from the cruelty and rapacity of the Despotism and its parasites, they displayed no vindictiveness; they punished only the most guilty of these; removed only those who showed by their actions that they were a source of danger to the Constitution; and they frankly forgave the others. The relations of Turkey with foreign Powers were directed by them with a tactful and resourceful statesmanship. Their mistakes were remarkably

few.

From the beginning they showed their fitness to rule. The avowed object of the Young Turks had been to depose the Sultan, and when they offered him the alternative of acceptance of the Constitution or abdication, they had little expectation that he would submit to their conditions. But when the astute Sultan did submit in a very graceful manner, protesting that he was a believer in a constitutional form of government, and posing as if he and not the revolutionary party had brought the boon of liberty to his subjects, the Young Turks showed their statesmanship by as graciously accepting the situation, and became once more the loyal subjects of a constitutional monarch, whose cleverness and diplomatic experience, if he would now use them rightly, might be of great service to his country and his people. The Sultan is the Commander of the Faithful to millions of Mussulmans, and had the Committee attempted to depose him at that

critical time a long civil war might have resulted. So Abdul Hamid was left on the throne of Othman, nominally ruling, to outward seeming popular with the people, who cheered him enthusiastically whenever he appeared in public. But the Young Turks had not forgotten how Abdul Hamid in 1878 destroyed the Constitution which he had sworn to uphold, so that power behind the throne, the Committee of Union and Progress, remained ever watchful, as the strong guardian of the people's liberties.

I will now briefly sum up the results of the Committee's energetic action during the few weeks immediately following the proclamation of the Constitution. In the first place it had to make itself as strong as possible so as to combat the reactionary intrigues that were working for the restoration of the Despotism. It therefore set itself to establish its hold on the army, to obtain the sanction of the Moslem religion, and to complete the pacification of Macedonia. It took the precaution of removing from the Second and Third Army Corps all officers suspected of reactionary views, and concentrated the bulk of the troops loyal to the Constitution at Adrianople, within striking distance of the capital, where, at any rate, a considerable portion of the First Army Corps and the Sultan's Prætorian Guard only needed the word from the Palace to become the instrument of the reactionaries. Later on the

Committee was able to obtain the removal of most of the battalions of the Imperial Guard from Constantinople and to replace them with troops from Salonica, thus securing the Committee's domination in the capital.

As regards the religious question, the work of the Young Turks was made easy by the Sheikhul-Islam, who-so soon as he had administered to the Sultan the oath by which the latter swore to respect the Constitution-proclaimed to the faithful that constitutional government was not contrary to, but was in accordance with, the teaching of the Koran; he rebuked the fanatics who were preaching against the reforms as being anti-religious, and saw to it that the mosques were not used as centres of reactionary agitation and intrigue. For the reactionaries were not idle, and, in European as well as in Asiatic Turkey, their agents-often ex-palace spies disguised as doctors of the sacred law and hodjas-were appealing to Moslem bigotry and denouncing the Constitution as the invention of the Evil One himself. To counteract this mischievous propaganda the Committee sent out its own missionaries all over the country, and doctors learned in the sacred law and others enlightened the people, supporting their arguments with quotations from the Koran, and in many cases preaching sermons that had been written for this purpose by the Sheikh-ul-Islam himself. It was

also a great help to the cause that nearly all the Turkish Press supported the Committee. Indeed, during the first few months of the new régime, a paper holding the unpopular opposite opinions would have had but few readers.

The Committee, having Army, Religion and Press on its side, was strong enough to dominate the Palace. It demanded of the Sultan the signing of Iradé after Iradé, and if the required Imperial decree was not immediately forthcoming, a threat that the Adrianople army would march upon Constantinople within twenty-four hours always produced the desired effect. Thus, within a few days after the proclamation of the Constitution, Abdul Hamid had to sign Irades by virtue of which he granted a general amnesty, the release of all political prisoners, the abolition of the spy system, the inviolability of domicile, a free Press, the abolition of the censorship, the liberty of the individual to travel in foreign countries, in short, all the privileges enjoyed by the citizens of free countries.

Then the Sultan was compelled to dismiss his favourites and principal advisers, including his hated secretary, Izzet Pasha, his old Arab Astrologer, Abdul Houda, Tashin Pasha, and Ismail Pasha, the founder of the detestable military spy system. The Camarilla, that had all but destroyed Turkey, was broken up and scattered. Izzet and several other notorious people effected their escape

to England and elsewhere-fortunately for some of them, who, had they remained, would probably have been torn to pieces by infuriated mobs, like the infamous Fehmi Pasha. But the Young Turks, as I have explained, despite the intense hatred which some of them must have nourished against the cruel oppressors and traitors to their country who had acted as the instruments of the Despotism, refrained from vengeance, and there were no reprisals. Penalties were only inflicted where the country's good demanded these. Some of the worst ministers of the tyranny were imprisoned in the War Office, or confined in their own houses on Prinkipo Island in the Sea of Marmora, where many rich Turks have their summer residences. Some have undergone their trial, and have been compelled to disgorge the public moneys which they had embezzled. For the rest it was complete amnesty, and when the Constantinople mobs began to occupy themselves in hunting down men recognised to have been spies of the Palace, in order to carry them off to the prison of the War Office, the Committee, whose word had to be obeyed, peremptorily forbade this practice. On the other hand, if any man took advantage of this leniency to indulge in reactionary intrigue, sterner justice was administered. Ismail Pasha, for example, the inventor of the military spy system, for very good reasons