1936 On the Continent

the battlefield of powerful nations.
    As children we once read of the dazzling deeds of the Amazons, of Gyges and of how he, a simple shepherd, became a mighty king. We learnt of Croesus and Midas, and of the fatal golden touch. It was here in Asia Minor that these legendary events took place.
    As early as 675 B.C. a tribe of Greeks known as the Megarians founded a colony on the Thracian Bosphorus. From this humble beginning sprung Constantinople, that famous city which, in the years to come, was to outshine Rome in beauty and magnificence and for the possession of which the leading powers of the world were to engage in savage warfare.
    Nine hundred and fifty years after the first Greek settler had established himself on one of the green, rolling hills overlooking the dream-like loveliness of the Bosphorus, the Christian Constantine, advancing at the head of his mighty fleet, wrested the city from the hands of his weak brother-in-law Linceus.
    There is a legend to the effect that Constantine, sleeping in his tent one night not long after the fall of the city, beheld, in a dream, the white-haired matron who was the titular genius of the city. Old and tottering, she appeared to him, her back bent with the burden of many years. Saddened by her plight, he held out his manly hand to her and lo, her eyes suddenly shone with the fire of many stars and the withered body rose, beautiful and strong, apicture of virile youth. Constantine, the early Christian, the superstitious Roman, read in this dream God’s command ordering him to build a new city on the ruins of the old. He at once placed himself at the head of a brilliant procession and, lance in hand, rode over hill and valley tracing the outlines of Constantinople, now known as Istanbul. Within a hundred years of that memorable day the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire boasted of one circus, one capitol, two theatres, eight public and one hundred and fifty-three private baths, and eight aqueducts.
    With the dawn of Mohammedanism in the East the power of the Byzantine empire, already weakened by luxury, intrigue, religious dissension, oppression, and vice, began to crumble, and eventually the Ottoman Turks obtained control of the country and Sultan Mehmet, better known as the Conqueror, ascended the throne in 1451. Three years later he captured Istanbul and put an end to the Byzantine empire.
    Foremost among the nations of the earth was this new and powerful empire which, for centuries, flourished on three continents and the boundaries of which at one time stretched from the sunny shores of Africa in the south to the gates of Vienna in the north.
“Sick Man” Revives
    But as the years fled the Ottoman empire in turn weakened and waned until, in the nineteenth century, it was looked upon by European statesmen as the Sick Man of Europe. Then came the World War, the Gallipoli campaign, the loss of Syria, Jerusalem and Irak. It was then that that man of destiny, Kemal Ataturk, arose and, from the sad remnants of a weary nation, recruited an army of men and women of all ages and stations which he suffused with his own burning patriotism and led on to a startling victory. Then was a new nation born, powerful, virile, progressive, a new republic founded through which foreigner and Turk alike may travel unarmed and unafraid, safe to enjoy in peace and civilisation the beauty of the country with its sunny climate and countless monuments which tell in a language more eloquent than words of civilisations now long since dead.
    The above historical account would be of little interest to the casual traveller who to-day visits Turkey were it not for the fact that each of the many civilisations that flourished and died in this territory have left strikingly interesting traces.
    But do not think that Turkey is a “museum country” in the sense that its historical monuments and other relics are of purely academic interest. There is nothing of any importance in Turkey that the visitor might not enjoy as—shall we say—a show, apart from historical associations. And most “monuments” are part of the atmosphere.
    The domes and minarets of Constantinople
are
Constantinople, just as the modern buildings that have risen everywhere in this glamorous city, its busy traffic, and the conspicuous absence of fezes, are part and parcel of the Istanbul of to-day.
Folk Art
    Even the Efkaf museum in Istanbul is part of the life of Turkey, with its unique collection of Mohammedan art. Here you