cubus under which they suffered under Abdul Hamid? Is life and property more secure? Are the people showing signs of hopefulness? The answers to all these questions are, on the whole, favorable. The pilots and the officers have had serious disputes among themselves, but the ship of State has been steadily, though slowly, forging ahead. The revenue for the last financial year, as shown by the returns up to the middle of April, is two millions in excess of that of the previous year, and amounts to thirty millions of Turkish pounds.

The construction of railways is going steadily forward. I am strongly tempted to give details, but space permits me here only to deal with railways as affecting the population of the country. Hitherto the peasant in the neighborhood of one of them cultivated, say, only two fields; that is, he grew enough corn to supply food for himself and family, to obtain seed-corn for the following year and to exchange some of his produce for a little coffee and sugar supplied by the village shopkeeper. It was useless to cultivate more, because to get his produce to the market would in most cases have cost him double what he could sell it for. In past years I have given many concrete instances of produce of various kinds, and in many districts of Turkey, which has been allowed to rot because of the cost of transport to a market. Now that the railway has come to his neighborhood the peasant has begun to cultivate four fields, the produce of two of which he can send to market at a profit. Throughout the length of the new lines the same story is heard. New lands are being broken up for cultivation-new, that is, in the sense that they have not been worked for centuries. Upon the long plain of Konia attention is being paid to water supply and irrigation.

A railway in a country like Turkey

is a great civilizer. To enable peasants to get their produce to market brings an inducement to work, offers the prospect of being able to obtain what in the West are considered the necessities of life, such as properly ground flour, salt, sugar, coffee, and soap; of being able to buy a plough and other simple agricultural implements; of village communities being able to support a doctor, a schoolmaster, and a priest. Education follows, for the peasant attaches real imporance to a knowledge of reading and writing, and, now that politics have given a new interest in life, wants to read a newspaper. Agriculture is the chief occupation in Turkey. But industrial business has also been making steady progress since the revolution. manufacture of carpets, which is largely a peasant industry, has taken a great development. The large companies, native and foreign, have difficulty in finding workers to complete their orders. They have to pay wages which would have been regarded as impossible four years ago. The peas

The

ant is beginning to learn the value of his labor. Companies also have been formed or extended for making cotton yarn, for weaving cloth, for fig-packing, for extracting olive and other oils. It has been found that the materials exist in several parts of Turkey, and notably near the capital, for making cement and hydraulic lime, and native companies have been formed for utilizing these substances. A builder informs me that he anticipates a great future in Turkey for beton armé, which in English is, I believe, fortified cement. To make the various railways useful, and to develop material prosperity, Young Turkey had to take a preliminary step; namely, to allow freedom of travel. This boon was granted immediately after the revolution. I have heard more said in favor of the abolition of the yol teskeré, or local passport,

There are in the plain to which I have so frequently referred communities which have either reverted to a stage of barbarism, or have never grown out of it. At Ivriz, for example, where one of the best of the socalled Phrygian monuments exists, I saw a village which is occupied by those who are possibly the descendants of the Hittites who carved on the gigantic rocks of their almost inaccessible valley, a noble image of their god and of his priest. Armies of invaders have traversed the long plain of which Konia is the centre, and passed the gorges of the Taurus and other ranges which surround it, unheeding the dwellers hidden in the mountains and unwilling to attack where a victory would be dearly bought and prove valueless. So the isolated inhabitants lived on, uncared for and unknown. Ivriz may be taken as a sample of many such villages. Travellers of less than a generation ago noted that its people dressed as their god was represented; that they were not Christians, but had some kind of sun-worship. Some ten years ago, the Governor of Konia, finding that European travellers occasionally visited the valley, sent to say that their women must cover their faces, and to inform them that they were Moslems. He even built them a small mosque. Now, these people and other interesting communities, like one

Nor are the hopeful signs of which I have spoken only those of material progress. There is especially one notable change deserving notice, which may have far-reaching results. The distressing hostility between the Greeks and the Bulgarians has greatly diminished. The question of the possession of the churches in Macedonia which divided them more than any other has been settled nearly everywhere, and this largely owing to the statesmanlike leadership of the Orthodox Patriarch and the Bulgarian Exarch. The Christian subjects of the Sultan of all races have probably worked more harmoniously together than ever before. The introduction of Christians into the army, and the very serious attempts which Shevket Pasha and other members of the Government have made to conciliate the heads of the Christian communities in regard thereto have had an excellent effect; and this notwithstanding the outrages in Macedonia upon the Christian population. The leaders of the Churches recognize that under a constitutional system, common action can be more effectively taken than ever before.

If

I am to believe a report which I have not been able to verify, some of the Committee of Union and Progress are somewhat alarmed at this common action, the tradition of divide et impera being difficult to forget. But the leading members of the Committee ought to rejoice in it, acknowledging that harmonious working of all the elements of which the nation is composed cannot be obtained by efforts to keep them apart. For probably the first time in Turkish history, the heads of all the Christian communities have met to consult together for common interests. Mr. Stead was greatly delighted to be present at such a meeting, and ex

Something must be said about the capital itself. Travellers who have visited the city during the last few months, and who knew it upwards of four years ago, are surprised at the improvements everywhere seen. The principal streets are better paved than they have ever been. Side-walks of a uniform level, and paved either with cement or with tiles formed of that material, have taken the place of tracks which were either not paved at all or paved, at the will of the neighboring proprietor, with bricks or slabs of stone. The principal streets have been widened by the cutting away of houses which often projected half-way across the street. The chief bridge from Galata and Stamboul, with a traffic in passengers possibly equal to that of London Bridge, was replaced last April by one double the width-about that of Westminster Bridge-which is at once convenient and handsome. An Anglo-French-American Company has preparations well advanced for giving us the telephone. The existing tramway is in process of being transformed from horse traction to that by electricity. Electric railways are promised.

The improved pavement of our streets has allowed us to have taxicabs and auto-buses. There is new life and activity among the citizens. Shops are kept open two hours later than they were four years ago. We are even beginning, since we adopted the European method of keeping our clocks, to learn punctuality. The

war with Italy has told severely on the hotel and shop-keepers. During the spring months of the past three years there have been crowds of excursionists from every European country and from America. These ceased to come, and much local business has been lost. But for these losses incidental to war, the merchants, tradesmen, and laborers of the capital are doing well.

The war with Italy has been a blow to Turkey's progress, but it has had important effects which deserve notice. It has strengthened the hands of the Government. It has made the population appreciate the improvements in the discipline of the army, and at the same time has shown the powerlessness of the Turkish fleet. Until the bombardment of Koum-Kali at the entrance of the Dardanelles, it suggested the struggle between an elephant and a whale. Great was the delight which many Turkish subjects showed when they judged that the bombardment mentioned was due to the belief that the Italians might end in landing an army. In such an eventuality, every Turk believed that their army would make short work with it; a belief which impartial foreigners shared, but always with the proviso that the landing should not be contemporaneous with the descent of a Bulgarian army. to the enormously increased efficiency of the Turkish troops, no one who has seen their development during the last four years can have any doubt. The experience of the introduction of Christians among them has so far worked well. The slow progress of the Italian expedition in Tripoli has surprised the Turks as much as foreigners. The appearance of Italian ships before several Turkish islands-Samos, Lemnos, Cos, Rhodes, and Mitylene-had little effect. The semi-official attitude among the Turks was that whether the islands are captured or not is a matter of slight importance. The bombardment and

As

capture of Rhodes is more serious. The object which Italy has in view in taking Rhodes and other islands is obvious. Turkey has constantly declared that she cannot, and will not, surrender Tripoli. Italy has already by a legislative act annexed it. Peace can only be obtained by a decisive defeat, which is highly improbable, or by a bargain; but Italy has nothing to swop. It is true that the Turks declare they do not care whether the islands are taken or not, but Italy does not believe this. It is incredible that the Turks should not regret the loss of islandsespecially that of Rhodes-which are associated with some of the most brilliant triumphs of their ablest sultans, notably Mohamet the Conqueror and Suleiman. Until the attack on Rhodes took place, the Turks had done more harm to their own subjects by their measures of defence in the Egean than the Italians had done. The injury to commerce by keeping upwards of a hundred merchant steamers locked up in the Marmora and the Bosphorus fell mostly upon neutrals, and chiefly upon the British and Russian merchants. The statement probably put forward as a feeler in the Turkish papers that the Straits would not be opened until Europe had guaranteed that the Turkish islands should not be attacked, was generally ridiculed as an attempt to force the neutral States to become belligerents on the side of Turkey. It afforded also a useful comment on the wide-spread fiction that Turkey cared little for the loss of her islands. The falling off in customs receipts, owing to the declaration of war, during the first three months was serious, amounting to about £120,000, but it was surprising to see how rapidly Austrian, French, German, and British merchants seized the opportunity of pouring into Turkey their own manufactures, which now come in steadily to replace those which came from Italy. Indeed, the

blow to Italian commerce will be severe because, old markets once lost, recovery becomes difficult. Turkey, from its proximity, was one of the best, if not the best, market for Italian manufactures.

Nevertheless, the continuance of the war is unfortunate for Turkey. The direct and continuous expense, though certainly far below that which Italy is incurring, is heavy. Money is spent on war equipments which can ill be spared. Men are called to the ranks from the fields where they are greatly needed. The Italians, laborers, and others who have been expelled are wanted for this industrial development of the country. In addition to all this there is the constant fear of complications with the Balkan States. It is true that the speeches of last month of Mr. Sassonow in St. Petersburg and Count Berchtold in Vienna confirm the indications previously given that Russia and Austria greatly desire the maintenance of the status quo in the Balkan peninsula, but disturbances in Macedonia and Albania may force them to take action. The dismissal of Mr. Charykoff from his post of Russian Ambassador in the month of April last may have been owing to merely personal considerations, but it had the appearance here, and was taken to mean, that he had shown himself too friendly to Young Turkey. It is worth noting that an interview with him published in the last days of December, and which it is believed was submitted to and approved by him, expressed sentiments which a correspondent of the same journal was expressly authorized by St. Petersburg to contradict a few days afterwards.

My conclusion in reference to the progress of Turkey is, that, all things considered, she has made as much progress since July, 1908, as ought reasonably to have been expected. This progress is much less than was hoped