The changes made were so far-reaching, and the spirit of the reform so modern, that, in spite of the unshakable power of Talaat's truly dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed, a concession had to be made to the public opinion roused against the measure. The form was kept as it was, but the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Haïri Effendi, refused ostensibly to sign the decree and gave in his resignation. Not only, however, was an immediate successor found for him (Mussa Kiazim Effendi), who gave his signature and even began to work hard for the reform, but--and this is most significant for the relationship of the Young Turks towards Islam--Haïri Effendi, the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had proclaimed the _Fetwa_ for the "Holy War," gave up his post without a murmur, and in the most peaceable way, and remained one of the principal pillars of the "Committee for Union and Progress." His resignation was nothing but a farce to throw dust in the eyes of the all-too-trusting lower classes. After he had succeeded by this manoeuvre in getting the reform of the law (which as a measure of Turkification was of more consequence to him now than his own sadly curtailed juristic functions) accepted at a pinch by the conservative population who still clung firmly to Islam, he went on to play his great rôle in the programme of jingoism. A "measure of Turkification" we called it, for that is what it amounts to practically, like everything else the men of the "Ittihad" take in hand. I tried to give some hint of this within the limits of the censorship as long ago as the summer of 1916 in a series of articles I wrote for the _Kölnische Zeitung_. Here I should like just to confine myself to one point. Naturally the reform of the law aimed principally at substituting these newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for the Arabian legal ideas that had been the only thing available hitherto. (Everything that this victorious Turkey had absorbed and worked up in the way of civilised notions was either Arabian or Persian or of European origin.) It set to work now in the sphere of family law, which hitherto had been specially sacrosanct and only subordinate to the religious _Sheria_, and where tradition was strongest--not like commercial and maritime law which had been quite modern for a long time.