We note with regret that a telegram in Friday's papers
states that on Wednesday a Moslem woman, several times divorced, was discovered by a mob in the house of a Greek whom she wished to marry. To protect them, both were removed to a police-barrack. The crowd, however, chiefly consisting of Kurds, rushed the barrack, beat the woman almost to death, and lynched the man in circumstances of great barbarity. Both the police and the soldiers appear to have behaved badly. Either from sympathy or from want of courage, they refused to fire on the crowd. No one can, of course, expect the police regulations of Constantinople to be made perfect in an hour. The disagreeable significance of the incident is due rather to the fact that the emancipation of women, which is sure to be claimed under the new regime, may lead first to mob outrage and then to reaction. It may be remembered that when Napoleon occupied Cairo a hundred and ten years ago nothing made French rule so unpopular as the relaxation of the seclusion of women which was one of its results. An !Arab chronicler of these events notes with horror and indignation the freedom claimed by the women and their illicit unions with the French, and declares this to have been the chief cause of the hatred in which the European conquerors were held. The relations of the sexes is a matter in which the Young Turks will have to be specially careful not to go too fast, and not to awaken the latent prejudices of the Old Turks of all ages.
