Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/50

 Montmarte section of Paris. This was the ideal which young Turks like Enver and Niazi and Kemal were propagating, as they built up the secret organization which was to compel Abdul Hamid to restore the Constitution. Throughout the Empire, they had their agents in every garrison, converting both the officers and the enlisted personnel of Abdul Hamid's Army, and assassinating hostile officers and men known to be spies. Small organizing committees had been planted in all the larger garrisons and directing committees were functioning in Constantinople, Salonica, Smyrna, Adrianople, Uskub and Monastir. Under the Eastern tradition of government, it was the Army which immediately mattered. Deprived of his Army, Abdul Hamid for the moment would be caught defenseless.

But in reality the Army was only the instrument of Abdul Hamid's power. The substance of his power lay in Moslem law and in the unswerving devotion to it of the Old Turks. Strong simple men, these Old Turks were, men who knew nothing of the arts of debate, broadly tolerant of the usages of others and rigidly conservative of their own usages, men who took their starkly simple faith very seriously, in whose lives religion was still the dominating factor. They were found in the mosque schools rather than in the War Academy, in Konia rather than in Salonica, and in winning over the Army, the Young Turks were not touching the vast and silent body of conservative Old Turkish opinion which formed Abdul Hamid's real strength. Here was a dead weight of usage which knew no necessity for change and which would have resisted to the end if it had. True, there was a section of