25th Lune, THE somewhat sudden departure on Saturday last of Enver Pasha and his suite to Turkey vid Nagasaki, Viadivostock, and the trans-Siberian railway, ends as far as China is concerned what can only be called a fiasco. The news that a Turkish mission was coming, headed by a iman_of the standing and reputation of Enver Pasha, was received in China with not unnatural surprise, and when we published a_ brief report of the interview which His Excellency accorded our representative soon after his arrival, there was a general belief that there must be something more in the mission than appeared on the surface. But this was a mistake. The Sultan of Turkey was persuaded, we understand, by the German Emperor to dispatch' the mission "to pacify the Mahomedans in the north-west provinces of China in the event of their causing the authorities trouble." There were serious rumours that a Mahomedan rising was contemplated, and it was believed that the influence of the Sultan of Turkey as the head of the Mahomedan religion could be most} usefully employed in pacifying the Mahomedan subjects of the Emperor of China, The idea was an excellent one if it were only certain that the Mahomedans in China recognise the Sultan of Turkey as the head of their religion; and there may be Mahome-Jans in China, possibly even in the north-west, who do so recognise the Sultan: but the majority of them, 9,999 in 10,000, or more probably 99,999 in 100,000, never heard of the Sultan of Turkey, and their whole idea of Mahomet is that it is a religion which prohibits the cating of pork. When Enver Pasha arrived here, he found that in the first place there were no Mahomedans handy to be pacified, and in the second place that the name of the Sultan of Turkey was not a name to conjure with in China. To reach the Mahomedans who might give trouble the Pasha found he would have to go to Kansu, no easy task just at present, in fact, if he really wanted to reach the Kansu Mahomedans, he must go from India through Cashmere, not from the east coast of China; and if he got to Kansu there was no probability that his representations that he came from the Sultan of Turkey would have any effect. whatever. In illustration of this, an incident that occurred here the other day may be mentioned. In company with General Creagh, Enver Pasha inspected one of the Mahomedan British regiments here. He spoke to one of the native officers, a very intelligent man, saying: "I come from the head of your religion, the Sultan of Turkey." "Your Excellency" replied the officer, "the only head that I know is the King of England."
In fact, Enver Pasha found himself in an entirely false position. He did pot even know, when he left home, that there was any European society in Shanghai; he thought he was coming to an entirely savage country. His visit has not been altogether fruitless, because there is now one! high Turkish official who has seen fur himself that there are great centres of European civilisation in China, and that there is in Shanghai! a city in Chin advanced as Stamboul itself is, But his mission, as far us it regards its avowed object, has been a complete farce: and the extraordinary thing is that the} Turkish Government did not seck some information on the subject before dispatching it. The British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Nicholas O'Conor, could have contributed something from his knowledge of! China which might have deterred the Sultan from incurring the politely-veiled but yet not entirely repressible ridicule with which this mission, which has made no attempt to see anything of China except Shanghai, has been met. The mission will not, however, have been altogether in vain if it leads to a better appreciation in Turkey of the real condition of things in Ubina.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.