Concerning Turkey and Bulgaria, I appealed to George Andreytchine, a Bulgarian revolutionist who as protégé of King Ferdinand was educated at Sofia and Constantinople, knowing his knowledge on this point would be authentic. He writes: “Turkey, which is the most backward of all modern states, recognized the status of political prisoners before 1895, or shortly after the Armenian massacres. Thousands of Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian and Arabian insurgents, caught with Arms in their hands, conspiring and actually in open rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, were sentenced to exile or hard labor, but were never confined in the same prisons with ordinary criminals and felons. They were put in more hygienical prisons where they were allowed to read and write and to breathe fresh air. Among some of my friends who were exiled to Turkish Africa for rebellion was a young scholar, Paul Shateff, by name, who while there wrote a remarkable monograph on the ethnology and ethnography of the Arabian Tribes in which he incidentally tells of the special treatment given him and his fellow exiles as political prisoners. “There is something to be said for the political wisdom of the Sultans. Amnesty is an established practice, usually at the birthday of the Sultan or the coming to power of a new Sultan, or on Ramadan[1], a national holiday. [1] The month (the ninth in the Mohammedan year) in which the first part of the Koran is said to have been received. “In 1908 when the young Turks assumed control of the government, all political prisoners were released and cared for by the state. My friend Paul Shateff was sent at state expense to Bruxelles to finish his studies. “Bulgaria, another one of those ‘backward countries,’ established the political regime even earlier than Turkey. Politicals are allowed to read, to write books or articles for publication, to receive food from outside, and are periodically released on amnesty.” And now we come to England. In general England, too, give’s political offenders much lighter sentences than does America, but, except in isolated cases, she treats them no better. She does not recognize them as political prisoners. If they are distinguished prisoners like Dr. Jamison, who was permitted to serve the sentence imposed upon him for leading an armed raid into the Transvaal in 1895, in a luxuriously furnished suite, to provide himself with books, a piano, and such food as he chose, and to receive his friends, special dispensation is allowed; or like William Cobbett, who was imprisoned for writing an alleged treasonable article in his journal, The Register, in 1809; or Leigh Hunt for maligning the Prince Regent who, he believed, broke his promise to the Irish cause; Daniel O’Connell and six associates in 1844 for “seditious activity”; John Mitchell, who in 1848 was sent to Bermuda and then to Van Dieman’s Land.[2] These British prisoners, while not proclaimed as politicals, did receive special privileges.[3]