opinion of the people is here. And even without this, the efforts
of the Turkish Government, the desire, and the policy of Turkey, are
so explicit that there is no ground for doubt as to the significance
of the declarations of the Grand Vizier.

Turkey has never asked for war, as she always has worked toward
avoiding it. But we must not misunderstand the meaning of certain
terms. Neutrality does not mean indifference. The present
Austro-Servian conflict is to a supreme degree interesting to us. In
the first place, one of our erstwhile opponents is fighting against a
much stronger enemy. In the natural course of things Servia, which
till lately was expressing, in a rather open way, her solidarity as a
nation, still provoking us, and Greece will be materially weakened. In
the second place, the results of this war may surpass the limits of a
conflict between two countries, and in that case our interests will be
just as materially affected.

We must therefore keep our eyes open, as the circumstances are
momentarily changing, and do not permit us to let escape certain
advantages which we can secure by an active and rightly acting
diplomacy.

The policy of neutrality will impose on us the obligation of avoiding
to side with either of the belligerents, but the same policy will
force us to take all the necessary measures for safeguarding our
interests and our frontiers. If it be true, as reported, that the
pacificist tendencies of Turkey constitute one of the safest
guarantees of peace in the Balkans, then we must hope that on the day
when a general settlement of accounts will be made Europe will be
willing to recognize the important part played by Turkey in the
preservation of peace in the Near East, and will be eager to rectify,
if not all, at least one part of the wrongs she has caused to our
country.

TURKEY LEARNS OF THE WAR.

_Turkish mobilization was still at its first stages when the European
war began on Aug. 1, 1914. The Turkish Government in particular and
the Turkish population in general were overwhelmed by the unexpected
turn of European events, and it was at the height of the crisis that
Turkey received the news of her two battleships building in British
yards being taken over by England. A correspondent of The Daily
Atlantis of New York, writing in Constantinople on Aug. 10, said:_

The European war makes the Turks think that this is their golden
opportunity for turkifying the empire from the one end t