III
THE YOUNG TURKISH PROGRAM
KEMAL'S ARREST AND HIS EXILE TO DAMASCUS—HIS
EVENTUAL RETURN TO SALONICA—WHAT
THE YOUNG TURKS WANTED—THE RELIGIOUS
CONSERVATISM WHICH CONFRONTED THEM—THE
ROLE OF AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AND
EDUCATORS—CHRISTENDOM VS. ISLAM.
The young Kemal had no sooner been graduated from the General Staff classes at the War Academy in Constantinople, than he engaged a small apartment in Stamboul to serve as the head-*quarters of the secret Society of Liberty. But an acquaintance whom he trusted and whom he permitted to sleep in the apartment at night on the plea that he was penniless, proved to be one of Abdul Hamid's spies and Kemal was arrested. Having been questioned at Yildiz Kiosk, he was held for three months in a police cell and then exiled late in 1902 to a cavalry regiment in Damascus. Fresh from the War Academy, fired with the spirit of revolution and schooled in its technique, he lost no time at Damascus in getting into touch with other exiles from the War Academy and the Military College of Medicine in the capital. His colonel, Lutfi Bey, introduced him to the keeper of a small stationery shop in the Damascus bazaars who had
