The Greeks, gifted as they are with administrative capacity, held high appointments under the old _régime_, and will no doubt do so to a greater extent under a constitutional Government; but as a people they have yet to prove themselves loyal Ottomans. During the elections their one thought was for the interests of their own race. Headed by the [OE]cumenical Patriarch, they demanded the maintenance of all the privileges that had been granted to them from the time of the Turkish conquest. The Moslems have had to give up their special rights, but the Greeks refused to surrender a single one of their privileges for the sake of Ottoman unity. The Greeks chatter about liberty, equality, and fraternity, but their aim is to secure to themselves advantages over the other Christian peoples; and the Patriarchate, the most cruel and intolerant ecclesiastical tyranny remaining in the world, makes use of “liberty” to increase its persecutions of the exarchists and other schismatics. In the ranks of the reactionaries are to be found many Greeks who profited much by the Despotism whose parasites they were. A large number of the Greeks in Turkey still cling to their separatist aspirations. Even as I write this the Greeks in Macedonia are breaking the peace which the Young Turks brought to that long harassed land; for large Greek bands are once more in the field, with no shadow of a grievance as their excuse for brigandage this time, but agitating for various things, including the annexation of Crete to Greece. If the great Powers would act together and let it be clearly understood that under no conceivable circumstances will Greece be permitted to annex another foot of Ottoman territory, the Greeks in Turkey might become the useful citizens of a united country; for they, like all the other peoples in European Turkey, would prefer even a Hamidian despotism to the domination of Germany, Austria, or Russia. CHAPTER XX _THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT_ On December 17 Abdul Hamid drove through the streets of his capital between cheering crowds to open the Turkish Parliament. The scene has been often described, and it is unnecessary here to relate again the events of that memorable day. That night I sailed through the Dardanelles, and on either side of me, on the shores of both Europe and Asia, every little town and village and the anchored fleets of fishing craft in the harbours were brightly illuminated; isolated farm-houses on snowy hillsides had their windows full of lights; fires blazed on many a lonely peak; and so it was all along the shores of Turkey from the Adriatic and the Ægean to the Black Sea and the shores of the Persian Gulf. It was a day and a night of rejoicing, and so contagious was the sincere enthusiasm that even the most cynical foreigner in the land had not the heart to speak otherwise than hopefully of the future of this freed country.