Palestine]
gospel in 1895. Some, even then, dared to speak openly of coming Hebrew domination where Jews had hitherto crept to hide.
German Emperor's Visit.—Foiled by the Powers, and betrayed by men of his own household, Abdul Hamid turned to his one Christian friend, a sovereign who never browbeat him, but watched the French and Russians, and was not credited with any predilection for the Jews. Kaiser Wilhelm II appeared in Palestine in October 1898, made a royal progress through the country, was presented with lands at Jerusalem, and there inaugurated a German epoch of the city's history. German influence, which had begun obscurely about the time of the Prussian Crown Prince's visit in 1869, and had been sustained inconspicuously by small Templar colonies at Haifa and on Mount Carmel, was to challenge henceforward all others in Palestine. But when the spectre of a second Franco-Lebanon had thus: been laid, Abdul Hamid was not minded to raise that of a German Palestine: and he was careful to keep his gratitude within bounds. Herzl retired baffled from Constantinople in 1902, and obstruction continued to be offered to the Jews. Only after the revolution of 1908 could the German-Jew institutions, which had come into existence to take control of the Hebrew movement in Palestine, begin to make headway, and the German era of Jew colonisation increased materially the numbers and holdings of alien settlers. Progress under Abdul Hamid.-Taken as a whole, the Hamidian regime in Syria marked Imperial progress, and is open to less criticism than elsewhere in Turkey.There were, of course, bad features-the same repressive atmosphere as in other provinces; the same nervousness of foreign encroachment, issuing, for example, in fantastic prohibition of access to coastal districts; the same suspicious and jealous system of administration .But there was no general sense of oppression and terror. The population steadily increased. When the Porte took over from the Egyptians in 1841, Syria and Palestine were estimated to contain
