return Edirne and it was vital to put [additional pressure on the Bulgarian Front, which was being shaken by bold action over and above the consent of the Government. And this, the Special Organization undertook to do.

"In truth, the heroic deeds which soothed our hearts at that bitter time did not stop at delivering only Edirne, we set up an independent state in Western Thrace, too. It was the first republic of that sort successfully set up, and ten years before the Republic established in Ankara in 1923.

"Because, through our own negligence and lack of foresight and with our own hands, we had put an end to the deep differences between the Greek and Bulgarian Churches which Sultan Hamid had so masterfully perpetuated for thirty years, Athens and Sofya were reconciled. Then the Serbs and Montenegrans joined them, and they set up themselves up against us as a quadripartite alliance. Bediuzzaman and I were together in the fight to save Edirne and Western Thrace. One time we were having a discussion weighing up events; after addressing me in the gracious way he always did as "my respected commander", he said:

"`I complained to Sultan Hamid himself in his own palace because he did not prefer the learned institution [the ulema] to Yildiz Palace, which I considered to be among the duties of Sultan and Caliph. However right I was to criticize him in that matter, it is necessary to praise and publicize his efforts in administering the Balkans for thirty or so years without raising any trouble. If I do not carry out my duty now, my conscience will be uneasy.'

"And he wrote a letter making known these feelings to the former Sultan , who was virtually a prisoner in Beylerbeyi Palace, and presented it by means of Major Rasim Celaleddin Bey, who was at that time the officer responsible for protecting the former monarch."'

Cemal Kutay also recorded the following description of Bediuzzaman at that time given to him by Esref Bey in person when they together visited Bediuzzaman in Emirdag in 1953: