Norwich bulletin., 1918-10-12
THE SITUATION IN TURKEY


 In his budget speech in the otto- man parliament, Djayid Bey. the Tur- kish minister of finance, gave some remarkable figures on the authority of the director general of the Otto man Public Dept. At Berlin" he said, the rise in price of the prin- ctpal articles of prime necessity has averaged 124 per cent, at Vienna IFS per cent, and at Constantinople, 1,97o per cent In the light of this official statement, it is not surprising to hear neutrals who have been working in Turkey compute that a quarter of the population of the empire has perished already during the war by casualties, massacre, starvation, or disease. In ether countries this might shake the government, but the committee of union and progress is not so easily unseated. Women, we are told, have brought their children to the muni- cipal authorities at, COnStantinople crying: Take them we cannot feed them ourselves" There have been raids on provision shops, riot or two, and such flow of desertien from the army in the Anatolian provinces that the mountains are full of armed desperadoes and travelling is hardly possible for civilians. .
 
 age are immemorial institutions in Turkey. and mere accentuation of these phenomena of state life does not, writes a correspondent of the London Times, cause a Turkish gov ernment undue alarm. The reported unrest among the younger military officers is more serious: that was the way the revolution started in 1908; but the conrn-ftt-p a,.7 wiser in their generation than Abdul Hamid, and are raising thel4 , so--I-c4 Eol-eGSueS pay. 1 After all. the interests of the whole 1 Turkish official class are at bottom | identical, and there is so much plum | der to give away. The committee of union and progress is an organization created by Saionika-- Jewish brains for | securing Turkish of1icialdem Ne, max 1 imum profit from the lands and peo- | pies it rules, and duTinf the war there | has been ? profiteering, as Dlavid l pkrased it in another passage of his speech, "of a disquieting and fantas- | tic kind" When supplies began to | run short each committee politician appeared as controller of some neces- sity of life. It is true, even in Turkey, thieves fall out. For instance, when the lat | minister of education was found tt
 
 him by the ministry Of war for th' | orphans of fallen soldiVs, he had tt go and his counter demand on Enve Pasha for the publication of accounts i Ca demand with which Enver was Il, more capable of complying than he did not improve the war minister's DO sition. In fact, Talaat PaSha, who a grand vizier represents the twill 0 the executive committee Of the com
 mittee of union and progress, found i politic to stimulate a fictitious oppo
 sition to Enver in parliament. as gentle hint that his pecuiations, toe had better be yelled more efffCientl
 from the public eye. But the pecuia
 tions go on. and the balances Of En
 yer and his rivals mount up in neu
 tral banks, Nor is the boom eonfne , to the leaders. The plundering of tn l Armenians and Greeks, the inhatio of the paper currency, 1and the credi !, produced by the purchases of the Cen tral Powers have broue-ht illusOrv cal !; ital into the hands of the whole Turk ] ish governing class. and Ehere has bee
 fever of company promoting. es } pecially in the Anatolian provtncia towns.
 Meanwhile, however, the economy ( [ the state, on which the profits of 1t parasitic IufklSh rulers uitltndtely ue
 reRd, is in a. grieYous decline. I'll 5 dizzy rise in prices has been accom- , panied by an equally xertigineus ia 2 in the value Of the government pape and it cost Djavid all his ingenuit f to demonstrate that the two symptom s lad no connection with one apothe I The depreciation in the paper currer 9 cy was put down by him to 3 "mor' I faetor"-namely, the publication (t t which he was bound by law) of tF g amount of paper which he WIS put e ting into circula tion. AThls depreois g ton is not scientific technical: or req l it is false,and artificial That mailt
 il all the more deplorable. but thnl
 is no means of battling against Il n current" Since the delivery of h Q speech Diayid is said to nave resartf ,. to the simple means of breaking u > law and circulating fresh paper witt