The “sights” for tourists do not delay one many days. There are excellent “Red Cross” hospitals, a military hospital, an école normale for girls, a military school, the Ministries, town gardens, the Armenian Orphanage, the “Embassies,” and the Ottoman Bank. One can also enjoy long drives through miles of uncultivated land. These various “institutions,” particularly the educational, are full of interest if one had time to thoroughly investigate the whole system, since probably no civilisation in the world differs so radically from our own. Explorations, however extensive, must all be over before five o’clock. For as the eastern sun sets in its glory, we all go home—ministers and deputies to plan and work, the rest of the population to talk and wonder what the “great folk” are doing. I never understood how all the people managed to hide themselves in so few houses. Turks, we all know, can perform miracles with mattresses and divans; but even their ingenuity can seldom have overcome so “tough a problem” as the inhabitants, official and civil, of Angora. There _is_, admittedly, a housing “problem,” and building has not yet begun. As Angora is to be the permanent seat of Government, they cannot much longer delay the important consideration of providing for Foreign Embassies. I have already driven many times past the Assembly (which closely resembles one of our county clubs); I have seen the admirably-arranged flower-gardens and heard the band. To-morrow, for the first time, I am to _enter_ the Nationalist Parliament! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVII ANGORA III.—THE MARVELLOUS ATMOSPHERE OF A GREAT BIRTH IN all my wanderings, East and West, over Europe and America, I have nowhere been so much thrilled by a dominating sense of “real effort” as at Angora. Against a background of prehistoric civilisations, the human bees swarm in and out of their Parliament, buzzing away night and day, a _free and independent Turkey_. What will their “delegation” accomplish at Lausanne? Is the war only postponed, or will there be peace? “At one moment our spirits rise to the most daring hopes; we see ourselves marching into Constantinople. At the next, Younous Nadi Bey reports ‘grave news’ from abroad, and preparations for war are resumed.” The colonel persists in “doubt” towards England. “Do you know,” said I, “I am astonished at my own superiority?” He was not convinced, but demanded chapter and verse. “We both love Turkey; but I also love your country and you dislike mine. Therefore, am I not immensely your superior?” * * * * *