Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/48

 ready in a ferment of Westernism and in their grim way were preparing to disentangle themselves in the wake of the retreating Empire. Salonica, Uskub and Monastir were already seething with forbidden political ideas and if the Empire were ever to halt its retreat, it was here it would have to make its peace with Westernism. It was here that Old Greece had flung down its challenge and it was here that challenge would have to be picked up. Furthermore, if any force were to be mobilized to thrust Westernism upon Abdul Hamid in Constantinople, it was from Salonica that it would inevitably be launched.

Kemal accordingly abandoned his work in Syria and induced Lutfi Bey to give him leave under an assumed name to Smyrna, intending to make his way from there to Salonica. Fearing, however, that Constantinople would detect his presence in Smyrna, he went to Egypt instead and sailed from Alexandria to the Piraeus, whence he reached Salonica. Constantinople was coming more and more completely into the grip of Abdul Hamid. The General Staff was being periodically broken up and scattered to the four corners of the Empire, and the Military College of Medicine was finally locked up and abandoned. Hamid was beginning in similar fashion to tighten his grip on Salonica and, although Kemal remained there in strictest hiding, his presence was discovered after four months and he fled precipitately to Jaffa, where a convenient outbreak of "trouble" at Akaba on the Red Sea gave him an alibi which served to soothe the ruffled feelings of the capital. From Akaba he went back to Damascus and waited there until a change of War