What next in Turkey; glimpses of the American board's work in the near East

Book I — Backgrounds

I. THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE

The Victorious Allies The Rise and Fall of Islam

II. AN EMPIRE AND ITS FAITHS

A Land of Memories

Churches of the Buried Talent

Moslems and Their Faith

III. OUR BOARD ENTERS TURKEY

Sowing and Watering Growing and Reaping

Book II — Foregrounds

IV. FROM ANATOLIA TO THE BALKANS

Progress in Asia Minor Upheaval in the Balkans

V. FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

Armenia from An Araba A Typical Mission

VI. THE WORK OF WOMEN

The Women's Boards Methods and Results

VII. THE TENTH DECADE ?

Need Enough Chance Enough Power Enough

vii

Preface

THE Balkan War has focussed the attention of our Congregational Churches upon the new opportunity before us in the Turkish Empire and in the freed provinces in Europe. Faithfully for nine decades the seed has been sown. Under the new conditions we must believe the harvest is at hand. Since Turkey is our greatest mission field it was the natural decision of the Prudential Committee of the American Board that a book on that field, written in a highly personal vein about our own work and workers, was the clear need of the moment.

Unfortunately the Committee's choice of an author fell upon one who had never set foot in Turkey. The consequent embarrassments have been many. The book makes no claim to originality or to authority. The writer has used freely the available sources and is under special obligation to Dr. Barton's "Daybreak in Turkey," Dr. Zwemer's "Islam" and Dr. W. E. Strong's "The Story of the American Board."

The book is written to make our work in Turkey interesting to the people in our churches. It is for those who know little or nothing of our work. It is written in the conviction that the missionary story is worthy of the brightest colors.

A word of apology is due to our missionaries in Turkey. It has proved impossible to mention the names of all. There are doubtless many glaring omissions. Nor has it been feasible to apportion emphasis according to the importance

ix of a missionary's work. In many cases only personal interest and acquaintance have been the standards. We wish it were possible to leave out the rest of the book and to dwell only upon the faithful services and honored labors of each one of the "gallant two hundred" who now represent the American Board in the Turkish Empire.

The book is presented both for Study and for Reading. It will be found that, as with humanity at the moment, the appendix is a most important part. Its pages should be carefully read for they suggest attractive plans for the study of this book by reading circles and young people's societies, in the older Bible classes and in the church prayer meetings.

Thanks are due to all the friends in the office who have helped in completing this task; to Dr. Barton and to Dr. Patton for reading portions of the manuscript and for many suggestions; also to Dr. and Mrs. J. K. Browne, Rev. and Mrs. James L. Fowle, Dr. and Mrs. Robert K. Chambers and Dr. Joseph K. Greene, who have corrected many "warpings past the aim"; but chiefly to Miss Mabel Emerson of the Educational Department for gathering material, writing portions of the book and reading proof. These pages are the combined labors of that Department.

The book goes forth in the hope that it will deepen the conviction of our Congregational churches in the sure triumph of the Kingdom of Christ in Turkey.

The American Board Rooms, Congregational House, Boston, August first, 1913.

IBonb (§m BACKGROUNDS

CHAPTER I The Victorious Allies

THE Turks have been driven from Europe. They hold Constantinople only by grace of international politics. Five centuries of injustice and oppression in the Balkan Peninsula are ended. Christendom today shares the relief and joy of past centuries over the battle of Tours in 732 and the repulse before the walls of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. To our keen interest in contemporary historical events of such magnitude is added our modern missionary enthusiasm which sees in these new conditions an opportunity for bringing education and Christian character to peoples long held under cruel bondage. Since Congregationalists are mainly responsible for bringing the gospel to the Turkish Empire both in Europe and in Asia we are here face to face with our most insistent and stimulating challenge.

A year ago victory for the Allies seemed an utter impossibility. Many disastrous rebellions under terrible provocation gave little hope for present success. Italy's successful attack upon Tripoli and the consequent weakness of the Turkish government at home offered the tempting moment of opportunity. The campaign begun with unexpected energy and with momentary unity of purpose, was carried through with sur- [131 prising ability and bravery. Little Montenegro declared war on October 8, 1912, to be followed nine days later by Bulgaria, Servia and Greece, all burning to avenge unnumbered memories of injustice and defeat. The impetuosity of the Allies could not be restrained as their armies poured through the passes of the Balkan mountains or advanced from Greece. Their leaders had learned effective lessons from the rush of the campaigns of the great Napoleon for in a single month the main forces of Turkey had been crushed at Kirk Kilisse and Lule Bourgas in a magnificent flanking movement after Adrianople had been adequately masked by a besieging army. The advance was not checked till the Tchataldja lines had been threatened, successful assaults had been led against Uskub and Monastir by the Servians, and Salonica and Janina had fallen under the hammering of the Greeks. The Allies dictated their own terms by carrying Adrianople at the point of the bayonet, throwing open the last approach to Constantinople. The terms of surrender included the loss to Turkey of practically all her provinces and suzerainty in Europe, as well as the Aegean Islands.

The bravery and rash devotion of the allied troops furnished a striking contrast to Greek disasters in her last war with Turkey in 1897. The strategy of the Bulgarian General, Savoff, placed him among the foremost modern tacticians. But such transformations in history never happen

WHO ARE THE ALLIES ?

by accident. We must therefore give praise not alone to the armies in the field but to the progressive spirit of each of the four countries which came to their hour of trial with a consciousness of victory already won. The Turks have fallen before men who were once their "rayahs" or slaves, before men made strong by suffering to forget their differences and to face death with joy in their new patriotism. Only the horrible strife between the Allies themselves, following hard on the heels of their victory, remains to mar' this glorious page of their struggle for liberty.

Who Are The Allies ?

It is with the keenest possible interest that we turn to the pressing question of who these peoples are who have accomplished what the "Powers of Europe" have been powerless to achieve in a century of diplomacy, although urged on by the outraged conscience of Christendom. We must peer far back into a distant past to trace the origins of Serb, Bulgar, and Greek. Their common homeland in the Balkan Peninsula was the land of Philip of Macedon out of which the armies of Alexander the Great passed into Asia for conquest. Rome made frequent expeditions here to bring the "Thracians" under her power. When Julius Caesar was assassinated his legions were camped here in Thrace ready for an expedition into Asia. With the beginning of the Christian era there was already a mixture of races in these mountains. Various tribes of the Indo- European family had settled there with later migrations of Goths, Huns and Slavs, all of them pressing into the rich west from the high tablelands of central Asia.

The first of the four allies, the Servians, came into southeastern Europe in the seventh century. Pressed to the shores of the Adriatic by their stronger neighbors they formed four distinct countries of which Servia and little Montenegro are two. Bosnia passed under Austrian control in 1878 and Herzegovina was annexed in 1908. Early in the last century Servia's dark days of oppression by Turkey were ended by successful rebellions under their two national heroes, "Black George" and Milosch. Independence has brought some progress and an increase of territory under the treaty of Berlin in 1878. Most of us remember reading about the savage assassination of their rulers, King Alexander and Queen Draga, by officers of the palace guard in 1903. At present King Peter, the grandson of "Black George," is on the throne facing the perplexing results of the present war.

Little Montenegro bears the honor of being the tiniest kingdom in Europe. Once an offshoot from Servia, it has maintained a precarious existence in its mountain refuge. The bravery of the Montenegrin troops was demonstrated by the remarkable heroism of the band of two hundred bomb throwers who stormed the trenches at

[16 1

WHO ARE THE ALLIES ?

Tarabosch, one of the important defenses of Scutari, and opened the way by the havoc of their hand bombs for the final infantry attack. Not a man of the group returned alive. King Nicholas last April defied a blockading navy of the Powers in an attempt to snatch Scutari from Albania and to claim a port on the Adriatic for an industrial outlet. All the world read with admiration of the final assaults upon Scutari and sympathized with Montenegro when she was robbed of the fruits of her victory by Austria.

The third of the allied powers is Greece. After the days of her glory under Athens and Sparta, Greece became the slave of succeeding masters. Philip and Alexander of Macedon gave way to the Caesars of Rome. The eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople yielded control of her to Venice and to Turkey. After Constantinople fell the Turkish crescent waved over the Acropolis in 1460. The powers of Europe secured the independence of Greece in 1830 after twenty-two centuries of unbroken subjugation, and again preserved her life in the rash war with Turkey in 1897. Today a new spirit seems to be in evidence. Many of her best men carried rifles in the ranks as privates. Her armies have done their full share with marked bravery in many engagements. The ancient island possessions are to be hers once again and the future seems bright with hope, though it is doubtful if her ambition to rule at Constantinople will ever be achieved.

The fourth and the strongest of the allies is Bulgaria. The Bulgari were a race distantly related to the Turks in their original home in Central Asia. Journeying into Europe through southern Russia they gave their name to or received it from the river Volga. Crossing the Danube on the ice they settled on the plains north and south of the Balkan mountains but lost their language and customs by absorbing those of the peoples who had preceded them precisely as did the Norman conquerors with the Saxons in England. By the seventh century they had become the leading factor in the peninsula and one of their earliest rulers, Krum by name, used as a drinking cup the gold embossed skull of an emperor in Constantinople who had dared burn his palace to the ground. In 864 their king, Boris I, was converted to the Greek Church by two brother monks, Methodius and Cyril.

Bulgaria's history has been one long story of strife with her neighbors. The long bitterness between Servia and herself has been increased by mutual cruelty and intrigue and can alone explain the insane outbreak of blood-lust last June. But both these lands found their worst foe in the Eastern Empire at Constantinople. In 1014 in an outburst of savagery the Emperor Basil II seared out the sight of fifteen thousand Bulgarian prisoners with red hot irons, sparing only one out of every hundred to guide his fellow prisoners back to their mountain home.

r is i

THE TURK ENTERS

The Turk Enters

It was this same needless strife among themselves that long ago brought ruin to the Balkan states at the hands of the Turk invader, as in all history civil war has opened the door for the foreign conqueror: Israel called Assyria to her aid only to be swallowed up; the Popes lost their Holy Roman Empire by calling in Charlemagne; the Saxons called upon the Danes; the princes of India welcomed England and thus did the Greek Emperor in Constantinople call twice upon the Turk across the Bosphorus to drive out the Bulgarian! In the thirteenth century two thousand Moslem cavalry entered Thrace to bring peace! Again in 1389 on the invitation of his Greek allies the Ottoman Sultan, Murad I, shattered the combined armies of Servia and Bulgaria, of Bosnia and Albania on the plains of Kossova, "the field of blackbirds." From that date until this year the crescent has waved over the lands that could not maintain peace among themselves.

At first their new provinces were allowed a degree of liberty. Moslem officials ruled as governors in the capital cities, collecting the revenues and crushing every attempt at rebellion. Murad claimed as a portion of the spoil the brightest and strongest of the sons of the conquered Christians to be educated under Islam and to be drafted into his new regiments of Janizaries. This body of soldiers grew to number forty thousand and their fanatical zeal outdid [19]

their masters in cruelty. Only four times in the five centuries did they suffer defeat but their power was so often used in the making and unmaking of new sultans that they were finally massacred by Mahmoud II in 1826.

The leaders of the captive races became Moslems in large numbers in order to keep their lands, thus depriving the people of all hope of successful resistance. In the present century and especially under the cruelty and misgovernment of the last Sultan, conditions became intolerable. A settled policy of oppression, murder and violence devastated whole districts or wiped out entire villages. In 1876 the "Bulgarian Atrocities" at last woke England from sleep. According to the reports of United States Consul Schuyler to the press and to the governments of Europe, not less than fifteen thousand Christians were massacred in cold blood within one month! In the village of Batak the whole population were driven into their church building where blazing oil and timbers were hurled upon the defenseless mass until every soul perished with the single exception of one old woman. Gladstone voiced the cry which aroused the conscience of civilized nations and Russia took up the defence of their kinsmen and fellow-Christians in the Greek churches with eager zeal.

In this Russo-Turkish war of 1878 the Bulgarian peasants did their utmost to aid the Russian troops in the Shipka Pass and at the siege

[20,]

THE EASTERN QUESTION of Plevna. The resulting conference of Berlin freed the Bulgarians forever from the oppression they had suffered, but while it permitted them to choose a ruler and to form an independent government it left them nominally under the suzerainty of Turkey and Macedonia was abandoned to the mercy of Abdul's empty promises of reform.

The "Eastern Question"

The treaty of Berlin reveals the diplomatic jugglery that for decades has engaged the jealousy of the Powers. If Russia had been allowed to have her way Bulgaria would then have been given Macedonia and the land south of the Balkan mountains known as Eastern Roumelia, but Europe feared that this would give to Russia her long-sought chance to find an easy approach to the Mediterranean. Herein lies the crux of the "Eastern Question" and the cause of the Crimean War in 1854-6 when England and France aided Turkey to resist Russia's attempt to capture Constantinople. It took the battles of Inkerman and of Balaklava with the immortal charge of the Light Brigade to check Russian ambition in that direction.

Another phase of the political problem has been the desire of Austria to extend her authority over the small kingdoms on her southern border to the shores of the Aegean Sea, but if England and France allow this it would strengthen the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria and

Italy, and would build up Austria's sea power as a menace to England. Welt-politique in this "Eastern Question" has thus been the excuse for continuing the authority of Turkey on the peninsula at Constantinople as a barrier against the aggression of Russia or of Austria. But while diplomacy was thus abandoning five millions of defenceless Christians to Moslem cruelty, the four allies quite independently of the foreign departments at London and Berlin have forced a solution of their own.

The progress of Bulgaria since her new birth in 1878 has been no less than remarkable. Under her first elected ruler, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a young man of twenty-two and an officer on Emperor William's staff at Berlin, wise laws were enforced, education was made compulsory, the Bulgarian language so long under the ban has been restored, the wealth of the country has rapidly developed, over two thousand miles of railroad and three thousand miles of telegraph have been built. Eastern Roumelia was added to the kingdom in 1885, since the people of the two countries were Bulgarian for the most part. Alexander won the title of "Liberator" but was forced by Russian intrigue to abdicate in 1886.

Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a young officer in the Austrian army, was selected as the new king almost by accident as he sat in a Viennese beer garden. The grandson of Louis Philippe, "the cousin of every crowned head in

THE RISE OF ISLAM

Europe," a man of large fortune and of discretion, deeply interested in natural history studies; but at once too aristocratic, too retiring and too formal to suit the easy-going Bulgarian peasants, he has made a fairly good king. In the present war he has been active with his generals at the front, to the rapid increase of his popularity. Ninetyfive per cent of his people are farmers and herdsmen with a firm common sense, a deep love of their homes, and a splendid patriotism that has always expressed itself in persistent support of the movement for the liberation of their fellowcountrymen in Macedonia.

The deepest passion in the heart of every true Bulgarian is the fierce hatred of the Turk. At last the old scores have been wiped out in these sweeping victories and the humiliation of her old enemy, but at the terrible cost of more than one hundred thousand lives laid down in the stormed trenches and mountain passes.

The Rise of Islam

To grasp the full significance of the outcome of this war and its influence upon missionary history we must turn back a thousand years to study its whole background in the rise and fall of Islam as a world power. No other page of history can excel this in missionary importance for here we stand face to face with Christianity's strongest rival in the world today. We cannot believe the issue is uncertain.

Mohammed died on the eighth of June, 632, soon after he had completed the great pilgrimage to Mecca with the sacrifice of one hundred chosen camels. He had appeared at Mecca in middle life as the Prophet of Allah, had won the aid of a group of believing friends, then of the neighboring tribes. As his power grew so did his lust for conquest. His early words, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" were soon forgotten in favor of the later revelation, "Then slay the polytheists wherever ye find them — but if they turn Moslems and rise to prayer and give the legal alms then let them alone."

His successors in power rushed forth with fanatic zeal upon the most rapid and sweeping conquest the world has ever known. Like a great tidal wave they poured their armies through lands far and near under the slogan "Ya Mansur Umit!" — "Strike, O ye conquerors!" The Arab hordes spread like a flame across Northern Africa, checked only by the waves of the Atlantic. Their leader, Akba, spurred his horse into the sea and with uplifted sword cried, "Great God, if I were not stopped by this raging sea, I would go on to the nations of the West, preaching the unity of Thy name and putting to the sword those who would not submit."

Under Tarik who gave his name to Gebel Tarik, the modern Gibraltar, they entered Spain to establish a civilization that was to last for eight hundred years. The islands of the Mediter-

THE RISE OF ISLAM ranean were overrun and even Rome itself was partially sacked in 846 to be saved however by the bravery of Leo the Fourth. The doom of Persia was sealed in 642 on the battlefield of Nehavend, where thirty thousand of her soldiers were slaughtered with eighty thousand refugees. All Western Asia was speedily subdued. In the east the great Moghuls entered India as conquerors in 1525 to build up a mighty Empire with its center at Delhi, leaving there until this day more than sixty millions of the Faithful, while peaceful conquests by Mohammedan missionaries have succeeded in winning more than twenty million converts in China and fifteen millions more in Asiatic Russia.

Meantime on the highlands of central Asia another conversion and conquest was made that becomes the chief factor of our present subject, for Seljuk, the leader of all the Turks, became a Mohammedan before his hordes swept westward into Asia Minor under his successors.

The Turks are from Turanian stock, more closely related to the Mongols and Manchus of history than to the peoples of Europe. They were nomads wandering from valley to valley, fierce, hardy and brave. In successive waves of migration they swarmed over Armenia until Othman the First founded his empire and the present dynasty of Sultans by the Mediterranean's shores. His sword is even now girt upon the hip of each new Sultan as his sign of authority.

When the Sultan Murad entered Thrace upon the invitation of the Greek Emperor but one final blow remained. Constantinople had been founded by Constantine in 330 on the site of the famous Byzantium. It was the capital of the Eastern Empire of Rome and the center of the Greek Catholic faith after the great separation from the Roman popes in 1054. After resisting two earlier attacks by the armies of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries it was thus again in the fourteenth century face to face with its final conquerors. Evil days had befallen its glories and it remained only an echo of the greatness of Rome and Greece whose heir it was.

Three centuries of terrible crusades had swept past its gates into the Holy Land in strange mixture of courage and devotion with folly and fanaticism, sapping Europe of her best blood but leaving the sacred shrines still in the hands of their Saracen rulers. In the struggle between Turk and Christian the greatest names of the age of chivalry won their renown, from Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert of Normandy, from Barbarossa of Germany, Philip of France and Richard the Lionhearted to Edward of England.

In 1453 under Mahomet II all preparations were complete and a giant fortress was built five miles from the doomed city. For the first time ancient and modern methods of war were combined by placing catapults, battering rams and huge cannon side by side. These guns were

THE DECLINE built to hurl stone balls weighing six hundred pounds. At last the walls were breached and with the terror-impelling cry of the Moslem hosts, "Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!" the quarter of a million Mohammedans swept over and crushed the tiny force of scarce fourteen thousand Christian defenders and Constantinople had fallen. An element of irony was added in the fact that the last Emperor like the first bore the proud name of Constantine.

The Decline

If the Moslem world today still offered the same united front then might we well despair of seeing Christian education and civilization prevail over it for at the zenith of its power Islam numbered not less than 220,000,000 people under the religious authority of the Caliphate. But there exist many reasons that lead us to hope that its power is on the wane. Perhaps the most practical evidence appears in the decline of the political power of Moslem lands before the spread of Christian nations. If we study the map of the world we are surprised to see how rapidly the temporal rule of Islam has disintegrated in the past century. Even when Columbus was saying farewell to Queen Isabella under the walls of Granada in 1492 the final blow was being struck for the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. From that day the tide has swept back as swiftly as it had risen. Morocco is now under French and

THE DECLINE

Spanish influence; Tunis and Algeria are no longer independent states; Tripoli has just been lost to the crescent; Egypt shows the progress and transformation of England's rule; Arabia threatens to throw off the Sultan's authority; most of India is under British control and with it the largest number of Mohammedans in any land are brought within reach of justice and education; the millions of "believers" in China are now hardly distinguishable from their neighbors; other millions in Russia and Mongolia are in process of absorption; all Persia, now dominated by Russia, gives but scant loyalty to the Caliph and today in the Balkan states the last provinces in Europe have been severed.

It is not claimed that this loss of political supremacy spells the speedy conversion of Islam. Alas, far, far from it! But it is clear that more than nine-tenths of living Mohammedans are now under other flags than the crescent and that many of them are, for the first time, within the reach of influences that make for progress and enlightenment. God makes even the wrath of men to praise Him and even through wars begun in injustice there may come results that lead to the accomplishment of His will among the nations. As the exodus from Egypt brought Israel to Sinai under the plan of God; as His wisdom prepared the world for the coming of Christ and for the spread of the Gospel by Paul; as His will has ever been wrought out in the history of nations; we must believe that the present accessibility of the followers of Mohammed to Christian teaching and influence is as clear an indication of His plan to men as was ever His guidance of Israel bypillar and cloud. A deep meaning is in the words, "See, I have set before thee an open door." If we seek the causes of this decline in the power of Islam they lie before us :

1 . Division. With each new conquest unity became less possible. Parties sprang up at the very death bed of Mohammed. Heresies flourished in Persia, in Africa, even in Arabia itself. Moslem authors cite the seventy-three sects prophesied by Mohammed himself as divinely appointed. There are said to be thirty-two separate divisions of the Shiah heresy and a like number of parties among the Mahdists. Abdul Kader wrote of one hundred and fifty existing sects and Zwemer states that "for rancor, bitterness, hatred and bloodshed the sad divisions of Christendom are far outmatched by the history of sects in Islam." There is comfort in the thought.

2. Social Degeneracy. Civilization has hid her face in every land where Islam has ruled undisturbed. Illiteracy has reached the appalling average of over ninety per cent among the men and ninety-seven per cent among the women. Immorality has been fostered by polygamy and concubinage; bribery, lying and robbery have flourished unabashed; slavery has been encouraged; fatalism has paralyzed progress and moral

CHAOS IN TURKEY responsibility while bigotry and injustice have led to industrial atrophy and have held in the bondage of poverty their subject races. These and a host like these are the terrible indictments of the social and moral weakness of Islam.

3. The Growth of Christian Civilization. In contrast to the impotence of Moslem rule has been the spreading power of the Anglo Saxon races as they have claimed every element of civilized life for their own bringing education, justice and industrial development to every land over which the flags of Christian peoples wave.

Chaos in Turkey

From this glimpse of the rise and fall of Moslem power in the world we may well turn back to the land in which our interest now centers to discover there the self-same results of misrule and of degeneration. Since the Russo-Turkish war and the beginning of the rule of Abdul Hamid II in 1876, Turkey has known no moment of progress. Permitted to hold his throne by European diplomacy, "the sick man of Europe" or "the great assassin," as Gladstone called him, made endless promises of reform but without fulfillment. Gathering about him a system of spies said to number a total of forty thousand, he banished or murdered every man whose progressive ideas made him dangerous. Oppression and injustice were the foundations of his policy. Massacre and confiscation were his weapons against the helpless Armenians and Greeks. Industry was stifled by graft and over-taxation. Only the evils of his reign flourished. So unbearable did conditions become that even the better element among the Turks banded themselves together to check his misrule.

On July 24, 1908, a successful revolution was achieved almost without a blow by the Young Turk Party under the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress and under the familiar cry, "Liberty, Justice, Equality and Fraternity." A constitution was announced and a parliament called. Progressive reforms were inaugurated, religious toleration was declared and while the people celebrated their new liberty in unparalleled scenes of rejoicing their leaders revealed a poise of judgment and an ability in reconstruction that promised well for the future. Even the massacres of Cilicia in 1909, secretly ordered by Abdul, could not enflame the land into civil war and consequent intervention as he had planned, but his treachery did succeed in losing him the throne and in winning banishment from the palace where he had misruled so long.