The gaming room causes any casino in the French Riviera to appear by comparison commonplace. The single rug that covers the floor is one hundred and sixty-five feet long and eighty-five feet wide. Its value is fabulous, yet there is no restriction on smoking. The play is the same as elsewhere, and we found on this occasion some three hundred players assembled.

It is the hope of the Italians that they can build up here the greatest pleasure center of the world, and they have already provided restaurants, tea rooms, dancing floors and bedchambers. In the park are facilities for riding, shooting and tennis, and golf is proposed. The marble palace on the water-front is to be restored and converted into a de luxe hotel. The whole enterprise is conceived on a vast scale and I wonder whether it can be made profitable.

In Turkey the undertaking is regarded in the light of a great social and moral advance, though most of its attractions have been made criminal in the United States. To the American puritan this paragraph from the Casino prospectus may sound ironical:

" Great changes have come to Turkey. Gone are the hosts of slaves, agahs, eunuchs and odalisques. All are expelled. The fires of the Imperial kitchen, over which a thousand cooks constantly bent, were permitted to go out. The Turkey of to-day, renewing her European civilization, has substituted for this center of waste and extravagance the Municipal Casino of Yildiz, which will satisfy the tastes of the most difficult visitor.