FREE TURKEY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2424, 12 February 1909, Page 6

FREE TURKEY.

A REGIME OF FREEDOM. Mr. diaries Roden Buxton* has a very interesting and informing article on 41 Free Turkey,” in the-London “Daily Chronicle,” in which lie sketches the new spirit which animates the people of Constantinople under their regime of freedom. “To those who knew Constantinople before the revolution, the first impression ou arrival now is one of an astonishing change, ho says:—"lt is seen at the first glance. Newspapers, cartoons, broadsheets of every description are hawked about the streets—a thing inconceivable last year. The censorship is abolished. New bookshops abound. The streets arc full of processions—processions of voters on the way to the polling station, processions in honor of newly-elected deputies, ‘manifestations’ in honor of England, or of France, all picturesque with their tall waving banners of red or green, bearing white crescents, and to the sound of the National Anthem, all orderly in the extreme, even solemn, except for occasional outbursts of concerted mapping—and all a totally new experience to those who take part in them. Four months ago a gathering of two or three was sedition ailcl'conspiracy. The very idea of meeting for any political purpose, even in the most secret place, was unknown. Now these sights and sounds greet you on vonr way from the railway station. And more, there is happiness instead of gloom in thousands of faces, confidence instead of suspicion, the simplo delight in the freedom of speech and action which we have lost in the orderly West, because wo have forgotten what it is to be without these things. But, beneath the surface, what is it that has produced this change? Talk to men who have helped' to bring about the revolution. They may be members of the Committee "of Union and Progress—-who are showing much hospitality to us, the members of the Balkan Committee—or they may be solitary citizens or soldiers" who have helped in secret to spread the sacred flame, who have longed in secret to breathe the free air., who suffered, probably, from intolerant. restraints, from imprisonment or exile, from loss of friends and relations, The committee, indeed, in a sense, is nineteen-twentieths of the Turkish people. No one knows exactly where the lino is drawn between membership and non-membership. Nor is there any formal organisation, any normal loaders. Talk to any of these men and you will begin to get glimpses, vivid glimpses, into recent history. The extent of the horrors suffered by countless thousands of Moslems, as well as of Christians, under the old regime, will begin to dawn upon you gradually, incredible at first, driven at last into your mind by fact after fact, one definite., minute, personal illustration following another. The extraordinary growth of the revolutionary movement within the last three years will open up before you, each conspirator known only to four others, so that no one individual could betray more than four of his comrades; the deliberate spreading of discontent among soldiery; the smuggling of letters by the help of trusted women; the innumerable devices of a subterranean propagandisin' —-the strange spontaneous co-operation of a multitude of unconnected human beings guided by one instinct, one spirit, and urged on by one system of universal oppression, crushing high and low with impartial cruelty and cunning, which made sedition, with all its dangers, preferable to passive acceptance.”