244 Sultan Abdul Hamid Deposed [!9°9 



Ryan complains of the lack of business capacity in the management 

 of the Egyptian newspapers. They are also now without a capable 

 leader. Mustapha Kamel died of cancer in the stomach and suffered 

 tortures. 



" 20th April. — The Young Turks under Enver Bey have again got 

 the upper hand and have marched to Constantinople. There is news 

 to-day, though not certain, that the Sultan has abdicated and fled. 

 This will be a splendid triumph. A revolution to be effective must 

 have a basis of force, force which everybody is afraid of and is bound 

 to acknowledge, otherwise it degenerates into mere chaos. I think 

 they will be well advised to bring Abdul Hamid to open trial ; it would 

 be dangerous to leave him at large, or even alive in prison. 



" 2yd April. — Things still unsettled at Constantinople except that 

 the Young Turk Party is in power. It is not yet decided what the 

 Sultan's fate is to be. Enver has declared that Abdul Hamid cannot 

 be allowed any longer to reign, though his life will be respected. I 

 fancy the Kaiser Wilhelm is intervening on his behalf. They may 

 be obliged to consider German wishes. Otherwise in cases of this kind 

 ' stone dead has no fellow.' 



" 24th April. — An order has been given for the occupation of Tabriz 

 by the Russian army, the excuse being that the Shah has broken his 

 promise of allowing food to be supplied to the besieged townspeople. 

 The Russians will now certainly occupy Teheran and Northern Persia 

 and administer it in imitation of our English way in Egypt. Massacres, 

 too, are announced in Armenia and at various places in Asia Minor, 

 which may lead to intervention in Turkey. However, let us hope for 

 the best. 



"Later. — The Young Turk army has stormed Yildiz, though with 

 what result to the Sultan is not known. 



" 2gth April. — Abdul Hamid is at last formally deposed and has 

 been sent as a prisoner to reside at Salonika. Reshad Effendi has 

 been proclaimed Sultan Mohammed V in his stead. 



"30th April. — Lloyd George has brought in a Budget of a rather 

 Socialistic kind, with a beginning of taxing land values and of things 

 more drastic. 



" 1st May. — To Cambridge, where I am staying with Browne at 

 his villa in Trumpington Road. The garden is large, one of those 

 pleasant suburban gardens which run a long way back, but the house 

 is of the plainest Philistine order — very clean, very handsomely fur- 

 nished, but everything in it commonplace, Browne being the least aes- 

 thetic of men. He has made me, however, extremely comfortable, and 

 is in all things else extremely sympathetic. A nightingale is singing 

 close to us. 



" He is writing a history of the revolution in Persia, which will 



