CHURCH OF MAR SHALITHA, QUDSHANIS.
The larger arch opens into the Sanctuary, the veil of which is never withdrawn except for the celebration of Qurbana. The smaller opens into the Sacristy, where is also the font. Ex voto offerings of aromatic herbs hang from the tie beams; and the Church is lit only by a tiny cruciform loophole at the west end, so that the interior is almost pitch dark.
No. 11
Very soon, however, the real problem of the relations of the Armenian and Ottoman began to come up again in a slightly different form.
The Young Turk ideal was an Ottoman Empire; with equal rights no doubt for all who were content to become Ottomans, but Ottomanization for all. The Tashnakists (who kept up their organization, observing, in answer to all protests, that it was as necessary for them as was that of the Committee of Union and Progress for others) were Armenians first and foremost; and further were anxious to set about the immediate realization of a programme that was wildly Radical, not to say Socialistic, in its objects. Confiscation of all landed property; disendowment and disestablishment of the Church;[125] universal suffrage (which was to include female suffrage by the way), and the abolition of all religious teaching in schools, were some of the planks of their “platform.” All authority, save that of the nation, was disowned; even a parent was not to exercise any power over his son. In fact all the reforms that even a Socialist admits must come in gradually in the West, were to be administered en bloc to an astonished East.