The decline of the Ottoman Empire was due to the corruption of the Turks that followed acquisition of wealth. They lost their hardihood, and their Sultans became profligate and luxurious. They filled their harems with wives and numberless slaves, and addicted themselves to pleasure instead of duty. They became tyrants, and their jealousies and fears of being supplanted made them so cruel that it became customary for a Sultan ascending the throne to kill all his brothers or near male relatives. This was usually done by strangling them with a bow-string, or sewing them in bags and drowning them in the Bosphorus, as one would an undesirable litter of puppies.
Recent Sultans, it is true, have not dared to commit such deeds openly in the face of growing public opinion, but, with few exceptions, they have been equally selfish and corrupt. Indeed, in the reign of the recent ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid, rightly styled "the Great Assassin" by Mr. Gladstone, corruption and villainy reached unheard-of enormity. He planned and carried out wholesale massacres against his Armenian subjects, and spirited away thousands of innocent Mussulmans and Christians at the instigation of the army of spies whom he employed, and who enriched themselves with the bribes he offered.
At last matters reached such a pitch that life in Turkey became unbearable, and in sheer desperation he was dethroned in 1908 by his army, led by patriotic officers who styled themselves Young Turks.
In his stead they appointed his brother, Murad V., to be Sultan, and proclaimed a Constitution; that is, a form of Government like our own, with a Parliament consisting of representatives of the people.
Turkey is now doing its best to reform itself, and we wish it all success, but naturally, after so many years of misrule and corruption, it will take time before the Turks can set their house in proper order.
For now more than twenty years Turkey has been connected with Western Europe by rail, trains starting from Vienna and crossing the Danube at Belgrade. Shortly after, the main line branches off and one portion proceeds through Bulgaria to Constantinople, while the other terminates at Salonica. The journey from London to Constantinople occupies three and a half days, but may be accelerated.
There is no railway bridge over the Bosphorus, but a railway line, of recent construction, runs from its Asiatic entrance into Asia Minor as far as Konia, the Iconium of Scripture. This line is now being extended to reach Bagdad in Mesopotamia, and will be prolonged thence to the Persian Gulf, and doubtless, ultimately, to India, and will perhaps enable us to visit our friends there within a week's journey from London.
Another railway crosses the Lebanon mountains from Beyrout, and proceeds to Damascus, and thence extends, keeping to the east of the Jordan, to Mecca, in Arabia, the Holy City of the Moslems. This line is called the Sacred or Pilgrim railway, because it conveys large numbers of pilgrims to their shrine. It was built nearly entirely out of the contributions of the faithful, both in money and in free labour.