Secret societies grow in membership and range from little groups of decadent youths to large organized bodies of which the full ramification is unknown. To these associations the periodic assassinations of officials and of loyal Indian pubic servants are due. Within a few years attempts have been made on the lives of two successive Viceroys, and in neither case did the offer of a large reward produce evidence from the many persons who were cognizant of the plots or spectators of their execution."

UPON

Germany Inciting the Asiatic to Revolt.

ON the outbreak of the war in Europe the diplomatic agents of Berlin, having nothing else to do, as the London Standard tells us, began a systematic encouragement of the discontented in India. Their task was easier than many yet realize. All, or nearly all the exiles from India, whether in China, Java, the United States or Africa, were incited to fresh activity. There are insinuations that the shipload of Indians who could not get into Canada were financed by agents. from Berlin. Leaflets appear in centers of Indian disaffection reminding the native that he is denied entrance into Australia as well as Canada. He was the victim of atrocities in South Africa which the British government did nothing to avenge. There is springing up everywhere outside of India and the British dominions a refugee press which dwells upon the opportunity presented by the present world crisis. Evidence in possession of the authorities in Calcutta proves, it seems, that these activities can be traced to the Germans. Berlin Vossische makes sarcastic references to this evidence. There was disaffection in India, it suggests, long before the war. English dailies were full of the theme less than a year ago. The censorship has drawn a curBehind it are a panic-stricken .tain upon the scene. viceroy and an army exiled from Asia to Europe lest a too active propaganda bring it to mutiny. This, says the Berlin organ, is the vaunted unity of the British Empire.

Ignoring the British Peril in India. IT T is no answer to those who regard the continued prevalence of political crime in India with the greatest anxiety, observes the London Times, to say that the conspirators against British rule remain comparatively few. Revolutionaries are generally in a small minority in the beginning of their movements and the necessity for dealing more effectually with Indian anarchists is not less insistent because their numbers are reiatively. inconsiderable. Nor do those who are best qualified to judge accept the conclusion that disaffection in India is a matter of little pressing importance. Sir Frederick Halliday, a high Indian police official, took a serious view recently of the whole subject. It has often been stated in the Anglo-Indian press that such a thing as a criminal conspiracy among the better classes of Indians does not exist. It does exist, declares Sir Frederick, and it is "a real and very dreadful evil." A startling impression of the Indian peril, as the London daily did not hesitate to call it, was conveyed by an expert on the subject recently, who wrote in its columns:

"Agitation in all forms is spreading throughout the land, and is producing the inevitable effects. A large section of the Indian Press devotes itself to a relentless campaign designed to undermine the authority of Government and to promote acute racial antagonisms. The operation of the Press Law, where it is enforced, may check the more crude manifestations of sedition; but it is powerless to cope with the incessant stream of misrepresentation and the spread of false reports which sow broadcast the seeds of hatred and Indian writers, educated in our schools and contempt. universities, have reduced to a science the methods of saying what their readers will perfectly understand while keeping

within the four corners of laws which-in India-are mildly administered. And any lack of open violence is supplied by leaflets and placards emanating from secret. presses which may secure wide circulation before their existence is known to the authorities.

"The propaganda assumes many forms, direct and indirect, obvious and shrouded, but the effect upon the masses of India is the same and is becoming increasingly apparent.

Severity of the Censorship over India.

The

EVER in its history has the censorship in India. been so severe as at this moment. The presence of hostile German warships in the Indian Ocean is the explanation given by London dailies. Nevertheless they have little or nothing in the way of news from. India. There is much conjecture in the Berlin press, but it gives no details. The censorship has been made rigorous by the British, says the Kreuz-Zeitung, because the situation is developing seriously. Plots are: unearthed at Calcutta against the Indian Raj, against the courts, against the Viceroy. Rumor is busy with the name of one prince who refused to contribute his share of the fund raised in support of the army sent to Europe. That army, furthermore, is not made up of the flower of India's soldiery, as the English soproudly assert. Many Indians of intelligence have gained an impression that the British Empire is breaking up. It is certain that the operations of the German cruiser Emden, which terrorized the coast cities recently, did much to confirm among the simpler inhab-itants of India a suspicion that the British Empire had fallen. They derived their suspicion, says the London: News, from the Germans. The Germans are smuggling a vast literature of sedition into India.

AS

SA result of a family council held m Yildiz Kiosk a few weeks ago, the Sultan of Turkey, desirous of ending the dictatorship of Enver Pasha, his masterful Minister of War, proclaimed the heir to the throne, Prince Yussuf Izzedin, commander of the Ottoman forces on land and sea. Enver Pasha declined to be superseded so summarily. The outcome was a series of palace revolutions during which a fresh face was put upon the Ottoman Empire nearly every day. When one faction gains the ascendant, Turkey seems to have gone to war with Russia. The triumph of the other faction results in pacific declarations of Turkish neutrality, with vague apologies for whatever battles have been fought the day before. Thus is the kaleidoscope in Constantinople explained by French dailies, which assure us that the Sultan, a prisoner in his palace, can not rid himself of the Germans. At least that is what he says, according to the Paris Temps, when the British. complain of German officers aboard Turkish warships. The statement that Mahmoud V. cannot rid himself of his German friends is plausible to the Manchester Guardian. The Sultan has fallen so low that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople remains in town. despite the appeals of Mahmoud V. that he leave. The government of Turkey amounts to nothing more than the military clique that can seize the palace and hold it for the time being.

Turkey Evolves a Strong Man.

ENVER PASHA is the statesman and soldier in

whose hands the fate of Turkey as a belligerent is presumed to rest. He became Minister of War months ར ago, since which time the extremist section of the press in Constantinople, the Ikdam, the Tasviri-Eftiar and others of a Pan-Islamite tendency, would seem to have committed themselves to a holy war. Now, they hint, the hour for Islam has struck. Those who have followed the utterances of the Turkish press of late have seen therein evidence that the secret camarilla which operates in connection with the Young Turks was ready for a stroke. The masses of the Moslems are for the most part too ignorant, says the Paris Débats, to have any considered political or military ideas of their own regarding the European situation; but they can be relied upon to fall in with the views of Enver Pasha. The Turkish organs just named summon the faithful to remember the lost provinces in the Balkans now that the infidel is divided. They utter warnings regarding the designs of a great power upon Constantinople. If the present inactivity of Turkey be not ended soon, the Sultan may be driven out of Europe. Enver Pasha holds all these opinions.

Turkey Sees Her Chance in the
European War.

TURKEY might be a formidable

factor in the European crisis were. she not distracted by the internecine feud. Altho this view is put forward by the newspaper organs of the allies, it finds support in Italian comment.

391

All that happens now in Constantinople is carefully watched from Rome, observes the Tribuna, for the action of Italy is to a great extent dependent upon what Turkey attempts. Turkey, for her part, seems to find in Germany her best friend for the time being, and no faction at Constantinople repudiates her altogether. There are elements in the Sultan's court which would come to some arrangement with England, as the Tanin itself admits. This paper makes out a case which it bases upon British admissions. Little more than a year ago the four Christian states of the Balkans entered into a compact for the spoliation of Turkey and in pursuance of that aim forced a war for which there was not even a nominal justification. None of the allies had any grievance for which they claimed redress, nor did they take the trouble to allege any. Europe, having tried in vain to hold back the belligerents, declared that at any rate they should get nothing for their pains, that no territorial changes would be permitted and that the integrity of Turkey, guaranteed by the treaty of Berlin, to which all the great powers were parties, would be maintained. The Balkan governments treated this declaration with scorn. They seized all the territory to which they could gain access. Why should Turkey alone-Turkey whose integrity has been solemnly guaranteed by the concert of Europe-show a scrupulous respect for public law and international morality?

Enver Pasha as the Turkish Napoleon.

ENVER PASHA and his associates feel at last that

they have it in their power to restore the prestige of the clique to which they belong, a prestige sadly dimmed by the failure of their military enterprizes last year. They are playing a dangerous game, declares the London Post. They think differently. The treaty of London seemed last year to have settled once and for all the relations between Turkey and her neighbors. She was confirmed in possession of Constantinople and the territory enclosed within the Enos-Midia line. It was assumed that in future her government would turn all its attention to the consolidation and development of the considerable empire left to her on the continent of

GOING TO "POT"!

Asia. This is the aspiration of the elderly Sultan and the men he trusts. The followers of Enver Pasha have dreams more sublime. They established themselves in power at a time when the tide of Turkish defeat could not be stemmed. They were forced by hard necessity to agree to the cession of Adrianople and the greater part of Thrace. The outbreak of hostilities among the Balkan powers who had been such close allies so shortly before gave the Young Turks their first opportunity. Taking advantage of the withdrawal of Bulgarian troops from the conquered territory, the Turkish army retook Adrianople. The new situation may enable them to retake much more.

FOR

Turkey Wants to Know Which
Side Will Win.

OR the past six weeks Constantinople has been flooded with German versions of the progress of the war, observes the Paris Figaro. For a few days the Moslems thought the Kaiser's troops were in Warsaw as well as in Paris. The British fleet had been destroyed. Turkey would have the satisfaction of recovering without the firing of a shot a portion if not all of what she had so recently lost. Prior to the outbreak of the great war, the Grand Vizier in a note to the powers indicated very plainly that the Turkish gov-ernment had no intention of contenting itself with the frontier defined in the treaty of peace signed at London. Turkey, he declared, was obliged to advance beyond the frontiers fixed for her in order to save the Mohammedan population from extermination. She was, further, obliged by regard for the safety of Constantinople to secure a more suitable frontier. She was ready months ago to advance her forces beyond the prescribed boundaries. She has lost no time since, She has lost no time since,

Guns are booming around both Sinai and Ararat. It is an ald world and still full of trouble.-Springfield Tribune.

After the war, if the Allies win, the question they will ask one another will be: "What part of the Turkey do you prefer?" -Louisville Courier Journal.

altho just what she has been doing with her army in the past six weeks is not known in western Europe. When the extremists gain the ascendant in the palace of Mahmoud V. there is a sort of advance by the army and a kind of raid by the navy. News of a defeat sustained by the Kaiser in Russia brings the moderates to the front in Constantinople and the Sultan professes ignorance of what has been done by the Young Turks in the way of bombardments and battles. The Ottoman government has been accustomed so long to the discord among the great powers of Europe and it has played one of them against another so long and so successfully, notes our French contemporary, that the comedy proves fairly successful. The allies profess to feel that the end of Turkey in Europe has come-a prophecy or a statement of fact according to the sympathies of the newspaper making it.

FOR

What Will Happen to Constantinople?

OR purposes of general convenience, Constantinople, the city desired by so many nations, was left in the hands of its Ottoman rulers, remarks the London Telegraph, with just sufficient territory to permit its adequate defense. Turkey was to be confirmed and safeguarded in her Asiatic possessions with an implicit guarantee that the powers would help her to consolidate her authority on the eastern side of the sea of Marmora. Now, if Enver Pasha and his followers upset this arrangement, they must be prepared to take the consequences. If they persist in rushing upon their own destruction, they will have Germany to thank for their fate. Europe will have no alternative but to leave the Turk to the wrath of offended Russia. Tur

key still possesses a few statesmen capable of long views, but the triumph of the extremists has rendered them impotent. Turkey must be reduced to fragments and even her hold upon Arabia must be relinquished. The one great concern of Turkey in Arabia is to retain control of the holy cities in order to preserve her prestige, says the London Times. The Turkish claim to dominate Arabia has always been imperfectly vindicated:

"For centuries Arabia has been to a great extent left isolated, an unknown land round which the main currents of human history have swept without penetration. . . . When more than a century ago the Wahabi schismatics arose and carried fire and sword far and wide, sacked Mecca and Kerbela, and even menaced Damascus, it was not the Turks who broke the Wahabi movement. The work was done for them by MEHEMET ALI, Pasha of Egypt, and his sons; and since the great Egyptian invasion the Crescent flag has won few glories in Arabia. Even the Hedjaz route has only been kept comparatively safe by heavy bribes to the Beduin, and the new railway to Medina is often threatened. There has been one protracted revolt in the province of Asir, south of Mecca, and another and a greater rebellion in Yemen. Both are still unsubdued, and against both the Turks have wasted their strength in vain. Their position in Arabia grows weaker and the spectacle of their beaten soldiery scrambling aboard a British steamer in the Persian Gulf is but one of many significant symptoms."

The Ottoman is beginning to look more like a doormat.-Boston Transcript.

Turkey, it is said, has proclaimed the annexation of Egypt, but our guess is that Turkey has been misinformed.-Houston Post. Now watch Russia play the rôle of a Turkey gobbler.-Florida Times Union.

JAPAN has not the slightest intention to retain Tsingtau, despite German insinuations to the contrary. The capture of this fortified city of Kiao-chow is but a prelude to its restoration to the Chinese. These statements are on the highest official authority in Tokyo. The only possible reason Japan could have for retaining Tsing-tau, as the Asahi Shimbun declared prior to the fall of the place, would be to make of it a naval base. In that capacity it was invaluable to Germany. It was her only military and naval base in east Asia. Tsing-tau has no such importance to Japan for the reason that she possesses much better bases in Port Arthur and in Korea. Hence its retention by the Tokyo government would be a tactless act. "It would be especially tactless at a time when China is cut off from loan sources in Europe," says the London Post. "China will soon have no money with which to pay her soldiers, thus rendering revolt likely. This would react unfaEvorably upon Japan, involving the interference of other nations." One of these might be the United States, a power with which Japan insists she is cultivating especially good relations just now. Tokyo, London and Washington are in active and harmonious correspondence on far eastern affairs, says the British organ.

SOM

An Anti-American Campaign in Tokyo.

393

country in China. This campaign was based upon an alliance between Peking and Washington for the conquest of the far East generally. American government officials in China and Japan pronounced many of these reports too absurd to be taken seriously. President Wilson, for example, had made up his mind to limit by force the extension of Japan in China and was negotiating a treaty in Peking with that end in view. These stories made a serious impression in Japan, as recent comment in the Hochi and the Nihon will show. The instigators of this deception, says the well-informed correspondent of the London News, seek only to stir the populace in the Japanese capital into mob demonstrations against Count Okuma on the ground of his friendliness to Washington, which is seeking to destroy Tokyo. The Germans have spent thousands of dollars in a press campaign in China, insists the Manchester Guardian, and there is reason to suspect that German press agents continue busy in Japan as well. Comment in American newspapers on the subject of Japanese activity in the far East appears in garbled versions in Tokyo dailies made by inspired correspondents aiming to create discord. Japanese officials are quoted in British papers as convinced of the German origin of the anti-American campaign. They no longer, says the London Times, take it seriously.

OME weeks ago there developed in Tokyo and in other important Japanese cities so systematic an effort to inspire anti-American feeling in the press that European attention was directed to it. Publications in Japanese, to which European dailies called attention, made it appear that the Washington government was preparing for active intervention in China. These hints cropped out in provincial Japanese dailies under the control of popular politicians. They dwelt on an alleged anti-Japanese feeling throughout the United States and were reinforced by interviews with persons described as prominent Americans. The topic was taken up by popular papers like the Tokyo Chuwo and finally spread into more important organs. The Jiji Shimpo at last. grew suspicious of somebody's good faith. It transpired that inflammatory statements had been given to Tokyo dailies by persons representing themselves as American notables. They warned Japanese that the United States is sending out a great fleet over the Pacific and fortifying its coasts. War was inevitable. These intimations were fathered by an alleged paymaster in the American navy and an admiral distinguished in New York. These individuals turned out to be creations of the imagination. When these points were established the Tokyo newspapers explained that the interview and the photographs accompanying it had been handed in as authentic by an American. He never

could be found by the police and we have more than one English daily, notably the Manchester Guardian, asserting that the incident is part of a German campaign to sow discord between Tokyo and Washington.

EVANS

TAKING HIS CHANCE IN THE JACK-POT
-Evans in Baltimore American.