for years in order to be
conquered now. The Christians, who had believed that "Constituzi"
meant the Turk was going, were horrified. Nothing would induce them
to fight for the Turks. Already in September I found distrust of the
Turk all through Kosovo vilayet. The Moslems who had gathered at
Ferizovitch and demanded Constitution of Abdul Hamid saw they had
been tricked. They declared they had been summoned to fight Austria,
and said they were ready to do that, but they would never allow
themselves to be dictated to by the Turks.

I talked with the two Young Turk officers, Halil and Khiassim Bey,
at Scutari. They were hopelessly ignorant. Knew, in fact, no more
about a Constitution than did the up-country mountain men. It was a
sort of magic word which was to put all right. They were arranging
to be photographed in new uniforms with plenty of gold braid, and
were childishly happy. When I said: "But you have the Bulgar
question, the Greek, the Serb, and Albanian questions all to solve
in Europe alone--surely those are more important than new uniforms,"
they replied: "These questions no longer exist. We have made a law.
All are now Ottomans!"

"You may make a law that a cat is a dog," said I, "but it will
remain a cat."

They expressed horror that I should compare human beings to animals,
and Halil persisted: "It will be like England. In England you have
the people of Scotland and Ireland. But they are all English. A man
from Scotland, for example, would not say 'I am Scotch.'"

"But he would," I persisted. "If you call an Irishman, English, he
will probably knock you down." They were surprised and incredulous.
They had no plans, no ideas. That no one wanted to be an Ottoman,
and that, contracted to "Ot" the word was used as a term of contempt
to denote "Turk" by the town Christians was unknown to them. Albania
was, in fact, for the Young Turks, the most important of its
European possessions, for, well handled, it might have remained
loyal to the Turk against the dreaded Slav. But Constantinople did
nothing to achieve this. And Scutari was infuriated because, though
the prisoners had been released in honour of the Constitution
throughout the land, the doors of Scutari prisons were still closed.
Folk began to say: "The Young Turk is as bad as the Old."

I took a long journey up into Kosovo vilayet to districts which had
previously been practically closed to travellers for many years,
visiting Djakova, Prizren, Prish