The ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid, of evil memory, died last Sunday
at Constantinople. He was seventy-five. He had reigned for over forty- two years when he was deposed by the Young Turks in April, 1909, and sent into captivity. There was none to lament his fall. He had ruined Turkey by concentrating all power in his own hands for his own enrichment, and by inciting Moslem fanaticism against the Christians. He averted European interference for a generation by skilfully playing on the jealousies of the Powers, but he did not foresee that the Balkan States would combine against the Turk and expel him from Macedonia. His habitual caution would probably have kept him from joining in this war. But we must not be under- stood, in making the suggestion, to say anything to Abdul Hamid's credit. He will be remembered as the type of the crafty and evasive Ottoman, whose word no man relied on. In the seclusion of Yildiz Kiosk he laboured incessantly, like Philip II. in his stuffy cell at the Escurial, and Abdul Hamid, like Philip, had nothing to show at the end for all his toil.
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