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 last autumn's 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 wouldbe 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 underrepresentation 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 Ecumenical 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-Internal dissensions-Criticisms of the Committee of Union and Progress-Resignation of Kiamil Pasha-Nationalist parties in Parliament-The Liberal Union-Ismail Kemal Bey-Campaign against the Committee-Reactionary intrigues-Corruption in

Constantinople.

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.