- ference. That Government, from the Sultan-Caliph
down, had been stripped of actual authority long before by the Allied occupation of the old capital, and the Grand National Assembly speedily put an end to its technical existence. On November 1, the Assembly reiterated its previous declaration that "the form of government based on personal sovereignty in Constantinople" had ceased to exist on March 16, 1920, adding that "the Caliphate belongs to the Ottoman dynasty and the Grand National Assembly will nominate him of the dynasty who is the most upright and wise in knowledge and character. The Turkish nation is the supporting power of the Caliphate."
On the morning of November 4, the Constantinople Cabinet handed in its resignation to the Caliph-Sultan and at noon Rafet Pasha took over the administration of Constantinople as one of the provincial capitals of the new Turkish State. In the early hours of November 17, the Caliph-Sultan fled on a British battleship to Malta and on the following day the Grand National Assembly at Angora elected the heir presumptive, Abdul Medjid Effendi, to the Caliphate of Islam. Turkish nationalism was continuing to surmount that Old Turkish conservatism which had helped to wreck the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908. As for Islam in India, such was the siege-encircled secrecy in which Turkish nationalism had developed that the end of its historic Ottoman theocracy fell upon it as a severe blow, but it stuck loyally to "our brother Turk." As for the Emperor of India, he was uncertain whether the seat of the Caliphate was Constantinople or Mecca. The ex-Sherif Hussein had
