Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/258

 the abolition of the harem. When he showed us what polygamy so often meant to the children, few of his large audience could keep back their tears. The colonel had introduced him, and said that he had been the Minister of Education. "Why did he give up the post?" I asked. "Ah, pourquoi!" shrugged my friend, "it is a delight to talk with him. You, who love French, will indeed enjoy the exquisite language in which he clothes his thoughtful opinions. Such men are an ornament to any parliament."

Hamdoullah Soubhi does not seem to feel so leniently towards the Greeks as M. Kemal, and is less optimistic about their return. It had been supposed, he told me, that the marked differences between the two races would balance each other; but it has not proved so, and, in his judgment, they would always clash. "Our Anatolians, so long neglected and forgotten, are as they were three thousand years ago: honourable, firmly resisting all tempest, faithful to the traditions of their race, loyal to their chosen leader in the hour of danger."

I told him it should be a lesson for us in Europe, to find a map of Asia Minor in all the humble homes; while my host, the Minister of Public Works, always brings his map on to our breakfast table, to familiarise me with all the geography of these wide lands. We are now studying Diarbékir and Kurdistan, not only the wonderful old towns, but the character of their cultured inhabitants. No wonder our Lausanne delegates have so affronted Turkey by their lofty allusions to the "illiterate" Kurd!

"How can our younger civilisations, however advanced in science and commerce, ever have been so self-satisfied as to suppose that we could keep down such people for ever?"

"Our forty millions," answered Hamdoullah Soubhi, "will not be so easily suppressed. Remember, our language is spoken beyond the borders of China, and our civilisation can be traced all over the world."

When I afterwards met Hamdoullah Soubhi, in a little restaurant adjoining the Assembly buildings,