ver that the filth and vice and corruption and
misgovernment which characterized it under Ottoman rule still remain.
Barring a few municipal improvements which were made in the European
quarter of Pera and in the fashionable residential districts between
Dolmabagtche and Yildiz, the Turkish capital has scarcely a bowing
acquaintance with modern sanitation, the windows of some of the finest
residences in Stamboul looking out on open sewers down which refuse of
every description floats slowly to the sea or takes lodgment on the
banks, these masses of decaying matter attracting great swarms of
pestilence-breeding flies. The streets are thronged with women whose
virtue is as easy as an old shoe, attracted by the presence of the
armies as vultures are attracted by the smell of carrion. Saloons,
brothels, dives and gambling hells run wide open and virtually
unrestricted, and as a consequence venereal diseases abound, though the
British military authorities, in order to protect their own men, have
put the more notorious resorts "out of bounds" and, in order to provide
more wholesome recreations for the troops, have opened amusement parks
called "military gardens." In spite of the British, French, Italian and
Turkish military police who are on duty in the streets, stabbing
affrays, shootings and robberies are so common that they provoke but
little comment. Petty thievery is universal. Hats, coats, canes,
umbrellas disappear from beside one's chair in hotels and restaurants.
The Pera Palace Hotel has notices posted in its corridors warning the
guests that it is no longer safe to place their shoes outside their
doors to be polished. The streets, always wretchedly paved, have been
ground to pieces by the unending procession of motor-lorries, and, as
they are never by any chance repaired, the first rain transforms them
into a series of hog-wallows. The most populous districts of Pera, of
Galata, and of Stamboul are now disfigured by great areas of
fire-blackened ruins--reminders of the several terrible conflagrations
from which the Turkish capital has suffered in recent years. "Should the
United States decide to accept the mandate for Constantinople," a
resident remarked to me, "these burned districts would give her an
opportunity to start rebuilding the city on modern sanitary lines" and,
he might have added, at American expense.

The prices of necessities are fantastic and of luxuries fabulous. The
cost of everything has advanced