from 200 to 1,200 per cent. The price of
a meal is no longer reckoned in piastres but in Turkish pounds, though
this is not as startling as it sounds, for the Turkish _lira_ has
dropped to about a quarter of its normal value. Quite a modest dinner
for two at such places as Tokatlian's, the Pera Palace Hotel, or the
Pera Gardens, costs the equivalent of from fifteen to twenty dollars.
Everything else is in proportion. From the "Little Club" in Pera to the
Galata Bridge is about a seven minutes' drive by carriage. In the old
days the standard tariff for the trip was twenty-five cents. Now the
cabmen refuse to turn a wheel for less than two dollars.

Speaking of money, the chief occupation of the traveler in the Balkans
is exchanging the currency of one country for that of another: lira into
dinars, dinars into drachmae, drachmae into piastres, piastres into leva,
leva into lei, lei into roubles (though no one ever exchanges his money
for roubles if he can possibly help it), roubles into kronen, and kronen
into lire again. The idea is to leave each country with as little as
possible of that country's currency in your possession. It is like
playing that card game in which you are penalized for every heart you
have left in your hand.

"But how is the Sick Man?" I hear you ask.

He is doing very nicely, thank you. In fact, he appears to be steadily
improving. There was a time, shortly after the Armistice, when it seemed
certain that he would have to submit to an operation, which he probably
would not have survived, but the surgeons disagreed as to the method of
operating and now it looks as though he would get well in spite of them.
He has a chill every time they hold a consultation, of course, but he
will probably escape the operation altogether, though he may have to
take some extremely unpleasant medicine and be kept on a diet for
several years to come. He has remarkable recuperative powers, you know,
and his friends expect to see him up and about before long.

That may sound flippant, as it is, but it sums up in a single paragraph
the extraordinary political situation which exists in Turkey to-day.
Little more than a year ago Turkey surrendered in defeat, her resources
exhausted, her armies destroyed or scattered. If anything in the world
seemed certain at that time it was that the redhanded nation, whose very
name has for centuries been a synonym for cruelty and oppression, would
disappear from the map of Europe, if