I HAVE had the opportunity since the Revolution of talking with many friends whom I have made at different times in Palestine, in the Yemen and Mesopotamia, in Asia Minor and Macedonia and the Islands, and I am convinced that the Young Turks of Europe were filled with a real enthusiasm two years ago for their work of reform.

There seems every probability of the new régime bearing good fruit in Mesopotamia. In the days of despotism that country was distinguished by perhaps the most most efficient organisation in Turkey, the Daira - es-Saniyah. This institution derived its authority from Yildiz rather than from the Porte, that is, from the Sultan, and not from the Council of Ministers. It combined admirable moral principles with a very intelligent system of land-grabbing, and the officials who directed its working were some of the cleverest and most educated men in the Ottoman Empire. Besides other advantages, it had absolute jurisdiction over its own lands, immunity from taxation, and exemption from the ordinary law. Not unnaturally, it paid extremely well, and when it had possessed itself of the land, it treated the people with consideration. It was often by the following very very simple method that it acquired its great possessions. Cultivation in Mesopotamia depends upon

the water-supply, which the soil receives from the river. It was customary for the cultivators to combine to keep the canals open which fed their lands. In one way or another, by fair means or by foul, the Sultan's company acquired the greater portion of the land adjacent to the river. It then allowed the canals to silt up and become choked. This naturally produced a water famine from which all the other owners suffered, for without irrigation the land reverts at once to desert. The position of the Daira-es-Saniyah was too strong for the Arabs. Opposition collapsed, and much land was sold to it for a song. When, however, these transactions had taken place, it set to work to improve the conditions of its domains and of the people.

Under the guidance of Sir William Wilcocks it seems certain that the Turks will be able to restore the proverbial fertility of Mesopotamia, and convert an organisation which was previously a defiant monopoly into an institution of the greatest value to the Empire.

Many policies have been tried in the Yemen: it has been courted and conquered, won by blows and wooed with smiles. Sometimes the two processes have been carried on together, as when Achmet Feizy was Commander-in-Chief. Then, in spite of the fact that under the Iman Mahommed

Until 1908 the government of Arabia Felix had always been a rule of "Somehow, and the best that can be said of it is that the Jews preferred Turkish to Arab domination.

A fact came to my know ledge which convinced me that the Government are genuine in their desire for reform in those regions. A Coptic friend of mine was discussing the present situation with one of the Arab Deputies from the Yemen, who did not know he was a Christian, and so claimed his sympathy as a fellow Moslem. The Deputy complained with great bitterness of the attitude of the Young Turks towards his country. "For," he said, "they would put us on an equality with the Jews-we, who are the lords of the land." If this difficulty can be overcome (and it must be remembered that an Arab is something more than a Jew upon horseback, in his turbulence and vindictive pride), and, if the nomad can be induced to become a cultivator of the soil, then, in time, the Yemen may develop its incomparable resources. Its pacification is of the greatest importance, as, although there is no unity amongst the Arabs, unrest is communicated in waves from one Province to another, so that the loss of Arabia Felix would mean

It was hard to say where the taxes fell with the greatest cruelty in the old days. It is certain that they pressed upon the beautiful land of Syria with very great harshness. Olive-yards were cut down in bad seasons to escape the heavy taxes that were placed upon the trees, and a great number of natives emigrated to the United States. For other reasons, there had also been an extensive emigration from Montenegro, and in the next few years it will be interesting to watch the clash of new ideas with ancient traditions, and the workings of the American training of those who return to a patriarchal and old-world system.

Though the spirit of the Crusades survives in Syria, yet it is not universal, and it can

be exaggerated. A friend of mine, a distinguished Christian deputy, Obeidullah Effendi, who is famous for his Arabic translation of Homer, represents Beyrout, chiefly by virtue of

Moslem votes.

In Asia Minor the problem lies less in granting reforms, but rather in the difficulty of inducing the people to accept any kind of innovation. For there it is Young Turkey against Old Turkey; salaries against baksheesh; 1911 against 1600 A.D. If the great experiment is to succeed, it must be by virtue of conciliation; for Young Turkey cannot hold her place amongst the nations on the corpse of Old Turkey, since her main strength resides in the fighting blood of the warriors of Anatolia.

It was my good fortune to be present at the opening of the Turkish Parliament after the Constitution had been granted, and as I looked at that great spectacle, I thought that the representatives of Anatolia would have found more favour in the eyes of soldiers than amongst politicians. At that astonishing wedding of the ballot-box and the sword it was Asia that held its breath while Europe did the talking.

In the East one is accustomed to the oddest combinations, but the incongruities of that day remain unusually vivid in my mind. On my way to this ceremony I passed a procession, at whose head there lurched a Bactrian camel, while at its tail there panted a taxicab! These two were not more ill-mated than the Kurdish and

the Armenian Deputy, or than the Arab with his sword and the Syrian Jew. It was a marriage of necessity, not of love, this union of the old and the new, of European methods and the spirit of Islam: it came because it had to come. One of the leading spirits of the Committee, a man whose eloquence in six languages did good service to the cause of the Constitution, said to me: "There is no muleteer" (the Turkish muleteer is not supposed to represent a high type), "however stupid and ignorant he may be, isolated in the mountains, who does not recognise that the downfall of Islam is at hand unless we find salvation immediately." That, I think, was true, and it was the knowledge that something had to be done at once, combined with the accumulated tyranny of thirty years, that determined the success of the Revolution; but other factors will decide whether its work is to live. Great oppression, a harsh and uncertain system of military service, and outrageous taxation, may combine to make the organisation of a vast secret society possible, and to engineer a wonderful conspiracy, without securing a permanent result. For, when the pressure of necessity is removed and tyranny abolished, the spirit of revolt which brought those forces of resistance into being is apt to lose its power. Though the institution and working of a new system of administration may seem to be easier than the achievement of the Turkish Revolution, in

reality it is the harder task. One thing, however, is certain, -that though the ballot-box, as Europe has found, does not always represent even the majority of votes that are cast into it, the sword can only be represented by the sword.

For many years the Ottoman Empire has been dumb, since all speeches were considered treasonable; and even gatherings to watch wrestling were forbidden. Consequently, when Turkey awoke she knew herself to be behind the times, and had to take her spokesman on trust, since in the old days the best men did not dare to show themselves, or had been banished to an obscure exile. It was often the Turk who had the civilisation of Paris who spoke for the peasant of Anatolia. Responsibility was given to him because he knew the ways of Europe; but that knowledge can only keep him in power if it agrees with strict adherence to the traditions of Islam. Suleiman the Magnificent would have made short work of any Committee whose conclusions differed from his own, and the Turkish character which he represented has not altered since that time.

When Parliament was opened one heard speeches perpetually and in every place, and it was very often pathetic to listen to exiles who realised how close their country had been to ruin. They execrated the past and saw the future through a golden haze; but they were conscious that their inexperi

ence made them helpless, and that they had no alternative but to accept the services of men whose education had been different to their own, and upon whose talents they could not always rely.

The antipathy to constitutional methods which exists in many places argues no love of the old régime, though it constitutes the chief difficulty of the Government in its relations with the Moslems of the empire. Innovations in Asia Minor must come, if they are to be accepted - not as the offspring of new principles, but as fresh manifestations of the wisdom of Providence; the Electoral Law must conform to the Sheriat, and modern legislation to the traditions of Mahomet. The problem is hard to solve in Asia Minor, but even there the friction is less

concentrated than in Europe. For, in Anatolia, the Turk is undisputed master; the maëlstrom of ideals is on this side of the Bosphorus, and here the difficulties are not the less stubborn because they are not always supported by logic.

For here history fights with politics, dreams with facts, and ghosts struggle with realities in a geographical, ethnological, and religious cauldron. One does not expect a foundling, ignorant of his paternity, to look for the inspiration of his life to an ancestral hypothesis. Yet Greeks, who until a few years ago have always spoken Bulgarian, when they are persuaded that their forefathers were Hellenes, become fanat