Americus times-recorder., 1915-01-23
.CONSTANT|NOPLE IS
.OUEEREST Of ALL
EUROPEAN CITIES
Especial to Times-Recorder.J

Age of Turkish dominion daWned and
began to decline.
Constaptinople crowned its con-
queror's life, as it has remained the
chief jewel won by Turkish arms; and
today. the Ottoman is trembling lest
this trophy of his former vigor, the
vantage point of his oriental world
upon the continent of Europe, be won
away from him and brought back
within the sphere of its native West
again. The life which developed in
this city since the possession of the
Turk, dating from 1854, is the subject
of paper prepared by H. G. Dwight
for the National Geographic society.
Before the revolution of 1908, Con-
stantinople was a survival of the Fif-
teenth century without electric lights,
telephones, trolley-cars, fre-brigades.
/
theaters or woman suffrage. At first
this was because the Ottoman capital
was allowed to remain a remote piece
of Asia transplanted into Europe; in
} later years, it was so because Of the
will of one man-the ex-Sultan Abw-
ul-Hamid II. This sultan, Mr.. Dwight
conjectures, firmly believed that a dy-
namo had something to do with dyna-
mite, and therefore would have none
of them.
Young Turks Make Things Hum.
The Young Turk uprising in 1906
transformed the city, and, according
to Mr.. Dwight, Constantinople has
changed more in the last five years
than in the 200 years before then.
Dynamos hum there now; electric cars
clatter through its streets, telephones
are in use; streets have been paved
and widened; motor traffic plies upon
! them, and there is even talk of a sub
way system for the city. Yet the tinga
of the Orient still saturates it's life.
Constantinople of today, the writer
says, is neither modern nor mediae-
val; not wholly Asiatic, nor yet who'll
ly European, rather it is a confusing
mixture of the old and the new, of the
East and the West. -
The great city, the writer continues
Is an agglomeration of villages rather
than an expressive whole. 1t does not
assimilate the people who come to
dwell in it, but each tribe and race
lives in a section apart, speaking it's
own languages, wearing its native
tracts, and adhering strongly to it's ma
tive customs. How the stranger wilf
live in Constantinople is dependent
upon the circumstance of his nation
ality. All visitors, however, must
share somewhat in its eastern atmos-
phere. In this connection, MIR. Dwight
explains:
The stranger shall not be amazed
when he discovers that his street has
no name and his house no number. for
the real system on which the address,
es Of Constantinople are Organized
Is that OF quarters. I, for one, live
In such and such village of the Bos-
phorus, in the quarters of Candle Goes
Not Out. Find that quarter and some-
one in it will be able to find me- if he
feel so disposed
practically ell the work of the
city is done by outsiders. and each
Klnd of work is done chiefly by men
from a certain country So it is that
the men who sell ice-cream in the
streets are Albanians, from the region
OF oskub; that the layers of .avements
are Mohammedan Albanians. of the
south; that the railroad navvies are
christian Albanians from the same
region; that bath men are Turks from A
SlVas; that street porters are Kurds
or ASIA Minor Turks, according to the
KIND of load they carry; that most
ooatmen are from the Black sea coast
and so indefinitely"
There is plenty of time in the Otto
man capital; in fact a prodigality Of
'his element of life-for the CITY re-
hglously follows four calendars. Time