On the financial side, apart from Turkey's enormous debt to Germany, the wonderful attempt at a reform and standardisation of the coinage in the middle of May 1916 is worthy of mention. The reform, which was a simplification of huge economic value of the tremendously complicated money system and introducing a theoretical gold unit, must be regarded chiefly as a war measure to prevent the rapid deterioration of Turkish paper money. This last attempt, as was obvious after a few months' trial, was entirely unsuccessful, and even hastened the fall of paper money, for the population soon discovered at the back of these drastic measures the thinly veiled anxiety of the Government lest there should be a further deterioration. Dire punishments, such as the closing down of money-changers' businesses and arraignment before a military court for the slightest offence, were meted out to anyone found guilty of changing gold or even silver for paper. In November 1916, however, it was an open secret that, in spite of all these prohibitions, there was no difficulty in the inland provinces and in Syria and Palestine in changing a gold pound for two or more paper pounds. In still more unfrequented spots no paper money would be accepted, so that the whole trade of the country simply came to a standstill. Even in Constantinople at the beginning of December 1916, paper stood to gold as 100 to 175. The Anatolian population still went gaily on, burying all the available silver _medjidiehs_ and even nickel piastres in their clay pots in the ground, because being simple country folk they could not understand, as the Government with all its prayers and threats were so anxious they should, that throughout Turkey and in the greater and mightier and equally victorious Germany, guaranteed paper money was really much better than actual coins, and was just as valuable as gold! The people, too, could not but remember what had happened with the "Kaimé" after the Turko-Russian war, when thousands who had believed in the assurances of the Government suddenly found themselves penniless. In Constantinople it was a favourite joke to take one of the new pound, half-pound, or quarter-pound notes issued under German paper, not gold, guarantee and printed only on one side and say, "This [pointing to the right side] is the present value, and that [blank side] will be the value on the conclusion of peace."