Photo and copyright by International News Service 

 A GROUP OF TURKS DISCUSSING THE: WAR NEWS 



Discussion is a favorite pastime with the East. There is always time enough to haggle 

 and bargain for hours, to philosophize over trifles, and to argue the case of almost every- 

 thing. 



It is of small use for marketing, how- 

 ever. Greek or Turkish are necessary 

 for that. Almost all butchers are Greeks 

 from Epirus or the Ionian Islands. Many 

 market gardeners are also Greeks, though 

 many others are southern Albanians, and 

 not a few are Bulgars from Macedonia, 

 while much of the street peddling so 

 characteristic of Constantinople is done 

 by Turks. They are not Constantinople 

 Turks, however. 



Practically all the work of the city is 

 done by outsiders, and each kind of 

 work, as the reader may have already 

 gathered, is done chiefly by men from a 

 certain "country." So it is that the men 

 who sell ice-cream in the streets are Al- 

 banians, Christian and Mohammedan, 

 from the region of tjskiib ; that the lay- 

 ers of pavements are Mohammedan Al- 



banians of the south; that railroad nay- 

 vies — or those of the Roumelian Rail- 

 road^are Christian Albanians from the 

 same region ; that bath men are Turks 

 from Sivas; that street porters are 

 Kiirds or Asia Minor Turks, according 

 to the kind of load they carry ; that most 

 boatmen are from the Black Sea coast, 

 and so on indefinitely. 



NO ASSIMILATION 



And though they may spend the greater 

 part of their lives in Constantinople they 

 almost always remain outsiders, wearing 

 their own costumes, speaking their own 

 dialects, keeping their families in their 

 own "country," and going at intervals to 

 spend a few months with them. 



This curious state of affairs is partly 

 a relic of Byzantine times, for many of 



531 



