the Turkish Embassies in foreign countries, among the retainers of influential Pashas, and in the Yildiz Palace itself. For example, a correspondent, writing to the Times from Salonica, tells the story of Dr. Baha-ud-Din, formerly physician to one of the Imperial princes, who had been exiled to the Russian frontier. He returned secretly to the capital, and for the three months preceding the revolution remained in the Palace undetected, supplying the Committee with a good deal of useful information. Suspicion fell upon him a few days before the revolution broke out, so he had to fly for his life, and became an active member of the Committee in Salonica.

Then there was the host of propagandists who were scattered all over the Empire doing their dangerous work, urging the civil population to embarrass the Government by a refusal to pay taxes and to prepare for a general rising, and persuading the soldiery of the righteousness of the movement, and obtaining their promise not to fight against their own countrymen when ordered to do so. So as to obtain easy access to houses and barracks, Turkish officers disguised themselves as hawkers of cheap jewelry and ribbons, or as the peripatetic sutlers who sell sherbet and little comforts to the Turkish soldier; and in their packs were always concealed the revolutionary tracts that were to spread the propaganda. One well-known officer for long kept a barber's

shop in Bagdad, and inoculated his customers with the doctrines of the conspiracy. Dr. Nazim Bey, who had been exiled, wandered over Asia Minor for eighteen months, sometimes disguised as a peddler, sometimes as a hodja, in order to win over the Anatolian regiments. He made initiates among the officers, and conversed with the men to such good effect that when the Sultan, in the last days of the old régime, despatched several battalions of the Anatolian army, to crush the military insurrection in Macedonia, these troops not only refused to fire on their comrades, but joined forces with them.

One remarkable feature of the propaganda was the great part taken in it by the Turkish women. They were largely employed, for example, in the delivery of messages and the carrying of documents; for it was easy for the wife of a member of the Committee to visit the wives of other members without attracting observation. The respect that is paid to women in Turkey gives them immunity from being searched; the women's apartments in a Turkish house are held to be inviolable, and a police officer would not venture to infringe these cherished customs without very weighty cause. The following incident exemplifies this Shortly after the revolution had made the Committee the virtual ruler of Turkey, some young officers were sent to pay a domiciliary visit to the house of a Pasha suspected of being a party

to a reactionary plot. They arrested the Pasha, but made a vain search for incriminatory documents. At last they came across a chest that had obviously been concealed, and felt confident that they had at last discovered what they were seeking. At this juncture the Pasha's wife came forward and stated that the chest contained her jewels and other property; whereupon the officers refrained from opening it, and, saluting the lady, left the house.

The first and most important task before the Committee was, of course, that of bringing round to the cause the Macedonian garrison-the Third Army Corps. The disaffection of these troops, the reasons for which I have explained, had in places manifested itself in open mutiny, and the incompetence and corruption of some of the officers of superior rank, who were indebted to Palace favouritism for their position, filled both the junior officers and the rank and file with an everincreasing disgust. By degrees By degrees a number of the young officers were affiliated to the Committee, and received instructions to win over the rank and file. The fact that the troops were moving about in small bodies, hunting down the Bulgarian bands, rendered this proceeding the more easy; for while engaging in this work, regimental officers, unrestrained by the supervision of their superiors, could give political instruction to the men, and were able to hold meetings among them

selves without attracting the attention of spies; the company commanders used also to deliver lectures to their men in out-of-the-way places, where any stranger would be conspicuous and Palace spies would be immediately recognised. Whenever a spy was discovered he promptly disappeared, soldiers who had taken the oath of fealty to the Committee being given the word to kill him. At last the whole Macedonian army was won over to the cause of the Young Turks, and as a consequence of the work performed by the disguised officers in other parts of the Empire, the Second Army Corps, which garrisons the Vilayet of Adrianople, also contained a large proportion of officers and men in sympathy with the movement -troops hostile to the Despotism thus enclosing the capital on all sides-while on the further shore of the Bosphorus, Anatolia, whose sturdy peasantry supplies the Ottoman Empire with its finest troops, had been similarly prepared by Dr. Nazim Bey and numerous officers.

To those Englishmen who knew something of the Turkish army it appeared an amazing thing that these soldiers, who worshipped the Sultan with a blind faith not only as their sovereign, but as the head of the one true religion, "the Commander of the Faithful," "the Shadow of God upon earth," -however discontented they might be, however ready to mutiny, as they sometimes did mutiny, against their officers-could be persuaded to join

in a movement of which the avowed object was the deposition of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. The soldier could only be won over by convincing him that religion itself commanded the overthrow of the tyrant. It will be remembered how, in 1876, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, as chief of the interpreters of the Sacred Law, decreed that the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz should be deposed because, in ruining the State which God had confided to him, he had broken his sacred trust, and could no longer be head of the believers. The young officers put the case in the same way, and in simple words, to the honest and devout soldiery; they quoted the passages in the Koran which denounce tyranny, and showed that the Sultan was not true to his country, and therefore had forfeited the privileges God had lent to him. The fact that Austria and Germany had been granted concessions to construct railways through Turkish territory (the proposed railway through the Sanjak of Novi-Bazaar, which would afford Austria railway connection with Salonica, and the German-owned Bagdad railway) was a proof to the soldier that the Palace was selling the country bit by bit to the foreigner.

During the early days of the propaganda, hodjas who had joined the Committee, and officers disguised as hodjas, being freely admitted into barracks in their capacity of preachers, advocated these doctrines, and satisfied the religious scruples of the men; and when, later, the Sheikh-ul-Islam