revolver and fire a shot in the air. This happened in broad daylight, in a place crowded by the mixed Levantine elements now making up the showy summer colony of Prinkipo. Composure and calm are not one of the qualities of such crowds. A panic started, the Levantines running in every direction and the general stampede was only quieted when Turkish policemen were called to the assistance of the Italian carabinieri. The Turkish police knows how to handle a Levantine crowd better than the foreign police, but now it can only interfere if it is especially asked to do so by the foreign police.

With such conditions prevailing, aggravated by their own financial difficulties, it is not surprising that the Turkish elements have neither the heart nor the desire to assume again their position as leaders of the summer colony in Prinkipo. They prefer to keep quietly to themselves and they make it a point to avoid as much as possible any contact with foreigners or with the mixed crowd of Levantines. The beautiful Yacht Club, which was formerly an essentially Turkish institution really devoted to yachting, is now more of a gambling den than a club and only a few unprincipled Levantinized Turks still frequent it. We passed before it on our way home, and father said smilingly that it was now “taboo” for us. I can well imagine how he felt. He had been one of the founders of the club.

My father and my uncle lived together in a big white villa midway on the hill. The house had been originally built by my father as a small cottage during the first years of his marriage and when my uncle was away on one of his diplomatic missions. Then gradually as the family increased and as my uncle came back, additions had been made to the cottage. It stood now, a large twenty-five room house in the midst of pine trees, with shaded verandas running around each floor, commanding a gorgeous view over the three neighbouring islands, on the one hand, and the smiling shores of Anatolia on the other. The background to this panorama is furnished by the city of Constantinople, dimly discernable at a distance, refleeting at night its millions of blinking lights in the blue waters of the Marmora. We settled into one of the wings of the house originally built for my elder brother when he married. He was now away with his family.

To celebrate our arrival my father took us at the first opportunity to the Prinkipo Club of which he was still president. This club has remained more exclusive than the Yacht Club and has therefore a larger and better Turkish attendance. It occupies the beautiful estate which was the American summer Embassy at the time of Mr. Leishman. Weekly concerts are given in its gardens every Friday night—the Turkish Sunday. My father took us to one of these concerts to make our “debut” into the Turkish society of Prinkipo. Groups of Turkish families were wandering together in the gardens or sitting at tables, enjoying the beautiful starry night and listening to the music. The ladies were attired in summer garments—beautiful Oriental capes of embroidered white silk, draping their Parisian gowns in flowing loose folds—their hair covered by a net or veil, but their faces uncovered. The men wore tuxedos or business suits and could be distinguished from the foreigners only by their red fezes, a most unbecoming and unpractical headgear which is, alas! obligatory for all Turkish men in Constantinople.

This public association of Turkish ladies and men was an innovation to me. It had gradually come to pass during my ten years absence. Before my departure Turkish ladies could only be seen by friends of the family, and then exclusively in the strict privacy of their homes. They went out by themselves. They never mingled with men in public places. They did not even talk to them if they met casually on the streets. They would only bow slightly or make a discrete “temenah”—the graceful Turkish salutation which consists in lifting the hand towards the lips and to the forehead. Now, ten years later, Turkish men and women were talking and sitting together in public places and in clubs, freely associating with each other. This was surely a concrete sign of, at least, social progress.

I renewed many old friendships that night at the club, and my wife began there many acquaintances which developed later most cordially. My wife was surprised to meet many foreign girls who had, like herself, married Turks.

When we announced our engagement several of her friends in America had endeavoured to dissuade her from marrying a Turk. Surely a Turk could not make a good husband, East and West could never mix and anyhow why should she be the first foreigner to marry a Turk? She had of course set aside all these arguments and had believed me when I told her that many Turks had married foreigners and lived happily ever after. I don't think, however, that she ever conceived that foreign marriages had been so usual. That evening at the club and during our subsequent stay in Constantinople, she found herself in a most international milieu, although associating exclusively with Turkish families. She met in Prinkipo a charming Austrian girl, who had married an admiral of the Turkish navy. The mother of one of my childhood friends is a Russian lady, while the wife of another is a most attractive Bavarian girl. Many are the Turks who studied in France and married French girls. But the first prize for international marriages goes unquestionably to the family of Reshid Pasha where four out of seven members married foreign girls? Italian, English and American. So, after all, my wife found out that not only she was not the first foreign girl, but she was not even the first American girl who had married a Turk and she hastened to write it to her friends in America and to tell them that from what she could see and by her own experience East and West could and did mix. The Moslem religion and the Turkish customs allow complete latitude as far as marrying foreign girls is concerned and leave them of course absolutely free to practise their own religion. As for the Turks making good husbands, I believe of course that this is entirely dependent on the individual and not on the race. There are good and bad husbands among the Turks, just as there are good and bad husbands among other nations.

Our stay in Prinkipo turned out to be one of the most pleasant summer vacations I ever had. I would go to town to attend business regularly, but would take long week-ends off; that is, I would do as most business men do in summer and would stay home Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. We would then go bathing in the mornings, and play tennis or go out sailing in the afternoons. The Sea of Marmora is ideal for yachting, and numerous are the sailing yachts which use Prinkipo as their port. Of course the fact that we usually used Turkish yachts would somewhat hamper our movements, as boats flying the Turkish flags were not allowed to go anywhere near the Anatolian shores, the Inter-Allied authorities enforcing at that time a strict blockade of the Nationalists.

Often there would be tea-parties or informal after-dinner gatherings in the Turkish homes. And while these were small, unpretentious affairs—the Turks cannot afford to entertain elaborately on account of their precarious means—they were a most pleasant manner of passing away the time. There was always someone interesting at these gatherings. A man or a woman of prominence who would give to us a new point of view or some insight into the general situation. Once an Egyptian princess told us of the difference in the progress accomplished by the Turks and by their cousins of Egypt in the last years. How, despite the fact that the Turks had been hampered by