The Daily Star Mirror

AMERICANS STIR
LETHARGIC TURKS

Constantinople Becomes Cosmopolitan City With Ending of War.

NOW HUMMING WITH ENERGY

American Soldiers, Red Cross, Y. M. C. A. and American Business Men Now Throng City--Call It "Invasion of Wealth."

Constantinople. -- Americans make Constantinople hum with their energy, business methods and way of "going ahead" that makes even the old Turk, Indifferent as he is to all that passes around him, lift an eyelash in mild surprise. American soldiers, Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., American business men, American-made machinery, food, clothing, merchandise of every sort and kind are now in this most dirty, casual and ancient city. The Turks, when they talk about it at all, call it "The Invasion of Wealth."

The Prussians have gone; the German invasion is over. But, besides this American invasion, is the Russian invasion, which the Turk, when he talks about it at all, calls, owing to its contrast with the American species, "The Invasion of Poverty."

Russians, Too, Abound.

Every day the orderly, prosperous businesslike, keen-eyed American grows more numerous, busier, better at home in this most fascinating old city on the Golden Horn, the most wonderful city that ever was, with its mingling of the races, its white marble palaces, its noise, dust, and its seal of the Orient.

Every day more and more Russians, poor, ragged, disordered, idle, "devil-may-care," hungry and pleasure-loving, flock here from the bolshevists, escaping by way of the Golden Horn from Odessa. At Stamboul, at more or less Americanized Pera, at Chiclin and other suburbs, Russians abound.

And what a contrast! The Americans, clean-shaven every day, methodical, wideawake to all around: the Russians, dirty, unkempt, possessed with the one idea, to amuse themselves.

They gamble every night in the hells of Pera, throwing down sheaves of rubles in notes of a thousand, two and five thousand, which they feverishly change at the rate of six cents per ruble instead of the once nominal 50 cents.

American ways and energy have even penetrated into the Turkish homes. Many Turkish women now go about with uncovered faces "because the American women do it," and a few are taking an active part in politics, holding meetings at the famous Hippodrome to agitate for woman suffrage, quoting the woman leaders of the suffrage movement in faraway America which they have never seen and whose language they do not know.

Public order is good throughout the city. Patrols of Italians and Turks see to that. At crossroads English policemen regulate that curiously intricate Eastern traffic with the same calm they showed a few months ago at Piccadilly Circus.

Prices Are High.

Americans find life dearer here than in New York. A cab, drawn by an emaciated horse, $15 for a short course; a cup of Turkish coffee, 50 cents, about the size of a thimble.

One furnished room costs $100 a month, but no extra charge is made for the various kinds of bugs that infest it. White bread can be had at 50 cents per pound; American flour is very popular in consequence.

Except for the women who have discarded their veils, nobody seems to care about politics; the great thing is business--business for Greek, Armenian and Israelite--and each and all want to do business with the Americans. There is a market for everything that grows or makes. And the Turk, who does no business, but smokes his cigarette, sips coffee and lets others toil for him, is ready to pay the price. For he is by no means so poor as he gives his neighbors, far and near, to understand.