ioig. The chief of the staff of the German 

 navy flies a flag of white fully quartered by a 

 black cross, upon whose intersection is im- 

 posed a disk of white, a circle of gold rope, 

 and a sword. 



1020. The flotilla flag of the German navy 

 consists of a swallow-tailed pennant, hung free 

 from the flagstaff and bearing the black cross. 



1021. The Sultan of Turkey flies a different 

 flag afloat from that which is borne for him 

 ashore. As commander-in-chief of the Turk- 

 ish naval forces he has a red banner upon 

 which is centered a white anchor with a blaz- 

 ing sun in the center of each quarter of the 

 flag. 



1022. The religious flag of Turkey is green 

 instead of the familiar red of the ensign and 

 merchant banner. It bears the usual crescent 

 and star in white and is the banner that is 



borne upon all religious occasions. It has been 

 under this banner that untold thousands of 

 Christians in the Mohammedan world have 

 suffered at the hands of the followers of 

 Islam. 



1023. The customs banner of Turkey is of 

 the same general design as the national ensign, 

 except that the star and crescent are inclosed 

 in a rectangle made of a thin white stripe close 

 to and parallel with the border. 



1024. The flag of Crete is quartered by a 

 white cross. The first quarter is red and bears 

 a five-pointed star in white, while the other 

 three quarters are blue. This was the flag of 

 the high commissioner appointed by Great 

 Britain, Russia, France, and Italy, and later 

 proposed by Greece with the permission of the 

 Powers, who governed the island before its 

 annexation to Greece. 



HEROIC FLAGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



The Geography of the Earth as Known in Medieval Times Symbolised in 



p6 Historic Standards 



(Ncs. 1025-1120) 



THE earliest representation of the 

 flags of all nations is to be found 

 in an illuminated manuscript of a 

 Franciscan friar, a native of Spain, who 

 was born in 1305 and who, according to 

 his own claim, wrote his monumental 

 "Book of the Knowledge of All the King- 

 doms, Countries, and Lordships that 

 there are in the World and of the En- 

 signs and Arms of Each Country and 

 Lordship ; also of the Kings and Lords 

 Who Govern Them," after having visited 

 all the places which he describes. 



Geographers and historians hesitate to 

 accept the friar's claim as literally true, 

 but it is evident that he was a great trav- 

 eler and a close observer, and though he 

 is prone to weave legend and hearsay into 

 his narrative, there is, nevertheless, a re- 

 markable fund of information in this 

 priceless manuscript, written a century 

 and a half before Columbus discovered 

 America, and which now reposes in the 

 Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid. 



"In the name of God the Father and Son 

 and Holy Ghost, three individual persons in 

 one essence. I was born in the Kingdom of 

 Castile, in the reign of the very noble King 

 Don Sancho, when the era of the world, ac- 

 cording to the Hebrews, was 5.065 years, and 

 the era of the deluge 4.407 years, and of Nebu- 

 chadnezzar of Chaldea 2,502 years, and of 

 Alexander the Great of Macedonia 1,617. and 

 of Caesar, Emperor of Rome, 1,343, and of 



ARTIST AS WEU, AS TRAVELER 



The manuscript of the anonymous 

 Franciscan whose travels extended as far 

 east as Java, by way of Mecca, was edited 

 by the Spanish scholar Marcos Jimenez 

 de la Espada, 40 years ago, with the aid 

 of Don Francisco Coello, the eminent 

 geographer. It was recently published in 

 English, together with the flags (see page 

 371), by the Hakluyt Society. 



The devices are very beautiful and rich, 

 both in color and in design, the Fran- 

 ciscan evincing great skill in reproducing 

 in some instances the banners and in oth- 

 ers the coats-of-arms of the kingdoms 

 and principalities which he visited. 



The story of these flags of the world 

 570 years ago and of the kings and coun- 

 tries over which they waved is best told 

 in the words of the Franciscan himself, 

 who makes no attempt to differentiate be- 

 tween what he actually saw and what he 

 heard (ihe numbers in the text refer to 

 the corresponding flag on page 371 ). 



Christ 1,304 years, and of the Arabs 706, on 

 the nth day of the month of September. 



"There are in the Kingdom of Castile 28 

 cities and many other towns, castles, and vil- 

 lages. Know that this Kingdom of Castile and 

 Leon has all the seacoast of the west as far as 

 Bayona the greater, and borders on Navarre 

 and Aragon and Granada. The ensigns of the 

 kings of this kingdom are a flag with two 

 castles and two lions quarterly (1025). 



388 



