through a curtain of dignified reserve. At a casual meeting this reserve, with a certain detachment of manner, would impress one as a dominating trait, and such was Mr. Freeman's feeling until a chance remark regarding the way in which the Arabs of Mesopotamia and Syria had clamored to be led to Tripoli against Italy and how several had even worked their way to Aleppo, brought a warm flush of color to his cheeks and a glint of moisture to his eyes. "Ah, my brave Arabs!" he cried affectionately. "If I could only gather them in from all their desert ways, and arm them properly."

"The plans of all the Powers," said Enver to Mr. Freeman, in that interview before the World War began, "have always been entirely selfish as far as Turkey was concerned. For years Russia coveted Constantinople, to say nothing of the rest of Turkey along the Black Sea and south of the Caucasus, and the British endeavored to keep us just strong enough to prevent Russia from realizing these ambitions. Finally came the Kaiser with his scheme of a chain of German-controlled States from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, and for the success of this plan a strong, not a weak, Turkey was sine qua non. Russia would wipe us off the map, England would keep us weak, but Germany would make us strong. All selfish motives on face of them, no doubt, but can you wonder what alternative was the least repugnant to us Turks, especially to us Young Turks who have done our best to avoid being enmeshed in the nets of British and Russian diplomacy and intrigue which have held helpless our predecessors? I think I will not need to say more to answer your question as to why it was that Germany obtained the Bagdad railway concession, why the Hedjaz line was built by Germans, and why the Germans are recasting our military establishment." 39

"Do you care to speak of your so-called Turkish reform program?" Mr. Freeman asked him in a final question, warned by Sheiks and officers gathering under the flap of a reception tent that a conference with Enver was about to be held. Enver hesitated for a moment, and then, his eyes lighting with the enthusiasm kindled by a project which in those days was the one nearest his heart, rose to his feet and spoke briefly and to the point, meanwhile grasping Mr. Freeman's hand in a grip of farewell:

"Real Turkish unification is my dearest wish, and any international political arrangement which will leave me a free hand to work for that, I will subscribe to. Turkey contains a great many Christians, as well as Mohammedans. The latter I would regenerate from within, not from without. The West has little that we need, save battleships and shrapnels, and if it would leave us alone we would not need even these. Nor can the Occident give us anything better to follow than the precepts of 39 In a Review of Reviews article.

the Koran. For us Mohammedans, I would purify the old faith, not bring in a new one, there are close to a score of them, as you know. But for our Christian peoples, I would let them follow their own faith in peace and security, something they have not always been able to do in the past. I would offer them everything that England, or Greece, or France could,-more than Russia ever would, and by this means I would make them Turkish subjects in fact as well as in name. Great Britain, a Christian power, has made good subjects of the Mohammedans in India; why shall not Turkey, a Mohammedan power, make good subjects of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire? A real Turkish nation is my dream-a nation able at last to stand upon its own legs.''

Enver was only thirty-two years old when the World War began. He was of Ottoman descent, by which was meant that he was one of the eight or nine million Mussulmans in whom the blood of the original Turkish conquerors had received, in the course of centuries, a strong Albanian, Slav, and Greek tincture. Thus he was not a pure Turk such as was Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna. He justified the proverb "as strong as a Turk," and was as healthy and tough as he was vigorous, and extremely handsome. An illustration of his powers of endurance was found when he headed the expedition for the recapture, in 1913, of Adrianople, riding fifteen hours on end and fighting a couple of hours after that for possession of the town, all the while suffering from a severe attack of appendicitis. Operated upon for this complaint a month later, he was up and doing again in a week. Born strong and healthy, he had always led a hygienic life-active, regular, and free from indulgences, so much so that he had never touched alcohol, following in this one of the prescriptions of Islamism. Neither did he smoke or drink coffee.40

KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

Only the German Emperor was more often sketched from an intimate point of view late in the war, than Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Cartoonists familiarized frequenters of cafés and beer-halls with a gigantic nose, a portly frame, an impressive height and statuesque repose. There were studies of him from the psychological standpoint also and estimates of his moral nature. And yet this so-called superman of the Balkans remained something of a mystery. His enemies seemed all in the Allied camp. He was said to be at once an artist and a grand-seigneur, consummately skilled in knowledge of human nature, especially on its weaker side, with gifts of ingratiation, but which he rarely deigned to exercise, a man of many moods and many stratagems, a botanist and a bird-stuffer, a disciple of

40 Compiled from an article by Lewis R. Freeman in the Review of Reviews and one by A. Rustem Bey in The World's Work.

Machiavelli, the incarnation of a hero for a moving-picture melodrama. Power came to him because of his personal sway over men. It was said of the Bulgarian Czar that he ruled men, bending them to his will subtly, by the exercise of something beyond and above charm. He cast spells.

All that was mysterious in Ferdinand could be understood by reference to his dream of being crowned in Constantinople. He was a man of genius fretting and fuming behind the iron bars of a parochial cage. His traits and tendencies were what might be expected from one who must work with and conciliate and manage intellectual inferiors. He was the lion who assumed, now the manners of the lamb, now the hide of the ass. He was a man to whom modern science had unfolded its mysteries. He had been a frequenter in the recent past of the laboratories of the Sorbonne, an admirer of Berthelot, a diligent reader of the mathematician Poincaré. He had his superstitions, too. When still in his cradle his mother received an assurance from some gypsy that he would sit on the throne of a Cæsar. He still studied signs in the heavens and did not disdain the lore of those who cast horoscopes. At his birth major constellations were in the ascendant, above the horizon. The English explained his career by his genius for intrigue and the windings of a devious nature.

The mother of Ferdinand was Clementine, daughter of the French King, Louis Philippe, one of the ablest women of her day, in whom his own fascination was foreshadowed. She had the same imperial "pose"-a majestic wave of the right hand and arm-which delighted cartoonists who used it to make much capital out of her son. He had her voice, which was loud and pleasing, "flexible as that of a Bernhardt," and he had as well that genius of hers for conversation of which much was made by writers, of memoirs of the period. Ferdinand was rated one of the best talkers in Europe; a witty raconteur, an exhilarating companion. All these things came to him from his mother, together, it was hinted, with a capacity for concealing his true self, which was feminine rather than masculine. Ferdinand got shrewdness as well as charm from his mother. She it was who revealed to him the mysteries of a statecraft such as he learned to practise. She was determined that her best-beloved boy should be something more than "one of the hapless group of unemployed Highnesses," that he should not lead a futile life as a mere officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. She meant that he should be a king, and gave him one bit of advice to which he adhered-to conceal rather than to reveal the extent of his powers.

Nothing, however, could have seemed more extravagant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century than that Ferdinand should be

summoned to rule a State. There were no thrones unoccupied and the old world was tranquil. Then suddenly Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, was kidnapped, the land was without a head, and Ferdinand had the audacity to offer himself for the place. He took a secret trip down the Danube and on one occasion slept in a farmer's wagon to escape the knife of an assassin. Chaotic Bulgaria was under the sway of Stambouloff, a rude, rough man, reared in the inn his father had kept and who roared with laughter at the cultivation, fine manners, perfumes and pedigree in which Ferdinand delighted; but in no long time Stambouloff fell completely under his spell, despite all their quarrels. Ferdinand began as a figurehead and ended as an absolute ruler.

His success was attributed to the essentially constructive activities of his mind. He built things up, organized and brought them together, always knew what he wanted, was positive, affirmative and ready with a plan. Relatively to other Balkan States, the school system of Bulgaria was efficient, and Ferdinand stood behind it at every stage. His scientific interests were reflected in it. He was remarkably receptive to new ideas, recognized ability wherever he saw it and never hesitated to advance a man of merit however humble in origin. Bulgaria came to have a long list of men whom Ferdinand had "discovered." If some farmer's boy showed an intelligent interest in the stars, he might be singled out as a possible Tycho Brahe, destined to shed luster on science in Bulgaria. Should a country bumpkin reveal oratorical gifts of an unusual order, he was welcomed at court, complimented by the sovereign and listened to with profound respect. Nobody, in short, in Bulgaria could manifest capacity without attracting Ferdinand. The somewhat ostentatious catholicity of his culture was partly calculated for effect upon the Bulgarians, whom he sought to civilize, refine, and educate, and so he popularized chemistry as well as the dinner-fork. Nor was he above saying a good word from time to time in behalf of wearing gloves, against which plain Bulgarians were inclined to protest.

The most serious charge against Ferdinand in his sovereign capacity concerned finance. If what some of the French and British dailies said was true, he had accumulated great wealth by methods likely to land an ordinary capitalist in the penitentiary. He never profest morality in the conventional sense. The life of Ferdinand was once described as a combination of the industry of Faraday, the energy of Bluebeard and the activities of Gil Blas, traits and tendencies of all being blended in the mosaic of his character.41

41 Adapted from an article by Alexander Harvey in Current Opinion, based on articles in the Journal des Débats, Temps, and Gaulo: (Paris). The Daily Mail (London), the Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), and the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin).

FRANCIS JOSEPH, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA

It was the Government of Francis Joseph of the house of Hapsburg, backed by the Government of William of the house of Hohenzollern, which launched in July, 1914, that fatal and brutal document, the ultimatum to Serbia, which precipitated the World War. Francis Joseph died at 86, two and a half years afterward, having had the longest active reign known to the history of kings and emperors. A likable man was Francis Joseph-very likable personally-in spite of the gross anachronism that his form of government presented to the modern world-a purely medieval autocracy, of which he was the soul and head.

The end of his long reign recalled a curse which the Countess Karolyi, nearly seventy years before, had passed upon him. The Countess had a son who was executed by Austria-Hungary for complicity in the Kossuth revolt in 1848. In her grief she called on heaven to blast the young emperor's happiness, "to exterminate his family, to strike him through those whom he loved, to wreck his life and ruin his children." Signally complete was the fulfilment of this curse, or prophecy. Almost from first to last, the reign of Francis Joseph was marked by political disasters, domestic misfortunes, and acute tragedies such as recalled the doom that fell upon the ancient and legendary house of Atreus, of which Homer sang and tragedians spoke their lines. There was the execution of his brother Maximilian, whom Louis Napoleon tried to maintain on the throne of Mexico; then came the assassination, in broad day light in Geneva, of his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, and the mysterious suicide, in circumstances pointing clearly to a great scandal, of his only son and heir, Rudolph. A brother disappeared from Vienna suddenly, and wandered to many distant parts of the earth under the name of John Orth. A sister-in-law was burned so badly that she died from her injuries. Three attempts were made on his own life. Last of all came the assassination of his nephew and heir, with his consort, at Serajevo, in June, 1914.

Francis Joseph's reign, in spite of a few notable successes, had been marked by political ill-fortune quite as tragic. As it had opened with revolution and civil war, so in the years before he reached middle life, Austria lost her Italian provinces, including states ruled by members of the Emperor's own family-Venice, Lombardy, Parma, Modena, and Tuskany. Austria had also lost to Prussia her supremacy among the German states. His reign finally closed amid the appalling ruin foreshadowed for Austria, as a result of the World War. Since his accession to the throne as a boy of eighteen, when he found his country in the throes of revolution, he had lived