The Days of a Man 



Creating 



public 



opinion 



The New 

 Turks 



other wholly in defiance of it and under conditions 

 which by our system cannot yet be reached by the 

 Federal Government, each state being responsible for 

 misdeeds within its own borders. 



Referring to Rustem, the governor of a neighboring 

 province said to me: "We should have thought better 

 of him had he turned Moslem after his appointment, 

 for we have no use for a Christian who adopts our 

 religion just to secure office." 



When I was there, the Germans were "busily 

 engaged in creating public opinion in their own in- 

 imitable fashion." 1 That is, through the use of 

 money they had secured complete possession of the 

 Young Turks. According to a saying current among 

 the British residents, "Old Turk, Young Turk, old 

 dog, new collar"; and the new collar bore the plain 

 mark of "Made in Germany." 2 



The Turk, like the Prussian, fails to understand the 

 feelings of other people. He is, however, very polite 

 and soft-spoken, uses good French, and ordinarily 

 gives little sign of cruelty or arrogance in Byron's 

 words, "as mild-mannered a man as ever scuttled 

 ship or slit a throat." Talaat Bey, Minister of the 

 Interior, "the uncrowned king of Turkey," was the 

 brains of the triumvirate which constituted the in- 

 famous "Committee of Union and Progress," Enver 

 Bey and Djamael Bey being the other two members. 

 The Young Turk revolt which brought these men to 

 the front began with the officers of the garrison at 

 Monastir, but spread sufficiently to result in the 



1 John Reed. 



2 A report of the British minister then at Constantinople stated that in May, 

 1914, about 13,000,000 in bar gold was sent from Berlin to the Moslem govern- 



C6io 



