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Number 12. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Price 15 Cts.
Copyright, 1878, by Harper & Brothers.
TWENTY YEARS’ RESIDENCE
AMONG
THE PEOPLE OF TURKEY:
BULGARIANS, GREEKS, ALBANIANS, TURKS, AND ARMENIANS.
BY
A CONSUL’S DAUGHTER AND WIFE.
EDITED BY STANLEY LANE POOLE.
DEDICATED (BY PERMISSION) TO
THE MARCHIONESS OF SALISBURY,
BY HER GRATEFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
No one who has talked with many people on the Eastern Question can have failed to remark the wide difference of opinion held on things which ought to be matters of certainty, and on which two opinions ought to be impossible. This divergence of view is only a very natural consequence of the want of any book of authority on the subject. How is one to learn what manner of men these Bulgarians and Greeks of Turkey really are? Hitherto our information has been chiefly obtained from newspaper correspondents: and it is hardly necessary to observe that the nature of their selected information depends upon the tendency of the paper. There have, of course, been notable exceptions to this common rule of a party-conscience: the world of journalists is but now lamenting the untimely death of one of its most distinguished members, with whose name honor and truth and indefatigable thoroughness must ever be associated. But granting the honesty and impartiality of a correspondent, allowing the accuracy of his report of what he has seen, it must be conceded that his opportunities for observation are short and hurried, that he judges almost solely from the immediate present, and that by the nature of his profession he is seldom able to make a very long or intimate study of a people’s character. One accepts his reports as the evidence of an eye-witness; but one does not necessarily pledge one’s self to his deductions. For the former task he has every necessary qualification: for the latter he may have none, and he probably has not the most important. Especially unsafe is it to trust to estimates of nations formed hastily on insufficient experience in the midst of general disorder, such as that in which many summary verdicts have lately been composed.