no European friend,
in the latter he fell more and more under the influence of Germany, which,
almost from the accession of Kaiser Wilhelm II, began to prepare a
southward way for future use, and alone of the powers, never browbeat the
sultan.

Internally, the empire passed more and more under the government of the
imperial household. Defeated by the sheer geographical difficulty of
controlling directly an area so vast and inadequately equipped with means
of communication, Abdul Hamid soon relaxed the spasmodic efforts of his
early years to better the condition of his subjects; and, uncontrolled and
demoralized by the national disgrace, the administration went from bad to
much worse. Ministers irresponsible; officials without sense of public
obligation; venality in all ranks; universal suspicion and delation;
violent remedies, such as the Armenian massacres of 1894, for diseases due
to neglect; the peasantry, whether Moslem or Christian, but especially
Christian, forced ultimately to liquidate all accounts; impoverishment of
the whole empire by the improvidence and oppression of the central power--
such phrasing of the conventional results of 'Palace' government expresses
inadequately the fruits of Yildiz under Abdul Hamid II.

_Pari passu_ with this disorder of central and provincial administration
increased the foreign encroachments on the empire. The nation saw not only
rapid multiplication of concessions and hypothecations to aliens, and of
alien persons themselves installed in its midst under extra-territorial
immunity from its laws, secured by the capitulations, but also whole
provinces sequestered, administered independently of the sultan's
government, and prepared for eventual alienation. Egypt, Tunisia, Eastern
Rumelia, Krete--these had all been withdrawn from Ottoman control since
the Berlin settlement, and now Macedonia seemed to be going the same way.
Bitter to swallow as the other losses had been--pills thinly sugared with
a guarantee of suzerainty--the loss of Macedonia would be more bitter
still; for, if it were withdrawn from Ottoman use and profit, Albania
would follow and so would the command of the north Aegean and the Adriatic
shores; while an ancient Moslem population would remain at Christian
mercy.

It was partly Ottoman fault, partly the fault of circumstances beyond
Ottoman control, that this district had become a scandal and a reproach.
In the days of Osmanli greatness Macedonia had been neg