As is the land, so are its people; not easy to understand and justly appraise. They are cruel and cunning and prefer to destroy an enemy by a sudden rush of overwhelming odds rather than to meet him in equal combat. Yes, this is true of many of them; yet they have a childlike delight in sweet scents, bright colors, beautiful flowers and simple games. Although they may live in poverty and squalor, they are very frugal and temperate. They are ignorant; but when the opportunity comes they study with a pathetic earnestness and an unrivaled quickness. At half-past three of cold winter mornings I used to hear a servant going the rounds of my dormitory to waken the young men, at their own request, so that they might spend four hours before breakfast at their books. Some of those same indefatigable students have since led their classes in great American and European universities.
It is true that the Syrians nurse vengeful feuds for generation after generation. That is partly because family ties are so wonderfully strong among them. “I and my brother against my cousin; I and my cousin against my neighbor,” runs the proverb. When two brothers are in the same class at school or college, they seldom have other chums, but insist upon sitting side by side in the classroom, and during their free hours they wander about the campus with arms around each other’s shoulders. If an elder brother goes away to make his fortune in some distant country, he never forgets the loved ones at home; but year after year the remittances will come, until all the younger children have been educated or have been brought across the sea to share in the opportunities of the new land of promise. A trusted American missionary had at one time in his possession no less than five thousand dollars which had been sent from America for the parents and younger children of a single mountain village.
The ambition of the Syrian is as boundless as his daring, and his courageous persistence is a buttress to his splendid capacity for both business and scholarship. The son of any laboring man may, for all one knows, become a high Egyptian official, a wealthy merchant of the Argentine, a French poet or the pastor of an American church. The “Arab” dragoman of your tourist party may be the proud father of a boy whose learned works in choicest English you hope sometime to read, or whose surgical skill may be called upon to carry you through a critical operation. These are not fanciful possibilities. I have particular names in mind as I write; and the tale of the bravely endured hardships of some of these sons of Syria who have made good in many a far-off land would match the romantic story of the early struggles of Garfield or Lincoln.
The hospitality of the Syrians is no mere form or pretense, but a sincere, winsome joy in ministering to the poor and the stranger. Their courtesy is fortified by an invincible tact and a very keen knowledge of human nature. Their speech, the strange guttural Arabic which sounds so uncouth to the passing stranger, is one of the most beautiful, expressive and widespread of languages, and has a wealth of fascinating literature. Their religious fanaticism is grounded in an intense, unshakable belief in the fact and the necessity of a divine revelation; and he who in the heat of a ferocious bigotry will kill his neighbor is willing, if need be, to die himself for the faith, whether it be in open warfare or by the tortures of a slow martyrdom.
The native ideals of truthfulness and business honor are not, to be frank, those of Anglo-Saxon nations. It is not considered very insulting to call a Syrian a liar. But even in the Western business world all is not truth and uprightness, and these men and women have an excuse which we have not. For centuries their land has been ruled by a government based upon untruth and injustice, and very often the only protection for life or property lay in evasion and deceit. The wonder is that, in spite of all, there are still so many Syrians who would swear to their own hurt and change not, and who boldly urge upon their people the eradication of what is perhaps their greatest racial shortcoming.
In brief, with all his faults, which we of the West are apt to over-emphasize because they are not the same as our faults, the Syrian is frugal, temperate, ambitious, adaptable, intellectually brilliant, capable of infinite self-sacrifice for any great end, essentially religious, generously hospitable, courteous in social intercourse and, to his loved ones, extremely affectionate and faithful.
When to these admirable racial traits is added a sincere acceptance of the moral teachings of religion, then, whatever his creed, the Syrian makes a friend to be cherished very close to your heart.