There is probably no city, Moscow not excepted, in which so many fires take place as in Constantinople. The flimsy woodwork of the houses in the Turkish quarters, which the heat of a Constantinople sun turns in course of time to tinder, partly accounts for it. Nor must the temptation to arson among the Greeks and Armenian trading element be lost sight of. Most of the insurance is done in English offices, for the English insurance offices have hitherto been those which have met claims most handsomely and with fewest awkward questions. I have repeatedly watched the firemen as, with bare legs and chests, they rushed breathless in a body in the wake of the fire-engine across the Galata Bridge to some fire in the Stamboul quarter. One could not help being impressed by their evident whole-hearted enthusiasm, though they got little pay and no reward, and it was easy to understand how in times gone by a rush of half-naked Turkish warriors, sword in hand, has proved well-nigh irresistible against clumsily moving knights in armour and awkward pikemen. This might even explain victorious inroads up to the very walls of Vienna. The development of modern firearms and tactics, for which the Turk by his temperament is ill-fitted, seems to account for the modern defeats of the Turks far more than any racial decline. Where the virtues of courage, sincerity, piety, and self-sacrifice have admittedly remained unchanged, it would be absurd to talk of degeneration. What can be admitted is that the character of this fine race may be no longer fitted to cope successfully with the intricate demands of a modern, highly systematized civilization. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV TURKISH TRAITS: II Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood, When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good. SHAKESPEARE, _Timon of Athens_ THE conditions of life under an autocracy naturally tend towards a sense of loyalty degenerating into adulation and servility on the part of public servants, as well as towards greed and corruption on the part of those whose high position places endless opportunities for dishonesty within their reach. To estimate the character of the Turk, therefore, by the corruption at the Palace would not be fair to him. As well might we ourselves be judged by the wiles of the company promoter or the outside broker in the City of London. For despotism, however well intentioned, offers a similar field of operations for the dishonest; only the thousands who are annually robbed and ruined in the City of London, and the doings of the vultures who rob them, are not nearly so much in the public eye as the rogueries of the influential parasites in Turkey.