A month or so after his departure, one of his eunuchs came to Constantinople to arrange for the transfer of his wives and family. The news of this brought a telegram to the British Embassy from a certain American impresario. It read: ‘Hippodrome New York could use wives of ex-Sultan kindly put me in touch with party who could procure them.’ When this message was shown to King George V he was greatly amused. Such was the last act in the Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire.
