Vol. XXVI, No. 6 



WASHINGTON 



December, 1914 



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LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE 

 By H. G. Dwight 



HE WHO would write of life in 

 Constantinople today risks writ- 

 ing of what today is and tomor- 

 row IS not. 



The revolution of 1908 started an era 

 of transformation whose end is not yet. 

 So far as outward appearances are con- 

 cerned — and appearances, the outer 

 forms and color of life, are all that make 

 the difference between one part of the 

 world and another — Constantinople has 

 changed more in the last five years than 

 in the 200 before them. 



During that time, while the other capi- 

 tals of Europe gradually modernized 

 themselves, Constantinople remained a 

 medieval cit3^ At first it was largely a 

 matter of remoteness and poor communi- 

 cations. In the end the case became the 

 will of one man — the ex- Sultan Abd-iil- 

 Hamid II. 



So long as he remained on the throne 

 there was not an electric light in the 

 town, for instance, or a telephone or a 

 trolley-car. They were expressly for- 

 bidden by the Sultan, who firmly believed 

 that a dynamo had something to do with 

 dynamite — that arch enemy of thrones. 

 For an equally good reason he prohibited 

 the use of rubber tires for street cabs. 

 The official inquiry into an attempt upon 

 his life revealed — whether correctly or 

 not — the pregnant fact that the bomb had 

 been thrown from a carriage so fitted 

 out, and he made up his mind that there 

 must be an immediate and necessary re- 

 lation between bombs and rubber tires. 



the: coming of modern THINGS 



The whole story of his dislike of mod- 

 ernity and of life in. Constantinople dur- 

 ing his long reign would be a piece of 

 comic opera if it had not been a tragedy 

 for his own people. This is not the place 

 to repeat it, and Constantinople is now 

 well on the way toward becoming a mod- 

 ern capital. Dynamos have at last begun 

 to hum on the shores of the Golden 

 Horn ; electric cars already clang about ; 

 telephone wires have been strung through 

 the city and will shortly be in use ; streets 

 have been smoothed and widened, squares 

 and parks have been laid out ; motor 

 traffic has begun to ply ; there is talk of 

 subways, of rapid transit, of I know not 

 what other modernities. 



Rome was not built in a day, however, 

 nor New Rome, and many days will pass 

 before old Stamboul loses her tang of 

 the medieval. In the meantime life there 

 is the compromise between East and 

 West which you might expect of a city 

 that straddles Europe and Asia. Com- 

 promise, though, is not always the word. 

 I have not quite made up my mind 

 whether I am ready to subscribe to Mr. 

 Kipling's famous stanza, but certain it is 

 that while East and West do meet in 

 Constantinople they do not willingly mix. 

 This is made very evident for an out- 

 sider in the mere matter of tongues. 



An Italian professor asked me once if 

 there were any one official language for 

 the American "Parliament," or whether 

 each member spoke in his own. The pro- 



