1 MAY 1909, Page 2

We wish we could quote the whole of this remarkable

story, and tell how the Sultan poured out his supplications, supplica- tions which in the Daily Telegraph report are punctuated with such remarks as : " Arif does not reply," "No reply is made," "Nobody replies," the Sultan's tearful expostulations breaking like a wave against the iron reticence of the depnta- tion. 'Yet even they were moved when the Sultan's son began to sob, and the Sultan turned to him with "two tears trembling in his cruel eyes,—perhaps. the only tears of his whole life." At the end the Sultan was fatalistically resigned, and twice humbly saluted the deputation, "carrying both his hands to his forehead." The interview, we are told, lasted 'eighteen nilnutes. • The picture of the empty grounds, of the palace and the crowd of black eunuchs in the shuttered room inside, and the trembling tyrant faced with his deposers, reminds one of a passage from Tacitus or Suetonius. The last phase of Abd-ul-Hamid la as dramatic. On Tuesday night a special train was pre- Pared, and at two o'clock on Wednesday morning the deposed Sultan with eleven ladies of his harem and several servants entered it and were conveyed to Salonika. The ex-Sultan will be confined at the Villa kllatini, a house belonging to a rich Italian Jew, but which of late has been occupied by General di Robilant, Inspector-General of the Macedonian Gendarmerie. We do not doubt that if the deposed Sultan honestly refrains from intrigue his life will be spared, and that he will not be tried by a military tribunal, even though his action in the past and during the last fortnight may deserve punishment.