done through commission agents, and the number of foreign agents, especially Germans, residing in the chief centres is highly significant. Representatives of British firms are hardly ever themselves British born. Adaptation of business to native requirements is another point which foreign manufacturers are accustomed to study to better advantage than our own. Favourable terms of credit are of primary importance. Much, too, may be gained by a readiness to consult popular taste and by intelligibility in correspondence, catalogues, and quotation of prices. French is the language generally understood; the metric system is used in commercial transactions; and c.i.f. quotations are commonly expected. In Palestine German interests have a strong support in the colonies at Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, and are also served to some extent by the Jewish colonies, whose members are commonly German-speaking and not seldom tinged with German Kultur. The Zionist movement is openly advocated in Germany as a means of spreading Teutonic influence—an aspect of the question which in this country is not sufficiently appreciated. The various educational, religious, and charitable institutions—British, American, French, German, &c.—have no direct concern with trade, though they may do something by means of creating an atmosphere." Papers and periodicals, which are read a good deal in the more Europeanised towns, are by no means negligible. The Deutsche Levante Zeitung, for instance, has quickly found a public among the merchants of the Levant, and is said to have done good service to German trade.
(f) Monopolies
The salt monopoly is assigned to and managed by the Ottoman Public Debt, which has two administrative centres, Aleppo for the vilayet of Aleppo, and Beirut for the vilayets of Beirut and Damascus and the mutessariflik of Jerusalem, with depôts in numerous places. In 1913-14 the amount sold in the administrative area
