Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-10-30

correspondent who knew how to grasp an |
opportunity when he saw one, the people of
London were reading the first message ever |
sent to newspaper by Sultan of Turkey. |
What Abdul-Hamid Said
SPEAKING of Sultans, few persons have
~ ever heard what Abdul Hamid, whom
some called the Sick and others the Damned,
really said when he was deposed and taken,
a closely guarded captive, into exile. Some
of the newspapers had it that he pleaded to
take with him only seven of his women, and
some said seven hundred; some that he
pleaded for his Empire. and others that he
pleaded for himself. But here is the real
story, the inside story, the untold story, of
that nights grim historic doings That it is
literally true there need be no doubt; for |
had it from the officer who read to the Sultan
Parliament's decree.
1t was seven minutes after midnight when
the little group of officers in their uniforms
of stained and torn khaki entered the Sui
tan's cabinet in Yildiz Kiosk and read to the
stoop shouldered, timid, shrinking little man,
whose face, as one of them described it after
ward, was the color of dead fish, the SEN
tence of dethronement and imprisonment
for life.
And when the reading was finished he ex-
claimed, in a voice choked with emotion,
$50 this is the treatment l get for feeding
my brother on birds milk" And all during
the time that his handful of faithful attend
ants were dressing him for his journey into
exile he kept repeating to himself, This,
then, is the treatment get for feeding my
brother on birds milk"
At half-past two in the morning they took
him out of the palace on the first journey he
had taken in thirty-three years, on the last
journey, mayhap, he will ever take in this
uncertain world of coffee cups and daggers.
The electric lights in the palace had gone
out, for the imperial servants had fled almost
to a man; so soldier took a lamp from
waiting carriage and used it to light the
steps of the fallen monarch. Without the
door an armored motor car, one of those that
had borne its part in the street fighting of
the previous day, was waiting to take him
to the station. 1t looked big and grim and
ghostly in the uncertain light of the lamp,
and the lean machine gun peered menac-
ingly from behind its armored shield.
Now, Abdul-Hamid, who had a constitu-
tional dread of machinery,-he once said
that dynamo sounded suspiciously like dyna-
mite,-had never set foot in a motor car, and
it was with considerable trepidation, there
fore, that he took the seat indicated to him.
But when the driver threw on the power and
the big car began to vibrate with the pulsa-
lions of the engines, it was altogether too
much for the ex-Sultan's equanimity, and so
completely terrified did he become that it
was necessary to remove him to carriage,
in which, seated between men who were de-
termined to kill him rather than let him es-
cape, and surrounded by cloud of cavalry,
he was rushed through the silent streets of
the sleeping city to the train waiting in
Stamboul. And all the way he would mutter
again and again. so this is the treatment l
get for feeding my brother on birds milk!
The dethroning of despots is not part of
the days work of young cavalry officers; so
it is scarcely to be wondered at that those in
charge of the august captive were first puz-
zled, then curious, and eventually trihe ir-
ritated at the reiteration of this apparently
senseless remark. The personal attendants
of the fallen Sultan were questioned as to
what he meant by birds milk; but without
any light being shed, until up spoke white
bearded old body servant who had been with
Abdul-Hamid when he was boy.
"My masters meaning is plain enough"
said he. when he and his brother Rechad
were boys together, Rechad Effendi fell i'll
with a malady of fever, and my imperial
master-whom Allah preserved day
fed his brother, whom he dearly loved, with
a prepared milk which came from Europe in
nd no, of b.rI