I love every inch of Constantinople. There are obvious and important religious-historical associations with its mosques and its public buildings; comfort and dignity, space and beauty, are, as it were, already at hand. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, to me it lacks, and will always lack, the marvellous atmosphere of a Great Birth that so impresses one in Angora. The Turks, I found, were unanimous in having a similar preference and, naturally, put forward more precise and practical reasons for their choice. There may be occasion for a _temporary_ sojourn in Constantinople. _But_ they want an “Asiatic” capital; they want to govern their own country beyond the reach of possible interference from dreadnoughts; they want to maintain an intimate continuity of association with the cradle of the movement that begot the State. There is, moreover, a primitive and Asiatic charm in Angora, which should serve, as it were, to “keep them holy” from the materialisms and the intrigues of Western commerce-Empires. Here we are all brothers, fellow-labourers in a common cause. All have suffered—at Malta, in Egypt, or from corrupt Ottoman Imperial Government. Could such union and natural intimacy exist elsewhere? The “Brotherhood” of the East does not mean anything like our various forms of socialism. The “democracy” or almost complete ignoring of class distinctions, does not destroy, or even modify, the inherited respectful submission of illiterate peasants to their “superiors” in intellect, authority, or military power. Their religion teaches them to obey. It _does_ mean a universal recognition of identity of interest; that the “good of all” is every man’s good and every man’s responsibility; that all have _equal_ rights to know what can be done for them by the State, to give their opinions, to express their wishes or their complaints, and to be heard with courteous attention. You feel that literally the whole nation is being busy about its welfare and its hopes. With us, of course, the submerged proletariat could not practise (and would not be _allowed_ to practise) such _real_ equality without perpetual self-assertion and loud outcries against the “slavery” of the past. Every Turk, in his degree, has always been content with so little. His personal nature is uncomplaining, from a combination of fine feeling and what in us would mean lack of courage. Herein lies at once their great weakness and their great strength.