This secret society was to a large extent modelled on Freemasonry, and a considerable proportion of the early associates (Mussulmans for the most part, with some Jews) were members of the Masonic Lodges in Salonica. The machinery of Freemasonry, however, was not directly employed to further the propaganda, and the Lodges took no official cognizance of this political movement. It would obviously have been too dangerous to discuss such a conspiracy as this one at Masonic gatherings, where the treason of one man could destroy so many. The methods of the Italian secret societies, where a member is introduced to two or three of the affiliated only and so cannot betray more than this number, were therefore adopted by those who framed the regulations of the new organisation. But still Freemasonry was a great help to the cause; for a member of the secret society who happened to be also a Mason, while he was seeking, as was his duty, to gain fresh initiates, could more readily approach a brother Mason than any other man with this purpose, knowing that the very fact of being a Mason indicated a natural inclination to be in sympathy with the aims of the Young Turks, and feeling also that he could rely upon the secrecy and fidelity of one of the fraternity. The secret society was first known as the “Committee of Liberty,” but shortly after its creation it was amalgamated with the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” in Paris, and became the working centre of that organisation. From that time the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” had its secret headquarters in Salonica, while Ahmed Riza and his associates remained in Paris to form an important branch committee that was able to further the cause in many ways from the secure sanctuary of a foreign capital. Thus it was in Paris, in 1907, more than a year after the establishment of the Committee’s head-quarters in Salonica, that, at the instance of the Paris branch, there was held that Congress of Turkish revolutionaries of which I have already spoken, at which Committees representing the various races of the Empire agreed to co-operate with the Young Turks.