with pink noses and sprawling
feet, fed with milk from wine bottles:

"_Dvadsat lira, dvadsat lira!_"

Alas, the temptations are great. Need becomes more and more incessant.
Starvation stares thousands in the face. One sees those who keep their
heads up still, but we lose sight of many who are utterly cast down and
lost. Many a Russian has gone down here in this great city and been
lost, vanished into the hideous underworld of the Levant. They sell
all their jewels and then sell the last jewel of all. In the cabarets
and night-halls of low amusement there is nude dancing and drink,
lascivious Greeks, drunken American sailors capable of enormities of
behaviour, British Tommies with the rolling eye, "seeing the world and
being paid for it" as the posters say. The public places are a
scandal, and the private dens got up in all sorts of styles with
rose-coloured shaded lights and divans and cushions for abandonment to
drugs and sensual affections must be explored individually to be
described. A part of old Russia has come to Constantinople--to die.

In charge of this imbroglio is a British General. The city is under
Allied control, and is patrolled by the troops of four nations, but the
British is the main authority. G.H.Q. Constantinople occupies a large
barracks which faces a parade-ground. Indian sentries march to and fro
outside and enjoy thus serving their King, a picture of polish and
smartness. Facing the barracks is a smaller building called "The
Jockey Club" where the Commander-in-Chief himself and many of his staff
meet to lunch or dine, play billiards, or chat pleasantly over their
liqueurs in English style.

"What a pleasure it is to see our fellows in the streets so clean and
well-behaved, with no interest except in football, and to compare them
with the loafers you see everywhere," says General M. "One thing the
British Empire can thank the Jews for," says Capt. C., "is that they've
ruined Russia." "What's the matter with the Russians," says stout Col.
C., "is that there's no punch in them; they're a helpless sort of
people, from a general to a private soldier, it's all the same; they
cannot cross a road unless you take them by the hand and lead them
across." "What's the matter with Col. C. is that he warmed a seat in
the War Office all the war," says Capt. T. "If he had ever faced a
tenth of what the Russians have faced he'd talk to a different tune."
"What I dislike about them is that you