There are thus excuses for the misunderstanding that poisoned the minds of so many Englishmen against their former friends, the Turks. Greeks, Bulgarians, and others who sought the dismemberment of Turkey and the appropriation of Macedonia voiced their cause loudly, not only with just denunciations of the Turkish oppression of the Christians, but with many plausible inventions. That the Turkish side of the question was so rarely heard was also largely due to the fact that, during the few years preceding the revolution, it became ever more difficult for Englishmen in Turkey to have friendly intercourse with the Turks themselves. The intervention of the English Government to introduce reforms into Turkey, and the action of the Balkan and Armenian Committees, which were wrongly believed by the Sultan and his advisers—and appear still to be believed by all Germans and Austrians—to be the agents in advance of the perfidious English Government, so intensified the hatred of the Turkish despotism against England that it was practically made a crime for a Turk, especially if he was suspected of Liberal tendencies, to receive an Englishman into his house. If a Turk was even seen to speak to an Englishman in Constantinople the spies reported the fact to the Palace; and, as I shall explain later, to manifest sympathy for the British cost many a Turk his life and liberty. Thus the intelligent tourist, or the globe-trotting M.P., who visited Constantinople in those days was not in a position to pick up accurate information. His doings and goings would probably be watched by spies, especially if he was a member of the Balkan Committee. Though he knew it not, he would find no opportunity of conversing with Turks save such as were the secret agents of the Palace. His dragomans would be Greeks or Armenians, who might speak to him of the grievances of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, but certainly not of the grievances of the Turks. So, too, was it with most of the journalists. If they were anti-Turks they sought information from the members of the Greek and Bulgarian bands, and if they were pro-Turks they were on friendly terms with officialdom—they had audiences with ministers, possibly with the Sultan himself; and as all Turks are very polite, they often left the audience-chamber charmed with despotism, and explained, in the papers they represented, that the Young Turk party was either a myth or a small and impotent group of malcontents, who, during a sojourn in Paris, had absorbed the wild theories of the internationalists and anarchists.