Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/38

 Western idea of democracy. A growing industrial plant was giving rise to trade unions and trade unions, exerting a growing influence on ideas of government, were drawing authority down to a popular electorate. Government was tightening its hold on the lowliest peasant and a civil service was being formed as a permanent body to which the increasing duties of government were entrusted. The country was becoming a powerful industrial unit, able to mobilize the vast new energies which machinery was opening up to it. It was embarking on manufacture and trade on such a scale as had never been dreamed of before. It was becoming the ganglion of a financial nervous system whose sensitive fibres covered the world. The old religious aspect of government was dwindling and in its place we saw a drilled and disciplined industrialism taking form beneath the feudal trappings which still constitute the surface of British government.

But when Abdul Hamid II ascended the Ottoman Throne at Constantinople, religion was still the dominant factor in his primitive and loosely organized country. From its surface to its core, the Ottoman Empire was still Eastern. The Moslem community was still the governing community, a community with a profound self-respect and a knowledge of its own duties as well as of the deference which was due to it. The dissenting communities were exempt by Moslem law from the duty of preserving the peace and hence were able frequently to attain a degree of prosperity which many Moslems never knew. Since the bulk of the Sultan's revenue was obtained from taxation provided for in Moslem law, foreigners, most of whom were Christians, were