hey choose, quite in the old
style of bag and Bosporus, but the organisation of them is German. And
well may the German Government distrust those signs of popular
discontent in a starving population: already the people have awoke to
the fact that the German paper money does not represent its face-value,
and, despite assurances to the contrary, it is at a discount scarcely
credible. Three German L1 notes are held even in Constantinople to be
the equivalent of a gold L1, while in the provinces upwards of five are
asked for, and given, in exchange for one gold pound. It is in vain that
German manifestoes are put forth declaring that all Government offices
will take the notes as an equivalent for gold, for what the people want
is not a traffic with Government offices, but the cash to buy food. Even
more serious is the fact that Austrian and Hungarian directors of banks
will no longer accept these scraps of paper. In vain, too, is it that
the hungry folk see the walls of the 'House of Friendship' rise higher
and higher in Constantinople, for every day they see with starving eyes
the trains loaded with sugar from Konia, and the harvests raised in
Anatolia with German artificial manures guarded by German troops and
rolling westwards to Berlin. According to present estimates the harvest
this year is so vastly more abundant than that of previous years, that
no comparison, as the Minister of Agriculture tells his gratified
Government, is possible. But the poorer classes get no more than the
leavings of it when the armies, which include the German army, have had
their wants supplied. The governing classes, whom it is necessary to
feed, are not yet suffering, for the Germans grant them enough, issuing
rations to such families as are proved adherents of the German-Turkish
combination, and until the pinch of want attacks them we should be
foolishly optimistic if we thought that a starving peasantry would cause
the collapse or the defection of Germany's newest and most valuable
colony. There is enough discontent to make Germany uneasy, but that is
all.[2] Long ago she proved the efficiency of her control, and the
successful pulling of her puppet-strings, and no instance of that is
more complete than the brief story of Yakub Jemil and the extinction of
him and his party, which, though it happened a full year ago, has only
lately been completely transmitted. Yakub Jemil was an influential
commander of a frontier guard near the Black Sea c