Turkish military police who are on duty in the streets, stabbing
affrays, shootings and robberies are so common that they provoke but
little comment. Petty thievery is universal. Hats, coats, canes,
umbrellas disappear from beside one's chair in hotels and restaurants.
The Pera Palace Hotel has notices posted in its corridors warning the
guests that it is no longer safe to place their shoes outside their
doors to be polished. The streets, always wretchedly paved, have been
ground to pieces by the unending procession of motor-lorries, and, as
they are never by any chance repaired, the first rain transforms them
into a series of hog-wallows. The most populous districts of Pera, of
Galata, and of Stamboul are now disfigured by great areas of
fire-blackened ruins--reminders of the several terrible conflagrations
from which the Turkish capital has suffered in recent years. "Should the
United States decide to accept the mandate for Constantinople," a
resident remarked to me, "these burned districts would give her an
opportunity to start rebuilding the city on modern sanitary lines" and,
he might have added, at American expense.

The prices of necessities are fantastic and of luxuries fabulous. The
cost of everything has advanced from 200 to 1,200 per cent. The price of
a meal is no longer reckoned in piastres but in Turkish pounds, though
this is not as startling as it sounds, for the Turkish _lira_ has
dropped to about a quarter of its normal value. Quite a modest dinner
for two at such places as Tokatlian's, the Pera Palace Hotel, or the
Pera Gardens, costs the equivalent of from fifteen to twenty dollars.
Everything else is in proportion. From the "Little Club" in Pera to the
Galata Bridge is about a seven minutes' drive by carriage. In the old
days the standard tariff for the trip was twenty-five cents. Now the
cabmen refuse to turn a wheel for less than two dollars.