CONSTANTINOPLE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 61, 15 March 1915, Page 4

CONSTANTINOPLE.

When Constantinople falls, as fall it must before long, there will be no manifestation of the passion of patriotism that has often made citizens of other capitals choose to be buried under the ruins of their town rather than survive it says a. writer in the Auckland Star. The Turks know nothing of the spirit which inspired the last Constantino and his followers or the defenders of Jerusalem at its latter end. Stambould is not their Holy City. They have not even heen thoroughly at home in it, as the Frenchman is in Paris or the Englishman in London. The devout wish of the Moslem, even if he lias been horn in Stamboul, is to he buried in the soil of Asia. There his Prophet was horn and conceived a. new faith and went forth to victory. There are the scenes of all his life, and there is his great tomb, to which thousands of the faithful make pilgrimages every year. And Mecca and Medina are not to him remote and almost imaginary places as the sacred spots of Palestine are to be Western Christian. Asia is at his door and part of his own Empire. Baron de Tott once inquired of the Grand Vizier whether the Turks would greatly regret leaving Constantinople if they were forced to evacuate it. "Not at all," replied the Vizier, "Asia is very beautiful, and yonder shores beyond Scutari offer delightful spots where to build our konaks." "The Turks may fight hard before they yield Constantinople up, for their empire in Asia is now shaking, hut they will be fighting out of the national pride of the conqueror, not the inborn love of the patriot. They have turned Sancta Sophia into a mosque, disfigured its once ' magnificent exterior by minarets stuck on to it, and painted it with alternative stripes of light and dark red, hut they have never quite obliterated the traces of its origin. It never could be to them what the Tomb of their Prophet is, nor what, even in its defilement, the great Christian Church still is to the Orthodox Greek or Russian. The Moslems themselves believe in the Christian prophecies that the city and church must jp.h day he, theirs no longer. They accept the legends that on Easter morn the angels sing carols within the vast dome, and the other tradition that when the Turkish soldiers burst in upon the last mass celebrated there, the walls miraculously opened to receive the officiating priest and the consecrated elements and closed upon them, to reopen only when the Crescent is hurled from the summit of the dome and the Cross once more stands above it. But for him these Christian legends are ominous, and he and his fathers for genei'ations back have felt themselves to be living insecurely in a city won and held by the sword and destined to be wrested from them by the sword.