not one of them has left the Committee or has lost faith in it. I also know that the single-minded patriots who made the revolution are still members of the Committee. Both Niazi Bey and Enver Bey have flatly contradicted the statements that were made concerning them.

The Young Turks who write to me from their own country or who converse with me in London are unanimous in describing the situation as serious, but in their opinion the Committee is too strong for its enemies. They say that the Sultan himself is on the side of the Committee, and disapproves of the machinations of the Liberal Union. They maintain that whatever professions of Liberalism the Liberal Union may make it is reactionary in its policy, has known reactionaries within its ranks, and is led by self-seeking politicians lacking in patriotism. They allege that many of the Greeks who support the Liberal Union, having thrived as parasites of the old régime, prefer despotisms to constitutions. They, moreover, explain that some members of the Liberal Union are exceedingly clever and cunning men who have succeeded in winning over honest men of the Young Turk party—including ulemas and other strict adherents of the Mussulman creed—by specious arguments and misrepresentations. All this seems probable, and it is certain that numbers of the Young Turks, though true patriots, are simple-minded honest men who are likely to be duped by the trained intriguers among the Committee’s enemies.

One gathers, therefore, that an incongruous alliance of non-Moslem socialists, Greek separatists, reactionaries, and misled upright Mussulmans is opposed to the Committee of Union and Progress. A most malignant press campaign is being carried on against the Committee, and the organs of the Committee strike hard in return, with the unfortunate result that on either side an intense hatred has been engendered which cannot but be injurious to the country’s interests, imperils the Constitution, and plays into the hands of Turkey’s external foes.

The Committee of Union and Progress is not rich and has not attempted to enrich itself; but it appears that the Liberal Union is well supplied with funds wherewith to carry on its campaign, purchase newspapers, and buy the consciences of men. It is known that the Greeks have been the largest contributors to these funds. The Palace gang is also said to have supplied its share. When I was in Constantinople I was informed that the Committee had intercepted correspondence between the Palace and a certain Pasha—who was then an exile in England passing under various aliases—and had obtained proof that this notorious person was the trustee of large sums lying in London banks which were intended to meet the expenses of intriguing for the restoration of the old régime. Certain foreign Powers, which have no love for the Young Turk régime, have also been openly accused of intriguing with the reactionaries. If they are innocent of this they have but themselves to blame for the suspicion that attaches to them, for one can only judge of their present policy by regarding their past. How unscrupulously Germany exploited the old régime is known to all the world. Some of the Germans whom I met in Constantinople expressed their conviction and their hope that the days of the new régime were numbered. It was interesting to hear these men, who represented the political commercialism of their country, frankly state, as if it were an incontrovertible axiom, that all European peoples, whether German, British, or any other, had for their one aim in Turkey the exploitation of a helpless country. The Germans are perfectly sincere when they assert that the Balkan Committee is the paid agent of a cunning British Government, that the expression of British sympathy for oppressed nationalities is organised hypocrisy with the attainment of selfish ends as its one motive. As they look with their cold, blue eyes into yours you realise that they quite believe these things. The materialism of modern Germany has so sunk into the souls of her sons—including some of the most illustrious of them—that it has become inconceivable to them that a nation, or a group of the citizens of that nation, can take a disinterested interest in the affairs of other nations and sympathise unselfishly with its misfortunes or triumphs. To the Germans the enthusiasm with which the success of the Young Turk cause was welcomed in England was all humbug—a cleverly engineered manifestation of friendship whose object it was to secure for Great Britain the influence in Turkey which Germany had lost by the revolution but confidently looked forward to recovering at an early date by more straightforward if more brutal methods.

The thirty years of despotism, by its deliberate encouragement of corruption, had demoralised a great part of the Turkish nation. The cure cannot come in a day, and those well provided with money can still buy power in Constantinople. It was amid very corrupt surroundings that the Young Turks, pure themselves, set to work to undertake the regeneration of Turkey and to make the Empire strong. To begin with, Constantinople is full of men who have lived by corrupt practices all their lives—the men who were blackmailing spies under the old régime, or had belonged to that huge tribe of useless functionaries who used to crowd every public department and had to be bribed by those whom business brought into contact with them. All these people, their occupation now gone, are wandering about the capital in very disconsolate mood, hard up, regretting “the good old days,” and hating the purifying influence that has brought this change about. These men are all reactionaries; many of them know well how to poison the minds of ignorant people against the Committee with cunning inventions. They are largely responsible for the growing popular dislike of the Committee. It is very difficult for the people in the capital to arrive at the truth, and they are largely at the mercy of paid agitators and schemers. Even foreign Governments are able to influence public opinion in Turkey. The Germans and Austrians possess a useful piece of machinery for the dissemination of news to serve their own interests in the shape of a telegraphic agency which supplies Constantinople with practically all its foreign information, and sells its despatches by the column to the newspapers of that city at a low rate that cannot possibly pay the expenses of the service. The news which purports to come from London is often of an astonishing character.

I understand that the Committee of Union and Progress is now about to reorganise its constitution and convert itself into what we should call a Parliamentary party; but under whatever name it continues its existence it is to be hoped that this body of men, which has done such great and noble work for Turkey, which contains so many men of single-minded, self-sacrificing patriotism, will remain the dominating party in the country. But it will have to be as the strong man armed and ever watchful, for its enemies are many and have the money wherewith, alas! the consciences of both men and newspapers can still be purchased in Turkey.

CHAPTER XXI

THE NEW SULTAN

THE greater part of this book was in the press, and the preceding chapter, which was to have been the final one, lacked but a few concluding paragraphs to bring my work to a close, when the news reached London that a revolution had broken out in Constantinople. On that eventful thirteenth of April I was lunching in a literary club off the Strand with two well-known members of the Young Turk party. The information conveyed by an early issue of a so-called evening paper was scanty, and we hoped that nothing worse had occurred than one of those mutinous demonstrations on the part of the Sultan’s pampered Body-guard which the Young Turks have already proved themselves capable of suppressing with promptitude and vigour. But later and fuller information brought anger and sorrow to the friends of Turkey: nearly the whole garrison of the capital had risen against the Government; the soldiers were killing their young officers; fanatical mobs were hunting out the members of the Young Turk party to murder them; the Committee of Union and Progress, in Constantinople at any rate, was at the feet of its enemies.

The members of the Committee were fleeing for their lives from their fellow-countrymen, whom they had saved from a hated despotism. A few months ago I heard these same Constantinople mobs shouting themselves hoarse with cries of “Long live the Committee of Union and Progress!” and all seemed grateful to this band of men who, animated by single-minded patriotism and a spirit of self-sacrifice, had organised the revolution. But a large portion of the population of Constantinople is a very vile thing; it is made up of everything that is worst of the various races of the Levant and of regions farther east. The fanatical Kurds are ever ready to join in any rising that gives them the opportunity of pillage and murder; the greater part of the Christian population is too cowardly to defend itself; here, too, are collected all the ex-spies and other corrupt products of the old régime. One is inclined to think that one of the chief lessons to be learnt by the Young Turks from the counter-revolution is that the seat of Government might with advantage be removed from Constantinople to some place at a considerable distance from it. My Turkish friends, I may state here, were perfectly confident, through those mid-April days when Turkey’s future seemed so dark, that the triumph of the reactionaries would be but short-lived, that right would prevail, and that within a few days the provinces, strongly supporting the Young Turk cause, would compel the capital to submit to their will.

I have postponed the writing of this final chapter until the last possible moment, in order that I might obtain a perspective view of these strange happenings in the Turkish capital. As may be gathered from the preceding chapter, there was a good deal of uneasiness in Constantinople for some time before the outbreak of the 13th. The bitter strife between the Committee of Union and Progress and the Liberal Union weakened the constitutional cause. A newly formed society called the Jemiyet-Mohammedieh (the League of Mohammed) was obtaining a hold upon the Moslem population. It professed to be in favour of the Constitution, but called for a strict application of the Sheriat or Sacred Law. It was the enemy of the Committee of Union and Progress, maintaining that the members of the Committee, including the young army officers, did not observe the precepts of the Koran, and by their irreligious ways set a bad example to the rank and file. These movements afforded an opportunity for mischief to the reactionaries, the men who cared little for religion or country, but desired the return of the absolutism with the corruption on which they had lived. So men from the Palace, together with ex-spies and dishonest Government employés who had been deprived of their posts by the new régime, began to intrigue with success, and were much helped by the fact that many of their own base order had wormed themselves both into the Liberal Union and the Mohammedan League.

The Liberal Union apparently took the lead in the plot against the Government, and it became obvious that it was well provided with funds. I am told that for a considerable time before the outbreak the members of this association used to frequent the principal hotel in Pera, and made of it a sort of head-quarters. Here, spending plenty of money, they used to converse plausibly with foreign visitors, including the correspondents of newspapers; for it was part of their aim to gain foreign sympathy—and especially English sympathy—for their cause; their efforts were attended with some success, for while plotting with reaction they prated of liberty, and their arguments to the effect that in the Committee of Union and Progress Turkey had but found a new despotism in place of the old one were convincing to many.

The acrimony of the strife between the two parties was much intensified by the assassination of the editor of a Liberal newspaper, presumably by some one in sympathy with the Committee; and as it became clear that the loyalty of the First Army Corps, forming the garrison of Constantinople, was being undermined by the agents of reaction, General Mukhtar Pasha, who was in command of that army corps, began to take due precautions; on April 12 he issued most stringent orders to his men, explaining to them that they were to shoot down even softas and other civilians if ordered to do so by their officers. I have already explained that the fidelity to the Constitution of this army corps, which included the pampered Palace Guards, had been doubtful from the beginning. The Young Turks, after the mutiny in November, had removed some of the least reliable battalions and had replaced them with troops from Salonica. They had intended greatly to reduce the Imperial Guard itself, but had refrained from doing so at the earnest wish of the Sultan. I have pointed out that before the revolution these Palace troops were officered with men risen from their own ranks—alaili—ignorant and faithful men who could be relied on to support their benevolent master, the Sultan. The Young Turks had removed these rankers, replacing them with mekteblis, officers who have passed through the military schools, and therefore to a man are supporters of the Young Turk party, many of them being members of the Committee. There is no doubt that the rank and file bitterly resented this innovation, and there grew up a sullen discontent, which subtle agitators who appealed to Mussulman fanaticism could easily fan into a flame. The hodjas and softas were assiduously preaching in the barracks that the Committee was endangering the Moslem faith, and the minds of the men became poisoned against their officers.

But though there was uneasiness in the capital, the counter-revolution came to the citizens as a complete surprise. In the afternoon of the 12th a British officer, who had just arrived in the capital, visited the various barracks, and found the troops peacefully drilling or performing their other ordinary duties, the officers and men alike seeming happy and contented, and an Inspector of Police of great experience informed him that the city had never been more quiet and orderly. During the early hours of the 13th, while it was still dark, people were awakened by the tramp of soldiery in the streets (successive bodies of men marching in silence), wondered a little what these unwonted movements signified, and then went to sleep again. When they went out a few hours later the citizens found the whole city at the mercy of nearly twenty thousand mutinous troops. The plot had been carefully organised with the same extraordinary secrecy that had characterised the Young Turk revolution of the previous July, and no one save those concerned had any suspicion as to what was about to happen.

Before dawn the troops, after shooting some of their officers and binding and imprisoning others, marched through the streets under the command of their non-commissioned officers, and concentrated in the neighbourhood of the House of Parliament. The Salonica Chasseurs, who, as Macedonian troops, had been regarded as being wholly loyal to the Young Turk cause, took a leading part in the revolt. A large number of marines also joined the mutineers and were guilty of the murder of many officers. When the sun rose the square outside the Parliament House and the Mosque of St. Sophia was packed with the mutineers and a great number of softas and hodjas in their turbans and flowing robes, who harangued the soldiers and inflamed their fanatical zeal. In front of St. Sophia waved the red and green banner of the Sheriat. Brave officers who occasionally arrived to remonstrate with their men were immediately killed.

It was apparent that the revolt had been very carefully planned, and that the troops had received detailed instructions which they obeyed to the letter, and there can be no doubt that they were assured that they were doing as the Padishah wished them to do. Bodies of troops were detached to seize the bridges and the telegraph offices, and dispositions were made to meet resistance from any point. It was made quite clear that the main object of the counter-revolution was the destruction of the Committee of Union and Progress; for, while killing officers and others who belonged to that association, the soldiers preserved order, in no way interfered with the civilian population, and spoke reassuring words to the Christians whom they met. But notwithstanding this, there was, of course, a panic in the city, and all the shops put up their shutters. Mobs of Mussulmans of the dangerous class, Kurds and Lazes, armed with pistols and clubs, and in many cases with rifles, joined the soldiery; but even these had apparently been given the word that excesses would damage the cause of the faithful, for the massacres and pillage which might have been expected from this rough and fanatical element of the population did not occur.

The conspirators had not secured the support of the entire garrison of Constantinople; for troops loyal to the Government—cavalry, artillery, and infantry—were holding the Ministry of War on the morning of the 13th. General Mukhtar Pasha, the commander of the First Army Corps, was on duty on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, and he has told an interviewer that the signal for revolution had been purposely given while he was absent. So soon as he was informed as to what was happening he hurried back to Stamboul, and on reaching head-quarters on the morning of the 13th found the Ministry of War surrounded by a wildly excited mob. He collected the troops who had not joined the mutineers and dispersed the crowd with his cavalry. He states that had he been given full powers he could have nipped the revolt in the bud, and that had the Ministry taken the proper measures in time the mutiny could have been mastered without bloodshed. But Mukhtar was expressly impeded from taking energetic action and, as the natural result, his own troops began to desert him. When Mukhtar heard that the Sultan had issued an amnesty to the mutineers he realised that he could do no more, and resigned his command. He only escaped the death that had been prepared for him by taking a circuitous route, and ultimately found a refuge on a foreign man-of-war.

The demands that were made by the mutineers showed pretty conclusively that the plot had been arranged by the Liberal Union working hand in hand with reactionaries and fanatics. The troops cheered loudly for the Sultan, called for the strict application of the Sacred Law, the overthrow of the Government, the destruction of the Committee, and the removal of the officers of the Salonica Chasseurs and the marines. The following specific demands, which could never have been thought out by the ignorant soldiers, who know nothing of politics, were also put forward by them—demands which had obviously been prompted by the Liberal Union—the dismissal of the Grand Vizier, the Ministers of War and Marine, the commander of the First Army Corps, and the President of the Chamber of Deputies; the removal from Constantinople of the editor of the Young Turk newspaper, the Tannin, and the expulsion of Rahmi Bey and Djavid Bey, Deputies for Salonica, and members of the Committee of Union and Progress. The soldiers also asked that Ismail Kemal Bey, the leader of the Liberal Union, and his supporter, Zohrab Bey, should be made President and Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies. Their acts as well as their words proved who had instigated them to revolt; they murdered Nazim Pasha, the Minister of Justice, and wounded the Minister of Marine; they killed the Emir Mohammed Arslan, a highly respected Deputy, as he was entering the House, mistaking him for the editor of the Tannin, and they destroyed the offices of the Committee of Union and Progress, as well as those of its organs, the Shura-i-Ummet and the Tannin.

During April 13 the reactionaries ruled Constantinople; the members of the Committee of Union and Progress had to take to flight or hide themselves, and several of the Generals crossed the Bosphorus and took refuge in the house of a well-known British merchant. The Liberal Union, which had let loose the forces of disorder, enjoyed but a short triumph. In the evening of the 13th some Deputies met in the House and elected the Liberal Union leader, Ismail Kemal Bey, as President of the Chamber—an illegal proceeding, as there was no quorum, and the Young Turk members who represented the parliamentary majority naturally were not present. In the course of the day Ismail Kemal and some members of the Liberal Union went to the Yildiz and begged the Sultan to appoint Kiamil Pasha, who was a supporter of the Union, as Grand Vizier, but the Sultan refused to listen to their advice. From this time the Liberal Union lost its hold on the people, and was deserted by many members of the party who were good patriots and adherents of the Constitution, for these recognised and were horrified at the mischief that had been wrought by the self-seeking wire-pullers of this so-called “Liberal” organisation.

And in the meanwhile all eyes were turned anxiously to the Yildiz to discover what would be the attitude of the inscrutable monarch at this crisis. In the evening of the 13th, when the Sultan granted an amnesty to the mutineers, called them his children, and yielded to many of their demands, there were lovers of liberty who feared the worst; but when it became known that the Sultan had not taken immediate advantage of the situation to restore absolutism, but, on the contrary, on the resignation of the Young Turk Ministry in the afternoon, had appointed Tewfik Pasha as Grand Vizier and Edhem Pasha as Minister of War, great relief was felt; for these were two trusted and able men, who, though they were no partisans of this or that political group, were undoubtedly men of Liberal principles and no creatures of the Despotism. So the Constitutionalists took heart, and they were still more reassured when on the 15th Nazim Pasha was appointed Commander of the First Army Corps and Assistant Minister of War. The appointment of Nazim Pasha as Minister of War in February last had roused the opposition of the Committee of Union and Progress, and was one of the chief causes of the fall of Kiamil Pasha; but, as the Young Turks clearly explained at the time, it was with Kiamil’s policy that they found fault; Nazim himself was admired and respected by them as a fine soldier and a man of distinctly Liberal views, for which the Palace had made him suffer in his time. It was therefore recognised that the newly created temporary Government was at any rate not a reactionary one, and that the cause of liberty, though still in great peril, was not yet lost.

For twenty-four hours the soldiers celebrated their victory by firing off their rifles in the streets, thereby accidentally killing and wounding a good many people. It was noticed that they had plenty of money to spend, and it was evident that a large sum had been provided by the organisers of the conspiracy to buy the support of the army. As many of the men confessed afterwards, they had succumbed to gifts of money and had been misled by lying preachers who approached them in the name of religion. On April 15 Nazim Pasha, who is popular with the army, though a strict disciplinarian, announced that the severest punishment would be inflicted on any soldiers who fired in the streets, and explained that the Sultan’s amnesty only protected them from punishment for crimes committed during the two previous days. Next he released all officers who had been imprisoned by the mutineers, and warned the soldiers that no mercy would be shown to those who molested these officers or any of the civilian population. The bulk of the troops now returned to their barracks, order was restored, and outwardly Constantinople was once again a city of peace.

But a crime had been committed with what far-reaching evil results to Turkey no man knows yet. This wanton conspiracy, doomed to failure from the beginning, not only threatened the destruction of the Constitution, but, stirring up all the forces of reaction, sent a wave of fanaticism sweeping through Asia that it will be difficult indeed to stem. It has brought about the massacre of Christians, civil war, the fratricidal fighting between Turkish armies, the menace of foreign intervention, and the possibility of the disintegration of the Empire itself. The counter-revolution soon bore its evil fruit. On April 15, telegrams from Mersina, in Asia Minor, announced the beginning of those massacres which have cost the lives of thousands of Armenians. It is probable that the reactionaries planned these massacres, for the fact that certain notable Armenians were warned as to what was about to happen by their Moslem friends, disproves the theory that a chance affray was responsible for all this slaughter; at any rate the outbreak of murderous fanaticism would have been suppressed speedily had not the authority of the Government officials on the spot been destroyed by the revolt in the capital. Then came the news of a rising of the Moslem Albanians, whom the agents of reaction had converted into the bitter enemies of the Young Turks. During these days of doubt and fear for patriotic Turks, but one event of hopeful augury occurred. On April 19 the Turko-Bulgarian Protocol, by which Turkey recognised Bulgaria’s independence, was signed. The provisional Government had acted wisely, for thus was removed the danger of a war with Bulgaria at this very critical time.

A member of the Young Turk party said to me: “If the reactionaries imagine that we will take this lying down they will find themselves much mistaken. We are very strong: practically all European Turkey is on our side, and you will see that we will now set to work to crush the power of the reactionaries once and for all.” And so indeed it has come to pass. When the news of the counter-revolution reached Salonica, the city that is proud that it was the cradle of Turkey’s liberty, the inhabitants—Moslems, Christians, and Jews—were infuriated, and called for an immediate march upon Constantinople. To Salonica flocked the officers and other members of the Committee who had escaped from the capital, and thither, too, hurried the two gallant young leaders of the July revolution, Enver Bey and Hakki Bey, who at the time were the Turkish military attachés in Berlin and Vienna respectively. Niazi Bey, too, in Monastir, sent the word to his Albanian and Bulgarian friends to collect volunteers, and he himself, with the regulars under his command, took train to Salonica. And now it was made manifest that Macedonia, at any rate, remained faithful to the Constitution and to the Young Turk party. The men of the Third Army Corps were eager to be led against the traitorous reactionaries of the capital; the civilian Moslems formed themselves into bands of fedais; all the Bulgarian clubs in Macedonia declared themselves the supporters of the Young Turk cause, and their members expressed their readiness to die in defence of the Constitution, and this despite the fact that the Bulgarians had not been treated fairly during the Parliamentary elections; the famous Bulgarian chiefs, Sandansky and Panitza, and other Bulgarian leaders, brought their bands of enthusiastic mountaineers to Salonica; the Albanian Christian mountain tribes, including my old friends the Miridites, sent their armed men to fight for the cause; the Jews volunteered in numbers; indeed, of the various elements composing the population of Macedonia the Greeks alone appear to have held aloof.

In Constantinople the reactionaries, notwithstanding the appointment of a Ministry that supported the Constitution, had taken it for granted that the success of their cause was assured, and, having seduced the garrison to their side, they but awaited the order of the Sultan to complete their work and give the coup de grace to the régime of liberty. They had apparently omitted to consider whether the rest of Turkey would support their action; for the news from Macedonia came as a shocking surprise to them, and irritated the well-named Volkan, the organ of the League of Mohammed, into an eruption of furious articles of a highly inflammatory and dangerous character. First came the news from Salonica that the Committee of Union and Progress refused to acknowledge the new Government, and that the Macedonians intended to march upon Constantinople. On April 16 a telegram announced that the first sixteen battalions of the Constitutional army (the Third Army Corps) had already entrained at Salonica. Next it became known that the Second Army Corps at Adrianople had agreed to support the Salonica force. On the 19th the advanced patrols of the avenging Macedonian army were at St. Stefano within two leagues of the capital. It was all in vain that the Government sent telegrams and deputations to Salonica to reassure the Young Turks and to explain that the Constitution was in no danger, and would be respected by the Sultan and his new Ministry, for the Young Turks could not be brought to believe that the Constitution was secure while the capital was full of triumphant reactionaries and troops who had been bought over to their cause, acting in the name of a Sultan whom it would be folly to trust again.

So the Parliamentary troops began to concentrate round the capital, and the reactionaries lost heart. The Palace spies and other deeply compromised persons thought it prudent to flee from the capital. A friend of mine, writing from Constantinople, tells me that a panic seized the people, including many Europeans, and that their hurried departure to catch any steamer in the port, bound for no matter where, was comic, but lacking in dignity. On the other hand, the different Liberal political groups, Moslem, Christian, and Jew, agreed to put aside their party differences and to unite in upholding the Constitution. The Committee of Union and Progress recovered much of the influence and popularity that it had lost, for it was recognised that this organisation alone had the power behind it to enforce the will of the people and defeat the reactionaries. It became plain, too, that the Ministry itself was co-operating with the leaders of the Macedonian army, so as to come to some arrangement that would safeguard the Constitution and at the same time prevent, if possible, the shedding of blood. As for the Sultan, he remained in the Yildiz, inscrutable as ever, and had frequent conferences with Tewfik Pasha, his Grand Vizier, who announced that “His Sublime Majesty awaits benevolently the arrival of the so-called constitutional army. He has nothing to gain or fear, since His Sublimity is for the Constitution and is its supreme guardian.”

No preparations for defence or resistance of any sort were made by the Government, and Nazim Pasha and the other Generals in the capital confined themselves to maintaining order in the garrison and preventing any fanatical outbreak on the part of the rough element of the Moslem population. Of the troops forming the garrison a considerable proportion repented that they had taken part in the mutiny, and, acknowledging that they had been misled by lies, were ready to take the oath of fidelity to the Constitution; but, on the other hand, a great many, including the six thousand who were guarding the Yildiz, were faithful to those who had deceived and bribed them, and were prepared to die for the Sultan.

General Husni Pasha rapidly brought up the troops that were to invest the capital, the bulk of them belonging to the Third Army Corps; but the force also included contingents from the Second, or Adrianople, Army Corps and numbers of volunteers, for the most part Moslem Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Albanians, wild-looking men from the mountains clad in their picturesque native dress. General Mahmut Shevket Pasha, the commander of the Third Army Corps, directed the operations, and on the 21st he left Salonica for the front to take over the supreme command of the army of investment. Foreign military observers have spoken in terms of highest praise of the rapidity with which the Third Army Corps was mobilised, the admirable organisation, the discipline, >morale, and excellent condition of the troops, the arrangements for the supply of food, the completeness of the equipment of the force, which included field hospitals, field telegraphs, and other details. The Turkish army has profited much by the splendid training of Baron von der Goltz and the German officers under him, and has become a fighting machine which will be able to give a very good account of itself if the enemies of Turkey venture to attack her.

It is unnecessary to give an account here of the various negotiations which were carried on between the Ministry in Constantinople and the advancing army, for it is clear that these were mostly simulated with the object of keeping the capital quiet and gaining time until Shevket Pasha had collected a force sufficiently large to overawe the reactionary portion of the garrison and so secure the entry and occupation of Constantinople with as little bloodshed as possible. Of the many statements made at this time by the Ministry and the Young Turk leaders, one stands out as important and significant. The Committee of Union and Progress, recognising that this was no time for any political party to assert itself, and that all friends of liberty should unite to save the Constitution, announced its intention of remaining completely in the background and not intervening in any way, while the army, acting quite independently, would free the Constitution from the fetters which traitors had placed upon it. The army, it was maintained, had nothing to do with politics or parties. It was the army of the nation, and it was for Shevket Pasha, representing the army, to redeem its honour by entering the capital, proclaiming martial law, and severely punishing the traitors who had corrupted the soldiers and used them to forward their reactionary schemes.

The army of investment increased in numbers daily, and on April 22 a semi-circle of thirty thousand men enclosed Constantinople on its land side while men-of-war guarded its sea approaches. On that day a National Assembly, composed of Senators and Deputies, with Said Pasha as President, held a secret session at St. Stefano, within the lines of the investing army, and apparently agreed on the deposition of the Sultan. On Friday, April 23, Abdul Hamid, for the last time, was the central figure of the Selamlik and drove to the mosque between faithful Guards and a crowd of many thousands of his subjects. Only ten days had passed since the counter-revolution had restored to him much of his former despotic power, but the action of the Young Turks was quick and decisive, and this was to be the last day of his long and calamitous reign.

Shevket Pasha, having completed his dispositions, lost no time in further parleying, recognising that to do as speedily as possible what had to be done would probably save much bloodshed in the capital, and prevent the further spreading of the dangerous reactionary movements in Asia Minor and Albania. At three in the morning of April 24 the Macedonian troops, regulars and volunteers, began to work their way into the city from all sides, and proceeded to occupy Stamboul, Galata, and Pera. They entered Stamboul by the principal gates that pierce the ancient walls, encountering resistance at one gate only. Near the Sublime Porte a portion of the garrison offered a determined resistance, which was overcome by Niazi Bey, at the head of the Resna battalion, and a band of Macedonian volunteers. Some of the guard-houses had to be taken at the point of the bayonet. The entry into Stamboul of the Parliamentary troops seems to have taken a great part of the garrison by surprise, for Shevket Pasha, in his official report, states that “the troops quartered at the Ministry of War were compelled to surrender before they had time to defend themselves.”

On the farther side of the Golden Horn the fighting was more severe than in Stamboul. Shortly after 5 A.M. firing commenced in the outskirts of Pera. The Macedonian troops attacked the Taksim and Tashkishla barracks, which were defended in most stubborn manner by desperate men who thought that they would receive no mercy, and there was fierce street fighting in the European quarter, where the guard-houses were bravely held by the misguided men of the First Army Corps. From the Tashkishla barracks a heavy fire was opened upon the advancing troops, and the barracks had to be shelled and almost destroyed by the artillery on the heights above, before the garrison, after several hours’ fighting and heavy losses, surrendered.

Equally desperate was the defence of the Taxim barracks, the attack on which was led by Enver Bey. This young officer, who, during the months that preceded the revolution, had wandered, disguised and at great risk to his life, through the Macedonian garrison towns, and there, though surrounded by spies, had successfully won officers and men over to the cause, like his friend Niazi desired no recognition of his patriotic work, and, modest as he is able, was glad to accept the simple post of military attaché at Berlin. Recalled by his country’s danger when the counter-revolution broke out, he joined the army at Salonica, and now, on April 24, he was leading across the Taxim Square a charge of regular troops and volunteers—Moslems, Christians, and Jews—fighting shoulder to shoulder against a Moslem foe, a strange thing, indeed, to come about in Turkey. These men fought splendidly under their young leader, but so deadly a fire was opened upon them from the loopholed barracks that here, too, artillery had to be employed to overpower the defence. Guns were dragged up the steep, narrow streets by the willing populace and opened fire at very short range upon the barracks and the Taxim guard-house. Then there was a rush of the Turks, Bulgarians, and white-capped Albanians, and the defenders, after a three hours’ resistance, which cost the attacking force many casualties, hoisted the white flag and surrendered.

While barracks were being thus assaulted, and there was hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Pera, the commander-in-chief of the Macedonian forces had made most careful dispositions to preserve order in the great city and protect the civilian population. A detachment of troops was sent to guard each embassy. Bodies of regulars, cadets and volunteers patrolled the streets of Pera and Galata, shooting down such Marines and Kurds as were attempting to loot the shops, and making prisoners of all the soldiers belonging to the garrison whom they came across. In Stamboul the troops seized hundreds of spies, softas and hodjas, who, after stirring up the evil passions of the garrison and the populace, had taken refuge in the mosques. By noon, quiet had been restored in Constantinople, and in the evening the troops quartered in the Selimieh barracks at Scutari surrendered to the Macedonian regiments which had been transported across the Bosphorus to compel the submission of these men, and to intercept fugitives from the capital.

These operations were all planned and carried into execution with a wonderful skill. The discipline, courage, and irreproachable conduct of the Macedonian troops aroused the admiration of all foreign observers. The wild-looking volunteers from the mountains fought as bravely as the regulars, and their behaviour was exemplary. That evening nearly twenty thousand fighting men, flushed with victory, were scattered through the great city, and yet there appear to have been no cases of drunkenness or irregularities of any description. It was the triumph of the right cause—the cause that represents enlightenment, justice, liberty, and true patriotism—as opposed to tyranny, corruption, fanaticism, and ignorance.

The capital was in the hands of the Young Turks; the forces of reaction had been crushed; a state of siege was proclaimed; some thousands of arrests were made; the more guilty received the punishment which they deserved, and the others were treated with leniency, for, while justice was administered, anything that savoured of vengeance was disallowed; the First Army Corps was disbanded and the mutinous soldiers were sent to Macedonia, to be employed in constructing roads; Tewfik Pasha and his ministers consented to carry on the government provisionally.

In short, the Young Turk régime was firmly reestablished by men who acted with discretion and decision after a crisis that perhaps has cleared the atmosphere and effected a reconciliation between such political foes as have in common the love of country and the determination to uphold the Constitution.

Early in the morning of April 27 Reshad Effendi left his residence, the Dolma Baghche Palace, and drove to the War Office, where he was proclaimed Sultan with a salvo of 101 guns. After thirty-three years of luxurious but depressing isolation he now changes places with his elder brother, the former going from captivity to a throne, the latter from a throne to captivity. The new Sultan is an amiable man, beloved by his entourage, and he has already produced a favourable impression on such foreigners as have been received by him.