The European, at least of the English-speaking world, who visits Constantinople for the first time usually arrives with extraordinary preconceptions regarding the mysterious ways, the cruelty and fanaticism of the Turk. If he be one of the open-minded few, a prolonged residence in Turkey will usually suffice to banish his previous opinions, to inspire him with sympathy, and to make him marvel how it could have been possible to harbour such false notions regarding a people and a country concerning which the average European knows so little. For there can be no doubt that our early training, the one-sided ideas of our youth due to clerical teaching from generation to generation, are the main causes of our conception of the Turks as cruel and depraved. Who of us has not been shocked as a boy in visiting the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s and viewing the array of coloured prints depicting the horrible tortures said to have been inflicted upon dishonest traders in Turkey?[21] Well might Turkish Ambassadors have protested long ago against this method of prejudicing the English mind against Turkey, as Bismarck did in Paris, after the 1870 war, against the public exhibition of M. Edouard Détaille’s well-known picture, “Nos Vainqueurs,” which was removed in consequence. But the Turk is accustomed to suffer wrong in silence, and, as far as I know, has never complained officially. Footnote 21: As far as I recollect no explanation is vouchsafed with these drawings that they refer to the Turkey of the past. Hence the likelihood that many a cockney visiting Madame Tussauds goes away with the impression that they treat of Turkish practices of to-day. The mystery attached to polygamy, our imaginary ideas concerning the position of Turkish women and the harem, may also have a great deal to do with our prejudice against the Turks. We are taught in our youth to look upon the Crusades as expeditions undertaken to protect the Tomb of Christ from the desecrating hands of the Infidel. Serious historians are no longer under any delusion as to the political character of the Crusades. Thus if the Sacred Sepulchre was ever endangered by the Turks, how came it to pass that it was not destroyed long before the Christians ever reached Jerusalem? Is it not an historical fact that Jerusalem was in the possession of the Turks for centuries before the idea of protecting the Holy Sepulchre ever occurred to the Popes? If the Crusades were justified as undertaken for the protection of the Christians against the Turks, how came it to pass that so few Christians in the East ever joined the Crusades? From what we know of Christian fanatical intolerance, even down to comparatively recent periods, is it not rather more than likely, supposing the Holy Sepulchre had been situated in a Christian country, that its very site would long ago have been obliterated?