At about this time Kermanle Metre, once a leader of a rebel band, who had been pardoned and had since done signal service as a Government officer, was tried and condemned to death unjustly, as the result of Russian intrigue. This cowardly betrayal of a valued servant by the Government aroused profound indignation throughout the Macedonian army, and was one of the most important of the factors that combined to effect the moral union between, not only the army, but also the Moslem civil population, with the Committee of Union and Progress; for the incident was a proof to the Mussulmans that the Government was an immoral one, “acting in defiance of the Sacred Law, the Moslem Religion, and Ottoman ideals.” Niazi Bey himself received orders to take Kermanle Metre to Monastir and he determined to save his prisoner’s life at the risk of his own. So, after arresting him, he connived at his flight, and the agents of the Committee restored the man to his home. This escape of their compatriot from the gallows with the assistance of the Committee of Union and Progress produced a great effect upon the Bulgarian peasants in the district, who said to themselves that a power that administered justice had at last risen in the land; and from this time the Bulgarian revolutionaries used to listen with an increasing respect and sympathy to Niazi when he argued that Mussulmans and Christians, being all brothers of one fatherland, should work in union to obtain a Government that would assure justice and equality for all. While Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs in Macedonia by noise and violence had been urging their racial claims in anticipation of the break-up of the Turkish Empire, the Moslem Turks under the direction of the Committee of Union and Progress had been steadily and patiently working for the liberation of their country, employing methods so secret that the outer world knew nothing of the movement and was deceived into thinking that the Mussulman backbone of the population was regarding the progress of events with indifference. The European Powers had ignored the memorandum in which the Committee had protested against the intervention of England and Russia in Macedonia, and patriots recognised that the time had arrived to come out in the open and strike the blow for freedom before that intervention and the increasing activity of the Palace spies had made it too late to act with any chance of success. Towards the end of June it was realised that it needed but a spark to start a general rising, and it was decided that certain young officers, who were members of the Committee, should abandon the Government service, form bands in various places, take to the mountains and organise the insurrection of the united Mussulman and Christian populations.