Each time that I have approached Constantinople from the Marmora Sea and
have watched that glorious and fascinating panorama--Seraglio Point, St.
Sophia, Stamboul, the Golden Horn, the Galata Bridge, the heights of
Pera, Dolmabagtche, Yildiz--slowly unfold, revealing new beauties, new
mysteries, with each revolution of the steamer's screw, I have declared
that in all the world there is no city so lovely as this capital of the
Caliphs. Yet, beautiful though Constantinople is, it combines the moral
squalor of Southern Europe with the physical squalor of the Orient to a
greater degree than any city in the Levant. Though it has assumed the
outward appearance of a well-organized and fairly well administered
municipality since its occupation by the Allies, one has but to scratch
this thin veneer to discover that the filth and vice and corruption and
misgovernment which characterized it under Ottoman rule still remain.
Barring a few municipal improvements which were made in the European
quarter of Pera and in the fashionable residential districts between
Dolmabagtche and Yildiz, the Turkish capital has scarcely a bowing
acquaintance with modern sanitation, the windows of some of the finest
residences in Stamboul looking out on open sewers down which refuse of
every description floats slowly to the sea or takes lodgment on the
banks, these masses of decaying matter attracting great swarms of
pestilence-breeding flies. The streets are thronged with women whose
virtue is as easy as an old shoe, attracted by the presence of the
armies as vultures are attracted by the smell of carrion. Saloons,
brothels, dives and gambling hells run wide open and virtually
unrestricted, and as a consequence venereal diseases abound, though the
British military authorities, in order to protect their own men, have
put the more notorious resorts "out of bounds" and, in order to provide
more wholesome recreations for the troops, have opened amusement parks
called "military gardens." In spite of the British, French, Italian and