What is the real difficulty in Turkey? Is it a conflict of race or religion? Primarily it is neither, though both these elements complicate the case. In one word it is misgovernment. Do not be deceived by this rather mild word, and dismiss the subject with the reflection that “there is misgovernment everywhere.” Misgovernment as it exists in Turkey is an organization that breeds death and corruption. It is a disease, of which the germs penetrate the whole system of the body politic. It is a disease, hereditary, chronic, and fastened upon the very vitals of its victim. No creed is exempt, every race is attacked by it. The more apparent result is outward impoverishment and material prostration. The more dangerous and deplorable symptom is the moral deterioration of all the races affected.
I am no eulogist of the mass of Armenians in their present condition. But I know their grand possibilities as a race, physically, intellectually, and morally. The depths to which an individual or a race can fall indicate the height which might have been attained. The only wonder is that a people of so great ability, energy, and spirit have so long submitted. But when one sees, as I have been compelled to, during years of residence both in Constantinople and the interior, how the fetters have been forged on every limb, and how the movement of a finger even brings down immediate and terrible vengeance, the wonder arises why these wretches are so foolhardy as to undertake revolution. The fact is they are not engaged in any such enterprise. Individual agitators there are, but even their object is only to force the civilized world to give attention to the despairing cry of their race, which even God does not seem, to them, to hear.
The case of the Armenians demands immediate and thorough attention. But the Armenian question should not be allowed to fill the whole horizon in the Levant. Just now the blaze comes from their house, but no one can tell when it may result in a general conflagration. All the other Christian races and the Mohammedan races, too, are equally concerned. Europe itself is endangered, as her statesmen well know, and safety depends only on their prompt and united action.
I have seen the crushing and—what is worse—demoralizing conditions from which the Armenian and all other races in Turkey suffer under Moslem misrule. I know how rapidly these fine races would advance along every line, were these conditions changed. It is my firm belief that such changes may now be secured, if the interest already aroused throughout the civilized world be expressed in intelligent and determined action. In the hope of such action I send forth this little book. If action is not taken, the effect of this book, as of all agitation in behalf of the victims of Turkey, will be to draw the fetters deeper. What result may follow to my many friends and former associates on the ground, with whom it is very difficult to communicate, I do not know. But I know them, and do not believe that there is one among their number who, to shield himself from danger, would stay my pen.
Reader, your voice and help are needed.
“He’s true to God who’s true to man; wherever wrong is done
To the humblest and the weakest, ’neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.”
—Lowell.