the Constitution was announced, the mob at Broussa, fearing him no longer, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.

Then there was the great army of paid informers who preyed upon the people. The system of espionage which Abdul Hamid in his fear devised to protect himself against conspiracy and assassination was so oppressive and cruel in its working as to render almost insupportable the lives of such of his subjects as were regarded as suspects on account of their good birth, enlightenment, patriotism, or honourable character. The expenditure on this espionage sometimes amounted to as much as two million pounds a year. The spies were everywhere, and were of every rank and condition. Ministers were paid to spy on each other. A man's house-servants, the Greek hotel-waiter who brought him his cup of coffee, the Armenian dragoman who guided the simple foreign tourist, were paid to watch and listen and send their reports to the Palace. Spies would gain a man's friendship, worm themselves into his confidence, and then denounce him. People were sometimes betrayed by their own relations. All the social relationships of the family, the military college, the regiment and the navy were undermined; for if the Palace suspected a man it would spare no effort to buy the treason of those nearest to him. There was an atmosphere of terror and universal distrust. When the spy system was introduced into the

army it destroyed all esprit de corps. It became known that there were spies among the officers of every unit, whose business it was to watch their brother officers; with the result that there was no comradeship even among officers of the same regiment, each suspecting the other of being the secret agent of the Palace; they never messed together, and in many cases had never spoken to each other.

And even the spies themselves had other spies set to spy upon them by the all-suspicious ruler. The Sultan's spies were in every foreign capitalsometimes working with its secret police-to keep an eye upon the exiles and seek evidence to entrap friends of theirs in Turkey who might be in communication with them. And from this great army of spies a flood of denunciations poured into the Palace. The denunciations were well paid for, so the supply never failed, even when the terrorised people avoided any conduct that could be construed into a political offence. Agents provocateurs incited men to acts that would afford ground for accusation. The spies did not hesitate to bear false testimony against the innocent, and, as in the case of Midhat Pasha, the creatures of the Palace, when desirous of ruining some individual, employed wretches to trump up the tale that would condemn him. A friend of mine suffered long imprisonment because the secret police searched his house and there pretended to

find compromising papers which they themselves had forged. It is scarcely necessary to add that vile people availed themselves of the system to levy blackmail by threatening denunciation.

The denounced were often condemned without any pretence of a legal trial. Many of the best men in the country disappeared from their families never to return, their fate the oubliette, or death by the cord, or the traditional dropping into the Bosphorus of a sack containing the victim. Exile or imprisonment for a term of years were the punishments awarded for minor indiscretions -chance words expressing disapproval of the methods of the Palace, or the possession of a foreign paper of liberal views. People were tortured in the Palace to betray their friends and relations. Thousands of families in Turkey have had to mourn members torn away after denunciations by the spies. After the proclamation of the Constitution about seventy thousand exiles returned to Turkey from remote parts of the Empire (the Siberias of Turkey) and from foreign countries, and how many thousands have been put to death or have died in captivity no man can tell.

I may mention here that during the latter years of the Hamidian régime many Turks were denounced and suffered because they manifested friendship for the English. The Turks are not a fickle people, and despite the thirty years' aloofness of the English through misconceptions

regarding the Turkish people, the Turks themselves have ever remained faithful to their old friends, and the present enthusiasm for our country is no passing wave. But the Palace hated the British Government which had attempted to force reforms upon Turkey, and it suspected all Englishmen of sharing the views of the Balkan Committee. On the other hand, German influence became ascendant at the Palace about twelve years ago, and remained so until the overthrow of the Despotism; for German diplomacy is not sentimental; it did not worry the Palace with humanitarian pressure for the sake of securing the better government of the unfortunate subjects of the Sultan; and it even assisted the Porte to thwart the efforts of the other Powers. Its main object was to further German commercial interests. The German Embassy in Constantinople squeezed concessions out of the Turkish Government by curious methods, and knew well how to make use of Palace intrigues and corrupt officialism. Helped by their Government, German syndicates, with cynical disregard of the fact that they were hurrying the country to its ruin, worked in league with those in the Palace, who were ready to betray their fatherland for a bribe, and secured the Bagdad railway concession with its iniquitous kilometric guarantee, and other privileges, on terms far more onerous for Turkey than could

have been obtained from other quarters, thus burdening the country with unfair obligations, which now cripple her efforts for reform and reorganisation.

But I must not digress into the tortuous ways of Turkish finance, which is outside the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that German influence at the Palace undoubtedly intensified the Sultan's hatred of England, and the obsequious spies received their cue. The English in Turkey were in no wise molested, but they were declared taboo by the authorities. For a Turk to be even seen talking to an Englishman was dangerous. Turks feared to look towards the English Embassy as they passed it. They were forbidden to visit certain English establishments, such as the English book-shop in Pera, and the quaint old inn in Galata, built long ago by the Genoese, where, with a retired British sea-captain as host, naval officers, British and Turkish, had been wont to forgather in good fellowship. The spies were busily employed in denouncing such Turks as were supposed to be Anglophil. A friend of mine who at that time held a good appointment and enjoyed a large income, was reported by the spies as having intrigued to bring the British fleet to Constantinople. He was imprisoned for five He was released with all other political prisoners after the successful revolution, and came back to the world to find himself penniless; to

years.