THE PORT SAID OF TO-DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16621, 18 August 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PORT SAID OF TO-DAY.

CHANGES WROUGHT BY HE 'MILITARY. Whev the war broke out Port Said held the reputationas, indeed, it had held from time immemorial—of being the wickedest city from a moral standpoint

of any place on the face of the globe. Into this port the flotsam and jetsam of the underworld drifted fr6m all parts of the universe. Here every type of vice imaginable was represented.

But.to-day after 33 months of military rule, the " Sinkhole of the East" is wellnigh a model city, the iron hand of the army having cleaned it up as no other power could have done.

When the military first took hold of affairs in Port Said, gambling, drinking, and vice of all sorts were rampant. Letters which were intercepted .by the censor showed that traffic in women was thriving. ' Now most of this has been stopped, military law enabling the authorities to deal with situations over which the civil courts had no control.

• That street of international notoriety. Rue Babel, so named because of the many languages spoken by its inhabitants. has ceased to thrive as the leader in the world's ipiquity.- Many of its vice leaders have been sent away from the country; certain forms of vice which could not be eliminated have been restricted, and one can walk the street without being beset by the denizens of the underworld. Even drinking has been limited, and it is impossible now to pro cure intoxicating liquors excepting between the hours of one and three in the afternoon and six and nine in the evening. The clea.ning-up has been largely <n the hands of Lieut.-Colonel P. G. Elgood, acting under instructions from the Commatider-in-Chief, .General Sir Arciu-

bald Murray.