While the Turks have not largely attended any of the schools mentioned, nor have they seemed awake to the needs of a modern education, nevertheless, through the influence of so many advanced schools in the country they have been compelled to improve their own schools. It is an interesting fact that recently a far greater number of Mohammedan pupils are applying for admission to these schools. Few of the Turkish schools have as yet been thoroughly modernized; still, their entire educational system, if system it may be called, has felt the influence of the foreign schools. There have now and then been attempts at the organization of a Mohammedan college. These have for the most part proven egregious failures from the lack of preparatory schools to train students for the college and of teachers with proper training to carry on college work. They have also in cases, not a few, opened and conducted schools for girls, thus demonstrating their acceptance, in a measure at least, of the Christian doctrine of the equality of the sexes and the worth of womanhood. Many Moslem young men have been aroused to seek education in England or France.
XVIII. THE PRINTING-PRESS
I cannot mention the American missionaries without a tribute to the admirable work they have done. They have been the only good influence that has worked from abroad upon the Turkish empire. They have shown great judgment and tact in their relations with the ancient churches of the land, Orthodox, Gregorian, Jacobite, Nestorian, and Catholic. They have lived cheerfully in the midst, not only of hardships, but latterly of serious dangers also. They have been the first to bring the light of education and learning into these dark places, and have rightly judged that it was far better to diffuse that light through their schools than to aim at a swollen roll of converts. From them alone, if we except the British consuls, has it been possible during the last thirty years to obtain trustworthy information regarding what passes in the interior.
—Hon. James Bryce,
British Ambassador to the United States.
The entire plan and purpose of missionary work in Turkey involved the printing-press. Only a little more than two years after the first missionaries to Turkey arrived upon the field, a press under the care of a missionary of the Board arrived at Malta, commissioned to print for the use of the Palestine and Turkish missions. At that time hostilities between Greece and Turkey were in progress and no port upon the Mediterranean was safe for the American press. Malta was under the English flag, and so proved for the time the best base for the literary operations of the mission.
Undoubtedly the earlier publications were too impracticable to meet the needs of the people of Turkey. The missionaries assumed ability in the untrained Oriental mind to grasp the thoughts of the West. In the list of what was printed at Malta during the first ten years are found such works as “Serious Thoughts on Eternity,” “Guilt and Danger of Neglecting the Saviour,” “Scott’s Force of Truth,” “Content and Discontent,” “Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.” A great variety of books was prepared, for the most part, by those who knew practically nothing of the thought and life of the people who were supposed to read them.