Meanwhile, announcing the opening of the Assembly in a personal message to the Sultan, Kemal reminded him in eloquent terms of a dream of his forbear, Sultan Osman, the founder of the dynasty, which had passed into oral tradition. The sacred tree, he dreamt, which cast a shadow over three continents and sheltered a hundred million Moslems, had been deprived of its branches, and only its bare trunk remained. ‘The trunk of that sacred tree,’ Kemal assured the monarch, ‘is in our hearts.’
