K-E-M-A-L

Perturbed would be a U. S. businessman, professor, poet, soldier or statesman, if President Coolidge said to him: "Please write the sentence 'Now is the time for all good men to. come to the aid of the party' in Arabic characters."

Yet the President of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, is doing practically this, and his people, bewildered but willing, are trying to obey. President Kemal has decided that Turkish shall no longer be written in the delicate intricacies of Arabic script. Instead, he wishes Turks to write Turkish in Latin characters, in A. B. C.'s.

It would be especially difficult for President Coolidge to make all U.S. citizens write English in Arabic characters because most of them already know how to write in Latin letters: But this obstacle does not exist for President Kemal, 80% of whose people do not know one letter of any alphabet from another. The President hopes that in two years his people, with nothing to unlearn, will have learned to express old sounds in new letters.

Unsparing are Mustafa Kemal's efforts to teach his people A. B. C.'s. At a recent dance he stopped the conductor, and showed him how to make a few of the letters. Kemal has even converted his summer palace, beautiful Dolma Bagtche on the Bosphorus into a summer school. Obedient Turkish newspapers print daily alphabet exercises.

Last week President Kemal issued an order which affected even his brilliant Prime Minister, General Ismet Pasha. All deputies (there are 315) must visit their electoral districts, and teach their constituents A. B. C.'s before Parliament opens in November. The deputies know their letters. They have been attending the Dolma Bagtche summer school.