The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-11-22


raising the wind. 1t was dubbed a patriotic
fund for arnling the defenders of the true
faith, and outsiders swallowed the formula
whole. There Is not tiny bit of patriotism
about tho scheme, nor is there anything
savoring of good win in the offerings. No
body subscribed except through fear of
being marked as an abstainer and nobody
expects to hear anything of the manner in
which the money is spent. 1t may be that
a few trusted soldiers of the imperial body
guard will be better armed and receive
some back pay, but nineteen-twentieths of
whatever Is collected will go into the pail
aces Unsuitable NAV. Therefore,
the outside world, unaccustomed to
Abdul Hamid's cunning. which, as well
as his ferocity, has insanity in it, may dis
miss the fear that Turkeys fanatical
forces are about to be armed to the teeth
IN order to eXterminate all non-Mussul-
mans. The financial position in CONSTANT
nopIe passes belief. 1t is much worse
even than during the desperate days of
1876, preceding the deposition of Sultan
Abdul Aziz. The bulk of the population
has quite forgotten the color of money,
and 1t is little short of marvellous that
the rich European quarter has not been
sacked by the thousands of absolutely
destitute Mussulmans, who hunger and
thirst not for Christian blood, but for
meat and drink, or money wherewith TO
buy them.
The Sun reporter has not vet come
across the respectable Turk, who does not
admit that the present regime is impossi-
Die, and that salvation is only to be found
either In the deposition of Abdul Hamid.
or IN the establishment of an European
commission to control the country's
finances. Most people, Turkish and Euro
pean, now incline to the belief that the
latter will be the solution
Sir Edgar Vincent, president of the I'm
perial Ottoman Bank, is meandering about
Europe in search of financiers willing to
ADVANCE FUNDS to keep the Turkish govern
mental machinery going. The great finan-
clers are shy, but doubtless Sir Edgar will
manage to strike some sort of a bargain.
Few people are in a position to know the
terms offered by the porte and fewer still
cherlsn any hope of permanent benefit
from all this juggling. Among the scep-
tics is King George of Greece, who ought
to be fairly well informed on such a matter
seeing how much he stands to lose or gain
for himself, and his people, According to
the Poster Lloyd which is an usually
trustworthy newspaper, his majesty told
an Austrian diplomatist this week that he
had no hope that the promised reforms in
Turkey would be really carried out. He
added that he was anything but reassured,
even as regarded Crete, and he expected
little from any reorganization of Turkish
finances. In other words, King George
thinks the time has come for carving up
this Turkey and he is quite prepared to
seize his. slice.
Short-sighted people, who have been
proceeding in their calculations upon the
assumption that Greece is too small and
too poor to do anything when the critical
moment arrives, will probably, one of
these days, wish they had consulted a po-
litical oculist.
The inquiry ordered by the Marquis dl
Rudinl the Italian prime minister, into
the accounts of certain public depart
ments in Rome, is revealing a state of
affairs which is worthy of Constantinople,
and it would not be surprising If the in
vestigation should result in the legal
prosecution of some ex-ministers and eX-
alted prominent functionaries who are
more or less responsible for scandalous
mismanagement, If not actual systematic
corruption. 1t ought not to be very diff
cult to make somebody responsible. The
late minister Of agriculture, for instance,
would surely find 1t an awkward task to
justify the annual expenditure of $20, 900
during ten years for carpets, seeing that
the carpets now on the floors of the minis
try buildings would probably not fetch a
thousand dollars at auction, and presum-
ably he would also have some difficulty
in persuading the average householder
few brass studs used to ornament a min
isterial book case.
In another department, believed to be
Signor Crispis own foreign office, $1,000 000
was spent in ten years in purchasing pins.
The ordinary mind shrinks from the strain
which would result from an effort to cal
culate the billions of pins that sum would
buy in the open market.
There is a suspicious smack, too, about
the manner in which payments to railway
contractors were allowed to get into ar
rears. So far as the muddled accounts
show, there was plenty of money available
for railway construction, but the accounts
remained unpaid, apparently for no better
reason than to entitle the contractors to
draw interest, with the result that in one
year alone nearly $1,500,00O was paid as in
terest. Some Italian newspapers make
merry over these disclosures, while others,
more properly treat them as symptomatic
of the existence of worse scandals, which
may yet be revealed.