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has been one of terror.

Since ever there was a case where

the beginning of this year a defendant people could

nearly two hundred of them have been murdered. Yet one looks over the Liberal and Labour newspapers, and the Labour and Liberal speeches, and finds that all they have to say of these assassinations is that the murderers must be given all that they desire. Then when these assassinations are carried into the very heart of Ulster, when a blameless police officer, coming home from church in Lisburn, the birthplace of the hero of the Indian Mutiny, John Nicholson, is shot down in the street, the Ulstermen lose their self-control and proceed to make reprisals on the sympathisers with the assassins, immediately the Liberal and Labour politicians and pressmen are horrified. A scream goes up which rends the firmament if it does not reach heaven. A pogrom, a pogrom against Catholios, that is the only name by which these gentlemen can adequately describe this foolish outburst of righteous fury.

No sensible person can, and no sensible Ulsterman has attempted to, justify that outburst. But lawyers, and Mr Asquith is one, know that there are two defences to a charge of crime. One is justification, that the defendant did only what he was entitled to do. The other is excuse, that the defendant was not entitled to do what he did, but that the circumstances were such to render him guiltless for what he had done. If

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plead excuse for 8 crime, surely it is the case of the people of Lisburn. Those people, unlike the bulk of the inhabitants of County Antrim, are not of Scottish, but of almost pure English descent. They have always been loyal to England, even in 1798, when most of their Soots neighbours were very much the reverse. The Irish among them are immigrants from the south, and 88 alien as the Irish colonies are in Lancashire or Lanark. These people, proud of their ancient lineage and allegiance, found those aliens murdering in their midst men whose only crime was loyalty. If the Irish of Glasgow or Liverpool began to assassinate the chiefs of the police because they were Sootsmen or Englishmen and loyal to the Empire, what do you think would happen to those colonies? What would happen in America we already know. It is not so many years since a gang of Italian assassins began to shoot police officers in New Orleans, and the result was a massacre of the Italian colony there, to which the outbreak in Lisburn was child's-play. Nobody justified that-except perhaps a few ultra-American newspaper men-and nobody justifies the fury of the Lisburn people; but as long as human nature is human nature such outbursts under unbearable provocation will occur, and will be by sane men never justified, but always excused.

But with the new Englishman tence to statesmanship; but murdering men loyal to Eng- the bigger bungler is still land is war, while wrecking regarded by some 88 the houses of men who are dis- statesman. loyal is a pogrom.

This prescient person, who But this slandering of the at the outbreak of the war Ulsterman is merely, as I have saw in all England's black said, a preliminary step to horizon only one star of hope, prepare the average English- which, strange to say, was man for the abandonment of Ireland, then on the brink of Ulster to his and her enemies. rebellion, has now come forViscount Grey, with the ward to display further forecourage of ignorance, has sight on Irish affairs. He now already declared for abandon- prophesies that so long as ment. His ground for advo- English government is mainoating such a course is that tained in Ireland, North and English government in Ireland South there will never agree. has failed. There he is right. This wise prophecy might be He is good enough to add that extended: even after English "even" the present Govern- government has been withment is not solely responsible drawn they will not agree. for this failure. There again What is to happen if they do he is right. The Government not? His lordship says Ulster which was solely responsible is strong enough to get her for the failure was the Govern- own terms. What does he ment of which he was a mem- mean by strong enough? If ber. When the Conservatives it is strong enough by noses were defeated and the Liberals which is his party's way of came into office, Ireland and counting strength-then Ulster Europe were in a condition of is only one to four; so it is profound peace. Sir Edward clear Ulster is not strong Grey was given charge of enough that way. If he European affairs, and Mr means by fighting, Ulster is. Birrell was given charge of strong enough to get her own Irish affairs, and both gentle- terms that way,-of that no men set out to improve the Ulsterman has any doubt: peace. Sir Edward's efforts her terms will be the indepenlanded Europe in the most dence of Ulster. Apparently, terrific war the world has ever then, Lord Grey's efforts for the seen. Mr Birrell's efforts pro- pacification of Ireland are like voked two rebellions in Ire- his efforts to improve the peace land-a rebellion of the loyal- of Europe-to end in war. ists against being extruded from the United Kingdom, and a rebellion of the disloyalists against being inoluded in it-surely a record in mismanagement. Mr Birrell has withdrawn from any pre

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But Lord Grey's abandonment of Ireland to the gunmen is not to be absolute. They may do what they like or what they can with Ulster ; but he will not trust them so far as England is concerned.

They must have no army and no navy. How he is going to prevent them having either or both after the English soldiers are withdrawn and the Irish police disbanded he does not explain. Would it not be wise to dissolve and disarm the Republican forces which now possess every weapon from revolvers to machine-guns before the English soldiers leave and the Irish police are disoharged? I wish him success in the job, for if it succeeds there will be no need to abandon Ireland.

For let there be no mistake about it, the abandonment of English government in Ireland is, in the very showing of those who advocate it, a capitulation to the gun men. They

advocate the abandonment because, they say, English government has become impossible. But who has made it impossible? When the "black and tans," or the soldiers, exasperated beyond endurance by the murder of their comrades, indulge in reprisals, these advocates of abandonment are horrified by such "hellish "behaviour. The poor people ruined by the reprisals, they contend, have nothing to do with the murders. If so,

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they have nothing to do with making English government impossible, and so England is being asked to capitulate to the assassins of her soldiers and policemen, and to nobody else. Not only is she going to capitulate to them herself, but she is, according to statesmen like Lord Grey, to abandon all the rest of the people of Ireland to them. It is to that that Ulster will never consent. If England chooses to withdraw from Ireland, Ulster cannot prevent it. She is willing, nay, anxious to remain integral part of not merely the British Empire but of the United Kingdom, to the full citizenship of which every son of hers was born. But if England finds her a burden and her allegiance an encumbrance, then all she asks is the right to go her own way and to determine her own destiny. The Bill now before Parliament she does not love; but, at any rate, with all its faults it will give her this. Therefore to avoid a worse fate she is willing to accept it. No longer wanted as a sister, she will make and rule her own home and always remain a friend. To England she says, Ave atque vale!

THE OLD SERAGLIO.

BY COMMANDER H. C. LUKE, R.N.V.R.

IN 1853, exactly four hundred years after the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed the Conqueror, Sultan 'Abdu'l Mejid Khan, a victim of the bad taste that was spreading from Mid-Victorian England and the France of the Second Empire over all Europe and the Near East, left the Old Seraglio, the home of his forefathers, and established the Imperial residence in his Palace of Dolma Baghohé, on the shore of the Bosphorus. For his abandonment of what was venerable and supremely beautiful in favour of what was new, banal, and vulgar, the Sultan must not be blamed too severely; he was merely following in the footsteps of the Occidentals of his time, who for a generation or two did their best to make and keep the world hideous.

'Abdu'l Mejid then went to Dolma Baghohé, 'Abdu'l Aziz, his successor, built Chiragan and Beylerbey; 'Abdu'l Hamid II., fearful lest the Bosphorus Palaces should prove too tempting a mark for the guns of mutinous ships, retired to Yildiz Kiosk, which has also housed his successors. That treasury of Ottoman art, the Old Seraglio, remains neglected of its masters save on the one day in the year when the Padishah proceeds thither to venerate the relies of the Prophet. The ceremony over, it relapses into its accustomed

seclusion, only disturbed at rare intervals by privileged visitors. Once sheltering a population of thousands, the Seraglio now houses a score or so of servants and a few Palace Secretaries (gentlemen of the anderun, or interior, they are called in the Persian phraseology affected at Court); occasionally a eunuch flits noiselessly about the empty Haremlik, dim echo of a past that now seems strangely remote.

The Seraglio occupies the easternmost of Constantinople's seven hills, 8 promontory washed by the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn; and on its incomparable site once rose the original Acropolis of ancient Byzantium. Now it is enclosed by battlemented walls, within which are scattered, without method, and according to the whim of successive Grand Signors, many buildings of divers sizes, purposes, and shapes-masterpieces, most of them, of eastern architecture and eastern decoration. These, collectively, form that mysterious and jealously-guarded retreat, that Turkish Kremlin, whenee for precisely four centuries the Ottoman world was ruled.

It is not, perhaps, quite accurate to suggest that the Seraglio is nothing but a confused medley of inconsequent and disconnected kiosks. A

considerable part consists of
courts or quadrangles as regu-
lar as those of an Oxford
college; it is only as one ap-
proaches the arcana of the
palace that symmetry begins
to make
make way for 8 more
picturesque variety. The Ser-
aglio, in its wider sense, begins
with the Outer Court, which
is entered from the precincts
of St Sophia by the Bab-i-
Humayun, "the Illustrious
Gate."
This court contains
the well-preserved Byzantine
church of St Irene, now the
Turkish Military Museum, and,
beyond it, the dilapidated
buildings of the Mint. Below
the Mint, on the western de-
clivity of the hill, are housed
the imperial collections of
antiquities, partly in the Chin-
ili Kiosk ("the tiled Pavilion "),
which dates in its present form
from the last years of the
sixteenth century, partly in
modern galleries. In the
middle of the court the cele-
brated plane-tree of the janis-
saries, around which that tur-
bulent corps was wont to
demonstrate its sentiments of
loyalty, or, more often, the
reverse, still maintains its
existence of extreme and en-
feebled old age. From the
outer court, which is open to
the public, the Orta Qapu, or
Middle Gate, leads into the
Seraglio proper, only acces-
sible to those provided with
permits from Yildiz Kiosk.

dinner.
an Oxford

The eastern side of the spacious quadrangle now entered is wholly occupied by the imperial kitchens, whose row of nine little domes, very conspicuous to ships rounding Seraglio Point, has led irreverent naval

officers to speak of the sultan's
raising steam for a nine-course
dinner. Facing the kitchens
is a gallery, now somewhat
decayed, under which
which the
janissaries paraded on cere-
monial occasions: in the north-
west corner, at the foot of the
main tower of the Seraglio,
stands the Hall of the Divan,
or Council Chamber. Here in
former times the Grand Vizier
presided on certain days of the
week at a court of justice open
to all suitors. On other days
the Hall was used for the
meetings of the Divan, or
Council, conducted, no doubt,
with a due sense of respon-
sibility on the part of the
councillors; for high above
their bench, and entered from
the Haremlik, is an iron grille
or cage, in which the Padishah
could overhear unseen his
Ministers' deliberations.

A gate with a mighty everhanging roof now leads into the more secluded part of the Seraglio. Though bearing the significant name of Bab-iSa'adet, the Gate of Felicity, it does not open immediately inte the women's apartments. It gives access, however, to the group of buildings where the sultans lived their official lives, and it was guarded by the corps of white eunuchs. The court to which it is the entrance is less regular than the two through which we have passed; we approach the portion of the Seraglio where the individual fancy of the monarch rather than a regard for symmetry has dictated the style and the emplacement of its component parts. Immediately before us as we pass

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