long in the land and were vaguely concerned about the Capitulations: young lady missionaries with a sweetly simple reliance on "these darling British": and stern "commissioners" of the Near East Relief on "tours of inspection" who learned from Greeks and Armenians that the worst they had been told of the Turk was quite true. At the head of them all was Admiral Bristol, equipped with a flotilla of American destroyers and charged with the defense of American interests in the Ottoman Empire. He enjoyed what was probably the most difficult American position in all of Europe and in it he proved himself a very tower of American strength.
The colony of which he was the head was divided into two sorts, American business men who looked to the American Embassy for their leadership, and American missionary, educational and relief workers who looked not only to the American Embassy but to the British from the Foreign Office in London down to the British Army in Pera without reminding themselves as frequently as they might have done that the British Army, while one of our most gallant Armies, interests itself, and quite rightly, in the King's peace and in no other peace.
In the absence of any Parliament to speak for than, a number of the most influential Turks in the capital formed themselves into a delegation from the Wilsonian League and pledged themselves early in 1919 to accept an American mandate over the entire country, provided a definite term, preferably fifteen or twenty years, was named for it. This pledge was communicated to Admiral Bristol and forwarded by him to Washington. If such a mandate would not apply the Westernism of the Four-
