I communicated my discovery to those of my colleagues who were interested with me in this dispute: Count de Montebello, French ambassador; Baron Blanc, Italian ambassador; and Sir William White, British ambassador. At the same time I submitted copies of the proposed regulations to the Reverend Doctor Isaac Bliss and the Reverend Henry O. Dwight, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Western Turkey. They all viewed the matter as I did.
The following day I again called on the Grand Vizier, informing him that I looked upon these regulations as seriously infringing upon the rights of American citizens in Turkey, and pointing out my objections in detail. The three colleagues just referred to did the same on behalf of their respective subjects who had mission or other schools in the empire. We succeeded in impressing the Grand Vizier with the force and validity of our objections, for he requested us to put them in writing and forward them to the Porte. With the aid of Drs. Bliss and Dwight I prepared such a document, and I am glad to be able to say that our protests came in time and were sufficiently forceful to prove effective in preventing this new legislation.
As I had now been negotiating for several months with reference to the Syrian schools, I decided that the most efficient way of translating into concrete result the repeated promises in regard to them was to visit some of our missionary schools throughout the empire. I obtained the necessary permission from Washington and took a journey to Cairo, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Beirut, Mersina, and Smyrna, where I conferred with our missionaries, with our several consuls, as well as with the respective governors and governor-generals. I found the relations between the local authorities and our consuls, and between the authorities and the missionary representatives, quite friendly, in some places indifferent, but nowhere hostile.
I had instructed the missionaries to get ready for the opening of the schools, and I planned the trip so as to be in Beirut about the time my order for the reopening was to be put in force. My plan had the desired effect. In anticipation of my arrival at Beirut, fifteen of the schools were reopened; and while I was there five or six more. That was about as many of the total thirty as the missionaries cared to or were in a position to reopen then. For the time being I felt satisfied that I had sufficiently reversed the Government policy to check the progressive closing of the schools which, if continued, would seriously have threatened the existence of all American schools in Turkey.
I must here express my appreciation of the assistance given me by Erhard Bissinger, our consul at Beirut. He was an earnest, sincere man, formerly a New York merchant. Although his health was frail he worked with unremitting zeal and efficiency, discharging his official duties with rare judgment and tact. I could always rely on the correctness of his reports respecting the many difficulties as they arose, and I could always feel assured that in each instance he would apply every effort to bring about an adjustment with the local authorities, by whom he was as highly esteemed as by the missionaries.
Another expression of the Government's enmity toward the activities of our missionaries was the treatment being accorded the colporteurs, or persons who went about selling Bible tracts. The agents of the American as well as the British Bible Society were constantly and arbitrarily being arrested. They were charged with plying their trade without license, yet when they made application they were never able to get license. From time to time I protested against these arrests and secured the release of one after another of the agents; but the thing to be done was to prevent arrests.
The fact was they were being made without real cause. Before these tracts or any other material could be printed a permit had to be obtained from the Ottoman Government. The material had to pass censorship before it was allowed to be printed, so that the very fact of its appearing in print was proof of the authorization of the censors. I held that, once printed, to prohibit the sale of these tracts was in restraint of commerce; that there was no reason why book hawkers should be under different regulations from hawkers of any other wares.
I prepared an argument along these lines, which I presented to the Grand Vizier, and he agreed with my conclusions. He forthwith gave orders for the release of all colporteurs and that no further arrests were to be made. The British Bible Society, of course, benefited equally with our own by these orders, and I received their grateful appreciation through my colleague, Sir William White.
All this hostility toward the missionaries and their work might be construed to be founded upon an objection by the Government to having its subjects converted to Christianity. But it was rather foreign influence as a whole that was being fought, and religion was simply the convenient peg. Conversions from Mohammedanism were few and far between, and for the number of Mohammedans turned Christian in the course of a year there were as many Christians turned Mohammedan. The Mohammedans are intensely and sincerely devoted to their faith. On the whole they are convinced that their religion is the only true one and that Christianity is inferior and less rational. Such converts as the missionaries do make come almost exclusively from among the Armenians, Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and other Christian sects whose form of Christianity is of a mediæval character. The chief missionary work in Turkey is educational, carried forward in a religious spirit. At the time of my visit to the various vilayets, the Presbyterian Board alone had over one hundred schools throughout Syria, all located in places where previously there had been no schools at all.