ABSTRACT
On the morning of July 11, 1908, I was sitting in the spacious hall of Antigone, with my old friends from Beshiktash, Auntie Peyker and her husband Hamdi Effendi. Their son was the young officer who had escaped to Europe and joined the Young Turks, and they often came to me to talk of him and to get his letters, for they corresponded with him through an American friend of mine. They had no hope of ever seeing their son alive. Hamidian rule had a finality and inevitability which made one almost laugh at the idea that it could be changed by a few pamphlets published occasionally in Paris and sent to Constantinople in secret.
