a debate, he simply looks round for the first vacant seat.
There is, however, a tribune for speeches in front of the Speaker's table, from which I enjoyed much fluent and animated oratory. The Turks speak mostly without notes and their constant gestures recall the French. Others, however, no doubt partly from my not knowing the language, produced a similar impression to that of prayers in a Jewish synagogue.
The Assembly is never closed, each member, however, being entitled to three months' holiday. At this time about two hundred were in attendance and crowded the hall to overflowing. The total membership is three hundred and forty.
I am not allowed to forget that it was England who really created the Nationalist Assembly—May 16, 1920, is the historic date—when we took possession of the Turkish Parliament in Constantinople, and the patriots (a hundred and fifty of the most enlightened Turks) were imprisoned at Malta. Then it was that Nationalism demanded, and set up, its own Assembly.
Men from Malta and the other deputies who escaped from Constantinople form two-thirds of the present Parliament; the remaining third have been elected in the country itself.
Its composition is, indeed, unique, representing all sorts and conditions of men, as varied in age, social position, and dress as they are in ideas.
As I looked down from the gallery on this strange, eager group, my eye was caught by the picturesque figure of that "ancient of days," the Deputy for Dersim. Diab is a Kurd, ninety years old, who speaks Turkish with difficulty. A tall, erect old man, with a long white beard and large piercing blue eyes that need no aid from glasses; he wears the tribal head-dress and robes, carrying an amber chaplet. Though the only deputy who can neither read nor write, he is a great personage in his own country, the chief of an important tribe. As, however, he has only twice spoken in the Assembly, we may suppose that the mountain population are generally able to settle their own grievances
