The secret central committee, therefore, held its meetings in Salonica, and kept up a constant communication with branch committees in Scutari of Albania, Monastir, Janina, and other towns, and later it had its small local committee in nearly every village of Macedonia and Albania. Before the outbreak of the revolution it had established its branch committees in all the important towns of Asiatic Turkey. Of those who composed the Salonica Committee I have met many. They were all men from what we should term the upper and middle classes—young officers in the army who had passed through the military schools and had profited by the splendid system of instruction introduced by the genius of Baron von der Goltz—the one good thing for which Turkey has reason to be grateful to Germany; young civil servants of the different State departments; land-owning Macedonian beys; professors; lawyers; doctors and some of the _ulemas_. Of officers of high rank and of the heads of the Civil Service there were none; for most of these were creatures of the Palace, and such as may have had sympathy with the Young Turk cause were, in consequence of their position, too closely watched by the Yildiz spies to take an active part in the movement. All the men—for the most part men under middle age—who became members of the secret committee were distinguished for their intense and unselfish patriotism, men who commanded the respect and admiration of every foreigner who has come in contact with them. This revolution did not come from below, from debased city mobs or ignorant peasantry, but from above, from all that is best in Turkey. The self-seeking demagogue had no part in this revolution. These men, who devoted their lives to overthrowing the Despotism, represented the honest and patriotic Ottoman gentry, men who placed country above self-interest, the natural leaders of the people, belonging to a dominant race which knows how to command men—a more useful quality than much administrative knowledge. Some of the principal members of the Committee of Union and Progress in Salonica spoke to me when I was in that city, in November last, without reserve—as they will do to an Englishman who has gained their confidence—concerning their early secret organisation; for now that the danger is almost over they are quite willing that the methods which they were compelled to adopt before the granting of the Constitution should be made known. To understand with sympathy what I am about to describe, and recognise how fully justified were such assassinations as were ordered by the Committee, one must bear in mind the terrible nature of the late _régime_; how thousands of spies were scattered over the country whose business it was to denounce suspects to the Palace; how many of the best men in the country suddenly disappeared from their wives and families, never to return; how torture and death were the penalties for those who sought to set bounds to the Sultan’s absolutism.