weekly custom, had gone to the Mosque near Yikliz Kiosk,
and was about to return, when an iron box full of dynamite was dropped from a carriage about a hundred yards off, and exploded, killing seventeen persons and injuring a hundred more. The Sultan was uninjured, and though usually a nervous and suspicious man, displayed the coolness with which Mussulmans commonly meet the decrees of destiny. Unless everybody is lying, he drove himself back to the Palace, returning salutes quietly, and exhibiting no sign of disturb- ance or alarm. No trace of the assassin has been discovered, and the driver of the suspected carriage was killed on the spot. This man may, of course, have been the criminal himself, who, it seems clear, lost his nerve, and fired off his infernal machine prematurely. Conjectures are numerous as to the ultimate organisers of the attempt, which was attributed at first to Bulgarians, then to Armenians, then to Anarchists, and then to the "Young Turks," who all over Europe are plotting to overthrow the Sultan. The Bulgarians would seem to have no motive, the Armenians are cowed, the Anarchists would hardly have failed so completely, and the last sugges- tion, though only provisional, seems best to explain the facts. The only results of the senseless crime will be an increase of repression, and the development of a certain human sympathy for a man who ever since the Armenian massacres has been denounced as beyond its range.
