No one of course would ever think of setting it down as a black mark against Talaat, for example, that he had to work his way up to his present supreme position from the very modest occupation of postman and postal coach conductor on the Adrianople road, via telegraph assistant and other branches of the Post Office; on the contrary, such intelligence and energy are worthy of the highest praise. But Talaat's case is a comparatively good one, and it is not so much their low social origin that is a drawback to these political leaders of Turkey, as their complete lack of education in statesmanship and history, which unfits them for the high rôle they are called upon to fill. Naturally it is not exactly pleasant when a man like Herr Paul Weitz, the correspondent of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, and a political agent, can boast with a certain amount of justification that he has given tips of money to many of the present members of the "Committee"--in the real sense of the word, not in the political meaning of _backshish_! It is no wonder, then, that German influence won its way through so easily! Even yet Talaat's lowly origin is a drawback to him socially, and, in spite of his jovial manner and his complete confidence in his own powers, he sometimes feels himself so unsure that he rather avoids social duties. Probably one of the reasons of his long delay in accepting the post of Grand Vizier--he was already definitely marked out for it in the summer of 1915--was his own inner consciousness that his whole past life unfitted him socially for the duties of such an office. That he has now decided to accept it, is only the logical sequence of the system of absolute Turkification, which, with its plan of muzzling and supplanting all non-Turkish elements, had of course to get rid of the Egyptian element in the Government, represented by Prince Halim Saïd, the late Grand Vizier, and his brother, the late Minister of Public Works. There are far more outstanding cases of incompatibility between social upbringing and present activity among the "Committee." I will simply take the single example of the Director General of the Press, Hikmet Bey. Mischievous Pera still gives him the nick-name of "_Sütdji_" ("milkman"), because--although it is no reproach to him any more than in Talaat's case--he still kept his father's milk shop in the Rue Tepé Bashi in Pera before he managed to get himself launched on a political career by close adherence to the Committee. Sometimes, of course, one inherits from a low social origin far worse things than social inferiority. Perhaps Djemal Pasha's murderous instincts are to be traced to the fact that his grandfather was the official hangman in the service of Sultan Mahmud, and that his father still retained the nick-name of "hangman" among the people.