worked more zealously and more successfully than any of his predecessors for the dissemination amongst the Mohammedans of the false imaginations concerning the Caliphate. His wily but short-sighted policy, which brought his own empire ever nearer to its fall, made him seek solace for many a failure in Panislamic intrigues, staged by unscrupulous but mostly ignorant and blundering confederates, who showed the credulous the ideal picture of a Caliph, assuring them that it was a good likeness of Abdulhamîd.
There has often been talk of an organization of Panislâm under the direction of Abdulhamîd, but this is without foundation. In 1897, in connexion with some foul, secretly circulated, pamphlets, which the most intimate counsellors of the Sultan in vying for his favour had let loose against each other, I tried to describe the