Results were always better to pass judgment upon than the history of the efforts to obtain them. He mentioned the various changes which had occurred and described them as sudden und sweeping. As an example of the drastic methods employed by the Turkish Grand Notionalist "Assembly, in which all power was vested, Admiral Bristol escribed the manner in which this body had taken the Civil Code of Switzerland and the Penal Code of Italy and translated them into the Turkish language and then promulgated them as the Turkish Civil and Penal Codes within less than a month!
The Nationalist leaders and Nationalist sentiment were responsible for one of thd most sudden depositions of a monarch the world had ever teen, The Sultan of the old regime ws wade a virtual prisoner {nis own palace and was taken from there, by request, at midnight and] exiled. "A. Caliph possessing powers vested int him solely by the Church and mianamed the "Pope of the Moslem Religion" was elected to) neeeed him. As a matter of fact this man was the legal successor to the Sultan as he himself was Crown Prince. A year later, however, the palace was again surrounded by the police and all outside communication was cut off. Instructions were sued for the Caliph to abdicate within five hours. He was provided with an escort to the railway, given some money and told to Jeave the country, Members of the Imperial family received notice to leave! within two weeks, which they di leaving as ordinary abandoning most of thei jons. Tt was a sad The Republic Declared Parliament was established when the Nationalist movement started] and it met in Angora, later becoming. Known as the Grand Nationalist Assembly of Turkey. Although full power was supposed to be vested in it, it did not in actual practice work out. Turkey became a republic in form in 1923 by a decree of the Assembly, but at the present time no elections to the Assembly were libeld without the approval of the President or his followers nor were any' laws pasted without the approval of the President, who was virtually a dictator, the difference doing that he did not issue decrees for carrying oat any precise programme: he worked always through the Assembly.
The results of these changes in government in so short a time were remarkable, said the speaker, and they started immediately after Turkey became a republic by pass-jing and putting into effect many reforms, especially relating to the Jaw. "The country formerly was governed by religious laws, which] had now been abolished and religious education had even been forbidden in the schools. If a case with an clement of religion in it came up in court, it would immedi jatoly be thrown out on the ground that religion was a man's private affair which should not be dragged up in public, No prayers were allowed in mosques without official permission. A system of educating fests had been started to elevate their profession from its former uneducated and corrupt level, Mon-asterias had been closed and, though reaction in the form of riots was at first expected, first-hand information from all over the country show-fed that these drastic changes were favoured by the masses.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.