We are back now in the turmoil of the end of the eighteenth century, and have to begin again from there. For more than a century England has with the best intentions been trying, by strictly secular education through a foreign language, by the exaltation of efficiency, simplicity, and single-mindedness-virtues which our souls abhor,-and by a political science which raises democracy into a religion, to force us into a mould which God never meant us to fit, and to change the pliable, sensuous Oriental into a puritan, matterof-fact middle-class Englishman. She would have liked to have turned our skins white too. How could we help being hypocrites if we desired our rulers' approbation? With the great desertion of 1925, which again was so well meant, England threw up the sponge, and left for us a hell paved with her good intentions. In this hell we now are, and are blindly groping back to the gate from which to start afresh. SMYRNA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. BY A. C. WRATISLAW, C.B., C.M.G., C.B.E. THE Chevalier Laurent d'Arvieux, "Envoy Extraordinary of the King of France to the Porte, and Consul at Aleppo, Algiers, Tripoli, and other ports of the Levant," died in 1702, but the Memoirs in which he described his travels and experiences were not published until 1735, when the Reverend Jean Baptiste Labat, of the Order of Preaching Brothers, gave them to the world in six volumes. The Chevalier, as we learn from his editor's preface, belonged to a noble but impoverished family of Provence which originated in Lombardy, had branches in other parts of France and, according to Père Labat, even in England, where the Italian family name of 66 "" Arveo was transformed into Harvey. In France it passed through the successive metamorphoses of Arveou, Arvieu, Arvieux, and finally d'Arvieux on the family being ennobled, which occurred eleven generations before the author of the Memoirs appeared on the scene. These Memoirs are particularly interesting, as they relate to a period which is not overrich in records of the Ottoman Empire. Their author, a keen and extremely curious observer, resided in the course of his long life abroad at Smyrna, in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Barbary coast, and, though he does not expressly say so, must have kept careful notes of what he saw and experienced, for no memory, however active, could possibly have supplied the wealth of detail contained in his three thousand pages unless aided by written records. It is impossible to compress within the limits of a single article an adequate summary of journeyings in so many countries and spread over so many years, but the following account of the conditions prevailing in Smyrna the first part of Turkey which he visited-may be of interest in view of the contest at present raging between Turk and Greek for the possession of that town. He was born in June 1635, and was thus only fifteen years old when, in August 1650, his father died from the effect of "trois coups de bayonnette received from the sons of a neighbour with whom he had a difference of opinion regarding a right-of-way through his property. The life of a landed proprietor on a small and barren estate in Provence failed to appeal to the adventurous youth, who saw other scions of noble houses with the permission of the king condescend to a commercial career and return to France with handsome fortunes gained in the dominions of the Grand Signor, and who yearned to follow their the Knights of Malta, and no merchant ship took the sea unless adequately armed or provided with convoy. It was barely a year after the Postillon sailed that Cromwell had to send Blake into the Mediterranean with a fleet to chastise the pirates of Tunis and Algiers for their depredations on English commerce. With a favourable wind they reached Genoa after twentyfour hours' sail. The object in touching at this port was to change into piastres a large sum in pistoles which the vessel carried for trading purposes, as the loss on exchange would have been heavy had the operation been effected in Turkey. In Genoa harbour they found example and restore the fortunes of his family. He had a passion for travel, considerable aptitude for the acquisition of foreign languages, and, what was still more important, two cousins, the Messrs Bertandié, established as merchants in Smyrna. When these relatives consented to initiate him into the mysteries of comof commerce, he bade farewell to his mother (the editor reveals that she was busily engaged in squandering the little her husband had left his family), and sailed from Marseilles in October 1653 on board the good ship Postillon, bound for Smyrna, being then eighteen years of age. This vessel was a king's ship carrying thirty large and twenty-eight small guns, sixty a Dunkirk frigate (Dunkirk sailors, thirty soldiers, and eighty officers and passengers, and then employed for the first time on commercial work. It is a striking indication of the state of insecurity prevailing in the Mediterranean that a man-of-war of this force should be required to carry goods safely to a not particularly distant destination, but the event proved that the precaution was by no means excessive. France was at war with Spain and on bad terms with England; but what may be termed legitimate risks to navigation were as nothing to the danger from the Barbary pirates, who swarmed in the Mediterranean and plundered the ships of every nation indiscriminately, to say nothing of the privateers sent out by then belonged to Spain), which at once made open preparations to attack the Postillon as soon as she should leave port, cleaning and manoeuvring guns and discharging muskets, greatly to the joy of the Genoese, "the secret and irreconcilable enemies of France," who publicly expressed their hope that the French ship would be taken. These warlike demonstrations so alarmed several of the passengers that they disembarked at Genoa rather than face the redoubtable Dunkirker. Nothing, however, happened in Genoa. The next port of call was Leghorn, and here things did not pass so quietly. The Dunkirk ship indeed came in after the Postillon had dropped anchor, but seeing her ready for defence, passed by on the other side. Then a Dutch vessel, the St Pierre, lying in the roadstead, hoisted her sails and bore down on the Postillon to lay her aboard; but the wind fell when she was a pistol-shot away, and the current carried her bows on to the Frenchman, and her bowsprit lodged in the latter's rigging. The French crew, under the impression that the onslaught was due to bad seamanship rather than malice, tried to fend her off; but the Dutchmen opened musketry fire on them, while twenty men leaped on board sword and pistol in hand. Several Frenchmen were killed and wounded in the first surprise, but crew and passengers flew to arms, killed, threw overboard, or made prisoners of the boarding party, and then opened cannon fire on the St Pierre, doing serious damage to her hull. While the combat was at its height, the commandant of the fortress of Leghorn, considering, as well he might, that a free fight between foreign ships enjoying the hospitality of his harbour showed a lack of respect for the Grand Duke his master, opened fire impartially on both combatants. By ill-luck the Postillon lay between the Dutchman and the fort, and thus received most of the punishment; but so enraged were her crew that they paid no attention to the strong hint from the shore, and were about to board the St Pierre in their turn when the explosion of a barrel of gunpowder set that vessel on fire, and they were glad to sever her bowsprit and push her off. The incident had no consequences except that the commandant of the fort locked up the captains of the St Pierre and the Dunkirk frigate, and threatened to hang them if any further breach of the peace occurred. It transpired that, though the Dutch Netherlands and France were at peace, Dutch vessels had been authorised to take any French ships with crews exceeding forty men in reprisal for the capture by Toulon privateers of certain Dutch ships. The nine Dutch prisoners were detained on board the Postillon, and made to work in place of the Frenchmen who lost their lives. Repairing the damage received in this action detained the ship for a fortnight at Leghorn. After touching at Malta, she steered for the south of Greece, and the wind failing her near Cape Matapan, was only saved from shipwreck by her boats towing her off that dangerous coast. This incident gave the Chevalier occasion to congratulate himself on not falling into the hands of the inhabitants of the locality, "a race wicked, cruel, perfidious, inhuman, in a word, Greek," who cultivated the unamiable habit of capturing shipwrecked mariners and selling them, if Christians to the Turks, and if Turks to the Christians. On the 4th of December the ship reached Smyrna, eight weeks out from Marseilles. The Chevalier was cordially received the Jesuits for the education by his cousins, who gave him a room in their house, with every facility for learning the methods of trade as practised in the Levant. The population of Smyrna at this time was not quite ninety thousand, less than half what it is now, or at least what it was before the Greek occupation. There were sixty thousand Turks, seven or eight thousand Jews, and the rest Franks (foreigners), Armenians, and Greeks. The present-day claim that Smyrna has always been an essentially Greek town thus appears to rest on no very assured foundation. For the Greeks our author has not a good word to say. He concedes them a considerable amount of intelligence, but declares that "in duplicity, rascality, and lying they easily outdistance the Jews.' Religious prejudice no doubt accounts to some extent for this unfavourable opinion, for he adds that they prefer to remain in shameful slavery under the yoke of the Turks rather than return to the fold of the Latin Church, and help, as they could, the Latin princes to expel these enemies of Christianity. The Christians, for their numbers, were amply provided with churches. The Greeks possessed a cathedral, with an archbishop, and a church bethe Armenians two churches and an archbishop; the Catholics three churches, as well as a school kept by sides; of the young people of their religion. The Memoirs make no mention of a Protestant place of worship, but as an English pastor is spoken of, it is to be supposed that something of the sort existed, probably within the precincts of the English Consulate. The Chevalier pays a high tribute to Turkish toleration. "There is no place in the whole of Turkey," he says, " where Christians have greater freedom in the practice of their religion. The doors of their churches open on to the public thoroughfares; the people assemble, the services are sung, and the congregations disperse without fear. Sometimes Turks enter out of curiosity, and watch what goes on without committing the slightest act of irreverence or causing the least scandal. They are equally indulgent towards the Jews. These people meet in their synagogues and cry and shout like madmen while holding their services, and nothing is ever said to them. It is certain that people in their neighbourhood are much inconvenienced thereby, yet the Turks bear it with patience. The Holy Sacraments are carried to the sick with more pomp and decency than in many towns of Christian Europe, funerals are conducted with solemnity, and it is a thing unknown for the Turks to object or to trouble any one in the exercise of his religion." When we reflect that no Jew might reside in contemporary |