CONSTANTINOPLE SURROUNDED.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 97, 22 April 1909, Page 4

CONSTANTINOPLE SURROUNDED.

BESIEGERS EXCELLENTLY

EQUIPPED

[press association.] (Received April 21, 10 p.m.)

CONSTANTINOPLE, April 21, The Sultan's yacht, after getting up steam, took ammunition aboard. Husni Pasha, commander of the Salonika troops, issued a proclamation! addressed to the garrison and inhabitants, assuring them of the safety of their lives and property. Husni's troops are spread in a semicircle within calling distance of the walls of Constantinople, and intersecting all roads thence. The force is well led, well disciplined and confident. Military attaches are amazed at the excellent equipment, which includes field telegraphs, hospitals and supply trains.

All Husni's requisitions of food and' live stock are paid for in cash. One attache counted 30 machine-guns; another learns that the corps has 60 field-pieces, well horsed. Husni considers that besides taking: he must be able to patrol and control the city, which contains a million inhabitants, with many dangerous mob elements.

( Trainfuls of visitors arrived at Saustfanc yesterday, including many, secret agents seeking to converse with] the troops. Fifty of these were arrested, several being disguised as hadjas.

Many real bodjas, hadjas and softas, whose subversive preachings were responsible for Tuesday's outbreak, have fled to Asia Minor.

[Webster defines a hadja as "a' Greek or Armenian who has visited the holy sepulchre at Mecca," and a sofca as "anyone attached to a Mohammedan mosque, especially a 'student of the higher branches of theology in a mosque school."]