CONSTANTINOPLE TO-DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17112, 18 March 1919, Page 10

CONSTANTINOPLE TO-DAY.

TOWN OF MANY races. OCCUPATION BY ALLIES. enthusiasm of greeks. Writing from Constable shortly alter the Allied occupation of the city, Mr G. Ward Price, the British war correspondent, describes the cento o J.„IU» ttat tat tb. «j , »a td complications which surrounded the All administration. Ho writes: ssr 1 -? siuX-jj Of soldiers of every warring nation, suib "HrGe&VßriS * SSI. F Sr«ffi' -ind Stamboul; ancl jobwe out " j , stamboul; and Mnicß of white-turbaned Indian name £££ marching through tho imfiogaleous throng on their way to the ships •that will take them to home and liberty. ' It, is a situation full of possiUecomplications, which have been " v^ d ' tbfi very reason, perhaps, that they were so obvious. These German and Austrian soldiers who swarm in the streets were active enemies but yesterday, and if Ger many had not signed her armistice, rnigh have become the same again directly they left Turkey. Forced to tolerate their presence until the end of the month which had been left them to clear ou of Turkey, the allied troops could do simply nothing but ignore them. No Salutes. Though the Germans had been ordered by their generals to salute allied officers in the streets, they stopped doing so after the first few days, and their officers, ostentatiously wearing automatic pistols, and sometimes swords as well, would i stalk stiffly along as if colour-blind to the constant spread of khaki and horizon-blue around them. Meanwhile, the Turkish capital has been feverishly transforming itself. Down came all the German names and up went French and English. Sign-painters were busy from dawn till dark. The Bierhans Lorelei becomes Anzac Bar. The pictures of tha Kaiser and the Emperor Karl have disappeared from the shop windows, and tha photograph! of M.- Venizelos—since most. Constantinople shop-keepers are Greeks—takes their place, surrounded by candles in almost religious veneration. It was not inscriptions alone that needed to be altered when the Allies ■ arrived in Constantinople, but opinions also. . Much of the Levantine population of the city has really no nationality at all, and can change its political views at the shortest notice without trouble. The traders of Pera and Galata, who were busy on contracts for the Turks and Germans a month ago, are now falling over one another to " render service," as they put it, to the Allies, and break inconstantly upon their business offers with almost hysterical expressions of welcome. *' Our saviours," they repeat with unction, Reforms Too Late. The . spall group of more enlightened and less degenerate Turks see clearly that their country has sentence of political death hanging over its head, and they are urging,, though it is already more than the eleventh hour, that the new Government should put on foot immediately the most sweeping measures of reform Wore the doom of the Turkish Empire is finally pronounced. As for the Greeks, who make up more than half a million of the population of the Turkish capital, they have been excited to the wildest enthusiasm by the arrival of the Allies at Constantinople, and, above all, by, the presence among, them of ships of the Greek fleet. The Greek newspapers, freed from fear of the Turkish atrocities, openly claim that Constantinople, as an. ancient Greek city, should be' added to the Kingdom of Greece. The Greek population would go further and show its triumph at what it takes to be liberation from hated Turkish rule by demonstrations, were it not that the Allies have not only advised but ordered the Turkish Government to keep public order, so that the capital is thronged with Turkish military guards. For all these symptoms of unrest life at Constantinople in these historic days is strangely uneventful. The guns of the Allied Fleet, out of sight though they may ha up the Gulf of Ismidt, am a powerful sedative against political disturbance. But for the immense prices to which unchecked speculation and systematic grafting by Turkish Government officials have raised the cost of living, life for the moment: follows a normal course. J