be contaminated ever so little with non-Arab elements, practices, or ideas, Arab administration seems incapable of producing effective government.  It has had chances in the Holy Cities at intervals, and for longer periods in the Yemen.  But a European, long resident in the latter country, who has groaned under Turkish administration, where it has always been most oppressive, bore witness that the rule of the native Imam only served to replace oppressive government by oppressive anarchy.

As for the Osmanli’s courage as a fighting man, that has often been exemplified, and never better than in the Gallipoli peninsula.  It is admitted.  The European and Anatolian Osmanlis yield little one to the other in this virtue; but the palm, if awarded at all, must be given to the levies from northern and central Asia Minor.

* * * * *

If Constantinople should be lost, the Arab-speaking parts of the empire would in all likelihood break away, carrying the Holy Cities with them.  When the constant risk of this consummation, with the cataclysmic nature of its consequences is considered, one marvels why the Committee, which has shown no mean understanding of some conditions essential to Osmanli empire, should have done so little hitherto to conciliate Arab susceptibilities.  Neither in the constitution of the parliament nor in the higher commands of the army have the Arab-speaking peoples been given anything like their fair share; and loudly and insistently have they protested.  Perhaps the Committee, whose leading members are of a markedly Europeanized type, understands Asia less well than Europe.  Certainly its programme of Ottomanization, elaborated by military ex-attaches, by Jew bankers and officials from Salonika, and by doctors, lawyers, and other intellectuels fresh from Paris, was conceived on lines which offered the pure Asiatic very little scope.  The free and equal Osmanlis were all to take their cue from men of the Byzantine sort which the European provinces, and especially the city of Constantinople, breed.  After the revolution, nothing in Turkey struck one so much as the apparition on the top of things everywhere of a type of Osmanli who has the characteristic qualities of the Levantine Greek.  Young officers, controlling their elders, only needed a change of uniform to pass in an Athenian crowd.  Spare and dapper officials, presiding in seats of authority over Kurds and Arabs, reminded one of Greek journalists.  Osmanli journalists themselves treated one to rhodomontades punctuated with restless gesticulation, which revived memories of Athenian cafes in war-time.  It was the Byzantine triumphing over the Asiatic; and the most Asiatic elements in the empire were the least likely to meet with the appreciation or sympathy of the Byzantines.