“Regular medical departments, with hospitals, are of late growth. In view of the healing mercy and saving power exerted through them, it now seems strange that their development should have been so belated. When, however, it is remembered that in missions almost everything in the way of means and measures is experimental it is not so strange that among the forces born into life and action the ‘noblest offspring’ should ‘be the last.’”[102]
Before the war there were fifteen missionary stations in Asiatic Turkey. Nine of these stations had medical departments with hospitals connected with them; 39,503 patients have been treated in these hospitals and the total number of treatments during the year of 1914 reached 134,357. This is a tremendous power for good and a marvelous blessing for a country like Turkey, yet the rulers of that unhappy country have been destitute of any sense of justice or gratitude, as the following, a few sentences from Dr. Barton’s letter to the writer, show:
Congregational House, 14 Beacon St.,
Boston, Mass.,
July 20, 1916.
You ask with reference to the situation in Turkey. We have but very little definite information. Our missionaries of Marsovan have just come out under compulsion by the Turkish Government and all of the mission property in Marsoval is in the hands of the Government; also the same is true of Sivas, except that Miss Graffam and Miss Fowle were allowed to remain, and in Talas they have taken possession of the public buildings, but the missionaries at last reports were there, hoping to be allowed to remain....
Very faithfully yours,
James L. Barton.
One of the hindrances to the work of still greater progress of reformation was, and is, the poverty of the Protestant community. The condition of the Protestant Armenians was very much like that of a young man falling in love with a pure, virtuous, and noble yet poor girl. The rash youth, disregarding the opposition of his parents, married the woman he loved, and on account of this he has been disinherited. Those who espoused the cause of reformation were driven out, not only from their homes and employments, but also from the use of the churches and school-houses, and even were not allowed to bury their dead in the old cemeteries. It was not very difficult for the American Board to meet some of the needs of the Protestant community, while that community was small and its needs few. But by the increase of the community its needs also multiplied. However, knowing the people as we do, their poverty was not a great hindrance. For the generous poor man is richer than the rich miser.
“Many a poor Armenian in the Koodish mountains, many a tattered villager on the Harpoot plains, used to the suffering of robbery and inured to want, brings for the support and propagation of the gospel his poor pittance, more munificent, measured by the sacrificing devotion of it, than the gifts of princes sounding aloud as they fall into the treasury. In other parts of the country there are those so humble that the dwelling of the family would hardly be valued at $25, who yet bring $25 to help build the house of worship, where they and their poor neighbors may hear the sound of the gospel.”[103]
The most prolific source of all evil influences and hindrances against the progress of reformation in the East is the Mohammedan Government. Prof. Vambery’s words might have been heeded twenty-five or thirty years ago, and many hundred thousands of lives would have been saved:
“The conviction is inevitable that until the power of Islamism is broken the true reformation of this land is an impossibility. At whose door shall we lay the blame of cherishing such a viper? That the solution of the vexed question of the political status of Turkey involves great difficulties cannot be denied. But those [the European powers] that are pleased to preserve the existing state of things, as a barrier for themselves against the encroachments of an already overgrown European power, ought to take into consideration the result of encouraging the continuance of a power at once so poisonous and so suicidal as that of the waning crescent.”