Then there was the host of propagandists who were scattered all over the Empire doing their dangerous work, urging the civil population to embarrass the Government by a refusal to pay taxes and to prepare for a general rising, and persuading the soldiery of the righteousness of the movement, and obtaining their promise not to fight against their own countrymen when ordered to do so. So as to obtain easy access to houses and barracks, Turkish officers disguised themselves as hawkers of cheap jewellery and ribbons, or as the peripatetic sutlers who sell sherbet and little comforts to the Turkish soldier; and in their packs were always concealed the revolutionary tracts that were to spread the propaganda. One well-known officer for long kept a barber’s shop in Baghdad, and inoculated his customers with the doctrines of the conspiracy. Dr. Nazim Bey, who had been exiled, wandered over Asia Minor for eighteen months, sometimes disguised as a peddler, sometimes as a _hodja_, in order to win over the Anatolian regiments. He made initiates among the officers, and conversed with the men to such good effect that when the Sultan, in the last day of the old _régime_, despatched several battalions of the Anatolian army, to crush the military insurrection in Macedonia, these troops not only refused to fire on their comrades, but joined forces with them. One remarkable feature of the propaganda was the great part taken in it by the Turkish women. They were largely employed, for example, in the delivery of messages and the carrying of documents; for it was easy for the wife of a member of the Committee to visit the wives of other members without attracting observation. The respect that is paid to women in Turkey gives them immunity from being searched; the women’s apartments in a Turkish house are held to be inviolable, and a police officer would not venture to infringe these cherished customs without very weighty cause. The following incident exemplifies this: Shortly after the revolution had made the Committee the virtual ruler of Turkey, some young officers were sent to pay a domiciliary visit to the house of a Pasha suspected of being a party to a reactionary plot. They arrested the Pasha, but made a vain search for incriminatory documents. At last they came across a chest that had obviously been concealed, and felt confident that they had at last discovered what they were seeking. At this juncture the Pasha’s wife came forward and stated that the chest contained her jewels and other property; whereupon the officers refrained from opening it, and, saluting the lady, left the house. [Illustration: TURKISH MARKET-WOMAN IN STREET DRESS]