D. 7 available trade figures, 4,012,574,000 piasters im11 ports, and 2,193,789,000 piasters exports for the year ended Feb. 28, 1911. It would be idle to enter into details for so remote a year, especially as these details were given in the previous From another source not so reliaYEAR BOOK. ble we quote trade figures for 1912: $217,755,000 imports and $119,606,500 exports; imports from United States in 1914, $3,328,519, and exports to United States, $20,843,077. 9 13 11 45 200,000 161 22 1 4 Bagdad * Mutessarifat. 8 Asir, Nejd, and El Hasa and El Katr, in Arabia, are regarded as belonging to Turkey, but are inhabited by tribes whose subjection is merely nominal. Albania, lost to Turkey at the end of the Balkan Wars, is a name given to an indeterminate area embracing the old vilayets of Scutari and Janina, with portions of Kossovo and Monastir; Macedonia comprehends the old vilayet of Salonica, the eastern (and larger) part of Monastir, and southeastern Kossovo. Turks in all parts of what was once the empire, are estimated to number about 11,000,000; Greeks, Arabs, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbians, Vlachs, Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Syrians, Circassians, and other races are scattered over the country. Reliable population figures are unobtainable the 11,000,000 Turks being merely a guess. Mohammedans form the majority of the population. Christians (Orthodox) predomi nate in some districts, notably in Macedonia, and Gregorians in Armenia. There are also Roman Catholics, Nestorians, etc. Public education, in the Western sense, is almost unknown, except in non-Moslem institutions. Moslem instruction, theoretically obligatory and in all cases free, is confined mainly to the reading of the Koran and is largely in the hands of the priests. The population of the larger cities, besides Constantinople, has been estimated as follows: Damascus, 250,000; Smyrna, 250,000; Aleppo, 200,000; Beirut, 140,000; Bagdad, 125,000; Erzerum, 120,000; Afiun, 95,000; Manissa, 90, 000; Jerusalem, 84,000; Aidin, 80,000; Brussa, 80,000; Diarbekr, 80,000; Mosul, 80,000; Sivas, 78,000; Urfa, 72,000; Aintab, 70,000; Mecca, 70,000; Busra, 60,000; Trebizond, 60,000; Adana, 50,000; Homs, 50,000; Hodeida, 49,000; Angora, 38,000; Gaza, 30,000. The inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey are in part sedentary, in part nomad; in part Mohammedan, in part Christian. The majority depend upon agriculture or grazing for their livelihood. The manufactures are mainly for home consumption. There are valuable deposits of minerals. Following are the statistics of production (1910) in 29 provinces and districts": 44,845,000 quintals of wheat, 4,773,000 of rye, 29,005,000 of barley, 4,478,000 of oats, 11,246,000 of corn, 1,019,000 of rice. Cotton, tobacco, opium, and other crops are raised; olive oil, wool, and mohair are valuable exports; rugs are manufactured. COMMERCE. Trade statistics are incomplete. A reliable German source gives as the latest COMMUNICATIONS. Railways, including the lines in the lost provinces, were reported in 1914 to be 4230 miles, divided as to ownership as follows: Hejaz line (1000 miles), Turkish; Salonica-Constantinople (320), Smyrna-Kassaba (330), Syrian (370), Jaffa-Jerusalem (60)—all French lines; Salonica-Monastir (140), Anatolian (to Angora, 360; to Konoa, 300; to Adabazar, 50), Bagdad-Bulgurli (130), MersinaAdana (50)-all German; Oriental railways (800), Austro-German; Smyrna-Aidin (320), British. The Bagdad Railway, according to the plans for its construction being followed in 1915, was to extend from Konieh, in the Province of Konieh in Asia Minor, southeast of Constantinople, through Aleppo, Mesopotamia, and Bagdad to Busra, near the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, a total distance of something like 1314 miles. Construction work, however, was carried on in disconnected sections. By the early part of 1915 there had been about 175 miles of line constructed to the west of the Cilician Taurus, about 105 miles (including a branch line about 36 miles long) in the plain from Adana, about 158 miles between the Amanus Mountains and the Euphrates, and 79 miles in the neighborhood of Bagdad. In addition to this there was a small branch line, 40 miles long, from Adana to Mersina, which the Bagdad company had acquired, and which until the opening of the port of Alexandretta for the Asia Minor portions of the Bagdad Railway, represents the only access to the sea. This made an aggregate of 556 miles of the Bagdad Railway opened for traffic by 1915. Owing to military considerations, the work was being pushed with energy. The sections that were being rushed to completion were directly associated with the military advantages that would be obtained with direct railway connection from the Bosphorus to the Egyptian frontier. During 1915 there was completed the large tunnel on the Bagdad Railway piercing the Amanus Mountains, on the border between Asia Minor and Syria. It is known as the Baghtché tunnel, taking its name from the station of Baghtché, at its northern entrance, about 75 miles east of the city of Adana and some 60 miles northwest of Aleppo. It has a length of 16,028 feet. Another important section of the line on which work was being prosecuted was the 24-mile section through the Taurus Mountains, which includes about 70 tunnels, viaducts, and other engineering works. Under normal conditions the completion of this section would have been looked for in 1916. The continuation line from Bagdad had been built north to Tekrif, 90 miles. During the year it was reported that Meissner Pasha, the German engineer who built the Hedjaz Railway, had been entrusted by the Turkish government with the construction of a new strategic line for use in connection with a second attack on Egypt. In May, 1915, this railway was said to have reached Lydda, on the Jaffa Jerusalem line. Rapid construction was possible by removing tracks already laid on other railways, and 270 miles of track intended for the Medina-Mecca section of the Hedjaz Railway had been taken for the construction of the new line. The extension of the Syrian Railway from Isilahie to Radju, which brings the completed section some 20 miles nearer the already completed tunnel at Bakdje, was opened Oct. 20, 1915. This line when completed will connect Aleppo with Alexandretta, and join the Syrian Railway with the Konia-Adana line. It is reported that in 1913 the total tonnage of vessels entered at Constantinople was 17,397, 888. NAVY. No reliable figures can be quoted for the number and displacement of vessels composing the Turkish navy at the end of 1915, the exact damage sustained during the Balkan Wars and the War of the German Invasion being unascertainable. FINANCE. A revenue of $141,240,000 and an expenditure of $150,475,000 are reported as estimated for 1914-15; but these figures cannot be relied upon. The 1912–13 budget is given below in detail: Revenue Stamps, etc. Tribute * Total hostile to the wishes and fatal to the true interests of the Turkish nation; and the German officers in the Turkish army were said to be the object of bitter dislike. Ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid was quoted in February as advising Turkey to conclude a separate peace; later, he was reported to have been removed into the interior of Asia Minor by order of the Young Turk ministers, who feared that he would instigate a revolution in Constantinople. In April, von der Goltz and Halil Bey were represented as having personally visited Berlin to plead for the dispatch of a German army to the relief of Turkey. According to another story, published in Le Temps, of Paris, Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey bitterly complained to Marshal von der Goltz, as Germany's military representative in Turkey, respecting Germany's heartless indifference to the fate of Constantinople. From German and Austrian sources, on the other hand, it appeared that public sentiment in Turkey was not at all perturbed by the Allied operations in the Dardanelles. In April the Neue Freie Presse quoted Field Marshal von der Goltz to the effect that Constantinople was perfectly confident in the ability of the Turkish army, with the advantage of the impregnable Dardanelles fortifications, to ward off the Anglo-French attacks. Over 1,250,000 well-trained soldiers were available for the Expenditure £ T defense of Turkey, according to the German field ..14,870,381 Public debt t..14,709,937 marshal's statement. The German press also 8,948,705 laid great stress upon the speech which Halil 4,166,053 Bey, president of the Turkish Chamber of Depu1,217,521 ties, delivered at the close of the parliamentary session. Reviewing the events of the war, Halil Bey asserted that Turkey and her allies had won a series of glorious victories; he pointed with pride to the fact that Turkey was able to take the offensive against the British in the region of the Suez Canal; he proudly boasted that the Ottoman army was helping to defend Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest at the same time as Constantinople; and as for the statement so persistently emphasized by Turkey's enemies, that the Triple Entente would have been willing to guarantee the territorial integrity of Turkey on condition of Turkey's remaining neutral, Halil Bey scornfully exclaimed, "To those who wish to see an example of a country whose territorial inviolability was guaranteed by Russia and England, I will point to Persia." Halil Bey later became Turkish minister of foreign affairs, October 24th, and was succeeded by Hadj Ali Bey as president of the Chamber of Deputies. £ T 5,692,728 War 3,621,373 Administration 1,361,886 Justice, etc. 30,514,159 Civil list Sheikh-ul-Islam. 1,690,104 1,276,000 732,800 Total .....34,590,561 *Egypt, Cyprus, Mount Athos, Samos. + And finance. Senate Chamber, council, gendarmerie, court of accounts, etc. And worship and instruction. And agriculture, mines, and forests. The public debt stood, Sept. 24, 1913, at £T211,146,852. The piaster, worth about 4.4 cents, is the unit of value, 100 piasters being equal to 1 pound Turkish. GOVERNMENT. Both temporal and spiritual authority rest with the Sultan, who appoints a grand vizier to form a cabinet. A Senate and a Chamber of Deputies constitute the legislative body. At the head of ecclesiastical affairs is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, under the direction of the Sultan. Reigning sovereign, Mohammed V, born 1844, brother of the deposed Abdul Hamid, whom he succeeded April 27, 1909. HISTORY INTERNAL CONDITIONS. Internal conditions in the Ottoman Empire during the war were the subject of the most confused and contradictory reports. Through the press agencies of the Entente Powers came sensational descriptions of uprisings in Constantinople, of mutinies in the Turkish army, of insurrections in Asiatic Turkey, of declarations by high personages in favor of an immediate and inglorious peace. In the nations of the Triple Entente, Enver Bey, the leading spirit in the Young Turk cabinet, was regarded as an unscrupulous and reckless political adventurer with no real popular support; Enver Bey's war policy was considered to be THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE. In November the Turkish Parliament was convened at Constantinople. The speech from the throne, opening the new session, was characterized by the most unmistakable confidence on the part of the Turkish government. "The violent attacks,” it was asserted in the speech, "which have been directed against the Dardanelles and Gallipoli by the land and sea forces of Great Britain and France with the hope of invading Constantinople and capturing the straits, an object for which the Russians for the last two and a half centuries had striven in vain, have been repulsed by the devoted and enthusiastic resistance of my army and my navy. The army and the navy have added new glory to the illustrious deeds of our ancestors, and have won the respect of all nations. . . After the brave armies of our glorious allies had captured the fortresses and destroyed the strength of the Russian army, and turned their attention to the Balkans, they were joined by the Bulgarian forces, and the Triple Alliance became a Quadruple Alliance." The treaty whereby Turkey had ceded a small strip of territory to Bulgaria, in order to secure Bulgaria's support (see BULGARIA), was referred to in the speech from the throne and submitted to the Parliament for ratification. Alluding to the recent arrival of a new German ambassador to the Porte, Count Wolff-Metternich, the speech continued: "Our political affiliations with our allies (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria) are founded for all time upon the mutual confidence which is constantly increasing. Together we will pursue the plan of coöperating against the enemy on all fronts." As the result of the war, Turkey would win the opportunity for the "complete development of her resources." RELATIONS WITH GREECE. In February, Captain Kriezis, a Greek naval attaché at Constantinople, was insulted by an agent of the Turkish secret police. Refusing to be satisfied with simple apologies for the insult, the Greek government demanded the dismissal of the offender. The Porte agreed to the Greek demands, but delayed the promised satisfaction, until in disgust the Greek minister, M. Panas, took his departure from Constantinople, February 14th. The incident for a time threatened to bring about a complete rupture of diplomatic relations between Greece and Turkey, but the Porte finally consented to give full satisfaction to Greece, and the affair was settled peaceably. RAILWAY EXTENSION. One of the most significant features of the year was the progress of railway construction indicated by reports from Turkey. The subject of Turkish railways is treated in detail in the section of this article under the caption Communications (supra). In this place it is necessary only to remark the additional importance which attached to Turkish railway construction in Asia, since the path from Berlin to Constantinople had been opened up, and German engineers and machinery could be imported for the development of the agricultural and mineral resources of Turkey in Asia. Germany in turn would purchase supplies of metal, oil, cotton, and foodstuffs from Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The development of the railway system by which armies and munitions could be transported for operations against Egypt or in the direction of India, would furthermore have a most important strategic value. ARMENIAN ATROCITIES. While the attention of the Powers was occupied by the war in Europe, the Turkish government authorized, or at least permitted, a most atrocious persecution of the Armenian Christian population inhabiting the region about Adana and the northeastern portion of Asia Minor. The ancient enmity between Armenians and the Kurds had for many years manifested itself in periodic massacres. The Armenian atrocities of 1915, however, were more cruel and more extensive than any in the unhappy history of the Armenian people. Not only were single villages wiped out, the men killed, and the women and children carried off, as in the past,-this time a systematic campaign was carried on. The Armenian villagers who had not been butchered outright were taken from their homes by thousands, and driven like herds of cattle, to find new homes in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, or to die of exposure and fatigue along the roadside. A report upon the Armenian atrocities, compiled by Arnold J. Toynbee, may be consulted for further details regarding the savage cruelty with which the Armenians were treated. TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS. Two groups of islands, over 30 in number, constituting a dependency of the British colony of Jamaica, though geographically a part of the Bahamas. Area, 169 square miles. Only eight of the islands are inhabited; their population in 1911 was 5615, of whom 1681 in Grand Turk. Salt raking is the only important industry. Imports and exports in 1913, £30,231 and £27,808, respectively; in 1914, £28,191 and £28,348. Revenue and expenditure in 1913, £10,867 and £8505; in 1914, £9051 and £9391. TURNER, SIR JOSEPH. English surgeon, died May 13, 1915. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1851, and saw service as medical official of health in Cape Colony and the Transvaal. During his service in South Africa he became interested in leprosy, and the research work which he carried on to discover a cure for it won him his knighthood. He successfully checked an epidemic of typhoid fever which raged throughout military hospitals and concentration camps during the Boer War, and while at Pretoria in 1901 fought an epidemic successfully. His studies of leprosy were carried on at a camp in which were nearly 100 Dutch and native lepers. Upon reaching the age limit he was retired from active service, but would not leave Pretoria, and continued the study and examination of lepers. Several years after his retirement, he discovered that he had the disease. From then until a few months prior to his death he lived among the lepers in the Pretoria camp. When his death became only a matter of a few months he was taken back to England. TUSKEGEE NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE. An institution for the industrial and higher education of negroes, founded at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, by Booker T. Washington, in 1881. The total enrollment in all departments in the autumn of 1915 was 1502. The faculty numbered 194. Booker T. Washington, founder and principal of the institute for 34 years, died on November 15th, after a brief illness due to a sudden breakdown caused by overwork. Maj. R. R. Moton was chosen his successor in December. J. R. E. Lee, for several years director of the academic department, resigned during the year. Ezra C. Roberts, for several years head of the department of history and economics, and assistant to the director, was made director. The gifts received during the year amounted to $28,102. The productive funds at the end of the year amounted to $1,970,214. The total receipts from all sources were $379,704. The library contained approximately 10,000 volumes. TWILIGHT SLEEP. Less clamor concerning twilight sleep, or the scopolamin-morphin treatment of the parturient woman while in child bed, arose in 1915 than in 1914; yet there was a hysterical and often genuine demand voiced by many people for the compulsory adoption of this expedient during delivery, in spite of the fact that those who clamored most loudly were least educated in the technique or physiology of the process, which civilization has rendered far from simple. It should not be necessary to remind people that it is manifestly im |