with preferential rights over minerals; they have bought the Mersina-Adana Railway, with right of linking up to the Bagdad Railway; they have bought the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, built with French capital.  They have secured also the Haidar Pasha Harbour concession, thereby controlling and handling all merchandise arriving at railhead from the interior of Asia Minor.[1] Already on the Bagdad Railway the big tunnels of Taurus and Amanus are available for narrow-gauge petrol-driven motors, and the broad-gauge line will soon be complete.  Meanwhile railway construction is pushed on in all directions under German control, and the Turkish Minister of Finance (August 1916) allocated a large sum of German paper money for the construction of ordinary roads, military roads, local government roads, all of which are new to Turkey, but which will be useful for the complete German occupation which is being swiftly consolidated.  To stop the mouths of the people, all political clubs have been suppressed by the Minister of the Interior, for Prussia does not care for criticism.  To supply German ammunition needs, lead and zinc have been taken from the roofs of mosques and door-handles from mosque-gates, and the iron railings along the Champs de Mars at Pera have been carted away for the manufacture of bombs.  Not long after eight truck-loads of copper were sent to Germany:  these, I imagine, represent the first produce of copper roofs and utensils.  A Turco-German convention signed in Berlin in January of this year, permits subjects of one country to settle in the other while retaining their nationality and enjoying trading and other privileges.  In Lebanon Dr. Koenig has opened an agricultural school for Syrians of all religions.  In the Homs district the threatening plague of locusts in February 1917 was combatted by Germans; and a German expert, Dr. Bucher, had been already sent to superintend the whole question.  For this concerns supplies to Germany, as does also the ordinance passed in the same month that two-thirds of all fish caught in the Lebanon district should be given to the military authorities (these are German), and that every fish weighing over six ounces in the Beirut district should be Korban also.  The copper mines at Arghana Maden, near Diarbekr, are busy exporting their produce into Germany; the coal-mines at Rodosto will very soon be making a large output.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The balance-sheets for 1916 of certain of those railways in which the Deutsche Bank has an interest have come to hand.  They show a very disagreeable degree of prosperity.  The Anatolia Railway Company has large profits with a gross revenue of 25,737,995 marks.  The profit on the Haidar-Pasha-Angora Line has risen from 42,566 francs per kilometre to 45,552.  The Mersina-Tarsus-Adana Railway has paid 6 per cent. on its preference shares, and 3 per cent. on its ordinary shares.  The Haidar Pasha Harbour Company has paid 8 per cent.]

[Footnote 2:  Later in this year we find three trains daily leaving Constantinople for Germany, laden with coal and military supplies.]