ABDUL THE—VERSATILE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2784, 24 July 1907, Page 80

ABDUL THE— VERSATILE.

His Imperial Majesty the Sultan Ghazi Abdul Hamid of Turkey was the "Great Assassin" of Mr Gladstone, the "Red Sultan" of William Watson. "Yet" (says tha Constantinople correspondent of the Times of India) "he is the trusted friend of the Emperor William, and Dr Washbourne, the honoured Missionary President of the American Robert College at Constanirople, speaks in the highest terms of the excellent qualities of 'heart and of head of this many-sided monarch." — Able, but Jealous. — "As to,, his. ability there can be no two opmions^jre^as pl a 7«l' with Europe for over i3s';j£gr£ Jr> ',a4id: even when, under menace of the international fleet-s, he yields to the threats '^>f ' Che great Powers it is generally found that Abdul Hamid has outwitted the ambassadors. He is a great man in many ways, and a very email man in others. A great diplomatist, inasmuch as he plays off one ambassador against the other, and yet maintains his position intact. A small man, consumed by violent jealousies : the credit of every work of progress, of every act of charity, of every good deed must be his and his alone. . . . "The Sultan's dislike of that poor old soldier Ghazi Moukbtar Pashu, now practically an exile in Egypt, is due to the fact that during the Rueso-Turkish war the field-marshal in Ms despatches failed) to lay sufficient stress on the invaluable aid he received from the strategical plans as wired to him from time to time by the minions of Yildiz Kiosque. Marshal Edhem Pasha, on the contrary, when announcing the bloodless victories in the Greek war of 1897, invariably ascribed his success to tE«g>, 'high auspices of hie Imperial Majesty.' He remains in. high favour. The inception of the Baghdad and Hedjaz railways, of the well-appointed children's hospital >n tihe hill above Pera, and the stately Military Medical College overshadowing the Crimean Memorial at Scutari is ascribed! to the Sultan Abdul Hamil, and' he willingly accepts all credit for these strategic, religious, educational, and charitable works. In point of fact, the Sultan opposed one and all of them, and bis opposition was only overcome after weary years of patience" — and, as regards ♦he railways, when his treasury was empty. "Jealousy prompts him to keep all his relatives in seaJusion. Even his ows §003

feel the weight of his dislike. He dreads anyone winning a smile that might other- » wise have been bestowed on Abdul Hamid. The younger and favourite son, the Prince Burhameddin, farts little better than the others, and it is a well-known fact that a foreigner in the Sultan's service who stood high- in the Sultan's favour lost the imperial esteem because -ac ventured to ask that he might be allowed to present a camera to the youthful prince, who was then beginning to dabble in photography. . . . —What He Might Have Been.— "Abdul Hannd has on more than one occasion shown cool courage of a very heigh order in the race of grave danger. Yet his dread of assassination is such that he only leaves his palace thrice in the year, and that only after the most elaborate precautions hare been observed. ... A man' prone to acts of unostentatious charity, moved to compassion by every tale of sorrow and suftering, dtevoted to young children acd to animals, yet absolutely callous to human life and destitute of any feelings of gratitude. Amidst other surToucdungs Abdul Hamid might have been. a great man. He possesses characteristics that would have gone far to have sent birr* down to posterity as the greatest Sultan who ever sat on the tJurone of Turkey."