Through information thus obtained, strange things took place. Of course there were never any hearings or trials. None were necessary when trusted spies had reported adversely. Groups of students in the government schools disappeared and the parents even did not dare ask a question. Men of wealth found themselves bundled off to Arabia in poverty, and officials in honor on one day were in exile, if not in their graves, on the next. The only thing certain about the life of an influential and intelligent Ottoman subject was his being under strict surveillance by those who were mainly concerned to satisfy their chief of their own efficiency. During recent years the one horror of the sultan has been the “Young Turks,” which meant Turkish subjects who know about good government and are eager to see it tried in Turkey. All who were suspected of harboring such ideas were summarily treated. Many such have been banished into interior provinces such as Macedonia, Asia Minor, Armenia and Syria. Some were given minor offices in their place of banishment, but all have been diligent in promoting their ideas. There is hardly a town of importance in Turkey to which one or more of these intelligent, thinking Ottoman subjects has not been exiled and where they have not propagated their principles of reform as opportunity offered. This seed-sowing of modern ideas has been broadcast, and the seed has fallen into rich soil. During these years, secretly and in the dark, multitudes of Ottoman subjects have been studying the science of government with the best educated in the empire as instructors. The lesson has not been the less impressive because secret and the teacher none the less in earnest because his profession was perilous. Wherever these exiles went they found the people writhing under injustice. Excessive taxes were assessed and then collected by extortionate officials who, in the name of the sultan, carried on a system of public robbery. Taxes paid in the spring were again demanded in the autumn, the peasant having no defense in the absence of tax receipts. These teachers of a possible new order of things did not need to take time to persuade their hearers that a change was desirable. Restlessness, approaching a state of sheer desperation, everywhere prevailed. In the meantime, revolutionary committees or organizations among Armenians and perhaps other nationalities had identified themselves sympathetically, if not formally, with the New Turkey party. Government by espionage and instruction of the masses by banished reformers have been going on in all parts of Turkey for many years, no one can say with certainty how many. It was inevitable that a crisis must come. The additional fact that all public officials, especially the army, were poorly paid on paper, if at all, brought things to a pass that seemed to be waiting only for a leader or an occasion to precipitate concerted action.