I will now briefly sum up the results of the Committee’s energetic action during the few weeks immediately following the proclamation of the Constitution. In the first place it had to make itself as strong as possible so as to combat the reactionary intrigues that were working for the restoration of the Despotism. It therefore set itself to establish its hold on the army, to obtain the sanction of the Moslem religion, and to complete the pacification of Macedonia. It took the precaution of removing from the Second and Third Army Corps all officers suspected of reactionary views, and concentrated the bulk of the troops loyal to the Constitution at Adrianople, within striking distance of the capital, where, at any rate, a considerable portion of the First Army Corps and the Sultan’s Prætorian Guard only needed the word from the Palace to become the instrument of the reactionaries. Later on the Committee was able to obtain the removal of most of the battalions of the Imperial Guard from Constantinople and to replace them with troops from Salonica, thus securing the Committee’s domination in the capital. [Illustration: CHATEAU OF ASIA] As regards the religious question, the work of the Young Turks was made easy by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, who—so soon as he had administered to the Sultan the oath by which the latter swore to respect the Constitution—proclaimed to the faithful that constitutional government was not contrary to, but was in accordance with, the teaching of the Koran; he rebuked the fanatics who were preaching against the reforms as being anti-religious, and saw to it that the mosques were not used as centres of reactionary agitation and intrigue. For the reactionaries were not idle, and, in European as well as in Asiatic Turkey, their agents—often ex-Palace spies disguised as doctors of the sacred law and _hodjas_—were appealing to Moslem bigotry and denouncing the Constitution as the invention of the Evil One himself. To counteract this mischievous propaganda the Committee sent out its own missionaries all over the country, and doctors learned in the sacred law and others enlightened the people, supporting their arguments with quotations from the Koran, and in many cases preaching sermons that had been written for this purpose by the Sheikh-ul-Islam himself. It was also a great help to the cause that nearly all the Turkish press supported the Committee. Indeed, during the first few months of the new _régime_, a paper holding the unpopular opposite opinions would have had but few readers.