Young Turk cause was welcomed in England was all humbug—a cleverly engineered manifestation of friendship whose object it was to secure for Great Britain the influence in Turkey which Germany had lost by the revolution but confidently looked forward to recovering at an early date by more straightforward if more brutal methods. The thirty years of despotism, by its deliberate encouragement of corruption, had demoralised a great part of the Turkish nation. The cure cannot come in a day, and those well provided with money can still buy power in Constantinople. It was amid very corrupt surroundings that the Young Turks, pure themselves, set to work to undertake the regeneration of Turkey and to make the Empire strong. To begin with, Constantinople is full of men who have lived by corrupt practices all their lives—the men who were blackmailing spies under the old _régime_, or had belonged to that huge tribe of useless functionaries who used to crowd every public department and had to be bribed by those whom business brought into contact with them. All these people, their occupation now gone, are wandering about the capital in very disconsolate mood, hard up, regretting “the good old days,” and hating the purifying influence that has brought this change about. These men are all reactionaries; many of them know well how to poison the minds of ignorant people against the Committee with cunning inventions. They are largely responsible for the growing popular dislike of the Committee. It is very difficult for the people in the capital to arrive at the truth, and they are largely at the mercy of paid agitators and schemers. Even foreign Governments are able to influence public opinion in Turkey. The Germans and Austrians possess a useful piece of machinery for the dissemination of news to serve their own interests in the shape of a telegraphic agency which supplies Constantinople with practically all its foreign information, and sells its despatches by the column to the newspapers of that city at a low rate that cannot possibly pay the expenses of the service. The news which purports to come from London is often of an astonishing character. I understand that the Committee of Union and Progress is now about to reorganise its constitution and convert itself into what we should call a Parliamentary party; but under whatever name it continues its existence it is to be hoped that this body of men, which has done such great and noble work for Turkey, which contains so many men of single-minded, self-sacrificing patriotism, will remain the dominating party in the country. But it will have to be as the strong man armed and ever watchful, for its enemies are many and have the money wherewith, alas! the consciences of both men and newspapers can still be purchased in Turkey. CHAPTER XXI _THE NEW SULTAN_