The telegraph system of the country is entirely in the hands of the government and reaches every city of any considerable size. This became necessary to the sultan in order to carry on the processes of government. Telegrams are carefully censored; cipher despatches, when known to be such, are not accepted except from ambassadors and from foreign powers to their chief at the Porte, or vice versa. The postal system is antiquated, irregular, and uncertain, reaching only the large towns upon the limited cross-country routes. Telephones are strictly prohibited.
In Constantinople and in several of the port cities like Smyrna, Trebizond, etc., there are foreign post-offices supported and conducted by foreign countries and using foreign stamps. These became necessary because of the unreliability of the Turkish offices. The local government has made several attempts to abolish the sale and use of foreign postage-stamps in the country, but has failed of accomplishing it because the representatives of the leading foreign powers are unwilling to trust their mail to Turkish supervision and control.
III. HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT
Even now, when we all talk of the Turkish empire as moribund, it is doubtful if it will perish under any decay from within. The subject races do not grow stronger, as witness recent scenes in Armenia, where a single tribe, with only tolerance from the sultan, keeps a whole people in agonies of fear. The Arabs, full-blooded and half-caste, who might succeed in insurrection, find the strength of civilized Europe right across their path, and are precipitating themselves, in a fury of fanaticism and greed, upon the powerless states of the interior of Africa. The European subjects of the sultan are cowed, and without foreign assistance will not risk a repetition of Batouk. The army for internal purposes is far stronger than ever, the men being the old Ottoman soldiers, brave as Englishmen, abstemious as Spaniards, to whom the Germans have lent their discipline and their drill. No force within the empire outside Arabia could resist the reorganized troops or hope to reach, as no doubt the first Mahdi if left alone might have reached, Constantinople itself. The financial difficulties of the treasury are great, but the sultans have recently risked and have survived complete repudiation, and the revenue is enough, and will remain enough, to keep the army together and supply the luxury of the palace.
—Meredith Townsend in “Asia and Europe.”
We cannot trace here the story of the rise and spread of Islam from its cradle in Arabia to the period of its greatest virility in 1529, when all Europe trembled at its onward sweep and conquest. We can speak only of the rise of the Ottoman empire that has been perpetuated in unbroken succession to the present time.