large volume for tray, our breakfast of bread and helva, nuts and fruit, looked quite appetising.
It is not the "indolence of the East" that is leaving these people in destitution among the ruins. One day, what remains standing will have to be pulled or burnt down, and a complete rebuilding undertaken. But nothing can be done under a threat of war.
At every inn on our return journey the whole of the "service" was entrusted to men. This, no doubt, largely explains the usual discomfort. Women must not remain entirely anonymous.
The cheik told me he hoped the new generation, largely educated in Europe, might welcome such innovations, but "it would be difficult for the old. My wife, for instance, complained at having to 'receive' men visitors in Berlin. She considered it 'cheap' and 'lowering' to her prestige."
I can only hope the women of Turkey, when they achieve progress, will advance on the right lines—more determined on tact than pace.
One must, of course, discard conventions at need, as I was doing all the time on this journey, but one can, at the same time, respect the feelings of others.
I could not, for convention, allow my present companions to keep up the full Eastern "separation of the sexes"; and, as the cheik remarked, London ballrooms would be no less offensive to Turkish ladies of the old school than the comparatively "close quarters" which common humanity forbade us to avoid.
There are often, of course, directly opposed conventions in different climates. In the Eastern mosques men keep on hats and take off boots; Europeans reverse the custom. Eastern women object to "low" frocks and "strange" partners "for the dance"; and, as one who had joined in them once told me, it is better to dance alone; for, if the music suddenly stops, a "couple" feel so embarrassed!
We were driven to the station for a train due to leave
