TURKEY 



sented in the council of the Public Debt and the board of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. 

 The latter, fearing lest the loan might be negotiated with an English group, when 

 representatives of Sir Ernest Cassel and Messrs. Baring (founders of the National Bank 

 of Turkey) arrived at Constantinople on the 23rd of September, decided to accept 

 Djavid Bey's terms. But the matter rankled in the minds of French capitalists, and 

 one outcome of it was a crop of press articles hostile to Young Turkey in the following 

 year, with serious political consequences. 



Another event occurred in the commercial world, with immediate mischievous effects 

 in politics. Though Hussein Hilmi Pasha enjoyed the esteem and confidence of every 



European cabinet, and of an important section of the Young Turkish 

 intrigues party, he had enemies among the Young Turks. The deputy for Kasta- 

 m/B/sfo'. * muni, Nejmeddin Mullah, minister of Justice, could not forgive Hilmi for 



appointing a judicial adviser to assist him, and Rahmi Bey, the very influen- 

 tial Salonica deputy, wanted to put Hakki Bey in power. (Hakki Bey for a long time 

 had been legal adviser to the Sublime Porte, during Abdul-Hamid's reign, and was after- 

 wards minister of the Interior and ambassador at Rome, which post he was filling at the 

 time.) They brought about the fall of Hilmi Pasha over the Lynch affair, a matter 

 which just then made a great noise in Turkey. Two Englishmen, the Messrs. Lynch, 

 owned, by right of ancient firmans, the monopoly of running cargo steamers on the 

 Euphrates and Tigris; Hilmi Pasha confirmed the grant, stipulating that the firm should 

 constitute itself an Ottoman company, and the steamers should ply under the Turkish 

 flag. The grand vizier regarded this concession as a handy counterpoise to German 

 influence in Mesopotamia, where the Bagdad railway scheme was in progress. 



An active campaign began among Ottoman deputies. Hilmi Pasha was represented 

 to them as ready to make Mesopotamia a British sphere of influence. On the nth of 



December 1909, after a stormy sitting, Hilmi secured 168 votes to 8 upon 

 Fall of a division, but he was given to understand by the party of Union and 



HHml Progress that he no longer possessed their confidence, and on the 28th he 



had to resign. Hakki Bey, now Hakki Pasha, was summoned to form a 

 new cabinet. It was the old one over again, except that Mahmud Shevket Pasha agreed 

 to resign the post of generalissimo to go to the War Office, immeasurably strengthening 



Hakki Pasha's position by doing so. It was well known that the sym- 

 /> a *ft'*s pathies of both were with the Triple Alliance, and especially with Germany, 

 Cabinet, 1910. and a change in Turkish policy, which hitherto had gravitated towards the 



Triple Entente, was not long delayed. 



Mention has already been made that Young Turkey aimed at uniformity of adminis- 

 tration and legislation throughout the Ottoman Empire, and how the very first step 



towards it was Djavid Pasha's Albanian expedition. The Hakki Cabinet 



determined to carry out the scheme root and branch in the Albanian 

 Macedonia, vilayets, while settling the Macedonian question once for all. The likeliest 



means to this end, it was supposed, was to disarm the entire Albanian and 

 Macedonian population. The Turkish Government must have known the difficulties 

 in the way. By immemorial Albanian custom every man goes armed, and every 

 peasant in Macedonia carries a weapon, because the country has been infested for years 

 by wandering bands. Mahmud Shevket Pasha, the War minister, went himself to the 

 spot, and sent General Shevket Torgut Pasha with 50,000 men and a field battery to 

 carry out the disarming at any cost. In Albania this meant nothing less than war. 

 Shevket Torgut 's army, marching from east to west, forced the Kachanik passes in 

 April IQIO, reached Prisrend in May, Ipek and Jakova in June, and entered Scutari at 

 the end of the month. He succeeded in disarming the tribesmen on his route, and 

 dismantled the Koules or strongholds of the Albanian chieftains, but it had been 

 done with a brutality which forever destroyed all Albanian loyalty to the Young 

 Turks. 



The session of the Ottoman Chamber ended on June 2nd. Djavid Bey's budget 

 for the following session showing a deficit T$, 000,000, he went to Paris early in July 



