During Abdul Hamid’s reign Ahmed Riza had of his own will gone into exile, and from Paris he had wielded great influence over the movement that led to the revolution of 1908. But when the Young Turk Government had practically become dictatorial and had yielded to the pressure that drove it towards Germany, he realised that policy was a failure and was leading the Empire to ruin; then, though he had been one of the promoters of the movement, he protested repeatedly in the Senate, of which he was a member, against the illegal doings of the Government and its foolhardy policy. As President of the “National Block”—which, though not a political party properly speaking, aimed at grouping all the conservative constitutional elements friendly to the Entente—he seemed likely to play an important part in public life again when, about the middle of August, 1919, it was rumoured that the Damad Ferid Government was about to take action against him and his political friends; and soon after it was made known that he intended to go to Italy or France till the reopening of the Ottoman Parliament. After staying in Rome, where he had conversations with some political men of note in order to establish an intellectual entente between Italians and Turks, he settled in Paris. The English censorship, which gagged the Turkish newspapers, went so far as to prevent them from reprinting extracts from French newspapers that were favourable to the Ottoman cause. It brought ridicule upon itself by censuring the Bible; in an article in the _Univers Israélite_, reprinted by the _Aurore_, which quoted and commented on three verses of chapter xix. of Isaiah, the censor cut off the first of these verses, which may be interpreted as foreshadowing a League of Nations, but in which he was afraid the reader might find a hint at a connection between Egypt and Asia and at the claims of the Turkish and Egyptian Nationalists. This is the verse, which any reader could easily restore: “In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.” Footnotes: 21: Cf. the _Matin_, June 17, 1920, an interview of M. Paul Benazet, ex-chairman of the Committee of War Estimates; and the _Œuvre_, July 8, 1920. 22: Cf. the _Matin_, June 21, 1920, and M. Fribourg’s speech in the second sitting of June 25, 1920. 23: _Figaro_, March 18, 1920. 24: Radet, _La Lydie et le monde grec au temps des Mermnades_ (Paris, 1893). 25: Oppert, _Le Peuple des Mèdes_. VI THE TREATY WITH TURKEY