The Greek Church resisted bitterly every move of the Young Turks to bring about the immediate millennium. The patriarch was a man of wide experience, of sound common sense, and of undaunted courage. Backed by the Lay Assembly, which has always been an admirable democratic institution of the Orthodox Church, he refused to give up realities for chimeras. With all its privileges and all its power, it had been hard enough for the Orthodox Church to protect the Greek subjects of Turkey. The patriarch did not intend to surrender the safeguards by which he was enabled to make tolerable the life of his flock for illusory and untested guarantees. Let the constitution become really the expression of the will of the people of Turkey, let it demonstrate the uselessness of any safeguards for protecting the Christians from Moslem oppression, let the era of liberty and equality and fraternity actually be realized in the Ottoman Empire, and then the Church would resign its privileges. For they would be antiquated, and fall naturally into desuetude. But in constitutions, as in other things, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
What the Young Turks attempted to do was to destroy the privileges of the Orthodox Church, on the ground that these privileges were a barrier to the assimilation of the races in the Empire. Americans, above all nations, have deep sympathies for, and well justified reasons for having faith in, the policy of assimilation. Have not the various races of Europe, different in religion and in political and social customs, passed wonderfully through the crucible of assimilation on American soil? But by assimilation the Young Turks meant, not the amalgamation of races, each co-operating and sharing in the building up of the fatherland, as in America, but the complete subjection and ultimate disappearance of all other elements in the Empire than their own. They intended, from the very first days of the constitutional régime, to make Turkey a nation of Turks. Theirs was the strong, virile race, into which the other races would be fused. Turkey was weak, they declared, because it was the home of a conglomeration of peoples. If Turkey was to become like the nations of Europe, these different nationalities must be destroyed. To destroy them, the Government had first to aim at the foyer of national life, the ecclesiastical hierarchies.
I have talked with many a zealous Young Turk. What I have written here is not only the logical interpretation of the facts; it is also the faithful expression of the ideas of the most earnest and intelligent Turkish partisans of the new régime. They pointed out, with perfect logic, that this process had gone on in every European country, and that it was the only way in which a strong nation could be built. So far they were right. But, aside from the fact that in Europe this political and social evolution had taken centuries, there was also the working of the law of the survival of the fittest. In European nations it had been the element, always composite, which deserved to live, that formed the nucleus of a nationality. The whole root of the question in Turkey was, were the Young Turks justified in believing that the Turk was this element?
There is not space to discuss the reasons for the supremacy of the Osmanli in the Ottoman Empire. Up to the eighteenth century, the Osmanli was undoubtedly the "fittest" element. For the past two hundred years, the continued domination of Turk and the continued subjection of Christian populations, in Turkey, has been due to causes outside of the Empire. The Turk has remained the ruling race. But is he still the fittest? One may examine the different elements of the Ottoman Empire, and measure them by the tests of civilization. From the intellectual standpoint, from the business standpoint, from the administrative standpoint, the Turk is hardly able to sustain his claim to continue to be, in a twentieth-century empire, the element which can hope to assimilate Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Slav, and Arab. He is less fit than any of the others, especially than the Greek and Armenian in intellectual and business faculties, and than the Albanian in administrative faculties. There remains, then, as his sole claim to dominate the other races, his physical superiority. By history and by legend, he is the fighting man and rules by right of conquest and force.
It was always the sane—and only safe—policy of the Turks to keep Christians out of the army. They saw to it that the métier of arms remained wholly to the Moslems. In spite of the increasing wealth and education of the Christian elements of the Empire, the ascendancy was preserved to the Turk through the army. But at what a sacrifice! By reason of military service, the Turkish peasant has been kept in economic and intellectual serfdom, while his Christian neighbour progressed. The Turkish population has actually decreased, and the ravages of garrison life, due to dyspepsia and syphilis, have diminished fearfully the physical vigour of the race. By the same token, the upper classes, knowing only the life of army officers, have been removed from the necessity of competing in the world for position and success. Can manhood be formed in any other mould than that of competition, where the goal is achievement, and is reached only by continued effort of will and brain? The upper class Turk is a parasite, and, like all parasites, helpless when that upon which he feeds is taken from him.
The attack of the Young Turk party upon the Greek Church failed. The patriarch refused to surrender his privileges. The Greek clergy and the Lay Council held out under persecution and threats. In October, 1910, when the Lay Council met in Constantinople, its members were arrested, and thrown into jail. In Macedonia and Thrace, in the Ægean Islands, along the coast of Asia Minor, the bishops and clergy suffered untold persecutions. Some were even assassinated. I shall never forget a memorable interview I had with Joachim III, during that crisis. His Holiness untied with trembling fingers the dossier of persecutions, which contained letters and sworn statements from a dozen dioceses. "They treat us like dogs!" he cried. "Never under Abdul Hamid or any Sultan have my people suffered as they are suffering now. But we are too strong for them. We refuse to be exterminated. I see all Europe stained with blood because of these crimes." How prophetic these words as I record them now!