On Sunday last took place the annual procession—I underscore the word annual—of Corpus Christi. The brilliance of the fête was heightened by the presence of Monsignor Nardi, and all the Catholic colony of the neighborhood assembled in the pretty church to see and hear its first pastor. Towards five o’clock the procession emerged amid a vast concourse of spectators who lined the way on either hand, the sacred cortège marching to the music of liturgical chants and the band of the Salesian Fathers. In front walked the school children, after them the faithful, then the clergy and notables of Makri Keui, while in the rear Monsignor Nardi, surrounded by the clergy, bore the Blessed Sacrament. Perfect order was maintained by the police with a degree of tact which did honor to the force. And for the space of an hour the procession traversed the gayly decorated streets of the quarter, which had been newly graveled for the occasion by the orders of the worthy and ever-courteous president of the municipality, Sherif Effendi. Such ceremonies leave a pleasant impression in a country like Turkey where everyone is free to practice his religion according to the dictates of his conscience.[144]
The same freedom of worship, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, is enjoyed by the Armenians. They are, besides, left perfectly free to have their own schools and to retain their own language. They have not had such liberty in Russia. “For six hundred years the Armenians were contented under the dominion of the Turks,” declared one of their bishops a few years ago, and they would, doubtless, be still living in peace with their old masters were it not for the machination of Russian propagandists and Armenian revolutionists. The proof of this is that “the highroad from Trebizond to Erzeroum ... is dotted with Christian monasteries and churches unmolested for centuries.”[145]
Napoleon I was wont to say that a lie, given twenty-four hours’ start, becomes immortal. But, when lies about the Turks have been repeated for generations in spite of the official denials of the Ottoman government and in spite of the contradictions of men who have long lived among these much misunderstood and greatly misrepresented people, what hope, one may ask, can there be for the final triumph of truth? What can be done to counteract shameless calumnies and official dementis when the greater part of the press is either muzzled or avowedly hostile and when public opinion has been so utterly poisoned by long and constant reiteration of all kinds of vilification and slander that the unfortunate victims are everywhere prejudiced and denied the right of a hearing which the law—not to speak of Christian charity—of all civilized nations accords to even the worst of criminals?
“Professional scribblers,” writes Pierre Loti, “who have never set foot in Turkey, expectorate ‘great historical romances’ on the ‘Tigers of the Bosphorus’ and the ‘Monsters of Stamboul.’”[146] “And they go so far even as to confound the true Turks with that aggregation of sharpers from all the Balkan and Levantine races who put on a fez in order to live among the Anatolians as gnawing parasites, parasites to the bone, whose depredations and usury, ruining entire villages, would almost excuse the worst vengeance of the rude and upright laborers of Anatolia who finally revolted.”[147]
Sidney Whitman, the distinguished English author who knows Turkey so well, is at one with the illustrious Academician when he writes:
In the course of my many visits to Constantinople I have repeatedly been made acquainted with instances of questionable newspaper correspondents who came to the Palace with the scarcely veiled intimation that it was to be a case of pay or slander. During the Armenian disturbances in 1896 a French female journalist went up to the Palace and openly declared that she intended to be paid or write up “atrocities.”[148]
But, notwithstanding the lurid tales that have so long been circulated about the Osmanlis, they have, nevertheless, loyal friends where one would least expect to find them. I have adduced in their favor the testimony of those who from long association among them have learned to know them and admire them for their splendid human qualities. Among these witnesses to the virtues of the Osmanlis are French, English, and American men whose competence is as incontrovertible as their authority is unimpeachable. It were easy to add to the number and among them we should find French, Italian, and German priests and bishops, Sisters of Charity and religieuses of the various teaching orders who have spent long years among the Osmanlis in all parts of the Ottoman Empire and their testimony would confirm that already introduced.
It may, however, be urged that the testimony in question is that of friends and sympathizers. It affords me, therefore, special pleasure to reproduce here the generous appreciation of “The Terrible Turk” which has recently appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette[149] from the pen of a Serbian gentleman who has had an opportunity of knowing him in war as well as in peace. It fully corroborates all that has been stated in the preceding pages and is as great an evidence of the writer’s nobility of soul, as it is a splendid tribute to the character of a whilom foe:
We Serbians are fighting against the Turks with all our might, but we do not wish to be unjust to them. I am perfectly certain that every Serbian soldier, marching now victoriously through Macedonia and Albania, and every wounded Serbian lying somewhere in a hospital, and every Serbian mother, sister, wife, sweetheart, who has lost her son, or her brother, or her husband, or her lover, on one of the many bloody battlefields, would applaud my effort to do justice to our enemy. And, therefore, I do not hesitate to say a good word for the Turk. I do homage not to the Turk, but to truth.
An average Turk—or shall I perhaps call him a normal Turk?—is an excellent man. He believes in God, and prays to God more earnestly and more intensely than an average or normal Christian does. And he persistently and honestly tries to conform his everyday life to the commandments of his great Prophet. He is charitable, honest, trustworthy; he is modest, yet dignified; he is proud, but not vain; he is brave, but not boastful; he is sober, clean, polite; he is generally poor, but always hospitable; and he is patriotic, ready to starve and suffer and die, without a murmur, for his faith and the honor of his country. But this excellent, virtuous, and God-fearing brave man is heavy, slow and somewhat stupid, and in the electrical and aeroplanic twentieth century cannot stand against scientific organizations and quick-firing guns of the clever, sharp-witted Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgars.
The Turk was master of the Balkan nations for nearly five centuries. During all those centuries he consistently refrained from interfering with our national churches and with our village municipal life. From the liberty which the Turk left to our Church and our municipal life in the country, our political liberty was re-born. But, notwithstanding his religious tolerance and his non-interference with our village life, we hated him as long as, and just because he was our master. But now, when our victories have deprived him of his position as master of our countries, we will be pleased to have him for our friend, because—although he is not exactly a “jolly”—he is certainly a good fellow.
How different is this portrait of “The Unspeakable Turk,” painted by one who knew him by life-long association from that of the atrabilious author of Sartor Resartus, whose delineation of him was based on fancy and prejudice, if not on pathetic ignorance!
The great trouble in Asia Minor to-day is an economic one. This is the verdict of those who are most competent to judge—of those who have lived among the Osmanlis for years and have only words of praise for their many natural virtues and their abounding goodness of heart. It is the verdict of men and women to whom the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God are not empty words, of those who believe that the precepts of Christian charity are as obligatory for nations as for individuals, and that it behooves the Great Powers to assist in its economic stress at least this part of the Ottoman Empire and to help it to develop its marvelous natural resources. Were they to do this, Anatolia would again blossom as the rose and flourish once more as it did in the heyday of Greek and Roman splendor. But such altruism is quite alien to the self-seeking policy of the dominant nations of Europe. Acting on the theory that might makes right they coolly proceed to the dismemberment of the empire and endeavor to justify it by alleging, in French diplomatic phrase, the requirements of the action civilisatrice of Western as against Eastern civilization while every one who thinks knows that the real reason is the lust of conquest.
Although I do not hold a brief for the Osmanlis, I would make a plea for more tolerance for a people who have so long exhibited such tolerance toward others. Having myself been among the number of those who unconsciously did grave injustice to them before I came to know them as they are, I feel that I am fully warranted in urging a change of attitude towards them. Equitable statesmanship, as well as Christian charity, demands such a change. We can never hope to remove the barrier between the East and the West, between Islam and Christianity, so long as the age-long misunderstandings and misrepresentations above referred to continue to separate peoples who should live in union and harmony.