A FRENCHMAN ON THE TURKS.* THE Frenchman who calls himself

Kesnin Bey, and who undertakes to enlighten the world on "the evil of the East" —meaning a small corner of the countries included under that name—has the bright literary faculty of his race, and, of course, the defects of his qualities. He says well what he has to say; but he leans to the "realistic school," deals too much in superlatives, and seems to suffer from some kind of disappointment which helps to intensify the lurid hues of his clever sketches. In what capacity he tried to serve the Turks we are not told. We only know that he is a Frenchman because he incidentally so describes himself ; and in the same way lets us see that he has personal grievances against the Ottoman administration. " I myself," he writes, when de- scribing the sloth of the Turkish bureaucracy, " went eighty- three times to the Ministerial Department to obtain the solution of a little matter, which, after twenty months of waiting, is not settled yet." But not only are we left to infer that the author is a Gaul, no indication whatever is afforded which would enable the reader to know whether the book was written in English or has been translated from the French. There is, however, one Frenchman who is competent to write such a book in English. Some account of its origin was due to the public who are asked to buy and read it. The inference permissible is that it is a translation, and if so, it is a very good one. Yet surely literary honesty required that the fact should be stated one way or the other.

The aim of the author is to destroy the illusion in which his countrymen indulge. " The East is fairyland, perhaps," he says, " but take good care never to spoil the charm by going behind the scenes." Then he goes there forthwith ; and tells you that outward shows give place to shameful realities. His deliverance is that both Mussulman and Christian are rotten to the core, and that " it is not an empire which is breaking up, it is a society which is perishing." The gist of his theory—adopted, he would have us believe, from an Irish humorist—is that " it is the Christians who have corrupted the Turk ;" and he calls it a great truth, adding that wherever the Turk lives isolated from the Christian, he retains his fine qualities, but loses them when in contact with the Christian. The paradox cannot be sustained wholly, and the Bey is forced to put it in another shape ; for he says that it is the juxtaposition of the two which produces the bad results ; and that the new gospel of the East, " My little children, cheat one another," applies all round. Hence the conclusion that the " indigestible mixture of races and religions has been one of the causes of the decadence of the Turk." From this view of matters it will be easily understood what a picture the lively Frenchman draws of Constantinople, and such relatively small portions of " the East " as he deigns to notice. The limit is not extensive, for the real East has no place in his survey. Thus, he says, with more shallow smartness than truth, " it was Islamism which created that strange reality which we call the East. Without Islamism the East would only be a cardinal point." Thus he ignores all Oriental history before the advent of Mahommed in order to make an epigram, and plainly discloses the fact that for his purpose the East means Turkey only. And, accordingly, nearly all he seta down with such a trenchant pen concerns the Ottoman Empire, as it was and is, and the Ottoman Empire alone. All who read the book, and, despite some pages savouring of Zola, it is worth reading, should bear in mind its contracted scope, and not forget either that the author, though he never parades it, seems to have been a man who has not got all he desired to get out of the corruption which he so vividly and, we may say, so good-humouredly describes.

This much, however, must be said for him,—he showers his playful censure upon all alike, not sparing his own countrymen, and, oddly enough, makes some allowance for all, except, perhaps, the English, who are a rock of offence in his eyes. The rural Turk is praised by way of contrast to the Stem- bouli ; the Armenian is savagely treated, and then promised a great future ; the Greek is painted as a very dreadful fellow in his dealings with his fellow-man, but he also is so rich in intellectual and practical virtues, that an empire is in store for him ; while the " Levantine " has scarcely any redeeming feature to raise him above the author's gay con- tempt, and the Hebrew of Constantinople is a monster.

• The Eva of the East : Truths about Turkey. Told by Keenin Bey. London: Tizetelly and Co.

tempered by industry and the domestic virtues. There is even a good word for the Persian, who is a very smart fellow in his way ; and of Persia it is said that she " may one day become a great nation," which is a speech calculated to " stir.

prise by itself." So that, on the whole, the mixture of races and religions produces the baneful East known to the author. Yet nearly every one of the elements in the Ottoman pot- pourri is credited with possibilities, if only they could be got to exist separately. Even Palestine is promised, in a manner, to the Jews, if they can wait for and like to take it. From these remarks it may be inferred that the book is lively reading, and it is so, never being dull from the beginning to the end, and characterised by a sort of French

fairness as well as that charming sprightliness which is also French. Very amusingly angry with England and the English, which is natural, and of no account, he does not deal tenderly with his own people, observing that they take their party passions abroad with them, and quarrel instead of banding together. " The less important they are, the less they agree," the men seeking to impose their opinions—which are not their own, but "cost twenty francs, post-free, per quarter "—and the women desiring to domineer. But he has a nice consolation for the want of influence. " If France has lost some of her military and commercial prestige, and if she does not stand first in all branches of art, at least nothing has been able to weaken her superiority in literature." The East, he finds, owing to the prevalence of the French tongue, " is open to our journals, novels, and plays," some of which, we should think, assisted in producing the awful depravity he so sarcastically describes and deplores, and the flaming conse- quences which hang over his East.

To indicate his keenness of eye and pen, we may quote a few mots with which the book abounds. Speaking of surface changes, as he calla them, he says :—" It is the old story of the

Turk who thinks he has turned an apostle of progress because he puts on a London-made coat, or gets his stick-up collars

straight from Paris." And again :—" In the Ottoman official world, esprit de corps is a thing unknown." " Turkey is the land

of the inexact sciences. When an Ottoman shows you a thing, reverse your opera-glass if you would get an idea of its exact size." Upon the Turkish official, who is not always a Turk,

he feelingly says :—" It verily does honour to the wonderful scent of the Oriental, that he can discover the odour of a baksheesh, like the odour of truffles, while yet buried in the

earth." It is of a piece with this that "one of the greatest misfortunes of Turkey is that no count is taken of a man's intellectual or moral worth." " No family ever knows how much it spends a year, nor what sum husband or wife may devote to dress or amusement. In all things Turkey is the land of the uncertain, the indefinite." Thus he dwells on the distraction consequent on the fact that each day repre- sents six different dates—Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Gregorian, Coptic, Jewish—and, calling it " the art of muddling up dates," he says : " Go now and try to establish a budget with this chronological jumble, and this antagonism between sun and moon." One merchant, known to the author, paid in drafts on provincial treasuries, " spent more money in getting them cashed than the amount due to him, for he had to travel all over Turkey. In fact, he had become a regular nomad, and talked of living henceforth in a tent." The Greek, he avers, has monopolised all the trades of the East. "Do away with the Greek population in Turkey, and it will no longer be possible either to eat, drink, dress, or furnish one's house." Remarking that it is often cheaper to get things from abroad than consume native products liable to duty, he gives an example :-

"No one in Turkey has ever yet succeeded in producing potatoes at a price moderate enough to compete with those imported from Marseilles and Trieste. To eat a beefsteak in Constantinople, one must get the beef from Russia, the butter from Italy, the potatoes from France—quite an international beefsteak, is it not ? Turkey only—ah ! we beg pardon, Turkey does supply something : she supplies the parsley."

He speaks well of the reigning Sultan, but his efforts are vain,—" Corruption has come from the top ; regeneration can never come from the bottom." The Turks have joyfully hailed Abdul Hamid, but not one will move along the road he indicates. " They wish the country to progress, yes ; but nobody will do anything towards this end. Each person doggedly persists in remaining where he is, and asks that others should be made to move on." So the verdict is that

"this reign, like those before it, will repair nothing, for in Turkey all is irreparable." We say nothing here of the darker abominations so ruthlessly dealt •with by the author in the French manner. It is enough to see from the facts, due deduction being made for over-literary statement, that, on the whole, the judgment passed is correct, and that in some shape the doom will fall; for whose profit, the time coming will have to show.