JANISSARIES OF 1926

The Turk is a grisly crusader in any style. Americans have sometimes undergone duckings for too early and too eager donning of straws and white flannels, but a wireless message from the Black Sea shore informs the New York Times that twenty-four Turks have been executed for not wearing according to Mustafa Kemal's late decree, hats of the European mode. Non-conformance is costly in Asia Minor.

Conversion by the sword seems to apply alike to gods and galoshes. The derbied and the turbaned Turk are brothers below the scalp. Their desires repressed on the battle-fields of the Balkans and in the valleys of Armenia, find vent in less holy carnage on the Black Sea coast. But it must be tedious for the more peaceful Moslems to spend their mornings in detailed perusal of statute books, lost a life be at stake in the crease of a trouser leg or the tilt of a hat brim.

This bloodthirstiness is introspective not to say suicidal. If similar penalties are to be devised for dating a letter according to the flight of the Prophet and for marrying polygamously, it may be that the Turk will succeed in his own extermination far beyond the hopes that Europe has long and fondly entertained.